Design Games and Learning

Games, and RPGs in particular, are, rather obviously, about having fun. Consequently, discussions about topics like design gaming and possible links between learning skills, psychological processes and psychological constructs, (such as enjoyment), can seem a long way removed from the gaming table or console. Nevertheless, without understanding how games operate, and how to design games that deliver particular outcomes, it remains difficult to see or move beyond current approaches to gameplay and game design.

For a long time games that offer opportunities for co-design and present challenges based around ‘higher executive skills’, (e.g. decision-making, critical thinking and collaborative co-design), have been largely divorced from learning, (and psychological models of learning), at the point when children start formal schooling.

However, studies of active learning, and the widespread use of roleplaying strategies in higher education and vocational contexts, now present considerable evidence that much of the more imaginative and creative gameplay, (so often set aside as ‘make believe’ or ‘childish’), offers access to a range of valuable skills and, possibly, enjoyment, which is otherwise elusive. This, perhaps, suggests that it is worth looking at links between games and learning in the interests of allowing games as a whole, and design games in particular, to play a greater role in formal and informal learning.

As discussed in earlier posts, there seems to be a clear distinction between procedural, rules-focused gameplay and flexible, mediated gameplay. This can be illustrated through a game design like Lego, which presents as either a fixed challenge or any number of opened-ended challenges. Both the procedural and the flexible approaches ask players to construct and use enjoyable skill sets through gameplay based around player choice, i.e. a player may choose a Lego set that re-constructs the Eiffel Tower or use a collection of Lego to build any number of co-designed towers. At the same time, the gameplay clearly differs in terms of the types and range of, (necessarily), cognitive skills and constructs used by players.

Unlike Lego, Top Trumps card games are usually played to the rules and, initially, offer what appears to be a valuable ‘training’ in ad hoc goal directed conceptual categorisation, (a process thought to underlie many of our cognitive decision-making functions). In other words, the cards’ content and the straightforward rules seem to combine to ‘scaffold’ players’ learning and enjoyment of a specific cognitive skill or process.

However, before long players know all the options and play becomes predictable. There is no longer any ad hoc or ‘on the fly’ categorisation involved. A deck with a different theme may extend the game’s ‘lifespan’ with added content, but there are few new or extended skills to develop in revisiting the same procedures. Essentially, gameplay becomes fixed ‘inside the zone’ formed by the rule set.

It seems possible to re-introduce novelty, spontaneity and, perhaps, enjoyment by re-instating the scaffolding of cognitive skills through co-design. As soon as a players start to make their own cards, revise the content of the decks and extend or revisit the rule set, the gameplay and the game’s re-design becomes part of play and more complex categorisations and re-categorisations can be introduced through, for example, ‘wildcards’ or ‘jokers’.

Inevitably, changing and varying the range and complexity of gameplay through design gaming introduces more elaborate, and taxing, cognitive tasks. These may offer rewarding challenges and enjoyment, but many players are accustomed to both passive learning and passive entertainment. It may, therefore, be helpful to try to identify and to map the skills and enjoyment open to being associated with co-design, (and higher executive skills), in terms of relevant cognitive skills, processes and constructs. Ideally, this might suggest approaches to making it easier for players to move from procedural gameplay to design gaming.

Mapping higher executive skills, (such as effective decision-making skills, critical thinking skills and collaborative planning), to the gameplay associated with design gaming, (such as challenge-focused play and co-design), is already familiar from curriculum design and active learning. Mapping possible correlations to various processes and constructs, (on various levels), should, therefore, be practical. For example, through isolating and identifying any positive outcomes, such as a construct like ‘enjoyment’, when decisions are used to shape or construct play.

Mapping skills, gameplay and constructs to specific cognitive processes is more problematic, as the operation of psychological constructs through cognition is hard to model. However, it is possible to simulate cognitive learning processes through neural networks, which take relatively simple rules or instructions and connect them in parallel to realise, or, perhaps, scaffold, emergent properties. These emergent properties are associated with properties of cognition such as categorisation, graceful degradation, scaffolding and, possibly, the formation of ‘situation models’, (broadly analogous to transferable socio-cognitive schema or dynamic blueprints).

