Math and Science Can Be Fun and Games

I’ve always believed in the work we do at EdGE and that games have real potential to transform education, but after attending this year’s Games for Change Festival, you might say that I am now fully drinking the Kool-Aid. Hell, I’m ready to set up a sidewalk stand and sell it to my friends, neighbors, and thirsty passersby.

I attended a lot of great sessions, but was most impacted by a handful of inspiring keynote speakers. Jane McGonigal opened the festival by telling us how playing games literally saved her life and made her a SuperBetter version of herself. She then showed us a glimpse of how to SuperBetter ourselves, added 7.5 minutes to everyone’s life, and made a very compelling argument for how games can help us avoid the top 5 regrets of the dying. Sounds pretty great, right? Then, Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari (and Chuck E. Cheese!), talked about his newest endeavor, Brainrush, which uses video game metrics to addict students to learning. Each lesson is a mini-game that adapts to the individual student’s skill-level. He gave us a vision of gamified classrooms where teachers would be free from the time-consuming tasks of being clerk, judge, and disciplinarian, and only have to focus on what they are meant to do, what they love to do—mentor students and foster a love for learning. Can you picture it? Finally, Jim Gee blew me away with his description of “Big G” games—games plus affinity spaces (interest-driven online communities where people come together over shared interests and passions for problems they are trying to solve within the game). Each and every one of his 20+ principles for good Big G games really resonated with me, especially the notion that through good games, you shouldn’t be learning just one discipline, but rather learning new skills, problem solving, and mastering expertise. In Dr. Gee’s own words, “We ought to be learning 10 things at once, not one.” Yes!

I think the pen that came in my conference welcome packet said it best: “Math and science can be fun and games.” Designing good games is hard, especially educational games. But, if we can do it, it will be so very worth the effort, and I for one am excited to be part of a team that is taking on this challenge to put the fun back in learning and to make a new generation of more engaged, productive learners.

So, play on my friends. You might just learn something while you’re at it.

PAX East: Game Genres

PAX East Expo Hall

I recently attended PAX East—a three-day gaming event in Boston—and it was quite an experience! Video games, board games, and card games everywhere! Tens-of-thousands of gamers—some in quite elaborate costume—packed into rooms, standing in long lines, playing games at tables, in booths, and on spare patches of floor, and generally having fun—very serious fun.

There were sessions, too. One that I found particularly interesting was The Genre Divide: Reassessing How We Define Videogame Genres by James Portnow, the CEO of Rainmaker Games. Unlike the other sessions I attended at PAX East, this one actually had an academic paper reference—MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek (2004)! More importantly, this session got me thinking.

James Portnow’s core argument was that a game’s genre should be defined by the Aesthetics of game, not the Mechanics. According to Hunicke et.al., Mechanics “describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms,” while Aesthetics “describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system.” Portnow is arguing that we should categorize a game by the reason why you go play that game. For example, one Aesthetic is “Sensation” or “game as sense pleasure”. In other words, we play some games for the way they stimulate our senses, such as the beautiful visuals and audio of Journey. Another Aesthetic is “Fellowship” or “game as social framework”. These are games we play to be playing with other human beings. The interactions don’t have to be direct, such as the ability to leave notes in Dark Souls, but they do need to be a primary reason why one plays the game. Games can have many Aesthetics, but the idea is that they probably have one or two that are the primary reasons people play them.

Martian Boneyards — Aesthetic: Sensation?

So what does this have to do with EdGE? We’ve had a hard time figuring out the genres for some of our games, and maybe, part of the reason is that the genre system itself is at least partially broken. But if we go with Portnow and try to categorize our games by their Aesthetics, where do we get? Certainly the primary reason folks played Martian Boneyards was Fellowship, but after that, what would one say was the balance between Sensation, Narrative, Discovery, and Expression? And what about Canaries? We wanted Narrative to be a reason—and didn’t achieve this—so maybe some mix of Challenge and Expression? As for our latest batch of Leveling Up games, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Anyway, I left PAX East with a new lens with which to view our work… and what more can you ask of a conference.

Justifying Games

Several of us from EdGE were at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco last week, and while I know attendance affected me (see earlier post), I want to talk about something else—justification of games.

