Tutorial

Step 3 in our course is about learning with games. This learning can be deep, it can be systemic (embedded in systems) and it will probably go beyond one topic or subject. When playing a game, you look out for what can be learned and how the game teaches, develops worlds and stories, and simulates systems. So, a game might fit into your teaching in several places and with several topics. The following chapter describes further how games teach and how players play. The connection to learning content might be found relatively easy. But using a game just as a simple text for learning vocabulary and doing reading and writing exercises doesn’t really appreciate the potential of the medium. Learning in games can be a lot of different things for a lot of different players. Try to find connections between your curriculum and the learning goals, but do not stop there. Consider what students are good at, what they are passionate for and which other subjects might be part of your game based learning project. And be aware that learning with games is often skill-based and therefore teaching knowledge with a game maybe should not be your highest priority for your project.

3-1 Systems and mechanics and games as texts

The main mechanics (Identifying the core mechanic)

With one major exception and that is story games, all games are about learning its mechanics. Mechanics are at the core of a gaming experience. Games are an interactive medium and you are asked to interact with them when playing. This happens through the mechanics of the game. At the beginning, you start out with what is called the main gameplay loop. You learn how to basically interact with the game and everything else is built upon that. Besides a story or information presented in graphs and tables, everything is about the core mechanics of the game. If you get good at it, you proceed in the game. The core gameplay loop is therefore the main thing to learn in a game. If this core mechanic is something worth learning for school, then the game fits well into your teaching.

If you ask players what they learned from a game, it is probably the mechanics and all the other information relevant for it. Simulations for example are very much about reading numbers and statistics, but what you really learn is how to operate the machine or system simulated by the game. All the other information in the game is relevant only in this context to the players. They might quickly forget what is presented to them in the story of a game, the core mechanic is something that they will keep. If it is motor skills and muscle memory with games that are about fast-paced action or the challenges and puzzles in a game about problem solving, experienced players will have thoroughly understood and learned what is in the game.

Learning in games is very much about learning and perfecting these mechanics and challenges. What you have to do in a game is mostly defined in the first few minutes. Everything else is just an addition or elaboration to it. Many games present worlds and systems to its players. The systems play a crucial role in a game because as Gee mentioned it in his learning principles, (p. 81) the world and the system provide context, they embed the knowledge and skills in a larger context. The learning that happens in (more complex) games is never abstract, it is always something to be understood in a systemic way. Everything is dependent on this system. So, learning is not linear in a game, it is always interconnected. This leads to a different understanding of mechanics and knowledge that enables the students to find many real-world applications of what they learned.

For you, starting out as a player, identifying this core mechanic is essential. Knowing about the system or the world a game plays in and having understood the core mechanic is the most important step to decide, if a game fits into your curriculum or not.

Even if a game is not that demanding with its mechanics, the world it presents might be relevant for your teaching. Games can be seen as texts like any other piece of media and analysing them as such can be a valuable part of your teaching. So, looking at the mechanics is crucial when looking for a game for teaching, but the world it presents can also provide a great context for language learning, reflection and discussion. We will have another look at the possibilities when understanding games as texts and as a narrative medium and what this can provide for language learning and understanding the world we live in.

What do you need to do to be good at the game?

This question is actually not that easy to answer. First, if you ask players of the same game, they might give you completely different answers. Games are played in different ways. There are different types of players (see Nick Yee’s motivation model in step 7) and different ways of playing a game (successfully). Of course, the challenges in a game might be well defined, but good games often offer diverse ways of achieving your goal.

With the game you have chosen, what is the right way to play the game well? One part of the answer is probably as ‘simple’ as mastering the mechanics. But there might be different ways of being successful at the game and they might include other knowledge or ask for completely different mechanics. You do not need to be able to give a comprehensive answer to that question when it comes to the game you chose. The most important aspect for bringing a game to class is rather to understand that there are probably different ways of playing a game, maybe different reasons for playing it. Of course, playing games is often about being successful and mastering the challenges, but there are a lot of other reasons and approaches to gameplay that might be worth considering like creativity, socializing or collaboration.

So, before choosing a game for your classroom, you should consider what competent gameplay looks like, how important it is for your students to achieve a certain level of mastery in the game and how to bring them there. Learning does not happen automatically in a game and you as the teacher and especially as the guide along their way through the game need to make sure that the students play the game ‘the right way’. You may need to help them get a grasp of the underlying concepts and systems to be able to create the right learning in the game.

Here again, additional information like YouTube videos, reviews and critiques can help you decide on finding the right title for your classroom. For now, it is just important to keep in mind that games can be played in very different ways, even ones you might not have considered in advance. But these different ways can be fruitful for your teaching. At the same time, it is important to know that just by playing a game in any way you are not guaranteed to learn what you are supposed to. Especially if a game can be overwhelming and is relatively complex, guidance is necessary for you when starting out as well as for your students when they play in the context of your project. We will later expand on this topic, but for now keep in mind that the more complex a game the greater the potential for learning while at the same time the more demanding it will be to integrate it into your teaching.

