game-based learning

[Marielle Lange]

> Of course, *I* am always interested ;-)

I attended a seminar today on the theme of serious gaming.
<http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game> -- this article is in  
French only.

Presenters were Olivier Rampnoux, Julien Alvarez, Jean-Pierre Jessel.  
All members of the European Center of children products.

Very nice talk. Covered
1) Why using video games
2) Classification
3) What kind of objectives
4) Girl Gaming

Some information that came across.

1) Why be interested in games?
- Commercial domain. Market study show that nowadays kids spend more  
time in front of a console or computer connected to the web than in  
front of a television. Apparently they spend 3 hours in front of a  
screen. That's good news for advertising as this means that they have  
a chance to target a large public at a lower price (TV advertising is  
really pricey) and with less resistance (TV advertising is not that  
successful). The concept to check out there is the one of advergaming  
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advergaming>, <http://www.clickz.com/ 
showPage.html?page=2239071>

- Education domain. Studies show that students need more  
interactivity. The good old system whereby they sit and listen to a  
lecturer doesn't work well with them anymore. They get bored and they  
don't take much information in. Then the 1 hour format doesn't work  
well either are their attention span tends to be shorter. In  
contrast, studies show that positive emotions, like the ones you get  
when playing help with more efficient memory encoding. Hence the  
notion of Education Arcade, introduced by the MIT. <http:// 
www.educationarcade.org/>

2,3) Classification. They have done some *very* nice work there. They  
created a database to store information about up to 1000 games. They  
then analysed them to try to understand the different dimensions that  
characterise a game. What they mentioned during the talk was their  
analysis of objectives and goals within the game. They came up with  
10 major rules, where rules are defined by what you have to do to be  
allowed to move to the next level. These rules are Answer | Manage |  
Have luck | shoot | create | block (maintain) | destroy (collect)  |  
position | avoid | move | time | score. Then using these low level  
rules, they define bigger bricks of metarules. A game that would mix  
move and avoid as objects would make up a DRIVER game. A game that  
would mix shoot and destroy would make a KILLER game, one that would  
mix manage and create would make a GOD game. Of course, games can  
count more than one brick. If you take the good old invader, then you  
have both the driver and killer component included.

4) Girl Gaming. The big problem, you see is that games then to be  
written by boys and be most successful with boys. All good when you  
try to sell to a leisure market. Problem is when you try to do  
advergaming, failing to engage 50% of your customers is not so good.  
Then in education, having a product that works only with 50% of the  
class is not great.

There was a bit of discussion on this topic. Apparently, girls and  
boys don't use a game in the same way. I go for cliche description  
now. Girls tend to do as told and carefully, and with a lot of  
attention, engage in the game. They read every single box of text  
that appear and they have at heart to do well. They play once. They  
get a quite high score. Boys just want to have fun. They rush  
through. Then they discover that they have a score lower than their  
neighbour, so they get back to the game and try to increase their score.

Girls seem to prefer to play games where they have to think about  
games. They want to be involved with the game. They also expect to  
get something out of the game, to be taught something, to acquire  
some knowledge. They expect content. Boys are more after some direct  
and simple stimulation. That's more about having fun and then get a  
score that let you know how well you did.

Another reason of the lack of success of traditional games with girls  
is the complex devices and set of key combinations being used. Games  
where controls are a lot simpler (like the last wii console) and  
where dexterity is not that important seem to have a better success  
with girls. Some also say to prefer black and white graphics over  
these new 3D all fancy graphics.

I will be meeting various persons involved in game-based learning or  
game-making software next week. If you want to be kept within the  
information loop, let me know.

Marielle