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Game Education Summit 09 Musings

Held in the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, this two-day event focused on game development.

Thus, there were many developers from game companies present. I got to rub shoulders with people that works on tactical/strategy games, etc.  It was great to hear their #1 issue:

People need team skills.

It doesn't seem to matter what you work on in today's world. If you can't function in a team, you are handicapped.

Don Marinelli, Executive Producer of the ETC, had this to say in his opening remarks:

Why doesn't the media cover the state of education?
 - American education is headed for a meltdown.

Videogames are NOT a fad. They are here to stay.
 - Games are art AND science.
 - Mario franchise has made more than all Star Wars movies combined.

If games are a paradigm shift in education, how do we make it happen? Let's forge a plan of attack.

 - No more apologies
 - Enlighten all
   - The potentials of gaming for education
  - We need to demonstrate the power of games within a societal context. Make it relevant to those that don't get it.
 - Young people find formal education less appealing, inspiring than ever before.
   - Maybe kindergartners should go on strike!

Richard Hilleman, Chief Creative Director for Electronic Arts, was also very interesting. EA is looking to develop smaller games. The days of the monolithic, $30 million game are almost over. Instead, EA will work on smaller games, and more of them.

Personal Note - This may mean EA is open to working with education to develop educational games?

I attended many other sessions, but the main takeaway was the people. I talked to many folks who were very interested in the Educational Gaming Commons concept, and set the groundwork for future speakers for the EGC Virtual Worlds Brownbags, etc.

The Annual GLS Conference took place at UWM June 10-12. What a treat! This conference is chock full of researchers, practitioners, and teachers that are interested in gaming, virtual worlds, and simulations for education. Here are my main takeaways.

1. It's not about games. It's about situated cognition, constructionism, constructivism, and active learning. Games, virtual worlds, and simulations embody these theories and bring them to life.

2. Jim Gee is the guru in this area, and rightly so. His broad swath of knowledge allows him to place all this in perspective, to give us a glimmer of where it all fits in the scheme of things. Read one of his books and you know what I mean. I was able to hear him as the conf keynote, then later in a much more informal Q&A session.

3. I participated in Real-time Research while attending the conference. This was a double session (one at the beginning, one at the end of the conf.) where teams devised a research question, tested it during the conf., analyzed gathered data, and reported out on their findings.


This sounds suspiciously like ETS' Hot Team Process, and I believe it would make a nice "snap-on" component for future Hot Teams where some data gathering from subjects makes sense. The only issue is IRB approval if we want to publish our results. That's not a minor issue, and I'll need to do some digging to see what's possible at PSU.

The neat thing is my team won best data analysis, and we get to publish our work in an upcoming book on RTR that will be produced by CMUs ETS-Press.

4. Some educators are producing in-house tools to develop games. By next year, it should be quite interesting to see what emerges.

5. Mobile gaming is gaining steam. IMO platform differences hamper this; you have to tie your development efforts to a platform, thus limiting distribution. I will continue to monitor this space, and at the EGC our developer, Jason Wolfe, continues to refine his knowledge in this area.

6. The people and connections I made are, as usual, at least as valuable as the conf sessions. This almost goes without saying, but it's worth noting that the frontier mentality re: ed gaming is slowing wearing away, to be replaced by a more mature, normal one. By this I mean people are increasingly collaborating, rubbing shoulders and sharing ideas, and devising joint projects. People are tapping into traditional funding agents, as these agents are now funding in this area.

I'm also seeing the Empire-builders appearing, the folk that always twist ANY conversation around to their projects, their ideas, their ways of thinking. If you fail to fall into their narcissistic black hole, they immediately discard you are irrelevant. How sad, yet how expected. There are two people I admired for some time that I met at the conf. that fit this category. My admiration for them has dimmed.

Finally, to read my minute-by-minute thoughts while attending the conference, see http://twitter.com/#search?q=brettbixler%20gls09

James Gee = Ed games guru.
GLS = Games, Learning, and Society Conference. Held in Madison, WI.

This man is a genius. He gets games, is a great researcher, and knows how to communicate his complex, deep thoughts.

My notes:

In his recent book - ignored Sims and women gamers.

But, in research, the marginal things are often the most interesting. This is true here!

Women in the Sims are doing amazing things - the future of gaming.

Gamers can become designers with today's games and tools.