3-2 Complex topics and practice

Bringing games to your classroom
No, we are not yet ready to take your laptop and the new game to your classroom and start playing. There are a lot of technical considerations and other limitations that need to be clarified before. But right now, you have played your first games, understood core mechanics and systems and the different ways games can be played.

It might make sense to consider what this actually means for your first game based learning project. We guess you have probably chosen a pretty straightforward game like Geoguessr, an escape room game, or something famous like Minecraft. How do you use these games in a classroom setting? There are many different ways of doing so. Geoguessr and the escape room games are short, the length of the play sessions fits easily into your lessons and the students learn to play it solidly in a short amount of time. You found a connection to your curriculum and the topics you would like to bring up in class. The curriculum content is even useful for the students while playing the game and helps them get better in the game.

Game based learning means learning in and with games. So, the learning goals you are trying to achieve (especially inside the game) are not something you can easily define as you like it. We already stated that everyone can potentially play a game in a different way. As the players might experience something different than the others in their gameplay, it is also tricky to make sure the right learning is going to happen for every student. With a game like Geoguessr, especially if you play the same maps competitively, the experience is going to be relatively similar for every group of players in your class. The escape room game might offer diverse experiences and the players might focus and struggle with different aspects than the others. More complex games, more open ones and less linear titles do not guide you a lot. That means the same game of Minecraft can be and probably will be a completely different experience for every single player in class. Guidance is important here, but at the same time you need to understand and embrace the fact that learning in games is not the same as in the context of more traditional education.

A Geoguessr multiplayer battle offers a clearly defined challenge for all the players participating, the game can be easily played in terms of interface and everyone should have a basic understanding of orientation and how to find relevant information. It is a game that is not very ‘gamey’, which means game-like in terms of typical gameplay loops and games language. It is also not a game that relies on motor skills or complex interaction with the game. It is just a google street view map and a traditional map and you are asked to identify where to put the pin to win. Escape room games present a series or a system of puzzles combined with each other to finally solve the mystery.

But games like Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Super Mario World or Starbound are much more reliant on the language and the sign systems of gaming. They also offer an enormous amount of freedom in gameplay and you should be very clear what to use the game for and also help your students on the way to the ‘right’ approach to gameplay. With games like these, we actually strongly recommend that you do not just use them for your first game based learning project. They present a world that takes time to understand and master. Even if your students already know the game well, we still recommend you build a group of colleagues to play and discuss games together or join another group or network of game based learning specialists to be able to understand and make use of the depth these games can offer when it comes to different ways of playing them. Minecraft is probably one of the best developed examples for games when it comes to the application in game based learning. Since Microsoft bought the game and the education project besides it a few years ago, they have developed the Minecraft Education Edition and with it a large international network of teachers working with the game and developing and sharing content with each other. A lot of it are commercial products and you have to pay for access, but you will also find appropriate material for learning with Minecraft on social media and YouTube and Twitch.

Even if you are not able to use a game in class the way it is described above, you can apply game based learning. Tom Hildgen developed a model for the use of digital game based learning in education (a closer examination of the model is to be found in the Research and Discussion section of the guidebook (p. 60). He mentions six different approaches to games in class.

Besides playing games, you can also reflect on them, show and watch them, ask about them and listen. Additionally, you can also create games and in games. Talking about games, games culture, or your personal gaming biography and preferences can be interesting and a topic of passion for your students. They might tell you about their latest achievements in their efforts to become a professional esports athlete, their journey and experience in a specific game or their habits of spending money for games. These topics open up great possibilities to discuss, evaluate and learn about gaming. You can also reflect on more specific topics, some of the (serious) games mentioned before present very relevant and controversial topics and offer the possibility to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. These can be valuable experiences and are a great topic for learning.

Creative projects about gaming are especially interesting. Being creative can take on different forms, from creating your own a game, to building something in or for a game and even creating media about games (wikis, guides, videos, etc.) Especially if you go for game design, a topic we only recommend to teachers experienced in game based learning and/or game design, you need a lot of time, not only for preparation, but also for the project itself, because designing and if it is only a slight adaptation of an existing game, is complex and time constraints only hinder creativity. Game design is still a worthwhile endeavour and combines most of the benefits of working with games, but time is of the essence here and the results should also be presented accordingly afterwards.

To round it up, games can enter your classroom in different forms. Playing and creating games are the most promising approaches for game based learning, but if you are limited in your approach to a game no matter why, you can also bring games, games culture and game based learning to your classroom. It is just important to start and then further possibilities and ideas might develop.

