1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:02,500 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,500 --> 00:00:04,019 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,019 --> 00:00:06,360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:10,730 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,730 --> 00:00:13,330 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,330 --> 00:00:17,215 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,215 --> 00:00:17,840 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:21,985 --> 00:00:24,360 PROFESSOR: So today in class, we've got a guest lecturer. 9 00:00:24,360 --> 00:00:26,840 Scott Osterweil from the MIT Education Arcade at MIT Game 10 00:00:26,840 --> 00:00:29,380 Lab's going to be talking to us about learning 11 00:00:29,380 --> 00:00:33,867 and play in games to put us in the mindset for the games 12 00:00:33,867 --> 00:00:35,700 that you're making that feel like they might 13 00:00:35,700 --> 00:00:40,520 be educational or more about awareness, to take 14 00:00:40,520 --> 00:00:43,180 some ideas from him on that. 15 00:00:43,180 --> 00:00:45,180 Then after that, we're going to do a play test. 16 00:00:45,180 --> 00:00:46,620 So this is your first opportunity 17 00:00:46,620 --> 00:00:51,400 to give staff and clients, if our clients show up, 18 00:00:51,400 --> 00:00:53,860 the experience of playing your games 19 00:00:53,860 --> 00:00:56,700 and giving you some feedback on the low-fidelity prototypes 20 00:00:56,700 --> 00:00:57,720 that you have right now. 21 00:00:57,720 --> 00:01:01,007 And again, they could be digital or non digital. 22 00:01:01,007 --> 00:01:02,590 That's going to be pretty quick today. 23 00:01:02,590 --> 00:01:04,860 We don't need everybody to play everybody else's games, 24 00:01:04,860 --> 00:01:05,610 if you don't like. 25 00:01:05,610 --> 00:01:09,000 So what we're going have you do is set up your games. 26 00:01:09,000 --> 00:01:11,240 I expect if they're paper, you probably only 27 00:01:11,240 --> 00:01:13,699 have one copy of your game running at any one time. 28 00:01:13,699 --> 00:01:15,240 So just make sure that everyone who's 29 00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:18,952 on the team who is not playing is observing and taking notes. 30 00:01:18,952 --> 00:01:20,910 If you do have digital and would like to set up 31 00:01:20,910 --> 00:01:22,730 multiple stations, please do. 32 00:01:22,730 --> 00:01:24,940 It's always helpful. 33 00:01:24,940 --> 00:01:27,580 Our next play test is November 5. 34 00:01:27,580 --> 00:01:31,606 We're having the class from 21W032, 35 00:01:31,606 --> 00:01:33,230 the Introduction to Digital Media class 36 00:01:33,230 --> 00:01:34,997 taught by Ed Barrett. 37 00:01:34,997 --> 00:01:37,330 They'll be coming in at the end of the day at about 3:00 38 00:01:37,330 --> 00:01:40,380 PM to test your digital games. 39 00:01:40,380 --> 00:01:43,150 So on November 5, it's a good opportunity 40 00:01:43,150 --> 00:01:47,430 for a first playable version of your digital game 41 00:01:47,430 --> 00:01:52,530 to get tested by people who are not in the class. 42 00:01:52,530 --> 00:01:55,080 And then after play test today, we'll take a quick break. 43 00:01:55,080 --> 00:01:57,580 And then we'll do presentations where each team will come up 44 00:01:57,580 --> 00:02:00,030 here, and you've basically got the floor for two minutes. 45 00:02:00,030 --> 00:02:02,830 We want to hear what is the state your game right now, 46 00:02:02,830 --> 00:02:05,580 basically referring back to your product backlog. 47 00:02:05,580 --> 00:02:08,180 What are the features that are planned? 48 00:02:08,180 --> 00:02:09,269 What did you test today? 49 00:02:09,269 --> 00:02:10,810 What does your build look like today, 50 00:02:10,810 --> 00:02:13,610 your low-fidelity prototype look like today? 51 00:02:13,610 --> 00:02:15,720 And just let us know how it's going. 52 00:02:15,720 --> 00:02:18,410 We're going to ask for a number of these short two-minute 53 00:02:18,410 --> 00:02:22,280 presentations throughout the rest of the semester. 54 00:02:22,280 --> 00:02:28,730 And those dates are in the handout for project four. 55 00:02:28,730 --> 00:02:31,400 And I'll be making mention of them as we go along. 56 00:02:31,400 --> 00:02:34,360 And then the remainder of class, you've got about hour 57 00:02:34,360 --> 00:02:38,570 to an hour and a half at the end of class to work in class. 58 00:02:38,570 --> 00:02:41,490 I'm going to let you know how much time you're 59 00:02:41,490 --> 00:02:44,676 going to have time for working in class for future days. 60 00:02:44,676 --> 00:02:47,050 This Wednesday, you'll probably have about two full hours 61 00:02:47,050 --> 00:02:50,821 in class to work, looking at what our lecture schedule looks 62 00:02:50,821 --> 00:02:51,320 like. 63 00:02:51,320 --> 00:02:53,280 So that's that. 64 00:02:53,280 --> 00:02:56,140 Any questions about what we're doing today? 65 00:02:56,140 --> 00:02:59,660 Any questions about project four? 66 00:02:59,660 --> 00:03:00,160 OK. 67 00:03:00,160 --> 00:03:03,490 I'm going to hand it off to Scott. 68 00:03:03,490 --> 00:03:05,110 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: [INAUDIBLE], this 69 00:03:05,110 --> 00:03:07,390 is the [INAUDIBLE] switch you were talking about? 70 00:03:07,390 --> 00:03:09,390 PROFESSOR: Yep, I'm switching it over right now. 71 00:03:12,601 --> 00:03:14,600 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Well, it's nice to see you all. 72 00:03:14,600 --> 00:03:18,860 I see at least two faces from-- three from classes 73 00:03:18,860 --> 00:03:22,020 that I taught, so forgive me for those of you who may 74 00:03:22,020 --> 00:03:25,440 have heard some of this before. 75 00:03:25,440 --> 00:03:27,780 So this was sort of teed up as if I'm 76 00:03:27,780 --> 00:03:29,440 going to talk to you about education, 77 00:03:29,440 --> 00:03:31,115 but I'm actually not going to talk to you about education. 78 00:03:31,115 --> 00:03:33,710 I'm going to talk to you about something else entirely. 79 00:03:33,710 --> 00:03:35,668 Maybe we'll get around to education by the time 80 00:03:35,668 --> 00:03:37,100 we're done. 81 00:03:37,100 --> 00:03:41,520 But what I want you to do right now-- hang on one second-- 82 00:03:41,520 --> 00:03:44,317 is turn to the person next to you 83 00:03:44,317 --> 00:03:45,900 and play a quick round of tic-tac-toe. 84 00:03:48,640 --> 00:03:53,340 So I do like doing this, even though it's 85 00:03:53,340 --> 00:03:55,580 hard to get people to stop. 86 00:03:55,580 --> 00:03:58,610 It's actually kind of interesting to me. 87 00:03:58,610 --> 00:04:02,150 When I've done this with an audience of about 300 people, 88 00:04:02,150 --> 00:04:05,820 it takes a long time to corral everybody back, 89 00:04:05,820 --> 00:04:07,539 which is really remarkable. 90 00:04:07,539 --> 00:04:09,080 If you weren't playing a game, I hope 91 00:04:09,080 --> 00:04:10,310 you were at least looking around and noticing 92 00:04:10,310 --> 00:04:12,060 that the room got kind of loud and there 93 00:04:12,060 --> 00:04:14,840 was a fair amount of laughter, and noise, and animation, 94 00:04:14,840 --> 00:04:16,390 which is really remarkable when you 95 00:04:16,390 --> 00:04:20,630 consider the fact that tic-tac-toe is a stupid game. 96 00:04:20,630 --> 00:04:22,264 That by age eight, you had figured out 97 00:04:22,264 --> 00:04:24,180 that there was no point in playing tic-tac-toe 98 00:04:24,180 --> 00:04:26,013 because you almost always play it to a draw. 99 00:04:28,330 --> 00:04:31,990 I'm always amazed when I ask a bunch of adults, which you are, 100 00:04:31,990 --> 00:04:35,350 to play tic-tac-toe, how into it they get. 101 00:04:38,700 --> 00:04:41,510 And I think in the end, it's the thing I really want 102 00:04:41,510 --> 00:04:43,530 to talk about, which is play. 103 00:04:43,530 --> 00:04:46,100 I know you guys have been in a class studying games. 104 00:04:46,100 --> 00:04:48,310 Have you talked much about the word play? 105 00:04:48,310 --> 00:04:48,810 Good. 106 00:04:51,850 --> 00:04:54,050 We are all in the business of making games, 107 00:04:54,050 --> 00:04:56,180 and yet we don't stop much to think about play. 108 00:04:56,180 --> 00:05:00,752 But play is not something that was invented with the Atari. 109 00:05:00,752 --> 00:05:02,710 People have been playing games for a long time. 110 00:05:02,710 --> 00:05:05,850 The oldest known game implements are older 111 00:05:05,850 --> 00:05:07,810 than the oldest known writing. 112 00:05:11,104 --> 00:05:13,020 I don't know how many of you know art history, 113 00:05:13,020 --> 00:05:14,810 but this is the late 16th century 114 00:05:14,810 --> 00:05:17,480 in what's now Belgium, the low countries-- 115 00:05:17,480 --> 00:05:20,140 Flanders in those days. 116 00:05:20,140 --> 00:05:23,150 The great genre painter Pieter Bruegel, 117 00:05:23,150 --> 00:05:26,880 who did a painting called Children's Games, in which he 118 00:05:26,880 --> 00:05:29,830 documented over 100 games that scholars have 119 00:05:29,830 --> 00:05:31,695 been able to identify as real games that 120 00:05:31,695 --> 00:05:32,820 were played at that time. 121 00:05:32,820 --> 00:05:38,100 And if you think about it, at that point 122 00:05:38,100 --> 00:05:40,820 there wasn't really much of a thing called childhood. 123 00:05:40,820 --> 00:05:43,010 That by the age of 11 or 12, you were probably 124 00:05:43,010 --> 00:05:46,200 working in the family business, whatever it was. 125 00:05:46,200 --> 00:05:50,210 You were expected to take on adult responsibilities. 126 00:05:50,210 --> 00:05:53,926 And yet clearly, play was still a huge part of their lives. 127 00:05:53,926 --> 00:05:55,300 Now, this is a fanciful painting. 128 00:05:55,300 --> 00:05:59,210 He was not trying to be realistic here. 129 00:05:59,210 --> 00:06:04,580 But the point was play was a huge part of their lives then. 130 00:06:04,580 --> 00:06:06,950 So we know that they were playing back 131 00:06:06,950 --> 00:06:08,890 in the 16th century. 132 00:06:08,890 --> 00:06:11,460 We know they were playing 6,000 years ago. 133 00:06:11,460 --> 00:06:15,650 We actually know that our ancestors played too, 134 00:06:15,650 --> 00:06:17,400 that other vertebrates play. 135 00:06:17,400 --> 00:06:20,870 In fact, Edwin Wilson has sort of argued that ants play too, 136 00:06:20,870 --> 00:06:24,752 but let's just stick to vertebrates for a minute. 137 00:06:24,752 --> 00:06:27,580 When mountain goats play-- there's a alpine mountain 138 00:06:27,580 --> 00:06:30,130 goat-- they play by-- and by the way, 139 00:06:30,130 --> 00:06:32,470 let me just say quickly from my definition, 140 00:06:32,470 --> 00:06:35,040 play is the stuff you do when you don't 141 00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:36,500 have to do something else. 142 00:06:36,500 --> 00:06:38,040 You don't have to get food. 143 00:06:38,040 --> 00:06:41,840 You don't have to evade capture, or protect your young, 144 00:06:41,840 --> 00:06:44,667 or procreate, or find shelter. 145 00:06:44,667 --> 00:06:47,000 When you don't have to do all that stuff-- some of which 146 00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:49,070 you do playfully, by the way-- but when 147 00:06:49,070 --> 00:06:52,140 you don't have to do that stuff and you're on your own, 148 00:06:52,140 --> 00:06:54,070 you play. 149 00:06:54,070 --> 00:06:56,740 And so mountain goats play by actually chasing 150 00:06:56,740 --> 00:06:59,270 each other around the mountains and jumping from cliff 151 00:06:59,270 --> 00:07:00,752 to cliff, ledge to ledge. 152 00:07:00,752 --> 00:07:02,210 And they do it in spite of the fact 153 00:07:02,210 --> 00:07:03,751 that mountain goats will occasionally 154 00:07:03,751 --> 00:07:05,380 fall to their deaths. 155 00:07:05,380 --> 00:07:07,120 And if we know anything about evolution, 156 00:07:07,120 --> 00:07:10,430 we know the behaviors that lead to the deaths of individuals 157 00:07:10,430 --> 00:07:13,030 are behaviors that are more likely to die out, 158 00:07:13,030 --> 00:07:17,190 unless there is some advantage to the behavior that 159 00:07:17,190 --> 00:07:19,170 outweighs the risk. 160 00:07:19,170 --> 00:07:21,010 And it would easy to assume from this 161 00:07:21,010 --> 00:07:22,510 that mountain goats are learning how 162 00:07:22,510 --> 00:07:26,370 to do the things they need to do, like jump and land 163 00:07:26,370 --> 00:07:27,542 on precarious ledges. 