Gee, 2003

From Eduwiki

Introduction:

How do good game designers manage to get new players to learn long, complex, and difficult games? Most Game designers do not want to "dumb down" their games to attract new players but think that their version of the game should be enough motivation to want to play and complete the game. Most games are made for people who already have experience in computer gaming, so this doesn't help out the cause to attract new gamers. The common complaint is that these games can be uninviting or frustrating for newcomers, such as:

Panzer Dragoon Orta

Jak II

Prince of Persia

Viewtiful Joe

Gee's answer for the above question, "The designers of many good games have hit on profoundly good methods of getting people to learn and to enjoy learning. Furthermore, it turns out that these methods are similar in many respects to cutting-edge principles being discovered in research on human learning" He states,"I also believe that more people, young and old, men and women, will play games, and get more out if them, if games are highly learnable, but remain powerfully complex."

Gee feels that there is no reason to dumb them down since computer gaming is getting to be more popular culture and keeping the games at their level will only make a better, smarter society. Secondly he feels that "good game designers are practical theoreticians of learning," since players are using their "learning muscles" no matter what level they are playing. He argues that learning is like sex, in that under the right conditions, learning is biologically motivating and pleasurable for humans.

Gee goes on to admit that he believes game designers can make worlds where people can have meaningful new experiences, experiences that their places in life would never allow them to have or even experiences no human being has ever had before. These experiences have the potential to make people smarter and more thoughtful. He also suggests that game designers who want to extend their games into the educational arena might want to learn from some cognitive scientist and red some papers on learning theory.

Learning In Good Games

Gee has came up with a list that he thinks are good principles of learning that should be built into computer and video games.

I. EMPOWERED LEARNERS

  1.  Co-design

  2.  Customize 

  3.  Identity

  4.  Manipulation

II. PROBLEM SOLVING

  5.  Well-Order Problems

  6.  Pleasantly Frustrating

  7.  Cycles of Expertise

  8.  Information “On Demand” and “Just in Time”

  9.  Fish tanks

  10.  Sandboxes

  11.  Skills as Strategies

III. UNDERSTANDING

  12.  System Thinking

  13.  Meaning as action image