Different ways of playing and working with a game

Games are often a long form of entertainment. Gamers invest hundreds and thousands of hours into specific titles they like and in which they are an active part of the culture around the game. They participate in a lot of different ways. We mentioned before that the culture around a game is created by its members which consist of enthusiasts, not of professionals. This can be fruitful for your project and you can easily create content for a game, from writing guides or reviews to creating videos or even producing mods. Mods are modifications of an existing game that change the original gameplay and are created by people outside the game studios who initially created the game. Some people only create items in- and outside of the game and share it with the community or just keep them for themselves and their friends. This is also part of playing games. As described above, you can also make use of that in your project in class. We always recommend making sure there is a relevant connection of what you aim to teach and what the players do with and around the game in class. It can be relevant because what the students learn helps them get better at the game, or maybe because they identify with the game and its characters.

Learning in a regular gameplay session with a game you have ‘only’ invested enough hours in to play it solidly is still a fantastic opportunity of learning concepts, skills and connections within a system. And the depth of commitment and identification that you can see in games culture sometimes that leads to a high level of expertise, is not something you should build your project on. If you happen to identify such commitment with one or more of your students, it offers great potential for active and motivated learning also way beyond your classroom. But you can not expect that to happen automatically. Still, do not miss the opportunity to activate this knowledge and specialization, if it is there.

Language, narrative design and worldviews

Games are a great tool for language learning. Not because they offer exercises in spelling, phrasing or grammar, but because they offer identification and interesting worlds and characters. Many young people use the wealth and the opportunities in games culture to practice English. They watch videos in English, follow a game’s community discourse and are deeply invested in a game’s story and characters. So, people learn languages and build their vocabulary by actively participating in the discourse in and around games. In general, playing games and playing them together by discussing them, theorizing and describing what is happening and what to do is a process valuable for language learning and building your vocabulary. Of course, there are other topics and opportunities to practice and learn languages, but games are probably the most common one and the one with the largest impact, as most young people are active in this culture in one way or the other. So, using games for language learning seems like an obvious choice. Language learning is a long process that needs a lot of investment from the learner’s side. If it is possible to use the potential of games to facilitate the process, then we should do so. Smaller games like Subwords, Hidden through Time, or Influent can help with the very basics of language learning and are well-suited for the earlier stages of language learning. But with larger, more immersive, more popular game worlds, like The Elder Scrolls series, Fortnite, or the FIFA titles, another level of language learning can be achieved, if the players are invested. They will automatically learn through participation in the community, even though the learning often is unintentional and not well structured. Still, this can be used for learning in classes, though it might be difficult to create the right setting with the right game there, to produce reliable results and reach every student supposed to be learning the language in your classroom.

There are two other aspects worth mentioning at this point in the course. Games are an interactive narrative medium. They tell stories through active participation. This leads to very different experiences for different players, but it also leads to creating and shaping identities of its players. Interactive stories matter more to the players than a more traditional passive consumption of stories. The decisions they make as protagonists in the game matter. There are reasons to be invested more. What you do and say in a game defines the outcome of the story and therefore you can often create a bigger impact on players than watchers or readers. This leads to interesting possibilities in storytelling in the games, but it also provides great potential for your language and literature classroom. If a game offers difficult decisions, maybe in terms of ethics or politics, you can reach a deeper level of involvement with your students. Additionally, a game can offer very interesting and uncommon perspectives and thus open up the possibility to ‘walk a mile in someone else’s shoes’, examples here being among others Bury me, my Love, Orwell or Depression Quest.

Besides that, games as a medium are of course political in their presentation. Some people in games culture do not like to hear that and the slogan ‘Keep politics out of my games” can be heard again and again. But games tell stories, they reflect the real world and they always work on a foundation of premises that represent typical structures and ideologies. In a city building game, you probably start out by building housing, commercial areas and industry and the additional roads for cars in between. Of course, this is how cities work mostly, but it manifests a certain understanding of cities and society. This can be seen critically, also in your classroom and the preparation for your project, but it can also be just taken as it is, as our world simply seems to work this way and the games reproduce more or less appropriately what society offers.

Serious games, or at least games that explicitly convey a message and display problematic situations and systems, are very interesting for teachers. The term serious game is a problematic one, but we discussed this topic in detail in the guidebook and will not do so here again. To put it in a nutshell, serious games as a term does not help when identifying games for classroom use. One subcategory of serious games, games that present politics and historical events, still hold value for learning, especially for higher level education. They make you experience what it is like to serve in a totalitarian state (Papers, Please), how to survive as a civilian in a warzone (This War of Mine), or what it means to be involved in an uprising (1979 Revolution: Black Friday). Oftentimes, these games are only created for a more mature audience, as they present challenging topics and situations. But their value for subjects like History, Civics, Ethics or Politics and Philosophy is tremendous.

