Games, Life, Education

The video from Web 2.0 Summit 2007 featuring Jane McGonigal explains a connection between life and games that has eluded me until now. The passion we have or can have for games and the ways these passions do not appear in our everyday lives is potentially explainable. Some of the reasons include special powers and gadgets (fly, teleport, speed up time), clear goals (save the princess, destroy the enemy, build a rollercoaster park), obvious paths to attain those goals (gather treasure, acquire powerful attack skills, follow arrows), meaningful feedback (life force, sound effects, scores), support structures (novice settings, cheat books, other players), audience and community (common narrative, multi-player, competitions). 

To connect all these same ideas to education doesn't feel like much of a stretch. Courses need to have clear goals (outcomes and objectives) - so often these are clear only to the institution and instructor. Courses need to have obvious paths to attain those goals, with intense amounts of feedback along the way. Students need an audience and common narrative and support structure to succeed. In many ways these ideas are built into institutions and in many ways they are missing the mark. We surely have tutors, but knowing when tutoring is necessary is difficult for many students. 

Game rhetoric, I believe, is an interesting tool to help understand how to improve our courses and student success. For a game to be successful it has to sell many copies, and for that to happen, many players need to want to succeed.