A theme of a number of the talks I attended was a push-back against the idea that games need to justify themselves somehow, with speakers arguing against the position that it’s not enough for a game to just be fun, that it needs to be weighty or meaningful or message driven. I agree. I love playing games, and mostly I want to play them for escapism and fun and time with friends. Games, as a whole, do not need to be justified.

But let’s dig into this a bit more. Making a parallel between movies and games, two separate GDC talks referenced the old movie Sullivan’s Travels. I haven’t seen this movie yet, but as I understand the plot, the main character, Sullivan, is tired of making “puff movies” and wants to make a movie that is serious and meaningful, capturing the plight of the poor and downtrodden. To gain insight, he sets off as a hobo and has a lot of experiences that eventually bring him to a really low, dark place… where he realizes the power of movies to bring laughter.

The speakers who referenced Sullivan’s Travels were making the point that, just like movies, games don’t need to have a higher purpose, do not need to justify themselves; however, in doing this, they were pointing to a movie that had a higher purpose. Sullivan’s Travels is a message movie about how movies can be just fun and don’t have to be messages! For me, the distinction is in the little words—”can” and “don’t have to” vs. “need to”. Games should indeed not feel like they need to justify themselves—but this doesn’t mean that some games can’t or shouldn’t have additional purpose or meaning. Which brings us to EdGE.

EdGE is designing and making games with the express purpose of engaging players in scientific inquiry and learning. Moreover, we’re using taxpayers’ money to so. EdGE games do need to justify themselves. There’s nothing wrong in providing entertainment, and our games certainly need to do that, but if our games don’t also do more, then we’ve failed. We won’t fail.

How did GDC change me?

Last week I spent time with the big boys. I went to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, where about 15,000+ people in the gaming industry come together to talk shop. I paused before using the term big boys – but yep, that’s pretty accurate. This was the first time I felt like the only girl in a room for a while, and actually I realized I wasn’t the only female…just the only female my age (and of course that is a bit of an exaggeration). Suffice it to say the 43-year old who is the typical social gamer is probably not working in the industry.

I will go back, I hope. It is as fun as you would expect a game design conference to be and I had a lot to learn there. I realize that the industry is struggling with many of the same questions we are at EdGE – what platform do we choose? How do we frame a game with narrative to guide but not constrain? How much does art really matter and in what ways? How do we “go viral”?

Many of the answers are the same we have been told over and over by our own game designer Mat Nicholas of GameGurus. Simplify, focus, and craft. Choose a very simple game mechanic and stick with it. Older games had complicated interfaces and the trick was to become an expert in the complication. No longer. Games are about doing one single mechanic over and over again in increasingly complicated situations.

The term “social game” is very limited at GDC and the community seems to be struggling with that. All the sessions I went to on social games were about facebook games, or someone trying to make an equivalent to a facebook game on a homegrown platform. In one session with EA, Kabam, and Digital Chocolate they acknowledged that social games should also include RPGs, MMOs, and other formats, but none did.

One talk really sticks with me. It was from Matt Ricchetti from Kabam. He described game mechanics as synchronous v asynchronous, symmetric v asymmetric, and in terms of strong and weak ties. Very cool cross-section of SNA and game design.

It’s hard to say what exactly I learned at GDC, but I do know that I learned. I know that I am a different designer with a different view on games. I have new terminology to express my thoughts about game design and I feel more confident in staking claims about games because I have been exposed to an expert community who is grappling with game design. I have adopted more of the gamer identity myself (by GDC badge now adorns my office door). Maybe it is like learning in a game, I am changed by the experience even if it is hard to quantify exactly what I learned.

What Makes a Game Addictive?

What makes a game addictive? I’m sure I don’t represent the typical gamer, and thus am not a good market study. But I am starting to learn what I like, and what I’ve don’t, and what lies between.

I’ve been playing Limbo. The neo-noir feel is intriguing and I immediately like my little bright-eyed character who awakens from the dark. Navigation is easy, important for a controller immigrant like me. The puzzles are clever and re-load is fast so as I “try-and-die” I don’t become impatient.

But each time I fail the black droplets of blood squirting from my little guy sends steel spikes through my heart (my real heart that is). I can’t watch my guy die a gruesome death over and over (and over) again without shutting down my empathy and emotive capacity for this character. And when I shut down my connection – the game becomes boring. I like the puzzles but they are more fun when I feel close to my character and if I feel close to my character, I don’t want to feel its pain. I can feel myself withdrawing from Limbo and am likely not to go past chapter 11.

