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.

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.

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:

With 29 new posts, April has been the most active month on our blog. And we do realize that some of you would want to get a quick summary post at the end of the month that lists which ones were hot. So here’s the first of our monthly roundup posts that we intend to put up every month now.

We talked on various topics in April – from LMS to Augmented Reality, from Games to AS 3.0 Resources.

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 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.

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