How to Design an Educational Video Game: Three Important Considerations

I’ve been talking with folks from the foundation affiliated with a Fortune 100 company recently about designing an educational game that would promote some of the foundation’s objectives. The project is in its infancy, so I’m withholding details. But the conversations we had led me to formulate some considerations for any company or individual to seriously consider before designing an educational game from the ground up. Three top considerations should guide the project from its beginnings all the way to the final product.

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1. Playing the game should be educational, rather than simply having educational content inserted into the gaming experience.

Students learn by playing. This is a critical component of good educational games. Allow me to illustrate with a basic example. Traditional dominoes is an excellent game for teaching math skills to children, especially for adding up fives. If a player can make the tail ends of the dominoes add to five or a number divisible by five, he scores points. If not, he may strategize to prevent his opponent from scoring. You can see children mentally adding while playing … three plus two equals five … four plus six equals ten … The game cannot be played without adding up the points on the table, so basic math is an integral part of the game.

Likewise, math, logic and strategy are integral to 42, a version of dominoes on steroids, a trick-taking game similar to hearts. A player must mentally calculate whether or not her hand is capable of winning a bid based on the potential points in her own hand, and a good guess as to the tricks her partner can take.

Rather than having a child solve math problems before advancing to the next level, a good game should simply integrate math within the game play. Considerable research backs up this approach.

Both traditional dominoes and 42 require basic math skills; 42 requires higher reasoning while dominoes requires simple addition. Because these elements are integral to the games, indeed a fundamental part of both games, they reinforce skills and hold high educational value for children. Likewise, a good educational video game should require the exercising of skills in order to successfully play the game.

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2. If looking to increase academic skills, reading and writing should probably be integral to game play.

A rising tide raises all ships, and the more reading and writing a student engages in, the higher his achievement scores potentially climb. Of course, information absorption is integral to any high end video game, especially 3D virtual interactive environments. But when students have to read and process specific information regarding game play, they’ll be absorbing the content you are interested in instilling.

On the other hand, if you are not interested in instilling academic content, say instead life skills or machinery operation, then reading and writing in the game are not as crucial. But if, for example, you are interested in increasing the understanding of Elizabethan English, then reading and writing will be very important.

Some common examples include history games and those in the Civilization series. Sometimes the reading takes place offline, for instance when a student peruses a history book to better understand strategies for winning in Civilization. Other times students read in-game for clues to solve mysteries and puzzles, such as in the old Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. Sometimes, especially for the younger set, reading simply is the game. We find this in the old Living Books series, especially the one modeled on Dr. Seuss’ ABC.

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3. The game should be interesting, engaging, and generate excitement for the topic.

There have been studies where academics spent lots of time, money, and effort creating video games that were absolutely educational by every measure. Yet, when kids finally were allowed to sit down and play the games, they found them … boring. These studies are valuable to educational game designers, and their lessons need to be heeded when starting from scratch.

What do players enjoy about games? They like to explore, socialize, rack up achievements and do stuff (mainly killing things, according to Richard Bartle, but the doing stuff can be other things besides killing in an educational game, provided it’s richly interactive). The game needs to be robust enough and engaging enough to meet the needs of its players. Keeping that in mind while designing and producing an educational video game will lead to a satisfying product that students will enjoy playing, and hopefully learn desired content along the way.

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These were the first three things springing to mind when discussing the genesis of a new educational gaming product. If I missed a crucial component in your opinion, drop me a line.

Georgia Tech Presents: Living Worlds IV – Interplay

Living Game Worlds IV: Interplay - NEW DATES - December 1-2, 2008

Living Game Worlds IV will focus on the theme of networked play and
engage dialogues on the rapidly growing domain of multiplayer games and
virtual worlds, including online networked entertainment as well as
pervasive, mobile and tangible gaming. The symposium will explore
various aspects of networked play from historical, cultural,
technological and design perspectives, as well as current and future
trends such as user-created content and the rising use of virtual worlds
in the workplace.

Keynotes: Raph Koster, Christopher Klaus, plus a "Pioneers" panel
featuring some of the people who made it all possible, including:
Richard Bartle, Brian Green, Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer, and
Pavel Curtis.

Confirmed sponsors:
Turner Broadcasting
Georgia Film, Video and Music Office

About Living Game Worlds:
Living Game Worlds is an annual symposium presented by the Experimental
Game Lab, the School of Literature, Communication and Culture and the
GVU Center of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Each year, Living
Game Worlds brings together luminaries from academia, industry and the
arts to explore topics related to research, design and cultural
practices of digital games.

For details and registration, visit http://gameworlds.gatech.edu
For sponsorship info, contact celia.pearce at symbol lcc.gatech.edu

Researching World of Warcraft

Climbing the scales at Digg this week is a story on How Stuff Works about World of Warcraft. Most intriguing was Section 2 of the article, entitled, “World of Warcraft Players.” Here, author Tracy V. Wilson lists a variety of research efforts focused on WoW, currently the most popular MMORPG.

First up is Stanford grad student extraordinaire Nick Yee:

According to one of Yee’s 2005 studies, 84 percent of “World of Warcraft” players are male, and 16 percent are female. The average player’s age is 28, and female players tend to be a few years older than male players. Regardless of their gender, players spend an average of 21 to 22 hours a week playing the game … Of course, these statistics may have shifted since Yee collected his data.

Yee continues to document his work at The Daedalus Project.

Next up is information on a report from the legendary Palo Alto Research Center:

According to research conducted at the Palo Alto Research Center in 2005, players tend to put in an extra burst of playing time when a character is about to reach a milestone level. The most dramatic spike occurs when approaching level 40, the level at which characters gain access to a mount, such as a horse or a tiger, and lots of new abilities and skills. The spike in play time leading up to level 40 is even greater than the spike leading to level 60, which was the highest possible level when the study was conducted. However, once people reach the highest levels, they generally spend more time playing than they did at lower levels

Finally, academic gaming luminary Richard Bartle is mentioned. Besides helping to invent text MUDs (multi-user dungeons/domains), Bartle was key in framing research questions surrounding online interactive environments. His four categories of players: achievers, socializers, explorers and killers, provide a taxonomy that remains relevant in today’s graphical MMORPGs. Bartle remains active in ongoing discussions, and is a regular over at Terra Nova, the Wonderland Blog, and elsewhere.

As the hunger for solid research on educational gaming, MMORPGs, and related popular phenomena shows no signs of abating, resources such as Wilson’s article in How Things Work will provide road signs on the Web to the research out there. Let’s hope folks find what they’re looking for.