As if Valve was reading my mind, they introduced Steamworks yesterday. With the added flexibility of Steam as a customizable distribution platform, things could get very interesting.
I spent some time with a colleague putting together the lab specs for the Educational Gaming Commons lab this week and have been thinking a lot about potential road blocks to software in the lab. Most games require the actual CD/DVD to be in the drive while you play. Sure, you can find cracks that allow you to run the game minus the media, but that brings up a few legal issues. We could put some sort of checkout system in place, but that would have to be staffed and you face the potential of media growing legs and walking out of the lab.
This brings me to Steam, Valve’s online game distribution platform. I’ve been using this system ever since Half-Life 2 and I’ve watched it grow exponentially from Valve’s own distribution and server browser to a distribution platform for multiple publishers and community management tool. My initial thought is to try and utilize Steam on each computer to manage games, which would alleviate the need for media. Then I started to poke around other features, and realized you can create groups and event calendars via Steam. Throw in the buddy list functionality where each user can manage his/her own profile and web presence…this is one powerful tool. It reminds me of early talks colleagues had with Apple for using iTunes as an educational content management system for podcasts and other file types which led to iTunesU.
Time to track down some contact info for the folks over at Valve.
Image taken from the Steam website
After examining the quantitative data regarding my class last semester, today I took a look at the qualitative data. This data came in the form of the ‘official’ SRTEs that go to the administration, as well as two open-ended questions I included in my own survey.
The SRTEs contained three question:
1. List one to three of the most important things that helped you learn in this course
The entire blog module faired well, particularly RSS and Podcasting. The individual technology presentations, where each student had to choose a different technology or web-based system, was next on the list followed by the video module. I find it somewhat comical that early in the semester students had no idea what RSS was, then thought it was pointless, then began noticing things like “Hey, that facebook news feed in my profile page is powered by RSS, isn’t it?”.
2. List one to three barriers to learning in this course
Second Life was almost unanimous here, which is scary. I’ve personally put a lot of time into leveraging Second Life as a learning tool, but not nearly as much time as folks at the NMC and other academic organizations around the world. The virtual teaming module also received poor reviews, mostly from the standpoint of the collaboration system we used.
3. List one to three recommendations to the instructor that would improve the learning in this course
You guessed it, drop the Second Life module. This also showed up in my own survey when I asked a similar question, but I also asked students to make a suggestion for a new module. Some folks felt that the virtual worlds module had too much Second Life and wanted to look at things like World of Warcraft. Others simply wanted to get a sampling of the different virtual worlds out there and not be ’stuck’ in Second Life for three weeks. Others wanted to look at online communities, focusing on virtual worlds or online gaming. Two students indicated the virtual worlds module provided NO relevant experience to their IST careers. Whether that was my not getting through to them or simply not being able to look beyond SL, I’m unsure.
I have a lot to think about and modify before teaching two sections of IST 110 in the summer.
As we get ready to launch the Educational Gaming Commons at PSU, I’ve recently found myself struggling with this question:
What makes an idea worthy of a game treatment?
We’re starting to get a few faculty who want to take ideas they have for teaching and turn them into educational games. We only have a few ideas on the table right now, but what if we eventually start to get 10+ ideas a month? How do we evaluate those ideas and decide “Yes, this would make a great game!” or “No, this idea does not fit within a game framework”? One big concern I have is that faculty want to turn content into a game because “kids like games, so they will be more motivated to learn my content if we somehow make a game out of it”.
I recall reading about this topic somewhere in the past, but I can’t seem to dig up the reference. Some of the attributes that I feel make an idea worth a game treatment include:
- Visualization. If the concept or content being covered relies heavily on something that can’t be easily represented in text. Example: learning about molecules and how they react under different conditions.
- Multi-tasking. If the content requires the learner to perform multiple actions at the same time. Example: working in a control center, where multiple inputs (from sensors, people, TV, etc) all contribute to decision making.
- Contextual. When the content lends itself to story-driven learning. Example: Certain aspects of history, such as the civil war.
- When the learning objectives are at the performance level (the learner will eventually have to take action and perform a task, to do something) vs. memory-level objectives (memorizing facts or rules). Example: conducting an operation on a patient.
I may return to this thread as I think of more. I’ve stated before, using a game to teach is just ONE medium that should be combined with other mediums for the best results. Don’t think because I used operating on a patient as an example, that I believe a doctor can learning everything about operations by playing a game!
Over the holidays, I hooked up my xbox wireless adapter for the first time and began rummaging through xbox live in search of new Rock Band tunes. I quickly found myself searching a vast array of content, mostly demos and trying to find freebie content. This isn’t the first time I’ve been on Live, but it is the first time I’ve been able to simply surf. The main thing that jumped out at me: The Interface.
Overall, I like it, but it can be intimidating at first. I got lost looking for Rock Band content at one point because a few songs were in the “feature” area, a few were in the “new release” area, but I couldn’t find the bulk of the songs. I eventually went to “all games”, found Rock Band, then found the 41 songs I could download (and no, I didn’t download all 41 songs!).
The Rock Band UI for downloadable content is…lacking. When a song is highlighted, in the lower right of the screen a text box appears with content about that song. In many instances, you can only see the name of the song in the box until it begins to auto-scroll. Yes, auto-scroll. Imagine being on a website with a scroll bar that you can’t control. Frustrating. Once the scroll begins, you finally see the artist. As I waited, I just assumed a small preview clip of the song would play. This did not happen. They need to find a way to provide the artist information as well as a small audio preview when a user scrolls over the song. The way it currently is now, I had to sit with my laptop open and hit YouTube for every song to see if I liked it or not. (NOTE: I couldn’t find a page on the web with a listing of all Rock Band downloadable content + links to either YouTube or an audio preview…this page MUST exist?)
My brother also picked up an xbox for his daughters (and partially for himself) with a wireless adapter. The first time he got on Live, he was overwhelmed. All he wanted to do was look for GH and Rock Band songs, nothing else. For the ‘casual’ gamers out there who have consoles and only play a handful of games, Xbox Live is a daunting, complex system that can take a while to sort out.
Two potential improvements:
1. Downloadable content for a game should be accessible via the game menu itself. For instance, I should be able to pull up a list of all DL content for Rock Band within the Rock Band menu structure. As long as I have MS points, I should be able to download straight from here. Stubb’s mentioned that a lot of games do this already, why not try and standardize on this?
2. Create some sort of phased interface system. Upon entering Xbox Live for the first time, provide the user with a quick survey to get a better understanding of his/her needs. Based on the survey, only provide the relevant Xbox Live tabs and menu items. Of course the full feature set can always be accessible by anyone, maybe via preferences, but for the casual or newbie folks…why does this have to be so complex and, at times, frustrating?
