Before we can get into restructuring or reinventing how school is done to take advantage of gamification principles, we need to look into what it takes to think like a game designer. Computer scientist and game designer Jesse Schell states that game design is really a state of mind. It’s something that we do naturally or at least have already done in some setting. Ask yourself, have you ever made up a game as a child or as an adult? Think of a goal you might want to achieve; like to get students to become better at close reading or to have teachers at a school improve and increase their communication with their students’ parents. If you approached these challenges as a game, what would they be like?
So the idea is to approach the work of learning from the perspective of game design; not to become a game designer. If we look at student behavior modification goals through that lense, we will arrive at other solutions to our challenges besides those that a school principal or a teacher normally would.
Think of a game that you've enjoyed playing. It can be a video game, board game, or something else. See if you can jot down at least three structural elements that make the game successful.
To get started thinking like a game designer, think of your audience as players, not students or teachers or parents. Changing your perception of the participants from the role that they normally represent in relation to you to the role of a player extends a subtle relationship change between you and your participants. Dr. Kevin Werbach, Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania and one of my teachers pointed out to me that it’s similar to how some businesses will refer to their customers as guests, not just customers. The word ‘guest’ changes not only the perception of the customer regarding his relationship to the store but it also changes the understanding of the employees as they develop relationships with the customers.
Another reason why it’s important to think of your participants as players when engaging in game thinking is that in games, the game revolves around the player. The player is the center of the game as opposed to, for example, the student who is simply one of the people that needs to learn your curriculum. The process of school becomes about the learner’s experience. It’s the difference between thinking of what the audience will think when they see a movie and what the characters think in the movie. Yes, there’s still the structure and narrative of the movie, which, in this analogy, is the analog for curriculum, and that doesn’t change. But the audience has a very different relationship with the movie than the actors who are in the movie. The idea is that we need to design experiences for students that start with what the students’ perspective is, not how the curriculum needs to be presented for an audience of students.
This is often referred to in the education field as student-centered curriculum.
Next, game thinking requires that you approach your participants as people that must feel that THEY are in control. The students or the adults you're working with need to feel that the game or the situation revolves around them because they get to make choices. They need to feel as though they have some level of autonomy when it comes to how they navigate through the game. Of course, you have to remember that by the very virtue of agreeing to play the game, they’ve already given up quite a bit. They can feel like they are making choices but the choices are ones that YOU as the game designer have established. So don’t think that this characteristic of thinking like a game designer suggests that students or your players can do whatever they want. It’s more that as the game designer, you need to confer to your players that they have a semblance of control. Otherwise, they will immediately recognize that they are just jumping through the hoops you want them to jump through and that will instantly pull them out of the psychology of play. They must have a sense of free motion within a set of constraints…
Lastly, thinking like a game designer involves considerable analysis and thought be given to establishing a setting wherein your players WANT to play your game. How can you entice them to play? Is there an incentive? Is the incentive powerful enough? And once they start to play, what will compel them to continue playing your game? What genuine reason will I instill so that they want to keep up or stay in the agreed venture you both enter when he or she decided to join the game?
The next component of game thinking is to ensure that your players get a sense of having gone through a process. Much like a story, the player needs to experience a beginning, middle, and end to the game. So onboarding, or getting your players started out in the game, is a first step along that journey. You’ll also need to think about support structures for them so that if they start to fail during the game or can’t determine how best to proceed, you provide them with a process or clues so that they can right themselves as they progress toward some level of mastery along their chosen pathway. Which is another item--providing them with multiple routes to winning. When there’s only one path to success, the sense of play and autonomy which is so important in gamifiying experiences is deflated.
Dr. Werbach suggested that as his students, we explore how the game Plants vs. Zombies onboards the players. If you’re not familiar with the game, it’s game that was first played on mobile platforms and in context of social networks and grew to become one of the most popular games of its time. But to try to explain the game and its rules verbally would make it sound like an inordinately complicated and abstract game to play. In fact, to hear or just read the rules would probably prohibit most people from even trying the game out. The trick is to create a seamless and nearly impossible to fail process for the player to get started in the game by just having them play it. So give it a shot. Try the game out (mobile, free) and just go through the first level or two of the game to see how the game designers get you started in the game. Think about the progression of complexity as presented. How the game provides immediate feedback. How it guides you through just getting started.
What experiences and states of being do you associate with fun? Recognition for something you’ve done? Problem-solving? Exploring? Relaxation? Collaboration? Vanquishing your opponent? Collection of objects? Surprise? Creating or customizing? Sharing? Role playing?