WEBVTT 00:00:00.090 --> 00:00:02.500 The following content is provided under a Creative 00:00:02.500 --> 00:00:04.019 Commons license. 00:00:04.019 --> 00:00:06.360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 00:00:06.360 --> 00:00:10.730 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 00:00:10.730 --> 00:00:13.330 To make a donation or view additional materials 00:00:13.330 --> 00:00:17.215 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 00:00:17.215 --> 00:00:17.840 at ocw.mit.edu. 00:00:21.985 --> 00:00:24.360 PROFESSOR: So today in class, we've got a guest lecturer. 00:00:24.360 --> 00:00:26.840 Scott Osterweil from the MIT Education Arcade at MIT Game 00:00:26.840 --> 00:00:29.380 Lab's going to be talking to us about learning 00:00:29.380 --> 00:00:33.867 and play in games to put us in the mindset for the games 00:00:33.867 --> 00:00:35.700 that you're making that feel like they might 00:00:35.700 --> 00:00:40.520 be educational or more about awareness, to take 00:00:40.520 --> 00:00:43.180 some ideas from him on that. 00:00:43.180 --> 00:00:45.180 Then after that, we're going to do a play test. 00:00:45.180 --> 00:00:46.620 So this is your first opportunity 00:00:46.620 --> 00:00:51.400 to give staff and clients, if our clients show up, 00:00:51.400 --> 00:00:53.860 the experience of playing your games 00:00:53.860 --> 00:00:56.700 and giving you some feedback on the low-fidelity prototypes 00:00:56.700 --> 00:00:57.720 that you have right now. 00:00:57.720 --> 00:01:01.007 And again, they could be digital or non digital. 00:01:01.007 --> 00:01:02.590 That's going to be pretty quick today. 00:01:02.590 --> 00:01:04.860 We don't need everybody to play everybody else's games, 00:01:04.860 --> 00:01:05.610 if you don't like. 00:01:05.610 --> 00:01:09.000 So what we're going have you do is set up your games. 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:11.240 I expect if they're paper, you probably only 00:01:11.240 --> 00:01:13.699 have one copy of your game running at any one time. 00:01:13.699 --> 00:01:15.240 So just make sure that everyone who's 00:01:15.240 --> 00:01:18.952 on the team who is not playing is observing and taking notes. 00:01:18.952 --> 00:01:20.910 If you do have digital and would like to set up 00:01:20.910 --> 00:01:22.730 multiple stations, please do. 00:01:22.730 --> 00:01:24.940 It's always helpful. 00:01:24.940 --> 00:01:27.580 Our next play test is November 5. 00:01:27.580 --> 00:01:31.606 We're having the class from 21W032, 00:01:31.606 --> 00:01:33.230 the Introduction to Digital Media class 00:01:33.230 --> 00:01:34.997 taught by Ed Barrett. 00:01:34.997 --> 00:01:37.330 They'll be coming in at the end of the day at about 3:00 00:01:37.330 --> 00:01:40.380 PM to test your digital games. 00:01:40.380 --> 00:01:43.150 So on November 5, it's a good opportunity 00:01:43.150 --> 00:01:47.430 for a first playable version of your digital game 00:01:47.430 --> 00:01:52.530 to get tested by people who are not in the class. 00:01:52.530 --> 00:01:55.080 And then after play test today, we'll take a quick break. 00:01:55.080 --> 00:01:57.580 And then we'll do presentations where each team will come up 00:01:57.580 --> 00:02:00.030 here, and you've basically got the floor for two minutes. 00:02:00.030 --> 00:02:02.830 We want to hear what is the state your game right now, 00:02:02.830 --> 00:02:05.580 basically referring back to your product backlog. 00:02:05.580 --> 00:02:08.180 What are the features that are planned? 00:02:08.180 --> 00:02:09.269 What did you test today? 00:02:09.269 --> 00:02:10.810 What does your build look like today, 00:02:10.810 --> 00:02:13.610 your low-fidelity prototype look like today? 00:02:13.610 --> 00:02:15.720 And just let us know how it's going. 00:02:15.720 --> 00:02:18.410 We're going to ask for a number of these short two-minute 00:02:18.410 --> 00:02:22.280 presentations throughout the rest of the semester. 00:02:22.280 --> 00:02:28.730 And those dates are in the handout for project four. 00:02:28.730 --> 00:02:31.400 And I'll be making mention of them as we go along. 