Games, Play, Inspiration Around the World: Part 2

Recently, I had the opportunity to examine the role of games and game playing in six different counties for a five-week period. During that time, I traveled to diverse countries and studied the role of game playing. I wanted to understand the history of games and the modern 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 second in a multi-part series that investigates the meaning of games, gamification and play around the world. In case you missed part one, see it here and here is part three and part four here and part five here.

Hanoi is an energetic, fast-paced metropolis with pedestrians, bicycles, motor scooters, and the occasional car co-existing in a chaotic dance on the streets of the city. Getting from one side of the busy street to the other is an adventure. The advice you are given for crossing the street is to simply "keep walking--don't slow down or change direction--if you keep going the traffic and chaos flows around you. If you stop, it disrupts everything." It's true.

The street's of Hanoi have an element of fluidity as everything just ebbs and flows, if one person is in the way, everyone flows around. No one is upset or mad, they just keep going. So in the midst of all this chaos, it was amazing to see a closed-off street upon which children and parents paused to sit down and play.

Here we were in the center of the hectic city on an island of serenity. Parents and children playing with small, rectangular, wooden blocks building all sorts of wonderful structures.

We watched as children attempted to build the tallest tower they could. Some times they built with amazing care and attention to detail and other times they haphazardly piled one block top of another.

While building, the children would occasionally decide that crashing down the tower was more fun than building it. Some parents assisted, some did not and some, it seemed, were not allow to help--the child wanted to do it herself.

Play as an Avenue to Learning

Play is fundamental to the experience of being human, children enjoy playing partly because they can control what happens in a world where they have little control otherwise. They can build a tower or wreck a tower. They can use their imagination to envision the tower being a temple or a skyscraper.

Play in the midst of chaos is both an oasis and a necessary tool for assimilating into the adult world. The children are able to take objects (little wooden blocks) and fashion those objects into anything they would like--a tower, a line of blocks or a wreck on the ground. As they play, the children are learning about the world around them and how to interact with peers and adults.

As David Lloyd George has been rumored to say "The right to play is a child’s first claim on the community. Play is nature’s training for life. No community can infringe that right without doing deep and enduring harm to the minds and bodies of its citizens.” (David Lloyd George in 1926)

"The right to play is a child’s first claim on the community. Play is nature’s training for life. No community can infringe that right without doing deep and enduring harm to the minds and bodies of its citizens.” --David Lloyd George circa 1926

Adults and Play

In life, we are never done training or learning so we should never be done with play--not as children and not as adults. To continue learning is to continue playing. But adults often lose their way and no longer have access to play or worse, choose not to play. Analytics, an obsession with numbers and "we're a serious business...we don't have time for play" all lead to unintended consequences and, I would argue, a sort of an end to learning. Or at least to the joy that should be associated with learning. When there is no learning through play, what's the alternative? Learning through drudgery? What a sad fate.

When there is no learning through play, what's the alternative? Learning through drudgery? What a sad fate.

However, the real-life constraints on employee time and commitments to projects and "real work" stifle an organization's appetite for play and, I would argue, real, deep learning. Unstructured, unfocused time is not what many would call "productive time" Although, arguments can be made for the value of unstructured, unfocused activities, organizations want more structure--they want the lesson I've learned from exploring the gift shop at the Burj Khalifa.

Applying Lessons from the Burj Khalifa

The Burj Khalifa located in Dubai is, for a short while longer, the tallest building in the world. The Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia is set to take the crown from the Burj Khalifa but that too may be short lived as many countries, including China, are in the process of building ever taller skyscrapers.

The aspect of Burj Khalifa that caught my attention was the inevitable "exit through the gift shop" which is now a required process for leaving any major (or minor) tourist attraction. Actually, it was not the gift shop itself that caught my attention so much as what was offered in the gift shop.

One could buy (and I did) almost any type of a scale model kit of the Burj Khalifa. You could build your own replica out of many different materials: wooden pieces, paper pieces, Lego-like bricks and an actual Lego version.

And these versions are not really aimed at kids, the Architecture series created by Lego definitely has an "adult" feel with histories of the buildings and an "adult" presentation of the packaging and directions. Yes, the boxes indicate 12+ but the kits are definitely aimed at the "+" part of that statement.

The need to build and create is as alive in adults as in the children of Hanoi. Not everyone can engineer and architect the world's tallest building but they can recreate a miniature version and display in their own home.

Structured Play

A Lego kit or other model is, for lack of a better term, structured play. A model building kit allows you to play within a defined structure. You know your end goal and you can take some diversions to get there but, for the most part, you need to follow a defined path. Yet, you have freedom and a bit of creativity to explore the building process, the dynamics of putting the pieces together and the challenge of seeing what you can create (with a bit of guided help.)

It's not "ideal" play but it is a form of play that can work well within a rigid corporate structure. And it is being done.

I've seen Lego bricks used in a workshop held in Brazil led by my friend Flora Alves to help participants visualize the corporate structure in which they operate and my friend and colleague Kevin Thorn uses Lego bricks in creative ways to help people visualize themselves, others and their organizations through the process of building with the bricks. Structured play can be a powerful tool for learning and self-reflection.

A "structured" play activity I've done when facilitating a game-design workshops is to ask participates to build a game from scratch.

The main parameters are given for the game. Then the team works within those parameters to create a board game. It's both fun and instructional.

The parameters serve many functions but the most important is to help the teams complete the work on time and to help them stay focused. But the freedom lets them explore, imagine and experience freedom of choice and direction that didactic instruction doesn't allow.

While play is often unfocused, in a corporate session, their is a real opportunity mix unfocused with focused activities. The trick is balance between the two.

Conclusion

To abandon play at either the personal or the professional level is not a sign of maturity but a sign of stagnation. Play and games are tools for sense-making, exploration and imagination.

These are all important aspects of a corporate culture as well as the larger culture around us. When we choose to purposefully ban play from our work, the separation is not healthy or productive. Instead, we need to leverage the powerful lessons that play provides. And to channel that power into innovation, productivity, problem-solving and, eventually, profits.

Immerse Yourself in Play

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 Lynda.com courses "The Gamification of Learning" as well as "Gamification for Interactive Learning"

Follow Karl on Twitter @kkapp.