164 00:07:27,542 --> 00:07:29,750 That that's what they're learning through their play. 165 00:07:29,750 --> 00:07:32,330 We might extend that thinking when 166 00:07:32,330 --> 00:07:34,470 we look at an image like this. 167 00:07:34,470 --> 00:07:37,940 By the way, you can find images like this on the internet. 168 00:07:37,940 --> 00:07:43,710 Anyway, so we've all seen images of cats or puppies 169 00:07:43,710 --> 00:07:46,355 fighting, playing at games that look like fighting or hunting. 170 00:07:50,760 --> 00:07:53,460 And if we take that example and the example of the mountain 171 00:07:53,460 --> 00:07:58,290 goats, it's easy to conclude that play is about rote memory. 172 00:07:58,290 --> 00:08:05,360 It's about learning to do things through repetition. 173 00:08:05,360 --> 00:08:09,390 But they've done a study where they prevented kittens 174 00:08:09,390 --> 00:08:11,550 from the opportunity to play while they grow up, 175 00:08:11,550 --> 00:08:12,950 play with other cats. 176 00:08:12,950 --> 00:08:16,665 And it turns out they learn how to hunt just fine. 177 00:08:16,665 --> 00:08:18,040 What they don't know how to do is 178 00:08:18,040 --> 00:08:20,172 how to interact with other cats or make 179 00:08:20,172 --> 00:08:21,380 other more complex decisions. 180 00:08:24,987 --> 00:08:27,070 What I'm going to argue is play is about something 181 00:08:27,070 --> 00:08:32,450 far more involved that just sort of rote memory and repetition. 182 00:08:32,450 --> 00:08:35,059 Last animal example. 183 00:08:35,059 --> 00:08:37,799 They did a study where they gave an otter a fish every time 184 00:08:37,799 --> 00:08:39,270 it swam through a hoop. 185 00:08:39,270 --> 00:08:42,230 Now, if you think about what an otter's needs are, 186 00:08:42,230 --> 00:08:45,090 that otter was rich beyond its wildest dreams. 187 00:08:45,090 --> 00:08:46,880 Everything it needed was right there just 188 00:08:46,880 --> 00:08:48,270 by swimming through the hoop. 189 00:08:48,270 --> 00:08:51,587 So did the otter retire as we might do if all our needs were 190 00:08:51,587 --> 00:08:52,170 taken care of? 191 00:08:52,170 --> 00:08:54,470 No, it started swimming through the hoop upside down, 192 00:08:54,470 --> 00:08:55,960 backwards. 193 00:08:55,960 --> 00:08:58,310 Playing with a hoop with its way of exploring 194 00:08:58,310 --> 00:09:00,736 how the world worked. 195 00:09:00,736 --> 00:09:02,610 The otters-- I assume there's more than one-- 196 00:09:02,610 --> 00:09:05,694 the otters knew that swimming through a hoop got fish. 197 00:09:05,694 --> 00:09:07,610 They wanted to find out what else it could do. 198 00:09:10,140 --> 00:09:14,360 And again, this is when survival is no longer an issue. 199 00:09:14,360 --> 00:09:18,170 So play is really the way in which we explore the world. 200 00:09:18,170 --> 00:09:20,300 Just looking at these images of children, 201 00:09:20,300 --> 00:09:23,430 there are four different continents here, 202 00:09:23,430 --> 00:09:25,580 four very different kinds of games. 203 00:09:25,580 --> 00:09:28,716 But I'd argue the affect is the same in all of them, 204 00:09:28,716 --> 00:09:30,340 and that what's going on in all of them 205 00:09:30,340 --> 00:09:34,710 is the same thing, that the kids in these pictures 206 00:09:34,710 --> 00:09:37,410 are really constructing their understanding of the world 207 00:09:37,410 --> 00:09:39,920 through play. 208 00:09:39,920 --> 00:09:42,820 What I want to argue is that through play, we 209 00:09:42,820 --> 00:09:47,850 begin to build the kinds of conceptual structures 210 00:09:47,850 --> 00:09:50,910 that we are going to then engage with more formally 211 00:09:50,910 --> 00:09:52,710 in other spheres of life. 212 00:09:52,710 --> 00:09:56,040 And I could argue that it's only for children, 213 00:09:56,040 --> 00:09:58,611 but I'm going to argue further that it 214 00:09:58,611 --> 00:09:59,760 doesn't stop in childhood. 215 00:09:59,760 --> 00:10:01,635 But sticking with childhood for just a moment 216 00:10:01,635 --> 00:10:04,510 and using my own personal example. 217 00:10:04,510 --> 00:10:08,355 I loved playing with blocks when I was a kid. 218 00:10:08,355 --> 00:10:09,730 And this is all pre-kindergarten. 219 00:10:09,730 --> 00:10:11,870 I can remember the pleasure of discovering 220 00:10:11,870 --> 00:10:14,940 that two square blocks were the same size as one 221 00:10:14,940 --> 00:10:17,580 rectangular block, and two rectangular blocks 222 00:10:17,580 --> 00:10:19,470 were the same size as one big block. 223 00:10:19,470 --> 00:10:22,590 And the kicker was that that was equal to four 224 00:10:22,590 --> 00:10:25,580 of the little square blocks, and that those relationships could 225 00:10:25,580 --> 00:10:27,236 then be replicated elsewhere. 226 00:10:27,236 --> 00:10:29,360 That that was a pattern that I could find elsewhere 227 00:10:29,360 --> 00:10:30,120 in the world. 228 00:10:30,120 --> 00:10:33,980 And so pre-kindergarten now, what I am really doing 229 00:10:33,980 --> 00:10:40,640 is developing a primitive, but I would say robust sense 230 00:10:40,640 --> 00:10:43,380 that math is the way we actually model the world. 231 00:10:43,380 --> 00:10:46,100 That we can actually model the world mathematically. 232 00:10:46,100 --> 00:10:49,330 Now obviously, as four-year-old, me couldn't have said that. 233 00:10:49,330 --> 00:10:52,900 Four-year-old me couldn't even necessarily answer 2 plus 2 234 00:10:52,900 --> 00:10:54,400 equals. 235 00:10:54,400 --> 00:10:56,700 But four-year-old me knew something far more robust. 236 00:10:56,700 --> 00:10:59,640 I was starting to really understand 237 00:10:59,640 --> 00:11:02,110 that the world could be described mathematically, 238 00:11:02,110 --> 00:11:04,529 and that that was why I was primed to be 239 00:11:04,529 --> 00:11:05,820 a relatively good math student. 240 00:11:08,890 --> 00:11:12,557 The challenge, though, is that I just played with blocks the way 241 00:11:12,557 --> 00:11:13,640 I chose to play with them. 242 00:11:13,640 --> 00:11:14,320 No one made me. 243 00:11:14,320 --> 00:11:17,130 In fact, if you'd sat me down and say play with blocks 244 00:11:17,130 --> 00:11:20,150 and discover what you can about numbers, I might have refused 245 00:11:20,150 --> 00:11:21,840 and age four. 246 00:11:21,840 --> 00:11:24,830 Players' motivations are entirely intrinsic and personal 247 00:11:24,830 --> 00:11:26,600 in all play. 248 00:11:26,600 --> 00:11:28,749 You cannot make somebody play. 249 00:11:28,749 --> 00:11:31,040 I think it's helpful to think about it as if there were 250 00:11:31,040 --> 00:11:34,300 four freedoms present in play. 251 00:11:34,300 --> 00:11:37,230 Freedom to experiment. 252 00:11:37,230 --> 00:11:38,990 I thought I had revised the slides. 253 00:11:38,990 --> 00:11:40,240 I really sort of revised that. 254 00:11:40,240 --> 00:11:45,617 I think it's better say freedom to explore is the better word. 255 00:11:45,617 --> 00:11:47,200 But what I was doing with those blocks 256 00:11:47,200 --> 00:11:49,520 was seeing things about the blocks that were not-- 257 00:11:49,520 --> 00:11:51,139 the package showed pictures of things 258 00:11:51,139 --> 00:11:52,930 you could build with the blocks, but that's 259 00:11:52,930 --> 00:11:54,120 not what I was doing. 260 00:11:54,120 --> 00:11:56,160 I was sort of exploring properties of the blocks 261 00:11:56,160 --> 00:11:59,520 that no one was telling me to look for. 262 00:11:59,520 --> 00:12:01,470 Freedom to fail. 263 00:12:01,470 --> 00:12:03,830 If you played with blocks, you probably 264 00:12:03,830 --> 00:12:05,850 built a tower that eventually fell down, 265 00:12:05,850 --> 00:12:08,711 and you probably learned a lot from the tower falling down. 266 00:12:08,711 --> 00:12:10,460 You probably, in fact, persisted at trying 267 00:12:10,460 --> 00:12:11,585 to get the tower to stand up. 268 00:12:11,585 --> 00:12:13,920 And along the way, you were learning all sorts of stuff 269 00:12:13,920 --> 00:12:16,610 about mechanics and physics. 270 00:12:16,610 --> 00:12:19,160 Freedom of identity. 271 00:12:19,160 --> 00:12:21,980 If you think about doll play for a minute, 272 00:12:21,980 --> 00:12:26,290 a kid in the floor of their room acting out 273 00:12:26,290 --> 00:12:29,760 conflict between two dolls, or stuffed animals, or action 274 00:12:29,760 --> 00:12:33,480 figures is really exploring all the roles in their own family, 275 00:12:33,480 --> 00:12:35,070 in their world. 276 00:12:35,070 --> 00:12:37,450 A kid who plays at Luke Skywalker versus Darth 277 00:12:37,450 --> 00:12:40,280 Vader is really figuring out what part of him 278 00:12:40,280 --> 00:12:42,690 or herself is Luke Skywalker and what part 279 00:12:42,690 --> 00:12:46,670 is Darth Vader, because we think we have both of them in us. 280 00:12:46,670 --> 00:12:48,700 And that's what we explore through play. 281 00:12:48,700 --> 00:12:52,620 In less than a week, on Friday, a fair number of you 282 00:12:52,620 --> 00:12:55,970 are going to engage in identity play at a fairly large scale, 283 00:12:55,970 --> 00:12:58,630 so it's not just a childhood thing. 284 00:12:58,630 --> 00:13:02,400 I mean, I'm talking about Halloween, obviously. 285 00:13:02,400 --> 00:13:04,940 And anyone who's ever played World of Warcraft 286 00:13:04,940 --> 00:13:09,780 or any number of games knows that in fact, through games, 287 00:13:09,780 --> 00:13:12,530 we play with our identity over time. 288 00:13:12,530 --> 00:13:15,230 Finally, freedom of effort is the freedom 289 00:13:15,230 --> 00:13:18,460 to really play hard or play relaxed. 290 00:13:18,460 --> 00:13:20,490 You cannot make somebody play hard. 291 00:13:20,490 --> 00:13:23,030 And if you watched the pattern of play, 292 00:13:23,030 --> 00:13:25,230 people will play intensely. 293 00:13:25,230 --> 00:13:26,802 They will suddenly ease up. 294 00:13:26,802 --> 00:13:28,760 Again, stick to World of Warcraft for a minute, 295 00:13:28,760 --> 00:13:29,926 sometimes you want to grind. 296 00:13:29,926 --> 00:13:33,110 You just want to do the mindless stuff for a while. 297 00:13:33,110 --> 00:13:36,010 And sometimes you want to enter into an intense battle. 298 00:13:36,010 --> 00:13:37,070 They both happen. 299 00:13:37,070 --> 00:13:39,179 So here's the challenge for us. 300 00:13:39,179 --> 00:13:40,720 The player's motivations are entirely 301 00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:44,670 intrinsic and personal, as I've already said. 302 00:13:44,670 --> 00:13:47,500 And I'm also arguing that obviously, learning 303 00:13:47,500 --> 00:13:48,930 is happening through play. 304 00:13:48,930 --> 00:13:50,690 But how do we channel play into learning 305 00:13:50,690 --> 00:13:52,440 while still allowing for its fundamentally 306 00:13:52,440 --> 00:13:54,644 open-ended nature? 307 00:13:54,644 --> 00:13:56,060 So if you, as Rick said, are going 308 00:13:56,060 --> 00:14:00,010 to be making games in which you want to-- well, 309 00:14:00,010 --> 00:14:04,520 I hope you're thinking about real learning rather than just 310 00:14:04,520 --> 00:14:05,900 conveying information. 311 00:14:05,900 --> 00:14:07,300 And I'll get to that in a minute. 312 00:14:07,300 --> 00:14:10,200 But whatever it is you're doing, theoretically you 313 00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:12,240 want to make a good game, they still 314 00:14:12,240 --> 00:14:14,842 have to have the freedom to play. 315 00:14:14,842 --> 00:14:16,300 You don't have a game without play. 316 00:14:16,300 --> 00:14:18,040 You can have something that has the structure of a game 317 00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:19,220 without play, but it won't really 318 00:14:19,220 --> 00:14:20,770 be a game if they're not playing. 319 00:14:20,770 --> 00:14:23,520 But anyway, so that's where games come in. 320 00:14:23,520 --> 00:14:27,520 That's how we can channel learning sometimes 321 00:14:27,520 --> 00:14:28,730 while still being open ended. 322 00:14:28,730 --> 00:14:32,215 And just to use the most absurd example, think about golf. 323 00:14:32,215 --> 00:14:36,900 It was Bernard Suits who originally used this example. 324 00:14:36,900 --> 00:14:39,220 But in golf, you're hitting a very small ball 325 00:14:39,220 --> 00:14:41,770 with a very long stick. 326 00:14:41,770 --> 00:14:43,920 Anyone golf here? 327 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:47,850 Yeah, that's what the normal percentage is in a class. 328 00:14:47,850 --> 00:14:48,895 But it's hard, right ? 