Games in Learning Contexts

Abstract

Games and learning, these days, is a much-discussed topic. At least some of that discussion is sparked by market demand; the 2008 worldwide market for serious games (a category which includes games for learning) has been estimated at $1.5 billion dollars. However, given the rise of organizations like the Serious Games Initiative, and MacArthur's recent grants for digital media and learning, it is clear that the impact of learning games goes far beyond the financial. Games seem a natural way to spark passionate engagement with learning, and new game technologies provide new ways to deliver and develop these learning experiences. When we talk about games and learning, however, there is a central question. Which games do we mean? And what kind of learning? Not all games are created equal. While this truth may be self-evident at times, it is sometimes hard to remember the breadth of activities that fall under the heading of games and play. The 'typical' game that a person thinks of might be Scrabble or Super Mario, Battlefield 1942 or Bejeweled. Even for those who have experience with a broad range of games, some types of games are likely to be more salient simply because some games get more press than others. When was the last time you saw an article in a major news outlet about Charades? When talking about games and learning, it is easy to confine oneself entirely to digital games, and particularly to long-form (i.e. non-casual) games, because these are the bulk of games that appear in mainstream news. However, games cannot necessarily be reduced to a single (digital or non-digital, long-form or casual) category. A player might play Magic: the gathering in person, with friends, and then go online to look up card prices and strategies. A World of Warcraft guild might haul their computers to the guild leader's house to perform a difficult raid in the same room. A player might play Scrabulous on Facebook, while also participating in offline Scrabble at the competition level. At what point do we declare a game 'digital' or 'non-digital?' What percentage of the players must spend what percentage of their time on the computer, or off it, to make those judgments? Just how much time spent on play makes a game no longer 'casual,' and how much does the player have to engage emotionally with their performance? Lines blur and blend quickly when it comes to play. For this reason, it is important to look across the obvious categories of games, rather than confining ourselves to games that use particular technologies or that appear to fit certain genres of play. Certainly there is much to learn about games within these divisions, particularly if we use the opportunity to inspect the features that said categories share. However, to talk about 'games' as a general category means understanding those principles of play that apply equally to Monopoly, Minesweeper and Manhunt. As different as the games appear on the surface, all three can be represented as systems of incentive, feedback loops, constraints and reward structures. To talk about 'games' and learning, therefore, it is worth our while not to forget just how diverse 'games' can be. Learning, too, is a vastly diverse field. Most readers of this journal are likely to be quite familiar with classroom-based academic learning; after all, if we weren't skilled at learning this way, Introduction