Every so often, I download a game into our family iPad for my kids to play. I do it as a kind of reward. But that’s not all. You see, I actually want my kids to play games–for a number of reasons that I have terrible difficulty articulating effectively to my wife. I began to form this opinion a few years ago when I read James Paul Gee’s book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. In it he builds a strong case for the ability of games to facilitate thinking and learning and literacy (36 ways, to be specific). Another book, Don’t Bother Me Mom, I’m Learning, by Marc Prensky, helped push along the heresy. It is a little over the top and a lot less academic, but it does score a few points. And other books, articles, websites, and TED talks byJane McGonigal and others have mostly convinced me that games not only can be good, but generally are pretty good. But I seem to be in the minority in the world of education and parents.
The common wisdom is that games are bad. This develops no doubt from the news media’s habit of mentioning games in connection with ax murders, tragic accidents and lives gone astray. And from the fear parents have that time on games is time not on homework, homework that is–that must be–more important because it was assigned by a professional teacher at an authorized institution. Well, I can’t deny that those teachers have the power to give my kids grades, and that they are doing what they probably think is best, carrying on with ineffective relics of teaching culture in the face of bored learners and growing mountains of exciting alternatives, but I would like everyone to stop for a moment and question their choice of materials and their approach. The world of games has evolved into a highly-disciplined, focused field. Game designers know what they are doing, make no mistake. They generally know it better–and do it better–than teachers, who should be (but often aren’t) professional learning designers. Ah, you are skeptical, I sense. Well, a serious look at the structure and techniques used in good games can make you believe, I believe. In fact, I want teachers to look at and learn from games, and that is really the purpose of this post.
On a recent trip to Miyazaki, I found myself with only my wi-fi-only iPad; and the only wi-fi available was in the lobby, but it was only for Softbank subscribers. The local Tully’s offered loads of wi-fi services for subscribers to any of those services, which I am not. So I was beyond the internet and had a few hours to kill. In desperation, I turned to the games in the ipad and tapped one on. Suddenly I found myself the middle of one of my daughter’s unfinished games, and in the midst of a lawn full of attacking zombies and valiantly defending plants. There was nothing to do but take control and fight. So I did. And I lost, overrun by zombies, really soon.
But as I played, several of the design features of the game began to stand out. The game both tickled me and taught me how to play at the same time. I realized that there are elements here that should be built into EFL lessons–or any lessons. Play the game for a while and see if you don’t agree.
The first point is delight. The game delights with its quirkiness. The narrator/guide/salesman is a weird Lemony Snicket sort of fellow who coaches you along and eggs you on. He tells you how much you are going to hate the next level, for example. He provides some entertainment for the procedural parts of the game. It’s a joke within a joke, a wink from the creators of the game. The heroes of the action are the plants, and that in itself is funny. The last defense of the humans in the house are the plants on the lawn, bravely battling waves of brain-eating zombies. The variety of looks and powers of the plants is pure Pokemon–an ever-expanding jungle of creative diversity. And the zombies! They could have been just grey-brown rotting figures closing in from the left, but again, the designers chose to delight with visual gags and zombie powers that surprise and entertain and challenge. Seeing them is fun, beating them is fun, and even being beaten by them is fun.
The second point is personalization. Before each zombie attack, you choose the assortment of plants you are going to battle with. This allows you to play with tactical options and see the results. You can play with your favorites, you can develop your own styles of defending or attacking and you can can control your destiny.
The last point I want to make regards flow, and this is where the game has the most to teach us. If you are not familiar with Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s theory, you can experience a wonderful example of it here. You are given a manageable challenge and you experience success right off the bat, even if it is just a little. But it pulls you in. You roll up your sleeves and tap yourself back into the game right away. That balance of challenge and success is really the genius of this game (and most other successful games). When you don’t get it right, you usually almost do. You can learn from your mistakes and you get a chance to do it again. It makes you think metacognitively and gives you immediate feedback. Designing for flow is tricky business, but it is essential for extended learner engagement. Julie Dirksen gives a really nice presentation on it here.
EFL learners are often not any more motivated to learn the language than people are to tap madly at a glass screen for several hours on end. The motivation they are feeling is often the same kind of motivation people feel about having children–yeah, it might be nice someday, somehow…The immediate motivation they are going to feel, I want to say, comes from the way that you make people do things. Once the game is in their hands or the butts are in the classroom seats, the nature of the experience takes over. I didn’t play Plants vs Zombies because I wanted to get good at playing it, but that is what happened because of good game design.
Here is a presentation explaining the success of the game and how the game was developed. It is a great story. The summary of principles at the end are worth considering. They can be applied to EFL lesson design , I think. They also show the work and craft that game designers put into “lessons”. You’ll have to search long and hard to find the equivalent in EFL text or materials design.