329 00:14:48,895 --> 00:14:50,520 The first time you swung the golf club, 330 00:14:50,520 --> 00:14:53,330 you might have missed the ball entirely, right? 331 00:14:53,330 --> 00:14:54,639 Yeah. 332 00:14:54,639 --> 00:14:56,930 Sometimes even when you start connecting with the ball, 333 00:14:56,930 --> 00:14:58,540 it goes the wrong direction. 334 00:14:58,540 --> 00:15:00,421 It goes 10 feet, 20 feet. 335 00:15:00,421 --> 00:15:02,170 When you can finally hit it some distance, 336 00:15:02,170 --> 00:15:04,550 it goes into the water, it goes into the woods. 337 00:15:04,550 --> 00:15:07,880 It costs $2.50 every time you lose a ball. 338 00:15:07,880 --> 00:15:10,390 If your goal, after all, is to get the ball in the hole, 339 00:15:10,390 --> 00:15:12,723 why don't you just pick it up, and walk to the other end 340 00:15:12,723 --> 00:15:13,860 of course, and drop it in? 341 00:15:13,860 --> 00:15:15,360 The golf game would go much quicker. 342 00:15:15,360 --> 00:15:16,640 You'd never lose a ball. 343 00:15:16,640 --> 00:15:19,580 You have a lot more success. 344 00:15:19,580 --> 00:15:22,380 But no one chooses to play golf that way. 345 00:15:22,380 --> 00:15:24,980 If you think about it, people choose 346 00:15:24,980 --> 00:15:27,720 to play golf by moving the ball to the hole 347 00:15:27,720 --> 00:15:32,640 in the single stupidest way possible. 348 00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:34,540 And as Bernard Suits said in this context, 349 00:15:34,540 --> 00:15:36,130 games are really about overcoming 350 00:15:36,130 --> 00:15:38,200 unnecessary obstacles. 351 00:15:38,200 --> 00:15:41,410 And unnecessary is critical here because every game 352 00:15:41,410 --> 00:15:43,710 is, by definition, unnecessary. 353 00:15:43,710 --> 00:15:46,810 If you're really playing, it's voluntary. 354 00:15:46,810 --> 00:15:48,470 It's not required. 355 00:15:48,470 --> 00:15:50,490 Your survival does not depend on it. 356 00:15:50,490 --> 00:15:53,274 So by definition, every game is unnecessary, 357 00:15:53,274 --> 00:15:55,690 and therefore the obstacles in every game are unnecessary. 358 00:15:55,690 --> 00:15:58,520 And the game is the voluntary overcoming 359 00:15:58,520 --> 00:15:59,850 of unnecessary obstacles. 360 00:15:59,850 --> 00:16:01,450 So why do we do it? 361 00:16:01,450 --> 00:16:03,234 Why would we do all that? 362 00:16:03,234 --> 00:16:04,650 Well, in games we willingly submit 363 00:16:04,650 --> 00:16:06,700 to arbitrary rules and structures 364 00:16:06,700 --> 00:16:09,740 in pursuit of mastery because that's what's going on in golf. 365 00:16:09,740 --> 00:16:10,370 Even in golf. 366 00:16:13,760 --> 00:16:17,140 You think it's hard, and yet even though you missed the golf 367 00:16:17,140 --> 00:16:19,515 ball the first time, you think, I think I can hit it. 368 00:16:19,515 --> 00:16:20,890 And then eventually you do hit it 369 00:16:20,890 --> 00:16:22,598 and you say, I think I can hit it further 370 00:16:22,598 --> 00:16:24,440 and I think I can hit it straighter. 371 00:16:24,440 --> 00:16:26,739 And in fact, the game gives you feedback. 372 00:16:26,739 --> 00:16:28,530 The game is continually giving you feedback 373 00:16:28,530 --> 00:16:31,780 as to how you're doing. 374 00:16:31,780 --> 00:16:36,170 No matter how ridiculously hard golf is, 375 00:16:36,170 --> 00:16:38,555 you set for yourself proximal goals. 376 00:16:38,555 --> 00:16:41,370 I'm going to hit a little straighter, a little further. 377 00:16:41,370 --> 00:16:43,200 And the game lets you do that. 378 00:16:43,200 --> 00:16:44,720 No one runs out into the golf course 379 00:16:44,720 --> 00:16:48,270 and says, stop, you didn't hit the ball far enough, 380 00:16:48,270 --> 00:16:52,735 or yells at you and says, hit it further, further, right? 381 00:16:52,735 --> 00:16:54,920 They let you playfully explore what 382 00:16:54,920 --> 00:16:56,530 you can do with that golf ball. 383 00:16:56,530 --> 00:16:58,290 And you keep saying I'm getting better, 384 00:16:58,290 --> 00:17:00,230 and so you keep playing golf. 385 00:17:00,230 --> 00:17:03,370 And that's true with every game. 386 00:17:03,370 --> 00:17:06,290 And I'll talk about a couple other examples going forward 387 00:17:06,290 --> 00:17:07,140 about that. 388 00:17:07,140 --> 00:17:10,990 So games give you proximal goals which seem worth achieving, 389 00:17:10,990 --> 00:17:13,250 but only if you can continue to be playful. 390 00:17:13,250 --> 00:17:15,060 And that's I think the thing we sometimes 391 00:17:15,060 --> 00:17:18,200 lose sight of when we're making games is the playfulness. 392 00:17:18,200 --> 00:17:19,789 We remember the goal. 393 00:17:19,789 --> 00:17:21,830 We remember that there's an outcome that we want. 394 00:17:21,830 --> 00:17:25,160 And we remember that we want the player to get to that outcome. 395 00:17:25,160 --> 00:17:27,980 But we forget about playfulness, which means we 396 00:17:27,980 --> 00:17:29,510 either make a game that's too easy. 397 00:17:29,510 --> 00:17:31,295 We lead them right to the outcome. 398 00:17:31,295 --> 00:17:33,920 That's like picking up the ball , and walking to the other end, 399 00:17:33,920 --> 00:17:35,086 and dropping it in the hole. 400 00:17:35,086 --> 00:17:37,290 And a lot of games do that. 401 00:17:37,290 --> 00:17:41,399 Or we just figure I'm going to make it really hard. 402 00:17:41,399 --> 00:17:43,190 I don't care whether they enjoy themselves. 403 00:17:43,190 --> 00:17:44,669 They're going to get there. 404 00:17:44,669 --> 00:17:45,710 And of course they don't. 405 00:17:45,710 --> 00:17:46,270 They quit. 406 00:17:53,960 --> 00:17:55,710 It's one thing to define a challenge. 407 00:17:55,710 --> 00:17:57,130 That's important. 408 00:17:57,130 --> 00:18:00,030 The real art in it is defining a proximal challenge, 409 00:18:00,030 --> 00:18:01,244 one that people can reach. 410 00:18:01,244 --> 00:18:03,410 And I would argue that if you're talking about games 411 00:18:03,410 --> 00:18:05,450 in which you want to convey information 412 00:18:05,450 --> 00:18:08,480 or you want people to learn something, all of that 413 00:18:08,480 --> 00:18:09,212 has to hold true. 414 00:18:09,212 --> 00:18:10,920 And in fact, the other thing I'm arguing, 415 00:18:10,920 --> 00:18:13,260 obviously, is that at in every game, people are learning. 416 00:18:13,260 --> 00:18:14,801 That the reason you like playing golf 417 00:18:14,801 --> 00:18:16,530 is because you're learning. 418 00:18:16,530 --> 00:18:19,110 And Raph Koster sets this out really well 419 00:18:19,110 --> 00:18:21,650 in the Theory of Fun, the book A Theory of Fun. 420 00:18:21,650 --> 00:18:23,590 But that basically, the fundamental pleasure 421 00:18:23,590 --> 00:18:25,690 of gameplay is learning, is learning 422 00:18:25,690 --> 00:18:28,706 to master the game, which means in a sense, 423 00:18:28,706 --> 00:18:30,080 if you're doing a game and you've 424 00:18:30,080 --> 00:18:35,180 got some goal for some learning to happen, all you've got to do 425 00:18:35,180 --> 00:18:37,320 is make that learning interesting and worth 426 00:18:37,320 --> 00:18:43,410 achieving by giving people the right set of goals 427 00:18:43,410 --> 00:18:46,190 to work toward it. 428 00:18:46,190 --> 00:18:48,880 So I keep talking kind of interchangeably between play 429 00:18:48,880 --> 00:18:49,470 and learning. 430 00:18:49,470 --> 00:18:54,120 And yet the four freedoms of play, which I'm arguing 431 00:18:54,120 --> 00:18:56,290 are the four freedoms of learning, 432 00:18:56,290 --> 00:18:58,567 are not the four freedoms of school. 433 00:18:58,567 --> 00:19:01,150 If you think about school, and I'm not talking about MIT right 434 00:19:01,150 --> 00:19:04,560 now, if you think about your own high school experience-- 435 00:19:04,560 --> 00:19:08,401 high school is particularly bad-- what kind of freedom 436 00:19:08,401 --> 00:19:08,900 is there? 437 00:19:08,900 --> 00:19:09,800 Freedom to fail? 438 00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:11,150 Not so much. 439 00:19:11,150 --> 00:19:12,030 Freedom to explore? 440 00:19:12,030 --> 00:19:17,344 Well, I mean, even a high school science lab, 441 00:19:17,344 --> 00:19:19,760 everyone is expecting to get the same results by following 442 00:19:19,760 --> 00:19:22,690 the exact same procedure, right? 443 00:19:22,690 --> 00:19:26,201 And that's the most experimental you ever get in school. 444 00:19:26,201 --> 00:19:28,450 Certainly no freedom of effort or freedom of identity. 445 00:19:28,450 --> 00:19:29,930 You sit in your same seat every day 446 00:19:29,930 --> 00:19:34,482 and you're expected to behave the exact same way. 447 00:19:34,482 --> 00:19:36,190 And you're expected to work equally hard. 448 00:19:36,190 --> 00:19:40,460 You can't come in and say I don't feel like working today. 449 00:19:40,460 --> 00:19:42,390 So there's very little play in school, 450 00:19:42,390 --> 00:19:43,980 at least as it's currently embodied. 451 00:19:43,980 --> 00:19:45,940 And this is why I mention school here, 452 00:19:45,940 --> 00:19:49,985 is because I think one of the challenges 453 00:19:49,985 --> 00:19:52,360 if you're an MIT student is that you were probably pretty 454 00:19:52,360 --> 00:19:54,940 good at the game of school. 455 00:19:54,940 --> 00:19:57,346 You probably did what was required of you. 456 00:19:57,346 --> 00:20:00,600 You probably didn't necessarily recognize 457 00:20:00,600 --> 00:20:03,100 that doing the things that school required of you 458 00:20:03,100 --> 00:20:04,835 is not when you were actually learning, 459 00:20:04,835 --> 00:20:06,670 that that was just playing the game. 460 00:20:06,670 --> 00:20:09,725 That the learning was more self-motivated 461 00:20:09,725 --> 00:20:11,500 and more self-directed. 462 00:20:11,500 --> 00:20:13,920 And so frequently people, when they turn around 463 00:20:13,920 --> 00:20:16,500 and try to make anything to do with learning, 464 00:20:16,500 --> 00:20:20,130 whether it's a game, or write a book, or create a curriculum, 465 00:20:20,130 --> 00:20:23,880 they replicate everything that's bad about school. 466 00:20:23,880 --> 00:20:28,010 And the reason I don't like to say I make educational games 467 00:20:28,010 --> 00:20:30,175 is because when you think of educational games, 468 00:20:30,175 --> 00:20:32,300 you think of all the bad games that have replicated 469 00:20:32,300 --> 00:20:34,220 what's bad about school. 470 00:20:34,220 --> 00:20:38,070 Games that have largely taken the dead carcass of a game 471 00:20:38,070 --> 00:20:41,090 and stuffed it full of academic content. 472 00:20:41,090 --> 00:20:44,450 So you're going to shoot at aliens 473 00:20:44,450 --> 00:20:47,360 and you're going to memorize your times table. 474 00:20:47,360 --> 00:20:50,635 Now, what aliens have to do with times tables, I don't know. 475 00:20:50,635 --> 00:20:52,760 Any I'd even argue that memorizing your times table 476 00:20:52,760 --> 00:20:54,730 is of questionable value. 477 00:20:54,730 --> 00:20:57,560 There may be a place for it, but it's 478 00:20:57,560 --> 00:21:01,620 certainly not what being good at math is about, fundamentally. 479 00:21:01,620 --> 00:21:04,480 And too often, games for learning 480 00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:07,875 end up being about simply I'm going to feed you content 481 00:21:07,875 --> 00:21:09,250 that would be boring in a lecture 482 00:21:09,250 --> 00:21:10,445 or boring in a textbook. 483 00:21:10,445 --> 00:21:11,070 And guess what? 484 00:21:11,070 --> 00:21:12,820 It's going to be just as boring in a game. 485 00:21:12,820 --> 00:21:14,236 The only difference is we're going 486 00:21:14,236 --> 00:21:16,970 to surround it with things that we think you think are fun, 487 00:21:16,970 --> 00:21:18,410 like shooting at aliens. 488 00:21:18,410 --> 00:21:22,180 So it sort of translates into people 489 00:21:22,180 --> 00:21:23,770 thinking that what the world needs 490 00:21:23,770 --> 00:21:26,535 is something like Grand Theft Calculus. 491 00:21:29,160 --> 00:21:32,464 But in fact, without playfulness, a game 492 00:21:32,464 --> 00:21:33,880 is just going through the motions. 493 00:21:33,880 --> 00:21:36,180 It's just gym class. 494 00:21:36,180 --> 00:21:38,870 Volleyball in gym is not the same as volleyball 495 00:21:38,870 --> 00:21:41,260 at the beach, and there's a reason for that. 496 00:21:41,260 --> 00:21:46,601 And even smart MIT kids making games 497 00:21:46,601 --> 00:21:48,600 when they think there's learning involved end up 498 00:21:48,600 --> 00:21:52,054 reverting to gym class, to just I'm 499 00:21:52,054 --> 00:21:54,220 going to make you play this game to learn this stuff 500 00:21:54,220 --> 00:21:56,560 you don't want to learn. 