I am wondering why Limbo has so much going for it and I am letting the darkness get to me. I love the B&W, I love the sudden thump of the spider leg, it is all so well done – but it’s not where I want to go when I want to escape in a game world.

Again, I think I am unusual in that I also don’t like any fantasy, MMORPG type games I have tried. I am not a mythical, medieval, or sci-fi kinda gal. But somehow that kind of character connection didn’t bother me in Portal, maybe because it is first person POV. I focused entirely on the puzzles and how to solve them rather than the effect they had on me.

Lots to think about as we make try-and-die puzzle games….JAC

What Happened to Canaries?

I hate to say the Canary died…but it has gone into hibernation. We tried to push what we might do with an alternate reality game, and try to use citizen science resources in a social mystery game – we didn’t get the mix right. We couldn’t provide the social presence we needed to get the crowdsourcing going. That is not to say it can’t be done – but we didn’t have the right mix of tools to do it.

So we are back at the drawing board, fortunately we have lots of crayons. We have funding to crack a big question – what can assessment of high school content look like in free-choice gaming elements?. And how do those elements fit into a larger free-choice inquiry gaming environment? So we are putting all our attention to that quest now (and an epic one it is!)

For those of you who liked what you saw in Canaries…stay tuned…it will be back. Perhaps reincarnated as a (shhhh…) classroom curriculum.

Thoughts on Design Research and Canaries

We are re-launching Canaries in a Coalmine today. This version has fixes (we hope!) to some of the issues we had when we first launched in August. Our minds were stuck in the frame of an MMO game since we had just come off of doing Martian Boneyards in Blue Mars. In an MMO, social presence is aided by avatars seeing one another. You come to the space, you see someone else there and start a conversation. It feels very natural (in fact it would feel weird not to start talking to someone standing there).

But in a flash based multiplayer game, like Canaries, we had to find ways to create social presence without avatars. What do I mean by social presence? The connection to other people that one can experience (or not experience) in an online environment. So as Teon, Jamie, and I sat around my living room in Halifax last August and watch the game launch with players coming and trying stuff, but not finding each other, we knew we had to try again.

We worked on several elements over the past couple of months. We created highly visible news feeds and re-organized the communication tool icons on the dashboard to help direct players to where they can join others in the game. We create tool tips to provide more immediate instruction on game tools and we created a new introduction video that explains more of the game to players before they begin. Finally, on the suspicion that the registration might be turning off players before they even start, we created a try-it mode where players can do activities without registering, and then are prompted to register the first time they attempt to enter data or initiate communication with another player.

So now we re-launch. Turn the media blitz machine back on (such as it is on a limited budget) and go for it. If nothing else, we are always learning….

Coming soon! Game release of Canaries in a Coalmine

EdGE’s newest alternate reality game, Canaries in a Coalmine, will be released in early August. Watch the trailer at

EdGE to release new game!

This Summer, EdGE will release its newest game, Canaries in a Coalmine.

Canaries is an alternate reality game with a message from the future. Earth’s ecosystem is in great peril. All we know from the message is that birds provide the key to saving the future. Canaries uses a web-based user interface with access to many scientific inquiry tools for the player community to use to gather information and make evidence-based decisions on how to save the birds…and thus save the planet. Players earn points by participating in the game’s activities, but they really advance when the player community rate their contributions as of high value to the decision making efforts.

Sign up to be notified of the release!

Jane McGonigal at TED

Jane McGonigal does a great job at TED of selling the human resource of gamers and calls for us to harness that energy towards solving world problems. She talk about four important game elements that engage players:

1. Games give players something to do all the time and just at the players level or just within of their reach – what Vygotsky would have called the Zone of Proximal Development.

2. MMO games offer a ready group of collaborators.

3. They involved players in an epic story.

4. The provide immediate reward via leveling up. Players get +/- points for activities.

When looking at the time people have spent in WoW, McGonigal says it is 6 million person years – the equivalent of the time since humans first walked upright. She says a typical gamer spends 10,000 hours playing games – the equivalent to the time in school from grades 5-12, and the amount Malcolm Gladwell claims is necessary for expertise in any given discipline.

She ends her talk with a description of the potential of the gaming population stating they have

urgent optismism + strong social fabric + blissful productivity + epic meaning

just what it may take to save the world….

Laurel