I attended the two day conference on Game Based Learning held earlier this week in London. This was the second edition of the conference and had a decent 400+ delegate presence. There were some sponsors too and but very few stalls in the exhibit hall which was disguised as the experience lounge. Overall I was quite pleased to have attended the two day conference. Here are some of my impressions of the conference.

Over so often I get asked what fundamentals of game design apply to the design of learning games – a very difficult question to answer that. In my opinion, every sort of principle ever used in the design of commercial video games applies to the creation of digital learning games as well. My opinion is that game design can’t really be reduced to a set of guidelines that instructional designers can follow to design games that teach. I’d even go so far as to say that game design is more of a philosophy than anything else, once you imbibe that philosophy the gaminess starts to permeate all your design, it fundamentally changes the way you think about user interface and experience design.

1. Games Change Brains – There have been many important findings on the benefits of video games in the last few months. This was a great post that put those in perspective.

• Video gaming improves visual perception, processing and attention.
• Internet use engages more neural circuitry than book reading in the digital generation.
• Sizes of three structures in the brain can predict a video gamer’s success.
• Learning environments of video games can educate children effectively.
• Building computer games promotes critical thinking and creative thinking skills.

The iPad is here. After all the hype, which it didn’t quite live up to, there was a lot of commentary web-wide on whether it’s suitable for elearning, or a specific type of learning. Here at Upside our camp is divided, there are iPad lovers and there are iPad baiters. The lovers are typically Apple fan-boys who are crazy about anything Apple, so their devotion to any bit of technology that Steve Jobs throws into the market is taken for granted. The baiters are mostly alternate technology lovers and who will hate pretty much anything that Apple develops; simply because of Apple’s “captive/lock-in users” business model.

As we knock on 2010’s doors, it’s a good time to look at what we did on this blog in 2009. We started this blog in March 2009 and in its 10 month existence has more than a 100 posts. The blog now has about 500 subscribers and has received more than 53000 page views and more than 200 comments.

1. Device tag support in HTML 5
   Yesterday World Wide Web Consortium has reported that HTML 5 will support external devices, directly from your browser. Now your browser will access your webcam, microphone and other USB devices directly, no other software/plug-ins required.

Yes, we believe it can.

Having fun is an experience that stays with you longer than any form of instruction. We advocate inclusion of games & fun interactions to achieve long term learning, and change of behaviors. Learning Games that pull learners to have fun (and learn while they have fun).

This video below from the fun theory , an initiative of Volkswagen, shows just how fun could be effective in getting people to consider changing their habits

Let’s use more fun activities in our learning courses as well.

It’s been an interesting start of the week, with the tiny Regifting game going viral of sorts within our office. Hit the jump and you’ll see just why.
http://www.regiftable.com/regiftingrobinpopup.html

Soon after I posted These are Not Serious Games on the blog and as a discussion on Linked-In, there was a flurry of comments over a couple of days that quickly covered some thoughts about Serious Games.

Recently I’ve been consulting with a customer on the design of a series of digital learning games for sales training. Most clients have done their research online about serious games, and find the whole gamut of samples, demos, etc. Clients typically have some thoughts about what they feel are serious games and whose game-play and mechanics they intended to emulate. Just one look at their collated ‘portfolio’ was enough to tell me that none of the content in the portfolio was really a serious game. What followed was the diplomatic squashing preconceived ideas about what serious games were in their (client’s) training context.

Last month Tony Karrer posted this interesting piece on the Business of Learning on his blog – eLearning Technology. It provoked a discussion on the topic with many different perspectives brought to bear.

Six in ten people (more than 4 billion individuals) around the world are carrying a powerful computing device in their pockets and purses. They don’t realize it, but today’s mobile phones have the computing power of a personal computer from the mid-nineties, while consuming a fraction of the energy and are made at significantly lower cost.