501 00:21:56,560 --> 00:21:58,012 Just to talk about the difference 502 00:21:58,012 --> 00:22:00,220 between a good learning game and a bad learning game, 503 00:22:00,220 --> 00:22:02,220 let's talk about difference between spelling bee 504 00:22:02,220 --> 00:22:04,030 and Scrabble. 505 00:22:04,030 --> 00:22:10,470 In a spelling bee, most of us, when we do a spelling bee, 506 00:22:10,470 --> 00:22:11,610 are nervous. 507 00:22:11,610 --> 00:22:12,890 Our palms are sweating. 508 00:22:12,890 --> 00:22:15,765 We think we're going to fail. 509 00:22:15,765 --> 00:22:17,140 Eventually the moment comes where 510 00:22:17,140 --> 00:22:18,223 they say no, you're wrong. 511 00:22:18,223 --> 00:22:18,790 Sit down. 512 00:22:18,790 --> 00:22:21,800 You're probably relieved. 513 00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:24,867 When they say, you're wrong, sit down, nobody says to you, 514 00:22:24,867 --> 00:22:27,200 well, that was interesting that you spelled it that way, 515 00:22:27,200 --> 00:22:30,080 or I can understand why you might have chosen to spell it 516 00:22:30,080 --> 00:22:31,920 that way, because it rhymes with-- no. 517 00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:33,990 They just say you're wrong, sit down. 518 00:22:33,990 --> 00:22:35,220 And that's the end of it. 519 00:22:35,220 --> 00:22:37,940 The end of a spelling bee, one person feels good, the winner. 520 00:22:37,940 --> 00:22:40,477 Maybe the kid who comes in second feels OK. 521 00:22:40,477 --> 00:22:42,310 Everyone else is relieved because they don't 522 00:22:42,310 --> 00:22:44,880 have to do spelling anymore. 523 00:22:44,880 --> 00:22:48,850 And I first coined this analogy thinking about bad games. 524 00:22:48,850 --> 00:22:51,716 But I later came to realize that it's bigger 525 00:22:51,716 --> 00:22:53,340 than that, because if you think about-- 526 00:22:53,340 --> 00:22:55,089 so I don't know how many of you know this, 527 00:22:55,089 --> 00:22:56,570 but 7% of the population in the US 528 00:22:56,570 --> 00:22:58,070 graduates high school saying they're 529 00:22:58,070 --> 00:23:02,720 good at math, which means we take an hour a day 530 00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:06,340 for 12 years teaching 93% of the population 531 00:23:06,340 --> 00:23:08,650 that they're not good at math. 532 00:23:08,650 --> 00:23:11,180 We would be doing them all a big favor by in kindergarten, 533 00:23:11,180 --> 00:23:14,860 saying you're not going to do math and just leave it at that. 534 00:23:14,860 --> 00:23:16,540 Or better yet, we could figure out ways 535 00:23:16,540 --> 00:23:17,956 that teaching method that actually 536 00:23:17,956 --> 00:23:20,750 were meaningful and relevant to people, rather than making them 537 00:23:20,750 --> 00:23:22,250 feel like they're not good at math. 538 00:23:25,350 --> 00:23:26,661 So that's a bad game. 539 00:23:26,661 --> 00:23:29,160 And so what I'm really arguing is that school is a bad game. 540 00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:32,050 School is a game in which we reward people 541 00:23:32,050 --> 00:23:33,656 for learning how to play at school. 542 00:23:33,656 --> 00:23:35,280 Sometimes they're smart at some things. 543 00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:36,946 I'm not saying that there aren't people. 544 00:23:36,946 --> 00:23:39,580 But largely our goal is to weed people out. 545 00:23:39,580 --> 00:23:42,250 And we filter some people into some fields 546 00:23:42,250 --> 00:23:43,460 because they seem good at it. 547 00:23:43,460 --> 00:23:45,459 For everyone else, we're sort of convincing them 548 00:23:45,459 --> 00:23:47,520 that they-- whew, I don't have to study anymore. 549 00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:48,394 I'm done with school. 550 00:23:48,394 --> 00:23:50,060 I never have to learn anything again. 551 00:23:50,060 --> 00:23:53,520 That's the way most people end up leaving school. 552 00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:55,350 Scrabble, you sit down. 553 00:23:55,350 --> 00:23:56,189 You got your board. 554 00:23:56,189 --> 00:23:56,980 You got your tiles. 555 00:23:56,980 --> 00:23:58,396 You're moving around all the time. 556 00:23:58,396 --> 00:24:01,210 You're being creative even in the downtime just thinking 557 00:24:01,210 --> 00:24:02,600 about all the words you know. 558 00:24:02,600 --> 00:24:04,310 If you never win a game of Scrabble, 559 00:24:04,310 --> 00:24:07,020 you have all sorts of other proximal goals, 560 00:24:07,020 --> 00:24:09,675 like getting a 50-point word, or getting a triple word score, 561 00:24:09,675 --> 00:24:11,540 or getting the highest score you ever got. 562 00:24:11,540 --> 00:24:15,890 Just like golf, it gives you lots of feedback. 563 00:24:15,890 --> 00:24:17,710 By the way, most people who play golf, 564 00:24:17,710 --> 00:24:19,090 they're not in a tournament. 565 00:24:19,090 --> 00:24:21,820 They're not playing to win a game. 566 00:24:21,820 --> 00:24:23,104 They made their own game. 567 00:24:23,104 --> 00:24:25,520 Maybe I'm going to get a lower score than I got last time, 568 00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:27,170 or maybe I'm going to get at a lower score than the person I'm 569 00:24:27,170 --> 00:24:27,840 playing with. 570 00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:29,829 Well, at Scrabble, it's the same thing. 571 00:24:29,829 --> 00:24:32,370 So you're continually setting your own goals within the game. 572 00:24:32,370 --> 00:24:34,890 The game has goals. 573 00:24:34,890 --> 00:24:37,050 It has something called victory. 574 00:24:37,050 --> 00:24:38,920 And we all may aspire to that victory, 575 00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:41,750 but we have lots of other ways of measuring ourselves 576 00:24:41,750 --> 00:24:43,360 that are not about victory. 577 00:24:43,360 --> 00:24:46,380 And every player makes up their own game within Scrabble, 578 00:24:46,380 --> 00:24:48,820 and golf, and any good game. 579 00:24:48,820 --> 00:24:51,340 We actually all play a different game when we play a game, 580 00:24:51,340 --> 00:24:53,720 and that's not a fault to the game. 581 00:24:53,720 --> 00:25:01,020 So one last thing I sort of want to bring into the conversation 582 00:25:01,020 --> 00:25:04,832 as we think about this is an expression. 583 00:25:04,832 --> 00:25:07,415 It dates back to around the same time as the Bruegel painting. 584 00:25:07,415 --> 00:25:11,480 But in English, we first see the expression all work and no play 585 00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:12,920 makes Jack a dull boy. 586 00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:15,140 And at first, your first response 587 00:25:15,140 --> 00:25:16,680 is that's a good thing, right? 588 00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:19,204 Yes, play is important. 589 00:25:19,204 --> 00:25:20,870 So it seems to be a statement in support 590 00:25:20,870 --> 00:25:21,640 of what I've been saying. 591 00:25:21,640 --> 00:25:24,181 But the only trouble with it is that it also sort of suggests 592 00:25:24,181 --> 00:25:26,080 that there is this dichotomy. 593 00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:27,620 There's work and there's play. 594 00:25:27,620 --> 00:25:29,470 And I may have sort of suggested it 595 00:25:29,470 --> 00:25:31,136 by saying it's the thing you do when you 596 00:25:31,136 --> 00:25:33,390 don't have to do anything else. 597 00:25:33,390 --> 00:25:35,290 But then I did modify that by saying 598 00:25:35,290 --> 00:25:37,880 that you do some of these other things playfully as well. 599 00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:40,080 And in fact, when we go into school, 600 00:25:40,080 --> 00:25:42,420 we think that there's learning and there's play 601 00:25:42,420 --> 00:25:44,435 and they're different. 602 00:25:44,435 --> 00:25:46,810 But in fact, I'm going to go quickly through those slides 603 00:25:46,810 --> 00:25:48,268 and just go up to here and just say 604 00:25:48,268 --> 00:25:52,474 I think we really need to think of it more like this. 605 00:25:52,474 --> 00:25:54,515 And we need to think about situating things here. 606 00:25:58,970 --> 00:25:59,880 And fun, by the way. 607 00:25:59,880 --> 00:26:01,640 Let me just be clear about fun. 608 00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:04,640 Fun is not giggles. 609 00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:08,260 Fun doesn't even necessarily require a smile on the face. 610 00:26:08,260 --> 00:26:10,490 If you think about yourself playing a video game 611 00:26:10,490 --> 00:26:12,560 at age 11 or 12, there were probably 612 00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:15,580 moments where your tongue was sticking out, 613 00:26:15,580 --> 00:26:16,960 and you're cross eyed, and you're 614 00:26:16,960 --> 00:26:18,760 yelling at the screen, that's not fair, 615 00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:20,330 and you threw your controller. 616 00:26:20,330 --> 00:26:23,890 And then you beat the game and said, that was fun. 617 00:26:23,890 --> 00:26:27,460 And Seymour Papert a retired professor from the Media Lab, 618 00:26:27,460 --> 00:26:30,300 is the one who coined the term hard fun. 619 00:26:30,300 --> 00:26:32,270 And hard fun is not a special category. 620 00:26:32,270 --> 00:26:37,110 I would argue that lots of fun is hard fun, maybe most fun. 621 00:26:37,110 --> 00:26:41,720 Certainly most games are hard fun, 622 00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:45,780 and that most good learning is hard fun. 623 00:26:45,780 --> 00:26:49,490 The things you learn that aren't fun, yes, there 624 00:26:49,490 --> 00:26:51,994 may be some value to memorizing your times tables, 625 00:26:51,994 --> 00:26:53,660 but it doesn't make you a mathematician. 626 00:26:53,660 --> 00:26:55,493 That's not where the real learning happened. 627 00:26:59,010 --> 00:27:03,430 There's things you have to memorize-- although I heard 628 00:27:03,430 --> 00:27:05,090 somewhere that a 10th grade biology 629 00:27:05,090 --> 00:27:07,340 student has to memorize more words than a 10th grade 630 00:27:07,340 --> 00:27:08,960 French student. 631 00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:11,959 And if you think about it, how many of us, other than those 632 00:27:11,959 --> 00:27:14,000 of us who go to biology, ever use all those words 633 00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:15,021 that we memorized about? 634 00:27:15,021 --> 00:27:15,520 None of it. 635 00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:19,470 So, I mean, I think too much of our vision of learning 636 00:27:19,470 --> 00:27:22,980 is still based on memorizing stuff that you then 637 00:27:22,980 --> 00:27:25,757 get tested on, rather than building up 638 00:27:25,757 --> 00:27:27,340 cognitive structures that you can then 639 00:27:27,340 --> 00:27:29,910 work with through the rest of your life, which is what 640 00:27:29,910 --> 00:27:32,310 we really want people to do. 641 00:27:32,310 --> 00:27:34,830 That's my point, because I know you're doing 642 00:27:34,830 --> 00:27:36,700 this work with the Red Cross. 643 00:27:36,700 --> 00:27:40,500 You have information you want to convey. 644 00:27:40,500 --> 00:27:42,500 I want to argue that if the information you want 645 00:27:42,500 --> 00:27:44,730 to convey fits on a 3 by 5 card and people 646 00:27:44,730 --> 00:27:48,464 can carry it around with them, then 647 00:27:48,464 --> 00:27:50,130 there's no point in making a game of it. 648 00:27:54,450 --> 00:27:56,490 So just to do a parallel example, 649 00:27:56,490 --> 00:28:04,281 I've done games for the working poor, games where the goal is 650 00:28:04,281 --> 00:28:06,780 to explain to them that they shouldn't take out payday loans 651 00:28:06,780 --> 00:28:08,817 or take on credit card debt. 652 00:28:08,817 --> 00:28:11,025 Well, in fact, you could write that on a 3 by 5 card. 653 00:28:11,025 --> 00:28:12,700 If I handed it to most people and said 654 00:28:12,700 --> 00:28:14,533 don't take out a payday loan, don't take out 655 00:28:14,533 --> 00:28:18,390 credit card debt, they would nod, and smile, and agree. 