One of the biggest challenges I face as an educational game designer is convincing, our often non-gamer, collaborators to respect the game design process. Working in a service unit at a University, on a non-academic career path, I look for advice from the few academic professionals who advocate for games in education. One of those advocates is Kurt Squire, in his book Video Games and Learning, he says:
“Educators can’t be allowed to make decisions at the expense of game design and game designers can’t make decisions where they are entertaining at the expense of the learning goals.”
There must be mutual respect from both sides of the table for a successful collaboration. Game designers should recognize the educator as content experts in their field. In return, educators should recognize the game designer’s expertise in extracting engaging user experiences from their content.
I recently had a meeting with a potential faculty collaborator who said, “I don’t care if the student is engaged, or cares about the content, that’s not my job.” At first, I found this shocking, both from an educator’s point of view and as a game designer. But after some thought, I realized that what he meant was his job is to transfer knowledge. He did not consider it his responsibility to keep students entertained or be interested in that transfer. Although his wording was extreme, this underlying philosophy is fairly common among educators. It is also common in the design of many types of educational materials like text books.
In contrast, the game design process is all about getting players engaged and interested in the content. Game designers always work with the assumption that players have the option to participate. If players are not entertained by the game, it will not be played, and the game will fail. Educators work with the assumption that their content is essential. If students do not to learn it, then they will fail. Educational game design strives for balance between knowledge transfer and entertainment. This balancing act is an art not a science. It requires many techniques known to game designers that vary from traditional instruction methods. A successful outcome can only come when collaborators are interested in exploring those techniques with the goal of achieving balance between engagement and learning.
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