00:02:31.400 --> 00:02:34.360 And then the remainder of class, you've got about hour 00:02:34.360 --> 00:02:38.570 to an hour and a half at the end of class to work in class. 00:02:38.570 --> 00:02:41.490 I'm going to let you know how much time you're 00:02:41.490 --> 00:02:44.676 going to have time for working in class for future days. 00:02:44.676 --> 00:02:47.050 This Wednesday, you'll probably have about two full hours 00:02:47.050 --> 00:02:50.821 in class to work, looking at what our lecture schedule looks 00:02:50.821 --> 00:02:51.320 like. 00:02:51.320 --> 00:02:53.280 So that's that. 00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:56.140 Any questions about what we're doing today? 00:02:56.140 --> 00:02:59.660 Any questions about project four? 00:02:59.660 --> 00:03:00.160 OK. 00:03:00.160 --> 00:03:03.490 I'm going to hand it off to Scott. 00:03:03.490 --> 00:03:05.110 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: [INAUDIBLE], this 00:03:05.110 --> 00:03:07.390 is the [INAUDIBLE] switch you were talking about? 00:03:07.390 --> 00:03:09.390 PROFESSOR: Yep, I'm switching it over right now. 00:03:12.601 --> 00:03:14.600 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Well, it's nice to see you all. 00:03:14.600 --> 00:03:18.860 I see at least two faces from-- three from classes 00:03:18.860 --> 00:03:22.020 that I taught, so forgive me for those of you who may 00:03:22.020 --> 00:03:25.440 have heard some of this before. 00:03:25.440 --> 00:03:27.780 So this was sort of teed up as if I'm 00:03:27.780 --> 00:03:29.440 going to talk to you about education, 00:03:29.440 --> 00:03:31.115 but I'm actually not going to talk to you about education. 00:03:31.115 --> 00:03:33.710 I'm going to talk to you about something else entirely. 00:03:33.710 --> 00:03:35.668 Maybe we'll get around to education by the time 00:03:35.668 --> 00:03:37.100 we're done. 00:03:37.100 --> 00:03:41.520 But what I want you to do right now-- hang on one second-- 00:03:41.520 --> 00:03:44.317 is turn to the person next to you 00:03:44.317 --> 00:03:45.900 and play a quick round of tic-tac-toe. 00:03:48.640 --> 00:03:53.340 So I do like doing this, even though it's 00:03:53.340 --> 00:03:55.580 hard to get people to stop. 00:03:55.580 --> 00:03:58.610 It's actually kind of interesting to me. 00:03:58.610 --> 00:04:02.150 When I've done this with an audience of about 300 people, 00:04:02.150 --> 00:04:05.820 it takes a long time to corral everybody back, 00:04:05.820 --> 00:04:07.539 which is really remarkable. 00:04:07.539 --> 00:04:09.080 If you weren't playing a game, I hope 00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:10.310 you were at least looking around and noticing 00:04:10.310 --> 00:04:12.060 that the room got kind of loud and there 00:04:12.060 --> 00:04:14.840 was a fair amount of laughter, and noise, and animation, 00:04:14.840 --> 00:04:16.390 which is really remarkable when you 00:04:16.390 --> 00:04:20.630 consider the fact that tic-tac-toe is a stupid game. 00:04:20.630 --> 00:04:22.264 That by age eight, you had figured out 00:04:22.264 --> 00:04:24.180 that there was no point in playing tic-tac-toe 00:04:24.180 --> 00:04:26.013 because you almost always play it to a draw. 00:04:28.330 --> 00:04:31.990 I'm always amazed when I ask a bunch of adults, which you are, 00:04:31.990 --> 00:04:35.350 to play tic-tac-toe, how into it they get. 00:04:38.700 --> 00:04:41.510 And I think in the end, it's the thing I really want 00:04:41.510 --> 00:04:43.530 to talk about, which is play. 00:04:43.530 --> 00:04:46.100 I know you guys have been in a class studying games. 00:04:46.100 --> 00:04:48.310 Have you talked much about the word play? 00:04:48.310 --> 00:04:48.810 Good. 00:04:51.850 --> 00:04:54.050 We are all in the business of making games, 00:04:54.050 --> 00:04:56.180 and yet we don't stop much to think about play. 00:04:56.180 --> 00:05:00.752 But play is not something that was invented with the Atari. 00:05:00.752 --> 00:05:02.710 People have been playing games for a long time. 00:05:02.710 --> 00:05:05.850 The oldest known game implements are older 00:05:05.850 --> 00:05:07.810 than the oldest known writing. 