656 00:28:18,390 --> 00:28:20,400 And then they would go and do it when 657 00:28:20,400 --> 00:28:22,580 they were in extremis, anyway. 658 00:28:22,580 --> 00:28:24,660 They don't do it blithely, but they do it. 659 00:28:24,660 --> 00:28:27,680 But my point is that the understanding that you really 660 00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:29,951 need is more subtle and more complicated. 661 00:28:29,951 --> 00:28:32,450 You really want to give people some functional understanding 662 00:28:32,450 --> 00:28:33,210 of something. 663 00:28:33,210 --> 00:28:35,376 So when we did that game, what we really tried to do 664 00:28:35,376 --> 00:28:38,340 is put people in the situations in which they might otherwise 665 00:28:38,340 --> 00:28:41,065 get loans and help them see what the alternatives were. 666 00:28:41,065 --> 00:28:44,360 That that was the important learning, and helping them 667 00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:46,670 recognize those moments. 668 00:28:46,670 --> 00:28:49,720 The learning was sort of helping them, and helping 669 00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:52,777 them feel empowered to be able to make decisions. 670 00:28:52,777 --> 00:28:54,735 So we were doing lots of stuff beyond conveying 671 00:28:54,735 --> 00:28:58,470 the information don't take out of credit card debt. 672 00:28:58,470 --> 00:29:01,210 And so similarly, I think you're doing games where you probably 673 00:29:01,210 --> 00:29:03,540 think you want to convey information, 674 00:29:03,540 --> 00:29:06,870 but that's all information that could fit on a pamphlet, 675 00:29:06,870 --> 00:29:09,097 or on a 3 by 5 card, and you probably really 676 00:29:09,097 --> 00:29:10,680 don't want to make a game out of that. 677 00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:12,950 You probably really want to make a game that's 678 00:29:12,950 --> 00:29:17,690 going to be about helping people through some experience master 679 00:29:17,690 --> 00:29:19,670 something. 680 00:29:19,670 --> 00:29:22,490 And through their sense of mastery, change them. 681 00:29:22,490 --> 00:29:25,600 So I think that's it in a nutshell, what 682 00:29:25,600 --> 00:29:29,850 I want to say, and just use the rest of the time for questions. 683 00:29:29,850 --> 00:29:32,117 And then you're to see your paper projects 684 00:29:32,117 --> 00:29:32,950 with everybody else. 685 00:29:36,650 --> 00:29:37,260 Any questions? 686 00:29:41,451 --> 00:29:41,950 Yes. 687 00:29:41,950 --> 00:29:43,363 AUDIENCE: So a lot of your initial description, 688 00:29:43,363 --> 00:29:45,250 it actually sounded like grad school. 689 00:29:45,250 --> 00:29:46,554 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah? 690 00:29:46,554 --> 00:29:48,054 AUDIENCE: So I feel like grad school 691 00:29:48,054 --> 00:29:50,924 is quite the opposite of what you're saying school is. 692 00:29:50,924 --> 00:29:51,590 PROFESSOR: Yeah? 693 00:29:51,590 --> 00:29:54,100 Say a little more, because not everyone knows. 694 00:29:54,100 --> 00:29:56,822 So [INAUDIBLE] and fail, because [INAUDIBLE] 695 00:29:56,822 --> 00:29:58,274 why did you go to grad school? 696 00:29:58,274 --> 00:30:00,788 Because you can explore things. 697 00:30:00,788 --> 00:30:02,084 You can fail. 698 00:30:02,084 --> 00:30:04,028 You can do a project that doesn't work, 699 00:30:04,028 --> 00:30:06,134 that nobody's really going to get mad at you. 700 00:30:06,134 --> 00:30:07,926 You just do the next paper. 701 00:30:07,926 --> 00:30:09,759 Afterwards, you can try as hard as you want. 702 00:30:09,759 --> 00:30:12,218 And there are days when you don't 703 00:30:12,218 --> 00:30:15,185 feel like [INAUDIBLE] too much. 704 00:30:15,185 --> 00:30:16,662 I'm not sure about identity. 705 00:30:16,662 --> 00:30:17,370 PROFESSOR: Right. 706 00:30:17,370 --> 00:30:19,380 Well, a lot of people enter grad school 707 00:30:19,380 --> 00:30:20,330 thinking they're going to do one thing 708 00:30:20,330 --> 00:30:21,700 and end up leaving doing something else. 709 00:30:21,700 --> 00:30:22,993 They have that freedom to. 710 00:30:22,993 --> 00:30:24,530 I mean actually, that's true of undergraduate too. 711 00:30:24,530 --> 00:30:26,760 I would say undergraduate, and certainly at MIT, it 712 00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:28,176 seems to me slightly more playful. 713 00:30:28,176 --> 00:30:29,070 Well, I don't know. 714 00:30:29,070 --> 00:30:29,910 I'm not familiar. 715 00:30:29,910 --> 00:30:32,370 I don't know what it's like the freshman year, when 716 00:30:32,370 --> 00:30:33,630 you're doing all those psets. 717 00:30:33,630 --> 00:30:35,510 I don't know what that's like. 718 00:30:35,510 --> 00:30:37,886 I was a theater major at a different school, 719 00:30:37,886 --> 00:30:39,260 so I don't know what that's like. 720 00:30:39,260 --> 00:30:41,843 But I do see, and particularly in upperclassmen, a fair amount 721 00:30:41,843 --> 00:30:44,680 of play in your work. 722 00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:45,710 But I think it is true. 723 00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:50,160 What I'm really arguing at core is 724 00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:53,320 that what real education is about is learning how to learn, 725 00:30:53,320 --> 00:30:55,050 is learning all the kinds of things 726 00:30:55,050 --> 00:30:58,760 you need to do to know how to learn. 727 00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:03,000 And some of it means just having your natural curiosity 728 00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:06,590 positively reinforced instead of negatively reinforced. 729 00:31:06,590 --> 00:31:08,180 Kids are naturally curious. 730 00:31:08,180 --> 00:31:11,607 They don't have any trouble asking questions. 731 00:31:11,607 --> 00:31:13,190 We slowly start doing things that make 732 00:31:13,190 --> 00:31:15,090 people stop asking questions. 733 00:31:15,090 --> 00:31:17,050 We killed the curiosity in most people. 734 00:31:17,050 --> 00:31:18,970 And so I'm really arguing that education 735 00:31:18,970 --> 00:31:23,150 should be about maximizing your curiosity 736 00:31:23,150 --> 00:31:25,430 so that you continue to ask interesting questions 737 00:31:25,430 --> 00:31:28,360 for the rest of your life. 738 00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:31,650 So my example of math, I don't see 739 00:31:31,650 --> 00:31:33,760 why there's no reason why everyone who graduates 740 00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:35,260 high school couldn't, when they then 741 00:31:35,260 --> 00:31:37,150 hear a politician quote a statistic, 742 00:31:37,150 --> 00:31:39,260 say how does he know that? 743 00:31:39,260 --> 00:31:40,770 Where did that statistic come from? 744 00:31:43,330 --> 00:31:45,570 And when you read a survey, say that question 745 00:31:45,570 --> 00:31:50,760 doesn't seem like a good survey, or that's 746 00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:52,330 correlation, not causation. 747 00:31:52,330 --> 00:31:55,110 Those are all things we can learn in high school math, 748 00:31:55,110 --> 00:31:55,670 for example. 749 00:31:55,670 --> 00:31:59,970 So it's much more about learning how to think than it is about-- 750 00:31:59,970 --> 00:32:03,150 and for statistics, it's far more important to know how 751 00:32:03,150 --> 00:32:07,790 to ask those questions than it is for everybody to know what 752 00:32:07,790 --> 00:32:09,240 the r value is of something. 753 00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:11,680 I think that's a term in the statistics, isn't it? 754 00:32:11,680 --> 00:32:13,360 Yeah. 755 00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:14,640 I haven't taken statistics. 756 00:32:17,759 --> 00:32:19,300 And the reason I'm going back to sort 757 00:32:19,300 --> 00:32:22,330 of trying to talk to you about what education should be about 758 00:32:22,330 --> 00:32:25,410 is because if you do games for learning, particularly 759 00:32:25,410 --> 00:32:28,140 because they're games, get you've 760 00:32:28,140 --> 00:32:31,090 got to shake the false model of learning is 761 00:32:31,090 --> 00:32:34,362 and go for the truly playful model-- 762 00:32:34,362 --> 00:32:36,070 because otherwise, it'll be the same kind 763 00:32:36,070 --> 00:32:38,820 of boring educational game that probably made you look 764 00:32:38,820 --> 00:32:41,780 askance at having to listen to me at all in the first place, 765 00:32:41,780 --> 00:32:42,460 because that's what you thought I 766 00:32:42,460 --> 00:32:43,710 was going to be talking about. 767 00:32:46,436 --> 00:32:47,360 Yes. 768 00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:50,835 AUDIENCE: What's your opinion on games that by structure makes 769 00:32:50,835 --> 00:32:56,550 it easy or hard for the players who play with a lot of effort, 770 00:32:56,550 --> 00:33:00,001 like hard work, or play without a lot of effort? 771 00:33:04,084 --> 00:33:05,500 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: You can do a game 772 00:33:05,500 --> 00:33:09,050 that's all-- requires nothing but 100% effort. 773 00:33:09,050 --> 00:33:11,887 And in a sense, the play is who decides to play that game. 774 00:33:11,887 --> 00:33:13,720 The people who are willing to put themselves 775 00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:17,830 through 100% effort all the time, they voluntarily do that. 776 00:33:17,830 --> 00:33:19,551 And so you've found your audience. 777 00:33:19,551 --> 00:33:21,550 I'm not saying you couldn't do a game like that. 778 00:33:21,550 --> 00:33:24,175 I'm saying that it's likely that in the course of most people's 779 00:33:24,175 --> 00:33:28,840 gameplay, they're going to have this need to-- a game 780 00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:31,200 where you get on the rails and the clock is going, 781 00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:33,700 and you guys [INAUDIBLE]. 782 00:33:33,700 --> 00:33:35,370 That's why there's usually plateaus 783 00:33:35,370 --> 00:33:36,370 of some kind or another. 784 00:33:36,370 --> 00:33:38,550 There's an acknowledgement that people 785 00:33:38,550 --> 00:33:40,220 need to stop and take a breath. 786 00:33:40,220 --> 00:33:44,080 Even if it's just a plateau, a savepoint, 787 00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:45,650 there's some acknowledgement of that. 788 00:33:45,650 --> 00:33:47,150 I think games where there's actually 789 00:33:47,150 --> 00:33:50,660 some combination of really intense play and more 790 00:33:50,660 --> 00:33:54,240 relaxed play can sometimes be more satisfying. 791 00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:57,310 So I'm not saying that a game can't be all hard-- 792 00:33:57,310 --> 00:33:59,061 or the other side of it, Farmville clearly 793 00:33:59,061 --> 00:34:01,310 was very popular with lots of people who really wanted 794 00:34:01,310 --> 00:34:02,610 to do kind of mindless stuff. 795 00:34:02,610 --> 00:34:04,490 I guess we all have the need sometimes 796 00:34:04,490 --> 00:34:07,700 for non-taxing-- so there's nothing wrong with a game which 797 00:34:07,700 --> 00:34:11,480 requires almost all in or very little in. 798 00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:14,650 It's just that the reality is, the player is 799 00:34:14,650 --> 00:34:17,073 going to move fluidly from one state to the other. 800 00:34:17,073 --> 00:34:19,489 And if your game can accommodate that, so much the better. 801 00:34:22,810 --> 00:34:24,476 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE], there's something 802 00:34:24,476 --> 00:34:27,130 that I want to comment on [? that. ?] 803 00:34:27,130 --> 00:34:31,679 It is totally possible to play Farmville extremely 804 00:34:31,679 --> 00:34:32,663 in hard fun, isn't it? 805 00:34:32,663 --> 00:34:34,631 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah. 806 00:34:34,631 --> 00:34:37,583 AUDIENCE: I had a interesting [INAUDIBLE] 807 00:34:37,583 --> 00:34:40,781 just playing [? for them ?] and that required very, very 808 00:34:40,781 --> 00:34:42,503 precise timing [INAUDIBLE]. 809 00:34:42,503 --> 00:34:43,979 So it is possible [INAUDIBLE]. 