Epic Think Tank
Games and e-learning
 ‘Now
where did I leave that tank?’ Steve Rayson, Sales & Marketing Director
of Epic, did a suspension-crunching right-hand turn across the oncoming
traffic in Birdcage walk (seriously injuring a pedestrian) and barrelled
into a fenced-off enclosure where he brought the car to a skidding
halt. Getting out of the car (and shooting the hapless policeman
who was attempting to apprehend him) he got into the tank and drove
off in the direction of Whitehall.
‘It’s got a gun as well,’ he said. Small grins visited the corners of several public sector mouths as the stuccoed headquarters of one government department after another came under Rayson’s screeching hail of fire...
Calm down, dear, it’s only a commercial. Steve Rayson is really a very safe driver. And this was, of course, not real life but an Epic Think Tank event, on the subject of Games and e-learning.
When is a game not a game?
There’s no doubt about it, when people are playing games they behave in ways that would appear wildly out of character under normal circumstances. And this is an important part of the value of games: the chance they give to explore other worlds and viewpoints, to be other people. In the process, they provide opportunities to escape some of the restraints under which we operate in normal life – to redress the Kantian balance between duty and pleasure – to do, for a change, not what we know we ought to do, but what we want.
Sometimes what we want is to do bad. To do the opposite of what we are supposed to do: to break traffic laws, mow down pedestrians in a tank, get arrested – to wilfully fail at a task we have been given, just to see what the outcome might be.
Kids playing a computer ‘god-game’ like The
Sims will quite often start by seeing how quickly they can make
a disastrous mess of the whole scenario and starve everybody to
death. Kids seek out failure: they know that failure is interesting.
The older we get the more we try and suppress this fascination,
in favour of focusing on success (and the less able we become to
benefit from game-playing, perhaps, as a result).
But the reckless behaviour game-players exhibit is not just about failing. Sometimes it is about trying out different roles; exploring the road less travelled, or getting different perspectives on familiar tasks and problems.
For these reasons, games can be highly useful for learning. The value of game-playing in training and education has been recognised by pedagogues since time immemorial. The ancient Greek words for games ('paidia') and education ('paideia') were closely related. In fact, Plato said that the only way someone will learn is through play. Traditional face-to-face organisational training has always made use of role-plays, simulations and other game-like activities.
We learn better and faster from our mistakes than from our successes, and an important part of learning is being able to fail in a safe context. In fact one of the shortcomings of the traditional training environment is that it avoids bringing individuals to the brink of disaster, with the result that the learning fails to really connect on an emotional level with the learner. The classroom is rarely a safe place in which to to fail.
The key thing about a game is that once we say it’s a game it then becomes safe to fail, or to make a fool of yourself – what you do there, in that ‘fenced-off’ space, has no impact in real life.
So why aren’t organisations falling over themselves to make use of computer game technology and design? The answer is probably that computer games have an image problem.
Games have an image problem
People perceive games as inherently trivial; an un-businesslike activity. Computer games suffer further from the association with their target audience (adolescent boys) and the type of people and companies that produce them. Nintendo was originally a toy company. Other games companies have their origins in the world of board games, and even more suspect, ‘anorakish’ activities like Dungeons and Dragons.
Computer games are extremely non-PC; a mind-rotting, anti-social activity that right-thinking parents ought to be protecting their children from. So what place, if any, should they play in the organisational context?
It is not easy, for a training manager charged with meeting a learning objective around, say, health and safety, to tell the CEO that they intend spending a substantial portion of budget on a computer game. In fact the word ‘game’ is rarely used, if a more credible-sounding term such as ‘simulation’ or ‘exercise’ will work instead.
Getting games and gaming logic into e-learning is very much a ‘stealth project’.
It is true that the word ‘simulation’ for many military applications has a very specific meaning: it is anything that represents a system. However in practice the line between simulations and games can be wafer-thin. With the simple addition of an objective to carry out within the simulated system, there is really nothing to distinguish a game from a simulation.
One of our delegates gave the example of Harpoon
developed as a ‘training and what-if simulation tool’, which broke
all records when released as a commercial product (and is now marketed
with the line that ‘for a more intense battle experience, you have
to be in the navy’). America’s
Army is another example in a similar line, which has been widely
written about in Epic white papers and show reports (see white paper:
Games and e-learning).
However, it is clear that there has to be some dividing line between what is useful in games for learning, and at what point gaming can actually destroy learning. So what are the pros and cons of games and e-learning?
Games pro and con
A lot of the issues around games in this context centre around that troublesome word, ‘fun’. Nobody wants to be seen to be anti-fun, on the other hand; if we went to work purely for fun, we wouldn’t need paying. Should training be fun? And at what point does fun destroy learning?
Some subjects are inherently boring to learn. Some information is just not a bundle of laughs to acquire, useful though it may be: who could call trawling through stock prices in the FT as fun? But it’s useful knowledge.
Fun can be a great attractor of interest, a great motivator, a great engager; but the danger is that it sets the wrong sort of expectations; raises the event horizon too much; failing to create the atmosphere of calm reflection most conducive to deep learning.
Games can actively inhibit learning if the objective of the game is not congruent with that of the the learning – fun then becomes a distraction from the learning, rather than a by-product.
In the organisational context there is a great difference here between training which is mandatatory and that which is elective. It may be necessary to market elective learning much harder, and thus to up the fun quotient. Similarly, learning which is provided by organisations to their customers needs to be actively promoted to the target audience (in doing this, there are lessons to be learned from the games industry, which is excellent at marketing its products).
With mandatory training however, there is less of an imperative to attract attention, and engagement can be sought at a cooler, more intellectual level.
Another danger, from the organisational point of view, that was raised, lay in the ability of games-like environments to provide individualised experiences for the learner. In many large, globally-dispersed organisations it is a more pressing requirement that everybody ‘sing from the same hymn-sheet’ (to use that grisly cliche) in a particular practice area. There is a danger that games might foster a multitude of viewpoints rather than one correct one; might dissect and fragment rather than bring things together.
Another, completely different viewpoint around the table praised the ability
of games-like e-learning to put the learner in control of a simulated
environment, building self-esteem and confidence, allowing the learner
to develop their own strategies, to explore and to discover. Too
much e-learning, in this person’s view, is not about building esteem,
as it takes away control away from individual, pushing the information
and knowledge in a centre-out, or top-down style.
Yet another delegate, from a military background (who could be
expected to have less worries about a command-and-control model)
saw much potential in the level-by-level nature of the games experience
for moving cohorts of learners up through levels of competence.
Another good point about computer games was seen in their ability to provide a high degree of immersion. It is seen with language teaching, for example, that the best way to learn a language is by actually staying in the country involved: games can’t pretend to simulate that level of immersion, but they can go a lot further than, for instance, reading a book.
Games shells and logic
A game shell such as that used by ‘The
Getaway’ (Playstation 2), our initial example, which provides
a highly realistic simulation of driving around London, could provide
a basis for a learning package on English as a foreigh language,
for instance - or training for taxi-drivers!
E-learning programmes that use games logic (if not actual games
shells) are becoming more and more widespread in e-learning. Roger
Schank has pioneered a model of goal-based learning which
Epic also uses, where learners are given tasks to accomplish within
the context of a simulated storyline. As with a computer game, the
story is a loose narrative, secondary to the main activity of completing
particular tasks, but holds the learning experience together and
provides a realistic and recogniseable ‘world’ in which learners
can safely progress from initial failure through to mastery.
An example of this approach can be seen in the FA
Psychology for Soccer Level 1 programme, featured elsewhere
on this site.
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