00:05:11.104 --> 00:05:13.020 I don't know how many of you know art history, 00:05:13.020 --> 00:05:14.810 but this is the late 16th century 00:05:14.810 --> 00:05:17.480 in what's now Belgium, the low countries-- 00:05:17.480 --> 00:05:20.140 Flanders in those days. 00:05:20.140 --> 00:05:23.150 The great genre painter Pieter Bruegel, 00:05:23.150 --> 00:05:26.880 who did a painting called Children's Games, in which he 00:05:26.880 --> 00:05:29.830 documented over 100 games that scholars have 00:05:29.830 --> 00:05:31.695 been able to identify as real games that 00:05:31.695 --> 00:05:32.820 were played at that time. 00:05:32.820 --> 00:05:38.100 And if you think about it, at that point 00:05:38.100 --> 00:05:40.820 there wasn't really much of a thing called childhood. 00:05:40.820 --> 00:05:43.010 That by the age of 11 or 12, you were probably 00:05:43.010 --> 00:05:46.200 working in the family business, whatever it was. 00:05:46.200 --> 00:05:50.210 You were expected to take on adult responsibilities. 00:05:50.210 --> 00:05:53.926 And yet clearly, play was still a huge part of their lives. 00:05:53.926 --> 00:05:55.300 Now, this is a fanciful painting. 00:05:55.300 --> 00:05:59.210 He was not trying to be realistic here. 00:05:59.210 --> 00:06:04.580 But the point was play was a huge part of their lives then. 00:06:04.580 --> 00:06:06.950 So we know that they were playing back 00:06:06.950 --> 00:06:08.890 in the 16th century. 00:06:08.890 --> 00:06:11.460 We know they were playing 6,000 years ago. 00:06:11.460 --> 00:06:15.650 We actually know that our ancestors played too, 00:06:15.650 --> 00:06:17.400 that other vertebrates play. 00:06:17.400 --> 00:06:20.870 In fact, Edwin Wilson has sort of argued that ants play too, 00:06:20.870 --> 00:06:24.752 but let's just stick to vertebrates for a minute. 00:06:24.752 --> 00:06:27.580 When mountain goats play-- there's a alpine mountain 00:06:27.580 --> 00:06:30.130 goat-- they play by-- and by the way, 00:06:30.130 --> 00:06:32.470 let me just say quickly from my definition, 00:06:32.470 --> 00:06:35.040 play is the stuff you do when you don't 00:06:35.040 --> 00:06:36.500 have to do something else. 00:06:36.500 --> 00:06:38.040 You don't have to get food. 00:06:38.040 --> 00:06:41.840 You don't have to evade capture, or protect your young, 00:06:41.840 --> 00:06:44.667 or procreate, or find shelter. 00:06:44.667 --> 00:06:47.000 When you don't have to do all that stuff-- some of which 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:49.070 you do playfully, by the way-- but when 00:06:49.070 --> 00:06:52.140 you don't have to do that stuff and you're on your own, 00:06:52.140 --> 00:06:54.070 you play. 00:06:54.070 --> 00:06:56.740 And so mountain goats play by actually chasing 00:06:56.740 --> 00:06:59.270 each other around the mountains and jumping from cliff 00:06:59.270 --> 00:07:00.752 to cliff, ledge to ledge. 00:07:00.752 --> 00:07:02.210 And they do it in spite of the fact 00:07:02.210 --> 00:07:03.751 that mountain goats will occasionally 00:07:03.751 --> 00:07:05.380 fall to their deaths. 00:07:05.380 --> 00:07:07.120 And if we know anything about evolution, 00:07:07.120 --> 00:07:10.430 we know the behaviors that lead to the deaths of individuals 00:07:10.430 --> 00:07:13.030 are behaviors that are more likely to die out, 00:07:13.030 --> 00:07:17.190 unless there is some advantage to the behavior that 00:07:17.190 --> 00:07:19.170 outweighs the risk. 00:07:19.170 --> 00:07:21.010 And it would easy to assume from this 00:07:21.010 --> 00:07:22.510 that mountain goats are learning how 00:07:22.510 --> 00:07:26.370 to do the things they need to do, like jump and land 00:07:26.370 --> 00:07:27.542 on precarious ledges. 00:07:27.542 --> 00:07:29.750 That that's what they're learning through their play. 00:07:29.750 --> 00:07:32.330 We might extend that thinking when 00:07:32.330 --> 00:07:34.470 we look at an image like this. 00:07:34.470 --> 00:07:37.940 By the way, you can find images like this on the internet. 