810 00:34:43,979 --> 00:34:45,219 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah. 811 00:34:45,219 --> 00:34:47,630 And the point is that Phillip chose 812 00:34:47,630 --> 00:34:48,919 to make it that kind of game. 813 00:34:48,919 --> 00:34:50,294 And everybody will choose to make 814 00:34:50,294 --> 00:34:52,840 it that kind of-- too many games, 815 00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:55,130 I think we freely make the mistake of imagining 816 00:34:55,130 --> 00:34:57,315 a certain path for a player on the win state, 817 00:34:57,315 --> 00:34:59,250 and we design the game around that player, 818 00:34:59,250 --> 00:35:01,240 following the path to the win state. 819 00:35:01,240 --> 00:35:03,570 And we forget to think about all of the time 820 00:35:03,570 --> 00:35:05,520 that players are likely to spend either 821 00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:08,520 trying to break the game, or play in different modes, 822 00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:10,204 or in fail state. 823 00:35:10,204 --> 00:35:12,370 I mean, one of the things I encourage students to do 824 00:35:12,370 --> 00:35:14,786 is make sure that the failure is the most interesting part 825 00:35:14,786 --> 00:35:17,490 of your game, because if your game is at all challenging, 826 00:35:17,490 --> 00:35:21,270 people are going to be spending a lot of time in failure mode. 827 00:35:21,270 --> 00:35:24,580 A, you want to reward them and say that's OK. 828 00:35:24,580 --> 00:35:27,565 We're happy to see you here. 829 00:35:27,565 --> 00:35:29,940 And b, you want to make sure that it remains entertaining 830 00:35:29,940 --> 00:35:33,900 while they're in failure mode so they don't quit. 831 00:35:33,900 --> 00:35:35,900 Like I said, I think it's an easy mistake 832 00:35:35,900 --> 00:35:38,170 to fixate on what's the path to success look 833 00:35:38,170 --> 00:35:40,710 like, and not think about what the whole gameplay 834 00:35:40,710 --> 00:35:42,940 experience is like. 835 00:35:42,940 --> 00:35:45,790 And that gets worse when people have an agenda, 836 00:35:45,790 --> 00:35:49,200 like a game for the Red Cross. 837 00:35:49,200 --> 00:35:50,470 We really fall into that trap. 838 00:35:50,470 --> 00:35:53,270 And that's why so many serious games seem 839 00:35:53,270 --> 00:35:58,030 so serious, and earnest, and humorless, 840 00:35:58,030 --> 00:36:01,470 because all the designer thought about 841 00:36:01,470 --> 00:36:04,670 was the player earnestly achieving the goals 842 00:36:04,670 --> 00:36:07,174 that the designer set out for the player, 843 00:36:07,174 --> 00:36:09,090 rather than thinking about the player playing. 844 00:36:12,502 --> 00:36:13,418 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 845 00:36:18,358 --> 00:36:20,828 AUDIENCE: I guess this goes back to your example about golf 846 00:36:20,828 --> 00:36:24,286 [INAUDIBLE] and not having somebody yell at you for not 847 00:36:24,286 --> 00:36:25,587 hitting the ball straight. 848 00:36:25,587 --> 00:36:27,003 How do you think that kind of goes 849 00:36:27,003 --> 00:36:30,708 with the existence of golf teachers, who 850 00:36:30,708 --> 00:36:34,166 are paid to essentially tell you you're doing it wrong? 851 00:36:34,166 --> 00:36:36,142 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: [INAUDIBLE]. 852 00:36:36,142 --> 00:36:39,140 AUDIENCE: I guess I'm thinking of my own dad and [INAUDIBLE] 853 00:36:39,140 --> 00:36:42,615 my sister, who have very different opinions about a golf 854 00:36:42,615 --> 00:36:44,387 coach telling them to do it right. 855 00:36:44,387 --> 00:36:45,970 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: So the relevant thing 856 00:36:45,970 --> 00:36:48,706 there is that they elected to have a golf coach tell them 857 00:36:48,706 --> 00:36:51,570 to do that at a certain point in their-- if you started somebody 858 00:36:51,570 --> 00:36:54,035 with a golf coach yelling at them-- now, 859 00:36:54,035 --> 00:36:57,220 it could be very gentle, loving, helpful person, in which case 860 00:36:57,220 --> 00:36:58,230 it might go fine. 861 00:36:58,230 --> 00:37:01,516 But chances are if you started somebody with someone standing 862 00:37:01,516 --> 00:37:03,890 over their shoulder telling them what to do every moment, 863 00:37:03,890 --> 00:37:06,410 they probably would never develop a real interest in it. 864 00:37:06,410 --> 00:37:11,820 So the point which you elect to have somebody there, 865 00:37:11,820 --> 00:37:13,030 you have your reasons now. 866 00:37:13,030 --> 00:37:14,071 You have your motivation. 867 00:37:14,071 --> 00:37:17,280 And so that's a different experience at that point. 868 00:37:17,280 --> 00:37:19,190 I think lots of kids who get turned off 869 00:37:19,190 --> 00:37:23,950 to musical instruments or sports because too 870 00:37:23,950 --> 00:37:25,900 early in the experience, they're forced 871 00:37:25,900 --> 00:37:29,520 into sort of just reproduce the results that some adult wants 872 00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:33,860 you to reproduce, rather than explore this and figure out 873 00:37:33,860 --> 00:37:35,010 where your motivation is. 874 00:37:39,851 --> 00:37:41,300 Well, thanks. 875 00:37:41,300 --> 00:37:43,800 But I'm sticking around, so if you have any other questions, 876 00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:45,247 I'm happy to take them. 877 00:37:50,720 --> 00:37:52,260 PROFESSOR: Another reason I wanted 878 00:37:52,260 --> 00:37:54,150 to ask you to come and talk to class. 879 00:37:54,150 --> 00:37:56,670 So we mentioned a couple of the other game classes we have 880 00:37:56,670 --> 00:37:58,150 at MIT that we're teaching. 881 00:37:58,150 --> 00:38:00,910 And you teach 615, the Games for Social Change? 882 00:38:00,910 --> 00:38:02,920 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Games for Social Change, yeah. 883 00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:03,860 PROFESSOR: Next fall, right? 884 00:38:03,860 --> 00:38:04,840 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah, that'll be next fall. 885 00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:05,690 PROFESSOR: Can you say a little bit 886 00:38:05,690 --> 00:38:06,960 about what that class entails? 887 00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:07,876 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah. 888 00:38:07,876 --> 00:38:09,050 And Sabrina took it. 889 00:38:14,345 --> 00:38:18,830 It's sort of taking the same principles that I was talking 890 00:38:18,830 --> 00:38:23,380 about and using them to think about if you're 891 00:38:23,380 --> 00:38:26,900 interested in social change and how you could use for that, 892 00:38:26,900 --> 00:38:30,180 understanding that you can't make people change. 893 00:38:30,180 --> 00:38:32,630 And so the question is, how can you use play 894 00:38:32,630 --> 00:38:35,090 to actually encourage change? 895 00:38:35,090 --> 00:38:37,480 And so probably we're looking critically 896 00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:38,680 at how society works. 897 00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:42,504 And the task we're trying this year for the first time-- well, 898 00:38:42,504 --> 00:38:44,170 you're doing two big projects this year. 899 00:38:49,070 --> 00:38:55,060 We're just now finishing a project on the theme of walls 900 00:38:55,060 --> 00:38:57,680 to go in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the Berlin 901 00:38:57,680 --> 00:38:59,620 Wall coming down. 902 00:38:59,620 --> 00:39:02,190 And that's going to be on display at the Goethe 903 00:39:02,190 --> 00:39:05,608 Institute, which is a place in Boston, 904 00:39:05,608 --> 00:39:07,233 and it may also be on display in Munich 905 00:39:07,233 --> 00:39:10,195 at the same time, the games. 906 00:39:10,195 --> 00:39:11,820 And then we're going do a project where 907 00:39:11,820 --> 00:39:15,390 we try to actually look at some system 908 00:39:15,390 --> 00:39:18,330 in society, like school, which is a bad game, 909 00:39:18,330 --> 00:39:20,420 and try to redesign it as a good game. 910 00:39:20,420 --> 00:39:23,970 Not make a game about school, but rather redesign school 911 00:39:23,970 --> 00:39:26,794 itself as if it were a game. 912 00:39:26,794 --> 00:39:28,210 Every year we try different stuff. 913 00:39:28,210 --> 00:39:29,170 The one thing I like to try to do 914 00:39:29,170 --> 00:39:30,753 is come up with projects that actually 915 00:39:30,753 --> 00:39:33,960 have-- for which you're doing it with somebody besides just me. 916 00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:36,364 I don't just want students doing stuff for me. 917 00:39:36,364 --> 00:39:38,280 I want them doing it for some bigger audience, 918 00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:39,850 and we try to do that in every game, 919 00:39:39,850 --> 00:39:40,850 every semester [INAUDIBLE]. 920 00:39:40,850 --> 00:39:41,290 And that's [INAUDIBLE]. 921 00:39:41,290 --> 00:39:41,810 PROFESSOR: Cool. 922 00:39:41,810 --> 00:39:42,010 Yeah. 923 00:39:42,010 --> 00:39:42,820 So if you really like what you're 924 00:39:42,820 --> 00:39:45,190 doing right now with the Red Cross/Red Crescent project, 925 00:39:45,190 --> 00:39:47,220 and you want do more of this kind of stuff, 926 00:39:47,220 --> 00:39:48,670 take a look at that in the fall. 927 00:39:48,670 --> 00:39:50,940 And if you're looking for some help or insight 928 00:39:50,940 --> 00:39:54,930 about the design of your project this semester, 929 00:39:54,930 --> 00:39:57,240 the Games for Social Change materials 930 00:39:57,240 --> 00:39:58,870 are on the OpenCourseWare website. 931 00:39:58,870 --> 00:40:01,340 And we'll post those readings and materials there 932 00:40:01,340 --> 00:40:03,210 so you can take a look at that. 933 00:40:03,210 --> 00:40:04,918 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: It's a bit of a seminar, 934 00:40:04,918 --> 00:40:06,290 so I think there's no lectures. 935 00:40:06,290 --> 00:40:07,540 And so I think there's a lot-- 936 00:40:07,540 --> 00:40:08,200 PROFESSOR: The readings. 937 00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:08,660 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah. 938 00:40:08,660 --> 00:40:09,860 And they're not always explicitly 939 00:40:09,860 --> 00:40:11,810 about what we end up talking about in class. 940 00:40:11,810 --> 00:40:13,910 So I don't promise that they'll always be helpful. 941 00:40:13,910 --> 00:40:16,240 But anyway, they're more like thought starters 942 00:40:16,240 --> 00:40:17,525 than [INAUDIBLE]. 943 00:40:17,525 --> 00:40:18,400 PROFESSOR: All right. 944 00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:19,787 So it's 1:48. 945 00:40:19,787 --> 00:40:20,870 Take a really quick break. 946 00:40:20,870 --> 00:40:25,030 And then set yourself up into your five groups, 947 00:40:25,030 --> 00:40:26,510 and set up your play test. 948 00:40:26,510 --> 00:40:28,710 We'd like to start doing play test at 2:00. 949 00:40:28,710 --> 00:40:30,600 So 12 minutes from now, if that's possible. 950 00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:31,850 Do you think it's enough time? 951 00:40:35,460 --> 00:40:38,150 So we're about to get started. 952 00:40:38,150 --> 00:40:41,580 How many stations do you have for testers? 953 00:40:41,580 --> 00:40:43,620 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] many [INAUDIBLE]. 954 00:40:43,620 --> 00:40:45,990 PROFESSOR: How many are you going to have? 955 00:40:45,990 --> 00:40:46,890 Three? 956 00:40:46,890 --> 00:40:47,650 All right, three. 957 00:40:52,033 --> 00:40:53,160 Cool. 958 00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:56,810 If you're not using your computer to run a game, 959 00:40:56,810 --> 00:41:00,340 then close it or set it aside so people know. 960 00:41:00,340 --> 00:41:03,037 How many stations are you going to have over here? 961 00:41:03,037 --> 00:41:04,230 AUDIENCE: Two. 962 00:41:04,230 --> 00:41:06,260 PROFESSOR: Two? 963 00:41:06,260 --> 00:41:08,160 And group behind you, how many workstations? 964 00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:08,660 Four? 965 00:41:15,207 --> 00:41:17,040 How many workstations are you going to have? 966 00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:17,857 Two? 967 00:41:17,857 --> 00:41:18,940 And in the back, how many? 968 00:41:18,940 --> 00:41:19,440 One? 969 00:41:24,250 --> 00:41:28,310 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12. 970 00:41:28,310 --> 00:41:34,280 So basically if you have-- there's one, two, three, four, 971 00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:39,050 five testers, plus let's say each team send out 972 00:41:39,050 --> 00:41:42,510 two people to test other games. 