As I mentioned in my previous post, we’re continuing to explore game mechanics that are apt for learning. While I mentioned three that are a ‘must-include’ in a learning game, the ones I’m about to mention two that aren’t quite at that level. However, adding these makes for a certain of gaminess in the interaction mix.

1. Levels – Yes, the ones we’ve seen in pretty much all games. Levels are essentially a method that all an increase in the difficulty of game-play. The better you do at one level, the higher the likelihood you’ll make it to the next. In commercial games, extra game-features or capabilities are unlocked as you progress through levels. As an example, being able to unlock more sophisticated ‘combos’ in a fighting games.

Continuing my unintended series of posts about Learning Games, I’m moving the focus to some game mechanics I try to include every time I try to design a game that’s meant for learning. While you will almost certainly encounter these in commercial games, I’ve seen some learning games fall flat because the designers are ignoring some fundamental mechanics. When designing a learning game, you’ll want to build these mechanics into the design. Some are quite obvious, some not so.
I’m covering three I think are really important, but will follow up with another post that lists some more next week.

As our services in game design and development advance, we’re often asked how ‘social gaming’ paradigms can be used in learning games. My instant response to those would be ‘yes’ it’s possible; but faltered on further details. I’ve been doing some thinking about social games; what makes them tick. Some thoughts:

We must bank on the capital sins – wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony; while these are ‘no no’s in the real world, social games seem to capitalize on them to a large extent. When designing a social learning game, I’d definitely want to include one or more of these in some way or the other. It’s great to use the weak moments during game-play to push elements of learning value/content through to the player. Social game developers and studios use these to monetize their product, as learning designers we can use these to capitalize on learning.

We’ve had our fair share of digital learning game development projects; and a recent one threw a spoke in our design wheels like never before. Thought I should share the top five things we learned from our experience.

1. Be absolutely certain about the game objective; what must the player do to win? – We had varied ideas and that resulted in a multitude of win-states, not nice for a learning game. Make sure to tie down to a singular objective, and one that is achievable given the game mechanics. Eliminate game mechanics that do not explicitly tie to the outcome.

When was the last time you were so involved in what you were doing that you forgot yourself? You lost track of time? You were ‘in the zone’?

All of us can recall such moments – while reading a book, listening to music, playing a sport, in an online computer game. But I wonder how many of us have felt this during an online course, or inside a classroom when being taught?

I stumbled across an interesting paper linked to in a post by Karl Kapp. The paper describes a Professor of Reading’s teachers experience and learning from playing digital games and describes some of the learning principles good games incorporate.

You need to take the time to listen to what Seth Priebatsch says about the emergence of the game layer. He also talks about four game dynamics, very interesting. “…we like to joke, with seven game dynamics, we can get anyone to do anything.”, “school is a game” makes some very powerful statements with serious implications for designers and developers of learning.

Ever so often I get asked what’s so great about games and learning using games. An answer I use just as often is that it’s all about ‘play’. In this video Dr. Jaak Panskepp talks about his research into play and its benefits. While in this context it doesn’t directly tie to eLearning, I felt this tiny video would be interesting to post to our blog. Take a look:

While we written about Microsoft’s Project Natal in the past, the interweb has been abuzz about a start-up from Israel that’s going to compete – Omek.

Their technology claims to “translate natural body motion into seamless 3D movement onscreen”.

The technology is claimed to be ground-breaking; you can judge from yourself; take a look at the videos.

As games continue to establish themselves into our daily lives, the future as we know it will not be the same. They don’t just hold the power to influence our life, but also have great implications for Learning.

Below are a few interesting talks from TED’s past, focusing on games, which are sure to get you thinking.

I’ll be making an online presentation about the fundamental differences between games and simulation at 11:00 AM IST on 24th April, 2010. The event is being hosted by IDC India which is a community of practice for instructional design professionals in India.

The presentation is meant for beginners, and will help them draw lines between simulations and games from a learning and learner experience perspective. 

I have been thinking about penning this one for a couple of weeks now, but just couldn’t do sooner.  And as I worked on this one I realized some of them have already faded away from my memory. So I had to rely on the session videos put up on Game Based Learning website and my own notes from the sessions. Also in order to make it happen I would be putting my Day 2 recap in 2 or 3 parts covering the sessions I liked.