00:07:37.940 --> 00:07:43.710 Anyway, so we've all seen images of cats or puppies 00:07:43.710 --> 00:07:46.355 fighting, playing at games that look like fighting or hunting. 00:07:50.760 --> 00:07:53.460 And if we take that example and the example of the mountain 00:07:53.460 --> 00:07:58.290 goats, it's easy to conclude that play is about rote memory. 00:07:58.290 --> 00:08:05.360 It's about learning to do things through repetition. 00:08:05.360 --> 00:08:09.390 But they've done a study where they prevented kittens 00:08:09.390 --> 00:08:11.550 from the opportunity to play while they grow up, 00:08:11.550 --> 00:08:12.950 play with other cats. 00:08:12.950 --> 00:08:16.665 And it turns out they learn how to hunt just fine. 00:08:16.665 --> 00:08:18.040 What they don't know how to do is 00:08:18.040 --> 00:08:20.172 how to interact with other cats or make 00:08:20.172 --> 00:08:21.380 other more complex decisions. 00:08:24.987 --> 00:08:27.070 What I'm going to argue is play is about something 00:08:27.070 --> 00:08:32.450 far more involved that just sort of rote memory and repetition. 00:08:32.450 --> 00:08:35.059 Last animal example. 00:08:35.059 --> 00:08:37.799 They did a study where they gave an otter a fish every time 00:08:37.799 --> 00:08:39.270 it swam through a hoop. 00:08:39.270 --> 00:08:42.230 Now, if you think about what an otter's needs are, 00:08:42.230 --> 00:08:45.090 that otter was rich beyond its wildest dreams. 00:08:45.090 --> 00:08:46.880 Everything it needed was right there just 00:08:46.880 --> 00:08:48.270 by swimming through the hoop. 00:08:48.270 --> 00:08:51.587 So did the otter retire as we might do if all our needs were 00:08:51.587 --> 00:08:52.170 taken care of? 00:08:52.170 --> 00:08:54.470 No, it started swimming through the hoop upside down, 00:08:54.470 --> 00:08:55.960 backwards. 00:08:55.960 --> 00:08:58.310 Playing with a hoop with its way of exploring 00:08:58.310 --> 00:09:00.736 how the world worked. 00:09:00.736 --> 00:09:02.610 The otters-- I assume there's more than one-- 00:09:02.610 --> 00:09:05.694 the otters knew that swimming through a hoop got fish. 00:09:05.694 --> 00:09:07.610 They wanted to find out what else it could do. 00:09:10.140 --> 00:09:14.360 And again, this is when survival is no longer an issue. 00:09:14.360 --> 00:09:18.170 So play is really the way in which we explore the world. 00:09:18.170 --> 00:09:20.300 Just looking at these images of children, 00:09:20.300 --> 00:09:23.430 there are four different continents here, 00:09:23.430 --> 00:09:25.580 four very different kinds of games. 00:09:25.580 --> 00:09:28.716 But I'd argue the affect is the same in all of them, 00:09:28.716 --> 00:09:30.340 and that what's going on in all of them 00:09:30.340 --> 00:09:34.710 is the same thing, that the kids in these pictures 00:09:34.710 --> 00:09:37.410 are really constructing their understanding of the world 00:09:37.410 --> 00:09:39.920 through play. 00:09:39.920 --> 00:09:42.820 What I want to argue is that through play, we 00:09:42.820 --> 00:09:47.850 begin to build the kinds of conceptual structures 00:09:47.850 --> 00:09:50.910 that we are going to then engage with more formally 00:09:50.910 --> 00:09:52.710 in other spheres of life. 00:09:52.710 --> 00:09:56.040 And I could argue that it's only for children, 00:09:56.040 --> 00:09:58.611 but I'm going to argue further that it 00:09:58.611 --> 00:09:59.760 doesn't stop in childhood. 00:09:59.760 --> 00:10:01.635 But sticking with childhood for just a moment 00:10:01.635 --> 00:10:04.510 and using my own personal example. 00:10:04.510 --> 00:10:08.355 I loved playing with blocks when I was a kid. 00:10:08.355 --> 00:10:09.730 And this is all pre-kindergarten. 00:10:09.730 --> 00:10:11.870 I can remember the pleasure of discovering 00:10:11.870 --> 00:10:14.940 that two square blocks were the same size as one 00:10:14.940 --> 00:10:17.580 rectangular block, and two rectangular blocks 00:10:17.580 --> 00:10:19.470 were the same size as one big block. 