973 00:41:42,510 --> 00:41:43,350 Remember to rotate. 974 00:41:43,350 --> 00:41:46,120 We're going to do this for about 20 minutes, 975 00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:46,980 as long as it takes. 976 00:41:46,980 --> 00:41:49,807 And then see where we are and do it again 977 00:41:49,807 --> 00:41:51,640 to get some just quick testing and make sure 978 00:41:51,640 --> 00:41:55,060 that the five of us get to play a good number of your games 979 00:41:55,060 --> 00:41:57,320 and give you some feedback on that. 980 00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:00,230 So remember, if you're using digital-- if you're not, 981 00:42:00,230 --> 00:42:02,080 if a computer's not being used for testing, 982 00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:05,080 close it or make it look like it's not being used 983 00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:06,520 for testing by typing on it. 984 00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:10,650 Let's get started. 985 00:42:52,450 --> 00:42:55,730 Can I get everyone's attention really quick? 986 00:42:55,730 --> 00:42:57,620 Can I just get a really brief report? 987 00:42:57,620 --> 00:43:00,520 How many teams-- how many tests did you guys get? 988 00:43:04,296 --> 00:43:06,460 AUDIENCE: Two rounds and three [INAUDIBLE]. 989 00:43:06,460 --> 00:43:09,737 PROFESSOR: So you feel like you did a good amount of testing? 990 00:43:09,737 --> 00:43:12,070 For the team close up here, how many rounds did you get? 991 00:43:12,070 --> 00:43:15,401 How much testing did you get? 992 00:43:15,401 --> 00:43:19,610 AUDIENCE: We got about four [INAUDIBLE]. 993 00:43:19,610 --> 00:43:20,986 PROFESSOR: Four? 994 00:43:20,986 --> 00:43:22,247 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]? 995 00:43:22,247 --> 00:43:23,830 PROFESSOR: How many tests did you get? 996 00:43:23,830 --> 00:43:25,163 How many people played the game? 997 00:43:25,163 --> 00:43:25,980 A good number? 998 00:43:25,980 --> 00:43:29,820 AUDIENCE: We had two who played [INAUDIBLE]. 999 00:43:29,820 --> 00:43:30,500 PROFESSOR: Cool. 1000 00:43:30,500 --> 00:43:31,891 I'm just trying to get a sense. 1001 00:43:31,891 --> 00:43:34,515 You guys feel like you've got a good sense of number of people? 1002 00:43:34,515 --> 00:43:37,239 Did you guys get four or five? 1003 00:43:37,239 --> 00:43:39,155 And in the back, how many players did you get? 1004 00:43:39,155 --> 00:43:41,081 AUDIENCE: We only had one [INAUDIBLE]. 1005 00:43:41,081 --> 00:43:42,330 PROFESSOR: Has it been useful? 1006 00:43:42,330 --> 00:43:42,770 AUDIENCE: Yes. 1007 00:43:42,770 --> 00:43:43,353 PROFESSOR: OK. 1008 00:43:46,450 --> 00:43:50,620 So let's close off testing for now. 1009 00:43:50,620 --> 00:43:54,200 If you'd like to test later today or later during the class 1010 00:43:54,200 --> 00:43:55,480 period, you can. 1011 00:43:55,480 --> 00:43:58,840 Go ahead and finish off whatever testing you're doing right now. 1012 00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:02,320 And at 2:50, we're going to come down 1013 00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:05,140 and each team's going to give a brief, two-minute description 1014 00:44:05,140 --> 00:44:08,960 about the state of their game and your product backlog. 1015 00:44:08,960 --> 00:44:10,820 And those are actually going to get recorded 1016 00:44:10,820 --> 00:44:14,669 so that we can send them to Pablo and the rest of his team, 1017 00:44:14,669 --> 00:44:16,460 so they can see what you've been working on 1018 00:44:16,460 --> 00:44:19,240 and give us some feedback about it. 1019 00:44:19,240 --> 00:44:20,150 OK? 1020 00:44:20,150 --> 00:44:22,680 So 2:50. 1021 00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:23,650 Everyone set? 1022 00:44:23,650 --> 00:44:24,566 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 1023 00:44:33,230 --> 00:44:35,570 PROFESSOR: So Snap, come on up. 1024 00:44:35,570 --> 00:44:37,439 And again, two minutes. 1025 00:44:37,439 --> 00:44:38,480 Talk about your features. 1026 00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:42,720 Talk about what's in your game now, what will be in your game. 1027 00:44:42,720 --> 00:44:46,460 Also, give a really brief description of the topic 1028 00:44:46,460 --> 00:44:47,490 your game's about. 1029 00:44:47,490 --> 00:44:51,210 So this is for our clients to know what we decided 1030 00:44:51,210 --> 00:44:54,050 to do for all of our topics. 1031 00:44:54,050 --> 00:44:55,620 AUDIENCE: So we're Snap. 1032 00:44:55,620 --> 00:44:59,100 So we've decided to [? return ?] Snap into a multiplayer game. 1033 00:44:59,100 --> 00:45:03,630 So it'll be all everybody playing at the same time. 1034 00:45:03,630 --> 00:45:06,310 Right now we have a game that looks pretty similar to what 1035 00:45:06,310 --> 00:45:08,930 we played in class, where you can enter words 1036 00:45:08,930 --> 00:45:14,490 and you can snap with anybody else who has played the game. 1037 00:45:14,490 --> 00:45:16,342 Right now we don't have any fiction 1038 00:45:16,342 --> 00:45:18,050 and we don't have any indication of score 1039 00:45:18,050 --> 00:45:20,175 other than just the number of times you've snapped. 1040 00:45:20,175 --> 00:45:21,880 We're hoping to change that. 1041 00:45:21,880 --> 00:45:23,890 We got a lot of really good feedback today, 1042 00:45:23,890 --> 00:45:26,720 and we've thought new ideas for how to convey feedback 1043 00:45:26,720 --> 00:45:29,695 to the player and some improvements to the UI, 1044 00:45:29,695 --> 00:45:31,070 because right now we don't really 1045 00:45:31,070 --> 00:45:33,430 express much to the player. 1046 00:45:33,430 --> 00:45:34,990 That's about it. 1047 00:45:34,990 --> 00:45:37,012 PROFESSOR: Any challenges that [INAUDIBLE] 1048 00:45:37,012 --> 00:45:38,896 leading up to where you are now? 1049 00:45:38,896 --> 00:45:42,193 Is there anything [INAUDIBLE] questions [INAUDIBLE] 1050 00:45:42,193 --> 00:45:43,591 risks that you have right now? 1051 00:45:43,591 --> 00:45:46,090 AUDIENCE: So the networking is still a risk, as we just saw. 1052 00:45:46,090 --> 00:45:48,461 It's a lot more confusing when something doesn't work, 1053 00:45:48,461 --> 00:45:49,335 why it's not working. 1054 00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:56,090 We also do want to confirm that the game that we build 1055 00:45:56,090 --> 00:45:58,860 is similar enough to Snap in terms of satisfying 1056 00:45:58,860 --> 00:46:00,390 the client's goals. 1057 00:46:00,390 --> 00:46:03,050 So we don't want to change the game, even if it's more fun. 1058 00:46:03,050 --> 00:46:04,800 We want to make sure that the game still 1059 00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:06,780 satisfies the client's requirements 1060 00:46:06,780 --> 00:46:08,905 and that they'll still be able to use it and gather 1061 00:46:08,905 --> 00:46:10,490 the information they want to. 1062 00:46:10,490 --> 00:46:12,410 And that will require some careful testing 1063 00:46:12,410 --> 00:46:14,430 to see what people end up doing with Snap. 1064 00:46:14,430 --> 00:46:16,080 PROFESSOR: And what did you decide on? 1065 00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:17,940 Have you decided on tech yet, or are you 1066 00:46:17,940 --> 00:46:19,176 still trying out multiple-- 1067 00:46:19,176 --> 00:46:19,800 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 1068 00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:22,010 So I think we have a tech. 1069 00:46:22,010 --> 00:46:24,840 So we have a server running on Node. 1070 00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:26,950 And we're going to use Phaser for the front-end 1071 00:46:26,950 --> 00:46:30,028 so that we can make a more expressive game. 1072 00:46:30,028 --> 00:46:31,694 For now, we're not using Phaser, though. 1073 00:46:31,694 --> 00:46:36,350 The current prototype doesn't use Phaser at all. 1074 00:46:36,350 --> 00:46:38,790 AUDIENCE: One thing you asked earlier was [INAUDIBLE]. 1075 00:46:42,539 --> 00:46:43,914 Does that basically mean that you 1076 00:46:43,914 --> 00:46:46,036 have to run on two different flight, or-- 1077 00:46:46,036 --> 00:46:46,910 AUDIENCE: Yeah, yeah. 1078 00:46:46,910 --> 00:46:48,720 So the idea would be to experiment 1079 00:46:48,720 --> 00:46:53,820 with what sorts of entire group visualizations 1080 00:46:53,820 --> 00:46:57,100 would be interesting to put up for the entire room. 1081 00:46:57,100 --> 00:46:59,840 And the back-end team might work on what sort of visualizations 1082 00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:02,680 we want to show separate from what we want to export 1083 00:47:02,680 --> 00:47:03,826 at the end of the game. 1084 00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:08,394 PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE] anybody else? 1085 00:47:08,394 --> 00:47:09,310 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 1086 00:47:09,310 --> 00:47:10,260 AUDIENCE: Thank you. 1087 00:47:14,050 --> 00:47:15,800 PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE] Cholera is Awesome. 1088 00:47:26,075 --> 00:47:26,700 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 1089 00:47:26,700 --> 00:47:28,950 So the current state of our game, 1090 00:47:28,950 --> 00:47:30,869 we spent a lot of time thinking about design 1091 00:47:30,869 --> 00:47:34,140 and how exactly we want to do things. 1092 00:47:34,140 --> 00:47:36,760 So we're currently making sort of a game 1093 00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:39,010 where you control-- or don't control. 1094 00:47:39,010 --> 00:47:41,090 You take care of a bunch of villages. 1095 00:47:41,090 --> 00:47:43,320 So you see different villages, how infected they are, 1096 00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:45,153 and how many people are dying sort of thing, 1097 00:47:45,153 --> 00:47:47,820 and then implement measures to prevent cholera spreading. 1098 00:47:47,820 --> 00:47:50,460 So you give people soap to wash their hands 1099 00:47:50,460 --> 00:47:54,365 or set restroom facilities, or use vaccination, 1100 00:47:54,365 --> 00:47:56,050 and that sort of thing. 1101 00:47:56,050 --> 00:47:58,800 And so a lot of the feedback that we 1102 00:47:58,800 --> 00:48:01,590 got on a lot of questions that we're facing basically 1103 00:48:01,590 --> 00:48:04,935 revolves around the issue of making this game realistic 1104 00:48:04,935 --> 00:48:08,660 versus making this game more fun sort of thing. 1105 00:48:08,660 --> 00:48:11,970 So you can make a really unrealistic game that 1106 00:48:11,970 --> 00:48:13,990 can be tons of fun, but we also want 1107 00:48:13,990 --> 00:48:16,073 to stick to reality because at the end of the day, 1108 00:48:16,073 --> 00:48:18,860 we do want to teach the people that are playing how to prevent 1109 00:48:18,860 --> 00:48:20,320 cholera from spreading. 1110 00:48:20,320 --> 00:48:22,740 So there's sort of this trade-off that we have to make. 1111 00:48:22,740 --> 00:48:25,320 And the second trade off is sort of like you 1112 00:48:25,320 --> 00:48:29,370 can make a blantanty educational game that just throws back 1113 00:48:29,370 --> 00:48:31,578 at you that can sort of be fun for the first time you 1114 00:48:31,578 --> 00:48:33,578 play it, but doesn't have a lot of replay value. 1115 00:48:33,578 --> 00:48:36,639 And it's sort of hard to make a great educational game that 1116 00:48:36,639 --> 00:48:37,930 also has a lot of replay value. 1117 00:48:37,930 --> 00:48:40,424 So we're thinking, maybe consider maybe we don't 1118 00:48:40,424 --> 00:48:41,590 want that much replay value. 1119 00:48:41,590 --> 00:48:45,120 Maybe this is a game that these people will play once or twice, 1120 00:48:45,120 --> 00:48:47,620 learn what they need to learn, and then never play it again. 1121 00:48:47,620 --> 00:48:50,559 So it's sort of trade-offs that we need to think about. 1122 00:48:50,559 --> 00:48:52,934 PROFESSOR: So you're still working on the paper prototype 1123 00:48:52,934 --> 00:48:53,898 that you need [INAUDIBLE]? 1124 00:48:53,898 --> 00:48:54,380 AUDIENCE: Yes. 1125 00:48:54,380 --> 00:48:54,862 PROFESSOR: OK. 1126 00:48:54,862 --> 00:48:55,362 Cool. 1127 00:48:55,362 --> 00:48:56,308 Thanks, [INAUDIBLE]. 1128 00:48:56,308 --> 00:48:56,548 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 1129 00:48:56,548 --> 00:48:58,381 But we're starting to build up the back-end. 1130 00:48:58,381 --> 00:49:00,880 And we're going to be using Phaser to [INAUDIBLE]. 