Have you played the Portal games? They include lots of things you mention… they introduce how to use the portal gun, for example, not by explaining stuff but giving you a simplified version first… then the full feature set… and then there are all the other things with different physical properties. I can definitely imagine some Portal Advanced game when you’ll actually have to use equations to calculate trajectories.
Nevertheless… I’d really like to be persuaded otherwise, but the ability to read Very Confusing Stuff, without any working model, and make sense of it can’t really be avoided after a while. We can’t really build a game out of every scientific paper, due to the amount of time required to write a game vs. a page of text… (even though I’d love to play games instead of reading papers. And it sounds definitely doable with CS papers. What about a conference accepting games as submissions?)
I’ve played the first Portal game for a bit, and I liked it, but haven’t finished it because puzzle games aren’t that strongly my thing. I wonder whether not liking them much is a benefit or a disadvantage for an edugame designer. :-)
the ability to read Very Confusing Stuff, without any working model, and make sense of it can’t really be avoided after a while
True enough. But I don’t think that very much of education consists of trying to teach this skill in the first place (though one could certainly argue that it should be taught more), and having a solid background in other stuff should make it easier when you do get to that point.
What I found fascinating about Portal is the effort they made in testing the game on players. There is a play-mode with developer commentary (thought perhaps it’s only available after the first play-through) in which they comment on all the details they changed to make sure that the players learned the relevant concepts, that they didn’t forget them and that they have enough hints to solve the puzzle (for example, it’s difficult to make a player look up). It’d be awesome if educational material (not necessarily just edugames) or even whole courses were designed and tested that well.
Have you played the Portal games? They include lots of things you mention… they introduce how to use the portal gun, for example, not by explaining stuff but giving you a simplified version first… then the full feature set… and then there are all the other things with different physical properties. I can definitely imagine some Portal Advanced game when you’ll actually have to use equations to calculate trajectories.
Nevertheless… I’d really like to be persuaded otherwise, but the ability to read Very Confusing Stuff, without any working model, and make sense of it can’t really be avoided after a while. We can’t really build a game out of every scientific paper, due to the amount of time required to write a game vs. a page of text… (even though I’d love to play games instead of reading papers. And it sounds definitely doable with CS papers. What about a conference accepting games as submissions?)
I’ve played the first Portal game for a bit, and I liked it, but haven’t finished it because puzzle games aren’t that strongly my thing. I wonder whether not liking them much is a benefit or a disadvantage for an edugame designer. :-)
True enough. But I don’t think that very much of education consists of trying to teach this skill in the first place (though one could certainly argue that it should be taught more), and having a solid background in other stuff should make it easier when you do get to that point.
What I found fascinating about Portal is the effort they made in testing the game on players. There is a play-mode with developer commentary (thought perhaps it’s only available after the first play-through) in which they comment on all the details they changed to make sure that the players learned the relevant concepts, that they didn’t forget them and that they have enough hints to solve the puzzle (for example, it’s difficult to make a player look up). It’d be awesome if educational material (not necessarily just edugames) or even whole courses were designed and tested that well.
Thanks, I saw the developer commentary option but didn’t try it out. Now that you’ve told me what it consists of, I’ll have to check it out.