Nickel and Dimed challenge by yamx - To the Sims community.
 - Based on the book, but at a metaphorical level.
 - Must be a "poverty" mom.
 - Raise kids until they are old enough to be on their own.
 - They can't die or be taken by social services.

Rule book for challenge created. Limits what you can do in the game, set boundaries.

This game "mod" is building social engagement.
Example - community wrote back and discussed the rules, argued them, some made mods of this mod rule set!

This is a new form of modding - built on social tools as opposed to "hard" programing skills. It involves "emotional intelligence."

That skill is critical for solving the problems of today and tomorrow. Games are one way to foster it.

This is an example of 21st century leadership - fostering connections, building people up, and allowing other's leadership to emerge.

We need people to use their emotional intelligence to engage all socially to solve the problems of today and tomorrow.

General responses to audience questions:

The game must be fun first! Learning of content should emerge naturally from the fun.

Fun is not the same as engagement. We don't always have fun playing games, but we are engaged.

My colleague Chris Stubbs and I had the opportunity to visit the NMSU Learning Games Lab recently.

Wow - what a fantastic experience. This visit really opened my eyes to some directions we can shoot for. It will take several years to reach their level of design and development, and Chris and I walked away with some good ideas on how to get there.

I believe they have two big strengths - the ability to use continuous rapid prototyping to develop games, and a strong ability to write and pull in grants to support projects they are interested in.

They really have a living lab, where they bring in students to test prototypes and have the developers observe reactions. I can't think of a better way to do game development. In many ways, development in this area is more of a black art than a science. While one can strive to design everything "correctly," until you test your ideas out you just can't be certain of success.

The lab itself has a soft, coffee cafe-like feel. Indirect lighting, soft chairs and couches, etc. I believe we've done as much as we can for our lab to emulate this, with the exception of indirect lighting. That should be easy to remedy.

One concern they have is lack of PR. Enough people just don't know they exist. Lessons learned here are we have to continually push on several fronts:

    •    Exposure at national conferences.
    •    Exposure to game companies.
    •    Assist faculty in publishing venues, formal and informal.
    •    Develop white papers made freely available.

This is a place we could collaborate on/subcontract to for large development projects beyond our current capability. They are a bunch of fine, caring people.

Below are notes I jotted down throughout the day.

Operational Setup

    •    Soft money. Only director is on hard money. Good at receiving grants, but these are drying up, and more competitive.
    •    Main thrust is developing games for middle schools.
    •    They use outside and inside faculty for SMEs. Outside SMEs are part of the grant. Inside ones do work for Games Lab on an informal basis.

Game Development

    •    Fairly traditional CRP model.
    •    Work with client, brainstorm initial storyboard. Looks like Barbara comes up with specific learning objectives.
    •    Rapid prototype, revise, revise. Lots of trial and error.
    •    They have ~five developers on any given project. No IDs, all game designers.
    •    Settle on finished product.

They all work in a common open room, computers around the edges, table in the middle.

Student Testing

    •    2 days, 1/2 day each
    •    Do it at all stages, alpha, beta.
    •    Testing is useful to justify uses of media to teachers.
    •    Use of fresh subjects at each stage.
    •    Use middle-skill gamers.
    •    Also used as bug testers.
    •    They develop the kids to be better testers as they are testing stuff.
    •    Pull the best testers over time for advanced work.
    •    The game developers do direct observation, think-alouds, etc. with the testers.
    •    Taught programming - SCRATCH. From MIT, for kids.

Kids design a game.
 - In groups
 - PPT
 - Developers listen, pick up ideas

Lab Setup

    •    Mobility is key - ability to move furniture.
    •    Coffee-room feel.
    •    Everything on wheels.
    •    Special tables that can be broken apart and reconfigured for special situations

We should add to EGC Lab - Sign that explains what the lab is really for.

Misc Interesting Things

    •    Video Closet - like a videoed SRDP, with just one question at a time. Young students like it. I can't see it for college students. Might be useful to the DC. I am scratching my head on this - can;t imagine why students would like to have a non-anonymous taping of their criticisms of a game.
    •    Also for blogging - doing a cafe, raised chair computer setup helps students to blog.
    •    They are far ahead of us in the game development area. The director wishes she had more time to publish.
    •    Our lab setup is unique. It looks like PSU is the only place to approach security, etc. in this manner.

Future Outcomes

This would be a great group to collaborate with on game development. They have the expertise and staff to develop mid to large games, far exceeding current capacity of the EGC.