1131 00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:01,986 PROFESSOR: So you've already [INAUDIBLE]? 1132 00:49:01,986 --> 00:49:02,486 OK, cool. 1133 00:49:08,650 --> 00:49:09,947 Forecast-Based Funding, right? 1134 00:49:09,947 --> 00:49:10,530 AUDIENCE: Yep. 1135 00:49:14,700 --> 00:49:16,840 Hi, we're Forecast-Based Funding. 1136 00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:19,930 The general idea behind our concept 1137 00:49:19,930 --> 00:49:21,960 is that planning ahead for disasters 1138 00:49:21,960 --> 00:49:23,840 is much better than trying to react to them. 1139 00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:26,615 So if you can have operating procedures or ways of planning 1140 00:49:26,615 --> 00:49:29,320 for them [INAUDIBLE] afford that, 1141 00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:34,110 you can reduce loss of lives in the event of disasters. 1142 00:49:34,110 --> 00:49:36,240 We are actually between two prototypes 1143 00:49:36,240 --> 00:49:39,590 right now that we're testing to try and get at the ideas. 1144 00:49:39,590 --> 00:49:44,090 The first one is a sort of higher-level city-based 1145 00:49:44,090 --> 00:49:47,910 simulation of a city that's at risk of disaster, which you 1146 00:49:47,910 --> 00:49:50,035 then have to fortify, [INAUDIBLE] train volunteers, 1147 00:49:50,035 --> 00:49:53,200 or preparing for upcoming disasters 1148 00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:56,466 in order to prevent too much damage from happening to them. 1149 00:49:56,466 --> 00:49:58,590 One of the problems that we're seeing with the game 1150 00:49:58,590 --> 00:50:01,810 is that's kind of abstract and not as interactive 1151 00:50:01,810 --> 00:50:03,270 for players to connect with. 1152 00:50:03,270 --> 00:50:04,978 But they are getting a good understanding 1153 00:50:04,978 --> 00:50:07,218 of the idea of planning ahead. 1154 00:50:07,218 --> 00:50:08,120 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 1155 00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:09,780 And so to try and address those issues, 1156 00:50:09,780 --> 00:50:11,430 we have a second prototype right now, 1157 00:50:11,430 --> 00:50:16,840 which is about trying to actually rescue 1158 00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:18,570 people in a flooding city. 1159 00:50:18,570 --> 00:50:21,320 And so that hits the other end of the scale, where 1160 00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:25,200 the player is told ahead of time this disaster 1161 00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,320 was planned for versus this disaster was not planned for, 1162 00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:31,742 and the appropriate effects for each. 1163 00:50:31,742 --> 00:50:33,200 And then they have to rescue people 1164 00:50:33,200 --> 00:50:35,320 under those two different conditions, 1165 00:50:35,320 --> 00:50:37,220 and then they get to directly compare 1166 00:50:37,220 --> 00:50:42,240 what the experience of is for acting in one 1167 00:50:42,240 --> 00:50:44,190 circumstance versus the other. 1168 00:50:44,190 --> 00:50:45,815 AUDIENCE: Over the next couple of days, 1169 00:50:45,815 --> 00:50:49,235 we'll be looking at what we learned from both of them 1170 00:50:49,235 --> 00:50:51,560 and trying to either combine them or pull out 1171 00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:56,182 the parts that we thought were really useful to [INAUDIBLE]. 1172 00:50:56,182 --> 00:50:58,174 PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE] on this? 1173 00:50:58,174 --> 00:50:59,170 This was the hard one. 1174 00:50:59,170 --> 00:50:59,668 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 1175 00:50:59,668 --> 00:51:00,626 PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE]? 1176 00:51:02,819 --> 00:51:04,860 AUDIENCE: I think it was stated a couple of times 1177 00:51:04,860 --> 00:51:07,720 that we should be looking at people that are policymakers 1178 00:51:07,720 --> 00:51:10,987 or donors in the sense of sort of people who would be 1179 00:51:10,987 --> 00:51:13,970 allocating funds from governments or non-profits, 1180 00:51:13,970 --> 00:51:15,261 things like that. 1181 00:51:15,261 --> 00:51:17,510 Basically we make it appear that this type of planning 1182 00:51:17,510 --> 00:51:19,510 ahead is a good idea. 1183 00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:25,426 PROFESSOR: And have you decided on technology yet, 1184 00:51:25,426 --> 00:51:28,077 or are you still pondering it? 1185 00:51:28,077 --> 00:51:29,660 AUDIENCE: We're probably using Phaser. 1186 00:51:35,050 --> 00:51:36,020 PROFESSOR: All right. 1187 00:51:36,020 --> 00:51:36,520 Thank you. 1188 00:51:40,430 --> 00:51:40,930 Heat Wave. 1189 00:51:48,585 --> 00:51:49,126 AUDIENCE: Hi. 1190 00:51:49,126 --> 00:51:51,430 So as you guys have all heard, Heat Wave 1191 00:51:51,430 --> 00:51:53,800 is going to be a game that will hopefully 1192 00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:58,210 be used to help Red Cross volunteers help people in areas 1193 00:51:58,210 --> 00:52:00,068 that are either suffering from or about 1194 00:52:00,068 --> 00:52:02,320 to suffer from a heat wave. 1195 00:52:02,320 --> 00:52:05,710 So what we did was we decided we wanted 1196 00:52:05,710 --> 00:52:09,700 to test out a very simple digital prototype, not 1197 00:52:09,700 --> 00:52:12,890 with the same type action as our final prototype, 1198 00:52:12,890 --> 00:52:16,260 but not in Unity because having a working 1199 00:52:16,260 --> 00:52:18,051 game in Unity at this point we didn't think 1200 00:52:18,051 --> 00:52:19,380 is a viable option. 1201 00:52:19,380 --> 00:52:21,450 So we made a Python test base game. 1202 00:52:21,450 --> 00:52:23,860 And people were able to choose what 1203 00:52:23,860 --> 00:52:26,430 they were going to do based on the scenario and the people 1204 00:52:26,430 --> 00:52:28,360 they were interacting with. 1205 00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:33,450 And what we really want to test it was how does this work. 1206 00:52:33,450 --> 00:52:36,300 Is playing a good way to learn? 1207 00:52:36,300 --> 00:52:39,490 And if so, how can we make more learning come out of the fact 1208 00:52:39,490 --> 00:52:42,620 that they're playing a game and then making these choices. 1209 00:52:42,620 --> 00:52:46,740 So what we did was we showed people, and a lot of times, 1210 00:52:46,740 --> 00:52:48,156 people noticed right away, well, I 1211 00:52:48,156 --> 00:52:50,590 don't want to sit there and do nothing, which is 1212 00:52:50,590 --> 00:52:52,180 what we wanted them to notice. 1213 00:52:52,180 --> 00:52:56,110 And oh, this person passed out even though they were 1214 00:52:56,110 --> 00:52:57,613 only outside for three hours. 1215 00:52:57,613 --> 00:52:58,365 Why was that? 1216 00:52:58,365 --> 00:53:00,140 So we did see a lot of that. 1217 00:53:00,140 --> 00:53:02,850 But something we didn't see was people sometimes 1218 00:53:02,850 --> 00:53:04,185 got stuck in a pattern. 1219 00:53:04,185 --> 00:53:06,700 It's just like, well, I'm always going to do the same thing. 1220 00:53:06,700 --> 00:53:07,845 And then they don't get different results 1221 00:53:07,845 --> 00:53:09,680 and they don't really learn anything. 1222 00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:12,950 So we want to give people more interesting options and more 1223 00:53:12,950 --> 00:53:15,470 options in our actual game so that they try more things 1224 00:53:15,470 --> 00:53:16,340 and they learn more. 1225 00:53:16,340 --> 00:53:18,967 So that's what we're going to do. 1226 00:53:18,967 --> 00:53:20,550 PROFESSOR: So you already [INAUDIBLE]? 1227 00:53:20,550 --> 00:53:21,945 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 1228 00:53:21,945 --> 00:53:23,060 Any other questions? 1229 00:53:25,837 --> 00:53:26,795 PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE]. 1230 00:53:26,795 --> 00:53:27,288 AUDIENCE: [? Great. ?] 1231 00:53:27,288 --> 00:53:28,274 PROFESSOR: Thank you. 1232 00:53:31,725 --> 00:53:33,204 [INAUDIBLE] Animal Village. 1233 00:53:41,585 --> 00:53:42,720 AUDIENCE: Hi, everybody. 1234 00:53:42,720 --> 00:53:44,930 We're saving the Animal Village. 1235 00:53:44,930 --> 00:53:50,240 Our goal is to empower around 8 to 13-year-olds 1236 00:53:50,240 --> 00:53:56,760 to reach into their community and learn more 1237 00:53:56,760 --> 00:54:00,990 about what cholera is, what its symptoms are, 1238 00:54:00,990 --> 00:54:03,780 and how they would convince people 1239 00:54:03,780 --> 00:54:06,240 that cholera is actually happen. 1240 00:54:06,240 --> 00:54:11,090 Our play tests were focused on bringing as many minigames as 1241 00:54:11,090 --> 00:54:13,340 possible, and to testing. 1242 00:54:13,340 --> 00:54:16,840 So in this case, we had four minigames. 1243 00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:20,160 The main feedback we got on those games 1244 00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:24,774 was that they were far too easy and simplistic. 1245 00:54:24,774 --> 00:54:28,090 And we agree, it turns out. 1246 00:54:28,090 --> 00:54:31,280 Our goals moving forward are to essentially 1247 00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:33,727 improve our game beyond just reading 1248 00:54:33,727 --> 00:54:37,430 an informational pamphlet, and to do things 1249 00:54:37,430 --> 00:54:43,390 where it requires actual abstract thought 1250 00:54:43,390 --> 00:54:47,530 and in general, more effort from the player 1251 00:54:47,530 --> 00:54:50,240 to think of the behaviors and actions they 1252 00:54:50,240 --> 00:54:55,240 need to potentially change or encourage in their community. 1253 00:54:55,240 --> 00:54:59,030 We found a lot of success with this in our game already 1254 00:54:59,030 --> 00:55:01,000 present in the mayor dialogue. 1255 00:55:01,000 --> 00:55:04,640 And we hope to branch that up as moving towards, 1256 00:55:04,640 --> 00:55:08,030 we begin to implement our game in Phaser. 1257 00:55:10,757 --> 00:55:11,340 Any questions? 1258 00:55:15,633 --> 00:55:21,370 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] what's the upside of having minigames 1259 00:55:21,370 --> 00:55:23,722 versus one [? full ?] game? 1260 00:55:23,722 --> 00:55:25,680 AUDIENCE: So our goal with the united minigames 1261 00:55:25,680 --> 00:55:31,066 is to be able to drill down and be 1262 00:55:31,066 --> 00:55:33,430 very specific about which behavior 1263 00:55:33,430 --> 00:55:35,700 we want people to show. 1264 00:55:35,700 --> 00:55:40,450 There are approximately three to four core behaviors 1265 00:55:40,450 --> 00:55:43,910 that are very necessary to prevent cholera. 1266 00:55:43,910 --> 00:55:48,090 And having one minigame devoted to each of them in theory 1267 00:55:48,090 --> 00:55:56,679 will allows us to focus more and teach more, as a result. 1268 00:55:56,679 --> 00:56:00,610 AUDIENCE: That's a good statement. 1269 00:56:00,610 --> 00:56:02,764 Just riffing off something else that you said. 1270 00:56:02,764 --> 00:56:05,180 I haven't looked that closely at the cholera documenation. 1271 00:56:05,180 --> 00:56:07,590 I'm not so sure if convincing people that cholera 1272 00:56:07,590 --> 00:56:10,862 is a problem is necessarily the thing you need to do, 1273 00:56:10,862 --> 00:56:13,320 but convincing people to change their behavior and whatnot. 1274 00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:15,771 AUDIENCE: So not convincing people cholera 1275 00:56:15,771 --> 00:56:18,477 is a problem because obviously. 1276 00:56:18,477 --> 00:56:21,270 It's convincing people to report cholera 1277 00:56:21,270 --> 00:56:26,605 as it happens instead of waiting to see if that one isolated 1278 00:56:26,605 --> 00:56:31,880 case of diarrhea is actually a symptom of an outbreak or just 1279 00:56:31,880 --> 00:56:33,444 someone eating something bad. 1280 00:56:33,444 --> 00:56:34,110 AUDIENCE: Right. 1281 00:56:34,110 --> 00:56:36,290 So one of the things is like this early alert thing 1282 00:56:36,290 --> 00:56:36,990 [INAUDIBLE]. 1283 00:56:36,990 --> 00:56:37,490 OK. 1284 00:56:37,490 --> 00:56:37,990 Cool. 1285 00:56:37,990 --> 00:56:38,690 All right. 1286 00:56:38,690 --> 00:56:39,890 PROFESSOR: Thank you. 1287 00:56:39,890 --> 00:56:40,723 AUDIENCE: All right. 1288 00:56:40,723 --> 00:56:41,740 Thanks.