3-3 Systemic learning and 21st Century Skills

Learning to understand systemic relations in games

Games often present systems to work with. Many games simulate real-life behaviour and translate an existing system to the world of gaming. With games you can learn to fly, build an enterprise, or understand the challenges and activities of interesting occupations. Games let you be a city planner, a truck driver, a farmer or the director of a space program.

You can learn about all of these occupations and ecosystems also through text or video. But learning in games is interactive and it happens within a system. So, if you change one cog in a system, you can directly experience how this interacts with all the other parts of that system, in real time. This leads to a deeper understanding of systems and the relatedness of all of its parts. In comparison to school learning and teaching, this offers a leap in understanding. When you learn in a job, there is as much practice as possible because knowledge and skills mediated through text in a linear form stays abstract and does not help to really get the meaning of the knowledge presented and its relation to reality.

Therefore, learning with games as learning in simulated systems and situated in a context or world that supports understanding concepts, is often superior to learning with texts. For you as a teacher this should sound tempting, especially because learning with games also focuses on teaching skills, following a hands-on approach, instead of giving abstract texts about knowledge and skills.

But this also means that learning in and with games is not that easily integrated into an existing curriculum and the knowledge and skills taught by a game might cover several subjects at the same time. Understanding systems and attaining skills might also take longer than the time you can provide in your lessons. This means that learning with games might probably be planned as a project including several subjects and teachers to be able to fully apply the potential that game based learning can offer. In our project outlines in chapter 7, you can see that and how other teachers and subjects can be included in your project.

Games and 21st Century Skills

The so-called 21st Century Skills are considered valuable for skill-oriented teaching and as a preparation to enter the labour market of today. At the core of this concept are four skills (though they are expanded on on a regular basis), i.e. communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. These can be trained well with games, especially when it comes to multiplayer or cooperative games. The games create the context in which communication, teamwork and critical thinking is needed. Games like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes or Escape Rooms in general provide a perfect opportunity to train and test these skills in a challenging and playful way.

An especially interesting article about the connection of games and 21st Century Skills is part of the book series Learning, Education and Games by Karen Schrier. According to the article, games are especially well suited to teach 21st century skills.

“21st century skills defined by the capacity to think flexibly and innovatively (creativity); the aptitude to communicate with colleagues both face to face and digitally (collaboration); capability in planning, self-management, organization, time management, and critical thinking (executive functions); and the knowledge of how to use electronic media and tools (digital literacy) will become the core proficiencies for future success. The use of video games and apps has potential for encouraging the practice of creativity, collaboration, executive functions, and digital literacy. Employers around the globe are looking for 21st century skills in their new hires to help them adjust to information-focused jobs that require problem solving, teamwork, the capacity to identify relevant facts, and organizational, planning, and efficiency skills.”

They define 21st Century Skills as:

“1. Learning and innovation skills, which include creative thinking and problem solving and communication and collaboration. These skills are crucial to working in a group, developing new ideas, and analyzing and evaluating information.

Life and career skills, which encompass skills such as flexibility and adaptability; initiative and self-directed social and cross-cultural skills; productivity and accountability skills; and leadership and responsibility skills, many of which can also be described by the term executive functions. Executive functions are defined as brain-based cognitive skills that support self-management and critical thinking. Executive functions are based primarily in the prefrontal cortex of our brains and orchestrate various brain functions that integrate a person’s perceptions, experiences, cognitions, and memories toward goal-directed behavior. These are identified by many experts as the key to academic and vocational success in the 21st century (Brown, 2013; Barkley, 2012). Executive functions include a set of related skills that help prioritize, regulate, and orchestrate an individual’s thoughts and behaviors.
Digital literacy skills, which include understanding about digital information; being able to access information effectively; evaluating, analyzing, and using media; and being able to apply technology effectively. Proficiencies in being able to create media use technology for research, and competencies in using a variety of electronic forms of communication and networking tools are core digital literacy skills (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009).” So, the authors enlarge the definition of 21st Century skills to include executive functions (management, flexibility, leadership, and cross-cultural skills) and digital literacy skills. This larger scope fits well with what you can learn in games with games being digital tools and many games also ask for managerial skills, flexibility, and initiative.

The authors also state that games are great for teaching these skill sets because they reach beyond the classroom and are played at home, too. Teachers are increasingly turning to a variety of types of games for their teaching. One of the common observations described by teachers who use games in the classroom is the level and sophistication of engaged discussion that takes place among classmates that leads to additional learning and insights. It is all about the right choice of game to bring these benefits to classrooms.

Let’s Play

Frostrune -

The Reactor Game -