Gaming for the Good of Education
Time and time again, I return to the understanding that games are not just entertainment, but a very real (and arguably dominant) media form in contemporary culture. The interest from students of all ages is high, yet games are rarely if ever integrated into standardized curricula. When it comes to finding something that is relevant, this form of media is definitely a low hanging fruit. Yet, even in progressive schools the closest I have seen to using a game as a media piece to study was reading a book like Ready Player One.
When I first started teaching many years ago, I quickly connected an important moment from my childhood learning experience to gaming. After moving to Germany and diving straight into a fully immersive German learning experience, some of my early successes in connecting with kids who spoke a different language and building my own understanding of German came from playing Monkey Island. The puzzles and story created a great motivation to learn functional German, as the commands from the game and all the reading was indeed in that language.
Today, gamer culture has come into the mainstream in a real way. Games are collaborations between hundreds of people; artists, musicians, actors, and storytellers are critical in the development of games. Some people even have professions in playing games excellently, as much as that factoid baffles me.
Of course, not everything in gamer culture is gumdrops and roses. There are many worrying trends: increased prevalence of video game addiction, disrupted sleeping habits, cultures which cyberbully and shame online, and widespread misogyny.
These are issues, that is no doubt. Since gaming is a widespread culture (particularly among youth), it strikes me a completely crazy that it is not addressed more often, and not just in a ‘play video games and you will become a useless, narrow minded junkie’ type way. We need to embrace those games with amazing qualities, appreciate the art and design that went into them, and study their impact both on the individual and our culture.
To start, I have thrown together some criteria that I find important in games, so without further ado:
Find games that…
- are collaborative. Specifically, games that can be played by multiple people in the same room. It provides a context for real human to human interactions and does a great job in bringing introverts and extroverts into a shared safe space. I have been loving Snipperclips and Overcooked for these reasons.
- are beautiful. This is subjective, for sure, but many games rehash old ideas with new skins (how many versions of Candy Crush saga could there be?). A beautiful game is one which shows care in game design, has a powerful visual side, and creates memorable moments while playing. Hand drawn games are amazing for this, as you are interacting with art pieces. One of the neatest I have seen lately is Gorogoa, where you solve puzzles through frames. However, games like Mini Metro and World of Goo demonstrate that simple can also be beautiful.
- are finite. This is a bit harder to find, and not always necessary. However, a game that provides an excellent experience for 10 hours and then is finished has a much lower life draining capacity than something that rewards thousands of hours of play. Thomas Was Alone is a good example of a nice short play through that satisfies without dragging on. Loom, one of the original LucasArts games, was designed specifically for this. It is still woven into my mind through their songs and story.
- have great stories. This is not always evident from the package, but some games are so full of lore they can create entire subcultures. I played Pokemon with my daughter and since then she has drawn Pokemon storybooks, and regularly has imaginary play dates with her Eevee and Pikachu.
- are non-violent. This is the hardest criteria to cover, but I believe in general we get an overdose of violence as a theme through film, books, TV, and other forms of media. Games just add to this, and I tip my hat off to any who rise to the challenge of making games which don’t use violence as a theme. Broken Age is a great example of this, a coming of age story told with minimal violence. A lot of simulations also check the boxes here.
These are just a tiny selection of what is out there in the gaming world. You may notice many of the games are independently created, and that is another amazing element in gamer culture: supporting entrepreneurial and independent developers. If the product is good, the bar for entry in the market is lower than most other creative industries.
Note: At time of writing, the author was applying systems thinking and writing composition to the game “Overcooked”