(It is necessary to be cautious when basing any proposals on emergent properties, as they currently only offer a theoretical description of cognitive processes and constructs on one level. That said they offer an accessible approach to studying processes which appear broadly comparable to a range of cognitive processes and constructs).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWCazRvsGOs

Emergent properties involve a self-ordering of simple components to produce behaviours or outcomes which weren’t built in at the outset. They appear to occur as a function of complexity in everything from economies and evolution to flocking, swarming and gameplay. For example, it has been suggested that Poker remains ‘fresh’, (and open to co-design), as a result of emergent properties, including the common practice of folding, which is not required by the rules. Equally, Poker’s many variants are, essentially, emergent meta-gaming.

Consequently, when a game and its gameplay reaches a certain level of structure, diversity and connectivity emergent properties should in theory ‘kick-in’. If the structure, diversity and connectivity are sufficient the emergent properties should, perhaps, demonstrate the emergent properties of learning systems, which might involve such processes as categorisation, the scaffolding of situation models and other processes, perhaps, capable of driving co-design, offering novel challenges and, taken together, constructing knowledge and understanding.

Following from that, games which model or exploit features and processes associated with neural networks and cognition may be suited to entraining complex and enjoyable emergent gameplay. This might operate by putting relatively simple components into players’ ‘hands’ and, gradually, helping to scaffold increasingly varied, novel and spontaneous design gaming.

Settlers of Catan can appear to offer an example of a game which uses straightforward components to deliver gameplay focused around finding creative, co-designed solutions that, possibly, involve emergent properties. The game is zonal, ‘connected’ and attenuated or ‘tuned’ through resource management and negotiation.

Tabletop RPGs should be ideally suited to generating emergent behaviours encouraging or even entraining the scaffolding of executive skills, co-design and player choice during play. That is providing the game is designed and run to ‘enable’ design gaming rather than to limit options by trying to proceduralise most or all aspects of gameplay.

As a result, it is, perhaps, likely that a game which offers plenty of emergent properties and ‘scaffolds’ design gaming and gameplay will share some of the properties of complex neural networks. Equally, the type of network most likely to deliver emergent properties is potentially comparable to the neural networking thought to model human cognitive networks, i.e. neuronal, modular, parallel, open to attenuation, and open to semantic and visual language and meaning.

It may seem counter-intuitive to simplify, streamline and standardise game elements to encourage and support play involving more elaborate cognitive skills and varied forms of enjoyment. However, under these conditions, the desired gameplay is contingent upon crossing thresholds mediated by structure, diversity and connectivity rather than the number of rules and procedures.

RPG systems like Classic Traveller and White Box D&D may offer suitable frameworks, as their modularity, straightforward mechanics and coherent design seem to leave room for, and encourage, fine-tuning, player choice and co-design. Treasure sets out to follow this approach through modelling other common features of cognitive and connective learning systems, including visual and semantic language systems, hierarchical categorisation, scaffolding campaign and scenario design, encouraging fine-tuning of the rule set and rewarding collaborative gameplay.

If the proposed links between executive skills, design gaming processes, (including the enjoyment of design gaming), cognitive processes and psychological constructs are present, gameplay within the learning system should, perhaps, demonstrate emergent properties. For example, it might be easy to take rules in and out, to modify rules and to add new game elements without problematic, system wide knock-on effects. Play might also, for example, foster player choice, reward interaction across all game elements and support for on-going co-design.

Treasure currently gives the impression of scaffolding higher executive skills, co-design and improvisation through scaffolding emergent properties. In keeping with a relatively complex, highly connected learning system, the game also appears to engage a range of further skills and actions which may also be open to interpretation in terms emergent properties. For instance, examples of building characterisation through typography and images instead of scores and descriptions, rapid visual design of campaigns and scenarios, rapid visual conversion or translation across visual genres and spontaneous freeform play all appear to emerge quite consistently.

Emergent properties can, perhaps, be seen as underlying the socio-cognitive learning processes and psychological constructs scaffolding gameplay in all games. However, where elaborate rule sets take precedence over player choice and co-design, it appears that gameplay may engage a limited spectrum of emergent properties, possibly resulting in less sophisticated psychological constructs elaborating fewer ‘executive’ functions.

Fortunately, it should become increasingly easy to match gameplay, skills, processes and constructs through reliable imaging technologies. Researchers are already isolating and then looking to integrate specific processes and constructs such as the processing of lies and decision-making. As such mapping develops games designers are probably going to be able to study game design, and gameplay, to deliver games that maximise enjoyment and motivation while scaffolding specific transferable skill sets.