Games, Play, Inspiration Around the World

Recently, I had the opportunity to examine the roles of games and game playing in six different counties around the world for a five-week period. During that time, I traveled to each country and studied the role of game playing. I wanted to understand the history and playing of games to gain first-hand insights into how games can be better leveraged for learning. I traveled to England, Scotland, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and The United Arab Emirates to study, play, learn, and have fun with games. Here’s my impressions, thoughts and take-a-ways. This is the first in a multi-part series that investigates the meaning of games, gamification and play around the world. Link to part two here and link to part three here and part four here and part five here.

Games are Ancient and Have Always Taught and Entertained

Built in the late 12th or early 13th century, the outer wall of the Bayon Temple in Angkor, Cambodia, has many bas-relief images of people doing ordinary, everyday tasks such as cooking and fishing but the one that interested me was a little different. It depicted two people playing some type of board game. The tour guide said it was an ancient version of the game known as Ouk Chatrang or Ok or Khmer Chess—is a variant of the game of chess introduced in Southern Asia many centuries ago. The Bayon temple is about 819 years old so it’s an ancient game.

But there are other ancient games. A game called “Senet” is a randomized race game traced back to Predynastic Egypt, dating it at around 3100 BC. Archeologists found the game buried with several ancient Egyptians. "The Royal Game of Ur" was discovered in 1926-1927 by Sir Leonard Woolley. He found the game in royal tombs dating back to more than 2500 BC. So it’s over 4.5 thousand years old.

Humankind has played games for long, long time even educational games. During the American Civil War, soldiers played a game called American Kriegsspiel, originally created in 1812 to train Prussian officers-of-war.

Every country visited had a rich history of ancient board games handed down through the ages. The universality of games and game play was clearly a theme running through the entire six-country journey. I found that early games focused on the concept of strategy coupled with critical thinking. To win, a player had to ask themselves questions such as “If I move here, what is the other player or team going to do?” or “Can I counter that move with a move that doesn’t leave my pieces vulnerable?” or “What are the ramifications, four moves later, of my current move?”

Many early games can be traced to thinking about strategies used in battle or are warrior-based. It’s interesting that the most deadly form of human-to-human interactions were some of the first to be “gamified.” This seems to point to games as not just a way of teaching or preparing for battles, but also to games as a tool for helping humankind make sense of the atrocities, we are capable of doing to one another. It’s the concept of games as a sense-making mechanism. We use games to make sense of the world around us, of our culture, and of our selves.

Games as Sense-Making Tools

The exhibit at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum “Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt” underscores this theme. The exhibition, the first major exhibition of its kind in the UK, highlighted ground-breaking video games while pealing back the curtain exposing the game design process. The exposé included peaks at designer’s notebooks, scribbles and wireframes. As well as glimpses of conceptual artwork and even toys that inspired game-design. The event highlighted how game designers attempt to add meaning and make sense of life through videogames.

It’s not just about play, it’s about meaning, sense-making. We can’t discount play because it’s a serious draw for humans, we will do much in the context of play. But play is not simply a distraction or an escape but it’s also deeper.

Play and games tap into meaning because they are abstractions of our feelings, hopes, fears and even aspirations.

The process of creating a game necessitates the dissection of an event—like a battle, or a feeling or a world and then putting it back together again in a way that can be “experienced” by others through gameplay.

Implications for Learning Games

Careful thinking about the design of games for learning pushes these themes further. If we want new employees to make sense of our corporate culture then games might be the answer. One could see the advantages of playing a game to underscore what’s of value to an organization. Gameplay becomes an effective method of conveying values.

This points to the importance of getting the sense-making elements of the game right. It’s not just about the mechanics or dynamics, good game design is about the overall experience of play. This makes it interesting to think of how games can underscore the right ethical decision or the right patient care determination because of the ability of a game to tap into how we, as humans, make sense of the world around us. Next time you think about creating a learning game, consider how your game helps others make sense of the world around them, how your game helps them react to events that are happening to them and how it can help them to cope and to make sense of their world.

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Immerse Yourself in Games

If you’d like to explore the ideas of creativity, innovation, sense-making and games then I have an event for you. It’s called “Step Away.” Register for more information at https://www.stepaway.design/. The event runs from Sept 5-10th, 2019 in Florida in a game house. You won’t want to miss it

Step Away is a five-day experience of living in a game house and focusing on creativity, working with Lego, crafting your game, tapping into your drawing ability and then making concrete linkages between the creative and the productive.

Bio

Karl Kapp is a professor at Bloomsburg University and he literally “wrote the book” on the "The Gamification of Learning and Instruction" and he recently co-authored the game-based learning book Play to Learn with Sharon Boller. Karl is a researcher, analyst, speaker, professor, consultant and designer of instructional games, gamification and engaging learning experiences. He is a learning experience designer who works around the global helping organizations create engaging and meaningful learning experiences using an evidence-based approach.

He is founder of The Wisdom Learning Group, LLC, a global partnership that helps organizations implement game-thinking and game-based learning to achieve success. He is author/co-author of seven books on the convergence of learning and technology. He is the creator of the LinkedIn Learning courses "The Gamification of Learning" as well as "Gamification for Interactive Learning"

Follow Karl on Twitter @kkapp.