Book review
Digital Game-Based Learning
McGraw-Hill, December 2000
Author: Marc Prensky
Review by Donald Clark - Epic
Marc Prensky has set the benchmark for debate
on games and learning. This highly readable 440-page book
is far and away the best text on the market about this subject.
Although, as we shall see, it is far from being the last word
on the matter.
Prensky starts by showing that today's trainers
and trainees are from totally separate worlds. Sure, learners
have a short attention span nowadays - for the old ways of
learning! His point is that the old ways are inappropriate
for the new generation of learners. Games now infuse the culture
with movies of games and games of movies. The powerful argument
that underpins the rest of the text is that games are cool,
education and training are dull.
The real power in the book comes from the arguments
he gathers on motivation, and using game techniques to improve
learning. This is much more useful, as games' designers often
know a lot more about motivation than those in education.
They have to - or their games won't sell. There is real mileage
in taking game design techniques and using them in learning,
mainly through simulations.
His analysis of what makes games tick is exemplary;
better than many I've read in books like Trigger Happy or
Joystick Nation. This is matched by a similarly strong analysis
on learning in relation to simulations. The difficulty, however,
is in bringing these two worlds together, and Prensky is not
entirely convincing in making these two worlds congruent.
Games may not be as widely applicable in education and training
as he imagines.
One practical danger in his approach is the
implication that creating games is easy. Games are difficult
to design and expensive to make. Having been involved in the
games industry myself, I know it is easy to underestimate
the culture, talent and costs issues. A game's budget can
push through ten million dollars with matching marketing spend
- and they require rare talent to design and code. Training
departments rarely have this scale of budget for individual
training programmes.
As one would expect, and as with any book that
takes a single, strong line - traditional learning bad, games
good - the book is light on arguments against games in learning.
He quotes Neil Postman on page 74, but fails to mention that
Postman has been a vigorous opponent to games in learning.
Postman's hugely popular 'Amusing Ourselves to Death', first
published in 1985, was a damning attack on the idea that all
learning had to be 'fun'. Postman is still recommending resistance
to this idea. With only four pages of conterarguments which
are dismissed in a rather cursory fashion, rather than through
real arguments is a weak spot in the book failing to address
the many debatable issues that surround the use of games in
learning. These include: violence, gender gaps, distractive
elements, disappointment and a whole raft of arguments against
the use of games in reflective, higher forms of learning.
For example, it is quite difficult to argue that the violence
in games has no effect whatsoever on players, then argue that
games make great sense for behavioural change. Why has the
military spent so much on games, simulations and even a free
downloadable game with over a million players (America's Army)?
This is a dimension to the 'games in learning'
debate that is often underestimated by the games evangelists.
Games often have no educational value, and, even worse, can
distract, disappoint or even destroy learning. Distraction
- if the learning objectives are not congruent with the game
objectives you run a real danger of distracting learners from
the learning. Learners become obsessed with progress, scores
and other non-learning components in the game, to the detriment
of the content. Even in real computer games, players will
go to enormous lengths to obtain cheats. Disappointment -
this is a danger where the learner is set up to experience
a game which actually turns out to be a rather weak affair.
Children brought up on a diet of blockbuster realtime games
are often bored by poorly designed educational games. Destruction
- in some cases, games can even destroy learning. This is
the argument put forward by Postman. If game-playing induces
an expectation that learning must always be an amusing experience,
then setting such an expectation risks producing the opposite
effect in contexts where amusement is absent. In this way,
a games-based approach might undermine other more traditional
forms of education and training.
Clearly, the luddite position of either banning
games or ignoring them altogether is not possible. A measured
approach to their use is advised. The debate about games in
learning often ends up as talk between older non-game-playing
educators, and old idealists, (I'm both) neither of whom are
truly immersed in the culture they are examining. Here's a
telling comment on the book from a twitch-generation game
player:
'I don't find my generation totally unable to
learn without computer games as injected fun. For my part,
I'm able to contemplate, read and write. Yes, some of us do
like computer games. But this is a matter of culture and aesthetics
- not of learning. And yes, like many other people we need
to learn: that is why we go to schools to get an education.'
(Lars Konzack)
However, I remain, like Presnsky, an evangelist.
I do not see games as being a waste of time and educationally
barren. If we can pull out the strengths of games while setting
their weaknesses to the side, games may turn out a generation
with better IQs, better skills, more attuned to technology
with a more enlightened learner-centric attitude towards learning
than any previous generation.
This book remains the vanguard text in this fascinating
debate.
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