Games, Play, Inspiration Around the World: Part IV

Recently, I had the opportunity to examine the role of games and game playing in six 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 and development 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 fourth 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 you can see part two here and part three here and see part four here and part five here.

It's hot in Cambodia, bloody hot, sweat pouring down your body hot. So hiking from the entrance to Angkor Wat into the depths of the ancient ruins is not exactly fun. But once you enter the grounds and start exploring, you forget about being hot or tired you just stare at the wondrous surroundings.

The Angkor ruins are one of the most fascinating places we visited on our trip. There are amazing ancient temples and cities that the Western world hadn't even known existed until they were "re-discovered" one day in 1860 (after having been written about as early as 1507). It's easy to imagine what it must have been like to come across the now famous Angkor Wat covered with trees, vines and over grown with vegetation but teeming with cultural treasures and artifacts.

For me, it is easy to see how one could be inspired by the location and experience to create an action adventure game.

It struck me in the temple that one of the most frequently asked questions I get about learning game design is "Where did you get that idea for that game?" or "How should I come up with a game idea?" or "Tell me a good idea for my game."

The answer is that inspiration for learning games should come from all around us. The surrounds, the situation, and problems we are trying to solve, behaviors we want to influence are all inspiration we should leverage. In terms of temples and ruins, looking at well known entertainment games as an example, you can see that the exploration of ancient and uncharted places occupies quite a large space in gamemaker's imaginations.

Probably the first game that comes to mind when thinking about exploring ancient temples and moving through overgrown cities is Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and you can totally see influences of Angkor Wat in that game but that's not the only video game that allows you to explore lost civilizations. One of my favorite video game franchises is the Uncharted Series where you follow/play Nathan Drake as he hunts treasure around the world.

I would argue that the Assassin's Creed series provides wonderful opportunities to explore ancient ruins and civilizations (actually often before they are "ruins"). On your mobile phone you can play Temple Run where you grab the idol and run... or you can play the board game; Escape - The Curse of the Temple.

Fantasy as Inspiration

Ancient places and times can serve as inspiration for the design of games. And, I know, you might be developing a "serious" learning game and not be so interested in a "fantasy" location but it turns out fantasy can be an effective tool in learning.

The use of fantasy in game design provides a number of learning benefits. In terms of the cognitive benefits, the issues confronted and successfully resolved in the fantasy world (such as an ancient temple) provide the learner with natural constructive feedback in an uninhibited interaction. The learner is often more open to receiving feedback in a fantasy world because it is unfamiliar and they need feedback to understand the new environment. 

In terms of emotional impact, fantasy provokes vivid images related to the material being learned, thus improving the learner’s memory of the material. Emotionally, fantasy also helps to break down the defenses of a learner. When confronted with many sales situations, the learner may feel he or she is already well versed in their subject viewing the training process as a waste of time. Fantasy helps to break down that resistance because the environment is new, novel and different.

So exotic, fantasy locations can serve as inspiration for creating a learning game. But that's not the only source of inspiration.

Inspiration from Ideas

Moving from the tangible (places) to the non-tangible (ideas) it's easy to see how one can derive ideas from normal, every day concepts or problems or stories. Or even self-imposed design limitations.

In London, when viewing the Victoria and Albert museum's exhibit, "Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt," there was the question "how do I find an idea for my game." It's a universal question.

The London-based exhibit dedicated an entire section to describing and detailing where game designers seek and achieve inspiration. I found it particularly fascinating that often inspiration comes from a challenge the game designer poses for her or himself. For the game Journey, an indie developed adventure game, one concept the game designers wanted to explore was how to communicate without text or speech.

In the game, a player travels through the desert and can meet other players but cannot speak to them or write to them or communicate in any way except through musical chimes.

Designing that kind of inter-play between players is a non-trivial tasks. And required the exploration of several different ideas to accomplish that goal.

One of the concept designs from early in the development process involved working on the eyes of the player's character to help convey meaning.

However, the design team found that detailed eyes introduce an element of cultural bias. So they backed away from that idea and instead worked toward featureless faces. Players would need to communicate primarily through sounds via whistles and chirrups. This speaks to the iterative nature of game design and the need to explore and develop ideas to see how viable they may be for actual game play. It also speaks to the need to keep with an original overarching concept and trouble-shooting methods to stay true to the concept even if the execution might not be as originally planned.

In the case of Journey, the concept of not communicating through voice or text remained but the idea of communicating through facial expressions or eye movement was explored and abandoned for a more musical solution.

Another game displayed at the exhibit was Kentucky Route Zero. This is an adventure game where the designers decided to forgo traditional puzzle solving mechanics (which are present in many adventure games...Myst for example) and, instead, focus on mood and narrative elements like the character's internal dialogue and exploring the character's feelings in a surreal and mystical environment.

The games is described as magic realist adventure game about a secret highway in Kentucky and the mysterious folks who travel it.

As the developers explain that, "the player controls Conway, an antique furniture deliveryman, as he attempts to complete the final delivery for his financially troubled employer. Along the way he'll meet dozens of strange characters and make a few new friends to help him overcome the obstacles in his path."

The developers also indicate that the Gameplay in Kentucky Route Zero is slow-paced. It centers around exploring new environments and talking with new people. The inspiration for the game comes from literature, experimental film, brutalist architecture and scenography. There is a mixing-bowl of influence and inspiration is what makes the game so immersive even when you are only interacting with text-on-screen.

Inspiration from Objects

Even objects that we encounter on a frequent basis can influence the design or at least the aesthetics of how we design a learning game. For example, looking at the architecture of the Dalhousie Castle Hotel, one could not but help envision a rook.

It's not a stretch to think about how castles, everyday structures at one point were incorporated into the ancient game of Chess.

They represent strength and permanence but also are symbols that would have been easily recognized and even a place people had visited or seen within their life time.

Lessons Learned

Answering the question of "where do I get ideas for my learning games:" perhaps the three easiest places for inspiration are exotic locales, everyday activities and, ultimately, what problem or issue or behavior are you trying to impact. If everyday objects like a castle feature can be turned into a game piece, you can easily take every day tasks like filling out a TPS report and turn it into a game...all you need is a little imagination.

If you want to see a game about "paperwork" see Papers, Please.

Find Your Own Inspiration

If you’d like to find some inspiration and 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 a game, tapping into your drawing ability, pretend playing as a leader and 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 several LinkedIn Learning courses including "The Gamification of Learning" as well as "Gamification for Interactive Learning"

Follow Karl on Twitter @kkapp.