The Importance of Video Games in Learning
“Uh huuuuuuuuh…?” is the polite raised pitch response I often get from teaching professionals when I mention the importance of video games in learning. Even those teachers who themselves play video games can struggle to see the full potential and impact of these virtual environments. And just to note, I used the term ‘video game’ there to differentiate from physical games; from now on in this article I’ll just use the word ‘game’ because the lines will get a wee bit blurred as we go.
This article is an attempt to confront the sometimes vampiric recoil I’ve observed by educators when drawing back the curtain on a world which they often find themselves in competition with. To be clear: if you are an educator, you and your profession will not turn to dust from opening yourself and your curriculum up to some of the tried and tested mechanics of games.
I think perhaps the biggest misunderstanding about the value of games in education is how students learn from them. In traditional teaching methods (books, lectures, etc.), students are being presented with facts which they are tasked with memorising for later recall. In games, the learning is experiential. In traditional academic assessment, students are expected to achieve a grade A and beneath that are layers of failure. In games, players start at zero and build up their score through action and understanding. Learning therefore becomes epiphenomenonal as students are practically experiencing consequences, undertaking complex problem solving, and actively engaging with many real world subjects, such as history and physics.
The real value of games is through their ability to give students an empathetic understanding of concepts and events by allowing them to assume a role that gives them a sense of agency over their environment. Their real life role moves from a passive observer state to an active participant in an unfolding narrative.
And that all sounds great in theory but what games in existence actually do offer educational value? Here a just a few examples…
Never Alone ( Kisima Inŋitchuŋa)
Indigenous peoples of America have a history of producing games to help people learn about their cultures and Never Alone is perhaps one of the most successful examples. Told in 8 chapters, it combines puzzle solving 2D platformer gameplay with short video vignettes about the culture of the Alaskan Iñupiat people in a natural way that doesn’t feel forced, as the vignettes are relevant to the narrative. The game is a beautiful environment to experience.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War
Another good example of a 2D platformer that successfully blends gameplay with additional educational information is Valiant Hearts: The Great War. In Valiant Hearts you assume the role of a German soldier, a French soldier, and an American soldier as they each experience the horrors of World War I from their own individual perspectives. This is a very emotional game and despite being an illustrated platformer, it draws the player into the experiences of WWI more than any film or book can possibly hope to. When the character you control relies on your actions to survive, you cannot help but be invested in their well-being and empathise with their situation.
Papers, Please
In Papers, Please you play an immigration inspector of a fictional country that has just ended a 6 year war with a neighbouring country and your borders have just opened for the first time. Your task is to attempt to ensure you don’t let in any terrorists, smugglers, or spies while at the same time being faced with moral and ethical dilemmas such as overlooking incorrect paperwork to let people be reunited with their family or escape persecution in their own country. However, this can have consequences as fines for not processing people correctly may result in you not being able to afford food and medicine for your own family.
Rust
Rust is a multi-player survival game where you wake up naked on an island and you have to survive against the elements and other players. Your character is randomly generated for you and that character is tied to your account so you cannot change it. This essentially means your race and gender is randomly generated and what you’re born with is what you have to live with (similar to real life, no?). This has caused a lot of backlash and while the negative reaction to race seems to come largely from Russia, worryingly the negative reaction to gender has no such geographic boundary. But this is good. There is discussion. Perhaps most importantly, some white male gamer’s have reported that for the first time they’ve gained an incite into what it’s like not to be white and/or male and the vitriol that can be levied towards them by some members of the gaming community has changed and expanded their views on race and gender issues.
This War of Mine
Often in visual media, war is portrayed through the eyes of soldiers or politicians while civilians provide nothing more than a backdrop to the horror. In This War of Mine you play three survivors of a war who have taken refuge in a house and must gather resources to survive. To do this you must stretch or break your own morals and ethics: stealing from an old couple who will surely now starve to death, choosing whether to risk your life to save someone who is about to be sexually assaulted, or turning away those desperately in need of safety to save yourself. There are no right or wrong choices in a game like this; there is no pass or fail.
Minecraft
Minecraft is an extremely popular game that is best described as virtual Lego. In the survival mode you must mine for resources but in creative mode you are free to build anything you like. This can result in virtual community spaces being created and has the potential for you to create your own games and experiences within the game, such as challenging players to find clues and solve puzzles. A good example of this is The Tate gallery in London who have created a series of Minecraft maps based on artworks on display in the gallery.
Alternate Reality Games (ARG’s)
Games don’t just exist in virtual worlds. What if you were to use the real world as your game environment? Alternate Reality Games are extremely complex games that require large communities, sometimes globally, to work together to solve puzzles for the narrative to continue to unfold. This can involve anything from hiding coded messages in audio files, to requiring players be at a specific payphone at a particular time to receive a web address. This information is then shared between players who use their individual expertise to contribute to the wider objective. Players have to work together and people will naturally fall into roles such as coordinators, gatherers, and those with specific technical duties. Year Zero, I Love Bees and Why So Serious? are all very good examples of this and were all used for marketing purposes. However, this format can be used on a smaller scale (e.g. in a school) to promote group working and shared discovery of information and concepts.
eSports
It may be surprising to know that online multiplayer games are so widely adopted now that some games have professional competitions associated with them, classed as eSports, that take place in packed stadiums globally. League of Legends is the biggest of these with leagues based throughout the world; the winners of each league go on to meet in an annual world championship watched by millions. A LoL game features two teams (5 players per team) competing on a fixed playing field to conquer each others base. It has been likened to chess as it requires exceptional skill and tactical thinking but it also requires a high level of dexterity and collaboration to compete at a professional level. It’s overwhelming at first glance but you may just find yourself sucked in (go Flash Wolves!). LoL is a game played by friends, universities, families, couples and many other groups. They might seem like a confusing mash of bright lights and strange creatures but online multiplayer games offer immersive worlds that foster strong bonds and communities which make them an ideal team building tool.
Text Adventures
Before graphic virtual worlds, computers were almost entirely text-based and so games took the form of Text Adventures (or Interactive Fiction as they’re also known). These were stories that required text to be inputted to explore environments and solve puzzles. Famous examples are Zork and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Modern educational examples can be found in games like Coming Out Simulator, which was created by a game designer to tell the story of when he came out to his parents. The Migrant showcases the limited scenarios available to you if you are a refugee trying to protect your family. And in A Journey Through Time you are a time traveller going back to key moments in United States civil rights history.
Obviously as well as using established games to give students a wide range of experiences, there is the potential for teachers to create their own games. The first step for this is empathising with all of your students. You know those students who are happy to do just enough to pass and don’t see any value in a grade A? Well they aren’t motivated by score or point-based achievements like that and may instead benefit from an assessment or curriculum that is more inclusive of their motivations; such as building an environment for them to explore autonomously then allowing them to demonstrate their discovered knowledge in an assessment form of their choice. There are some helpful design tools for this such as Bartle’s Taxonomy, which can be useful for ensuring your game and curriculum is inclusive of different player types. Educators don’t need to know coding or computer animation to develop games; remember it’s the core mechanics, such as levelling up or presenting a discoverable world, that engages students. For example, A Journey Through Time was created using Inklewriter which is a pretty simple tool for educators to create narrative games.
It is important to understand that the days of expecting students to conform to achievement based curriculum’s are over and the onus is on the educator to address the attention of the student. The above range of game types show that a game’s genre or graphics are irrelevant; it’s narrative environment and game mechanics that matter most. The single most important lesson you should take from games is that if you give your students an environment they want to visit voluntarily and spend time in then you can hold their attention and teach them anything.
