- serious games
- serious game development secrets
- using games to transform learning experiences
- quantitative and qualitative research about gaming and its impact
- exploring the learning in gaming
- game design
The presenters were a mix of higher education faculty who teach game design and corporate game designers. Quite a few of the examples were focusing on corporate learning - as in, how can I get my employees to practice certain skill sets, learn certain knowledge to improve levels of customer and other services. The results of our AU collaborative nuggets is at https://padlet.com/auburnonline/augames4learning.
Here some more details
Atlanta's company SillyMonkey discussed how games engineer learning, tapping into our core compulsions to compete, collaborate, win, learn from mistakes -- games make failure compelling: you want to try again, you are eager to beat the challenge. However, a game designer needs to find the balance of making the game challenging enough so that the player does not become frustrated. Later on, another presenter discussed the scaffolded design towards winning the game, with increasing complexity and difficulty of the various levels.
Games are defined as a strategic experience with rules, goals, and fun -- and the goals contain a victory experience.
Serious Games include conflict and rules, are still entertaining but have a different primary purpose. Think about Civilization, Celebrity Calamity, AYII: The Cost of Life.
Games take time to develop - rapid content design and publication does not work for game design, but rapid prototyping with multiple revisions is necessary
Games can be explicitly about learning -- and in that case, think about your learning outcomes carefully -- or they can frame the learning to give the brain a break between work/stress and learning/potential stress.
Designing Digitally suggested that we move away from ROI -- Return on Investment - towards ROE -- Return on Engagement. He reminded us that when folks come to us with disjointed ideas or goals, it is our task to turn this collection of wishes into a coherent vision. One of the key questions is what is the intrinsic behavior that we want to change -- leading to a discussion about what kind of game/action would get us to this change in behavior.
Games are about discovery -- they appeal to curiosity
Games also satisfy our new trend of instant gratification -- even if that means we spend money so that our carrots ripen faster than the free carrots (think Farmville).
Games allow us to empathize with characters in a story line, creating emotional attachment
Games create loyalty -- you want players to come back
Game design principles include such points as
MAD -- Mechanics, Dymanics, Aesthetics: The mechanics of the game are the basic variables (eg, cards, board game), the dynamics are variations that are introduced to the mechanics, and the aesthetics are the look and feel.
Think through all permutations, parallel story lines, what player personae you are likely to encounter (Bartle's player types or Amy Jo Kim's Social Action Matrix)
Assessment is achieved through the points/levels that can be first and foremost seen and experienced by the player.
Who plays online? We think of gamers as young and male -- 48% of over 50-year-olds play games, 44% of gamers are female -- but these groups are not as heavily invested in massive online games like World of Warcraft but are instead playing casual games -- like online card and puzzle games.
Only 20% of coroporations are using games for learning at this point - some of these companies build games where the thene of the game is related to the learning outcomes, but others simply use the game as an incentive. Positive outcome for either technique: corporation's learning management systems have been underused, and with the introduction of games, employees are now aware of the lms and use it on a regular basis.
Some of the tools and game engines mentioned throughout the days (including some companies)
Adobe Captivate: http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/education.html -- unfortunately, this product is not part of the Adobe Creative Cloud
Articulate Storyline: https://www.articulate.com/products/storyline-why.php
Gamebryo: http://www.gamebryo.com/
PowerPoint -- making choices -- here are some templates: http://powerpointgames.wikispaces.com/PowerPoint+Game+Templates
Gamemaker: http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker
Unity 3D: https://unity3d.com/
Knowledge Guru: http://www.theknowledgeguru.com/
Balsamiq: https://balsamiq.com/
Powermockup: https://www.powermockup.com/
Kahoot: https://getkahoot.com/
and here is one to play:
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