In this set of blogs I am going to present some of my
thoughts on the place of games and play in learning. I was just going to write,
“This is not a painting by numbers guide to developing games”, when I realised
that that is the crux of the difference between games and play. Painting by
numbers in an exercise in control while painting is all about creating an
original piece of work. Susan Striker (http://www.susanstriker.com/)
has produced the Anti-Coloring Book® series which illustrates (or rather doesn’t
illustrate) the difference better than I can explain in words.
These three blogs look at play vs. games, motivation in games
and games design. Enjoy and please come back with your thoughts.
1. Playing the Game
“Play the game” is a well-used
aphorism. Of course, its underlying meaning can often have little to do with
play at all. It most commonly means that the target of the phrase should adhere
to the rules. The game is most often not an entertaining distraction, but a
serious hierarchy into which he or she must fit. The play is no more than
compliance to the regulated status quo.
Most definitions of games include
references to rules, such as Fullerton (2008) who says, “…the role of the game
designer is to craft a set of rules within which there are means and motivation
to play,” and Sitzmann & Ely (2011) who state, “[Games] are entertaining,
interactive, rule-governed, goal-focused, competitive, and they stimulate the
imagination of players.”
There is, however, a friction
between games and play. The rules through which we have to comb on the inside
of the Scrabble box are juxtaposed with the description by Kane (2005) that,
“The moment of play is identified as a generator of originality, energy and new
development. Wherever play is present, there are possibilities...”
If one “plays the game”, the
chance of originality is constrained by the inflexibility that is a defining
component of any rule. This uneasy relationship between play and game has
influenced much of my thinking on the whole area of games-based learning.
Surprisingly, it brought back a linguistic dichotomy found in Jesus’ references
to St. Peter. He describes the erstwhile fisherman as both a rock (Matthew
16:18) and a scandal (Matthew 16:23. A skandalon translates from the Ancient
Greek as a stumbling block or, as a teacher of mine preferred to put it, “a
small stone in one’s shoe”); simultaneously the foundation of, and an
impediment to, development and progress.
The place of play in learning is
widely supported in early years’ educational research, where the relationship
between play and cognitive and social growth is well developed, as noted by
Bergen (2002). In the business world, there remains an unspoken scepticism with
regards to "play" in the workplace. Indeed, the encouragement to play
at work, which developed in new technology companies in the 1980s and 90s has
withered; offices retain their table-football and ping-pong tables, but these
are seldom used to energise the work ethic. Play as a creative stimulant has
been replaced by in-company coffee-house franchises, where staff can
"relax" with a coffee and carry on working in meetings via Wi-Fi
connections.
Play is regarded as frivolous,
and in these serious times it has been replaced by serious games. As
Sutton-Smith (1997) comments regarding the rhetoric of frivolity, "[Frivolity]
is usually applied to the activities of the idle or the foolish. But in modern
times, it inverts the classic "work ethic" view of play..." More
straightforwardly, Rieber (1996) says, “There is a risk attached to suggesting
that an adult is at play. Work is respectable, play is not.”
Business nods to play by
trumpeting gaming in digital learning, and more particularly its less playful
sibling "gamification", as an effective vehicles for training and
learning. But, the term play is seldom used. Perhaps it is because business
fears associating play with work; the former belittling the importance or
seriousness of the latter. However, as we see beasts learning skills upon which
their lives will ultimately depend through play, perhaps we are missing an
important trick, as Fagen (1981) suggests, "The most irritating feature of
play, is not the perceptual incoherence, as such, but rather that play taunts
us with its inaccessibility. We feel that something is behind it all, but we do
not know, or have forgotten how to see it."
In my second, I consider the
place of motivation in gaming.
References
Bergen, D. (2002) The Role of Pretend Play in Children's
Cognitive Development
Fagen, R. (1981) Animal Play Behavior (New York: Oxford
University Press)
Fullerton, T. (2008) A Playcentric Approach to Creating
Innovative Games (Second Edition)
Kane, P. (2005) "A general theory of play" from
Kane, P., The play ethic: a manifesto for a different way of living pp.35-64
Rieber, L. P. (1996) Educational Technology Research and
Development
Sitzmann, T. & Ely, K. (2011)
A Meta-Analytic Examination of the
Effectiveness of Computer-Based Simulation Games
Sutton-Smith, B. (1997) "Play and ambiguity" from
Sutton-Smith, B., The ambiguity of play pp.1-17
Design Narrative Devices and techniques for the Design of Interactive
Learning Environments,
Educational Technology Research
and Development
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