Will Wright presents “Why Games are Good for Learning” at NYU

The Games for Learning Institute was gracious enough to invite Will Wright, the genius behind games such as The Sims and Spore, to speak about “Why Games are Good for Learning”. I’ve watched him speak in the past via youtube videos, and have always been impressed by the insight he brings to the gaming industry. Games such as SimCity, have broken down so many boundaries and have help in redefining several aspects of gaming. He has managed to empower children, though a constructionist approach by giving them the ability to become producers of their worlds, and not merely consumers. These ideologies fall in line with much of Seymour Papert’s work with LEGO and LOGO along with the ideas of Maria Montessori.

The secret of good teaching is to regard the child’s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination. Our aim therefore is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his inner most core. — Maria Montessori

Why Serious Games are not Fun
This was an obvious question to start off the talk. Typically the games that I have seen, that focus on learning loss their sense of playfulness. According to Will, this is not necessarily due to the topic, but to craftsmanship of the game design in general.

“I am convince you could make any topic fun. You could make a movie about the most interesting thing in the world and make it boring as well.”

According to Will, most Serious Game designers take the obvious approach to designing a game about an instructional topic. Instead designers should learn to take a different perspective. An interesting example he shared was, if you where teaching about Malaria, a typical game would probably center around being in the Peace Corp. What if you flipped it around and played the part of Malaria, and your objective was to take out as many humans as you can. Interesting perspective, and I could see how that would be much more engaging without sacrificing any educational content.

The value of games, is being able to easily change our perspective via our role in the games. By placing ourselves in different types of shoes, we have the opportunity to peer at topics from angles that may not have been available through traditional linear media. When concepts are not taken from such a rigid straight forward approach and deconstructed, areas of playfulness emerge.

The Evolution of Media
Will noted that every new media is forced to take on the criticisms of prior existing media. He mentioned how books, where seen as a tool of the devil, because of the engagement that it produced. This isn’t much different then how games are sometimes perceived by some of society today. Games are still in their infancy, and the generational gap is creeping closer by the day. In media, history proves to be a repetitive cycle:

I do not think I am exaggerating the possibility of this invention when I tell you that it is my firm belief that one day there will be a telephone in every major town in America – Alexander Graham Bell

According to Will, media typically is developed to solve very specific problems, but though an evolutionary cycle it starts evolving into mass entertainment. I see this happening with Augmented Reality at the moment. Heads Up Displays (HUDs) where originally developed as an interaction experience that fighter pilots could use to fly planes w/o having to look down at their gauges and loss sight of their targets. Now Augmented Reality has entered the world of film, television and games for entertainment purpose.

Linear Stories vs. Interactive Play
In linear stories we take a more observer route, and base most of our experience around empathy, based on the predefined decisions that the director made. In a sense, linear stories allow the director to “see into the future” to make decision on which camera angle to select to produce the most empathetical response.

Interactive Play enables the ability for agency, participation, and choice. Players could “effect the situation” by identifying and exploring options.

Games and Learning
Games are learning, much like our everyday actions require us to constantly build models of the world around us. These models are then stored in our imagination, and we then reference our imaginations to create a simulation in our mind that result in choices. Will breaks down imagination to several components: Classification, Causality, Empathy, and Agency.

Humans look for pattern constantly which derive from these components, and help in developing a schema. These schema are based on all the data we have come across which we are constantly referring to and updating. This is what he describes as our learning process, however to build these schema, we have to base them on examples, which is one of the obstacles we face in learning. Luckily we could extend our data collection via others experiences and simulated experiences we create through the use of toys which we could pull data out of to add to our schema. Both of these could be refereed to as “Story” and “Play”, both of which are Will describes as Educational Technologies.

As kids play games they take on an a approach very similar to a scientific method. They immediately start to create models of the virtual worlds that they could later apply to the real world. They build onto their schema through play, and test the success of the schema through games.

The player will build an internal model of your system. If you don’t help them build it, they’ll probably build the wrong one – Will Wright

Tools are also very important, which he describes as “amplifiers for imagination”. A few of the properties that Will Wright likes to use when designing tools are:

• High Leverage
• Fun to Use
• Useful
• Social
• Multipurpose

Through the use of this medium, the most beneficial thing that games and play could do for education is motivation. Increasing the intrinsic motivation, enable children to learn, without consciously being aware that they are learning. This enables education to look less like a chore, and much more engaging.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of the fire – William Butler Yeats

Will on Social Gaming
Will notes that, the more a game is about someone, the more emotionally engaged they become because, “People in general are kind of narcissistic.” By not only making a game about the player, but also including their social networks, you create a “social currency” between the player and their network which results in its “stickiness”. This format allows your relationships outside of the game to integrate into the landscape of the game. Compared to more highly immersive gaming, in this format your social landscape is what drives the play, creating much deeper engagement.

Time Playing x Social Relevance = World Impact

Failure is Good
Although all of Will’s talk was amazingly informative, his talk on “failure” was most notable. He mentioned how games are comprised of interaction loops that adjust over time. Each loop is comprise of both success and failure. By mastering each cycle you are able to move onto learning your next skill. Will’s example talked on how the fist few seconds of game play might be learning the basic interaction controls, you could only move onto the next interaction loop once you have mastered the current one. An interesting note that Will made regarding his experience analyzing the usage patterns of Sims players, is that most players enjoyed exploring the failure side of the game.

Here is a quote from another talk Will Wright did regarding failure:

One of the counter intuitive things I needed to learn as a designer was that players enjoy failures more than success. As long as it’s diverse, they like to explore the failure space of a game.

Learning is exploring a failure space. Once you’ve mapped out all the wrong paths, you can avoid them as easily as the furniture in your room when you’re walking around it at night. The point of classroom exercises and homework is to guide students through the failure space of knowledge, exploring the wrong turns and blind alleys, as well as identifying the right path.

Will Vision for the Future of Gaming
Most people think of the future of gaming as an enhancement of:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Hyper real Graphics
• Advanced Physics
• World Simulations
• User Generated Content

Will takes a different perspective at looking at games of the future

• Fractal Entertainment: By this he means entertainment across a wide variety of platforms. This would include movies, game, books. Will stated that, The magic circle of storytelling and game environments are fractalizing
• Non-Immersive Games: This would include gaming formats such as the Wii and DDR. “Most of the entrainment for me comes not from the game, but what the players around me are doing…Playing the game outside of the computer in it’s real world context.” Context aware gaming that mobile device offer through geo-location, along with interaction experiences like Augmented reality are enabling users to experience the world around them from a different perspectives.
• Bandwidth Symmetry
• Expressive Play
• Psychological Profiling: Games will evolve to fit you much like your own dream state
• Relevance: Games will be more relevant to your life. They more relevant they are the more value you get from them.

What I Came out With
I too believe that games could help children learn “any” topic. However, we as designers need to deconstruct these topics to uncovers playful experiences. We should also allow for the kids to create and test their models, becoming producers of content and not only consumers. This is not only missing in educational gaming, but in formal educational settings as well. Students are typically consumers of knowledge, listening to their teacher lecture in front of class and expected to retain the knowledge.

Game designers should try to give special attention to the failure states. They should be varied, and player must be given ample feedback to clearly understand why it happened, and should be allowed to easily explore and learn from them. The tools should also be fun, and not feel like tools, they should feel like toys. They should also be able to take assets from a game built with it’s tools and use them in other areas outside of the game.

Will Wright, by far has been one my favorite speakers I have had the opportunity to watch speaking live, and would highly recommend everyone to go and check him out, if given the opportunity.

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