00:10:19.470 --> 00:10:22.590 And the kicker was that that was equal to four 00:10:22.590 --> 00:10:25.580 of the little square blocks, and that those relationships could 00:10:25.580 --> 00:10:27.236 then be replicated elsewhere. 00:10:27.236 --> 00:10:29.360 That that was a pattern that I could find elsewhere 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:30.120 in the world. 00:10:30.120 --> 00:10:33.980 And so pre-kindergarten now, what I am really doing 00:10:33.980 --> 00:10:40.640 is developing a primitive, but I would say robust sense 00:10:40.640 --> 00:10:43.380 that math is the way we actually model the world. 00:10:43.380 --> 00:10:46.100 That we can actually model the world mathematically. 00:10:46.100 --> 00:10:49.330 Now obviously, as four-year-old, me couldn't have said that. 00:10:49.330 --> 00:10:52.900 Four-year-old me couldn't even necessarily answer 2 plus 2 00:10:52.900 --> 00:10:54.400 equals. 00:10:54.400 --> 00:10:56.700 But four-year-old me knew something far more robust. 00:10:56.700 --> 00:10:59.640 I was starting to really understand 00:10:59.640 --> 00:11:02.110 that the world could be described mathematically, 00:11:02.110 --> 00:11:04.529 and that that was why I was primed to be 00:11:04.529 --> 00:11:05.820 a relatively good math student. 00:11:08.890 --> 00:11:12.557 The challenge, though, is that I just played with blocks the way 00:11:12.557 --> 00:11:13.640 I chose to play with them. 00:11:13.640 --> 00:11:14.320 No one made me. 00:11:14.320 --> 00:11:17.130 In fact, if you'd sat me down and say play with blocks 00:11:17.130 --> 00:11:20.150 and discover what you can about numbers, I might have refused 00:11:20.150 --> 00:11:21.840 and age four. 00:11:21.840 --> 00:11:24.830 Players' motivations are entirely intrinsic and personal 00:11:24.830 --> 00:11:26.600 in all play. 00:11:26.600 --> 00:11:28.749 You cannot make somebody play. 00:11:28.749 --> 00:11:31.040 I think it's helpful to think about it as if there were 00:11:31.040 --> 00:11:34.300 four freedoms present in play. 00:11:34.300 --> 00:11:37.230 Freedom to experiment. 00:11:37.230 --> 00:11:38.990 I thought I had revised the slides. 00:11:38.990 --> 00:11:40.240 I really sort of revised that. 00:11:40.240 --> 00:11:45.617 I think it's better say freedom to explore is the better word. 00:11:45.617 --> 00:11:47.200 But what I was doing with those blocks 00:11:47.200 --> 00:11:49.520 was seeing things about the blocks that were not-- 00:11:49.520 --> 00:11:51.139 the package showed pictures of things 00:11:51.139 --> 00:11:52.930 you could build with the blocks, but that's 00:11:52.930 --> 00:11:54.120 not what I was doing. 00:11:54.120 --> 00:11:56.160 I was sort of exploring properties of the blocks 00:11:56.160 --> 00:11:59.520 that no one was telling me to look for. 00:11:59.520 --> 00:12:01.470 Freedom to fail. 00:12:01.470 --> 00:12:03.830 If you played with blocks, you probably 00:12:03.830 --> 00:12:05.850 built a tower that eventually fell down, 00:12:05.850 --> 00:12:08.711 and you probably learned a lot from the tower falling down. 00:12:08.711 --> 00:12:10.460 You probably, in fact, persisted at trying 00:12:10.460 --> 00:12:11.585 to get the tower to stand up. 00:12:11.585 --> 00:12:13.920 And along the way, you were learning all sorts of stuff 00:12:13.920 --> 00:12:16.610 about mechanics and physics. 00:12:16.610 --> 00:12:19.160 Freedom of identity. 00:12:19.160 --> 00:12:21.980 If you think about doll play for a minute, 00:12:21.980 --> 00:12:26.290 a kid in the floor of their room acting out 00:12:26.290 --> 00:12:29.760 conflict between two dolls, or stuffed animals, or action 00:12:29.760 --> 00:12:33.480 figures is really exploring all the roles in their own family, 00:12:33.480 --> 00:12:35.070 in their world. 00:12:35.070 --> 00:12:37.450 A kid who plays at Luke Skywalker versus Darth 00:12:37.450 --> 00:12:40.280 Vader is really figuring out what part of him 00:12:40.280 --> 00:12:42.690 or herself is Luke Skywalker and what part 00:12:42.690 --> 00:12:46.670 is Darth Vader, because we think we have both of them in us. 00:12:46.670 --> 00:12:48.700 And that's what we explore through play. 00:12:48.700 --> 00:12:52.620 In less than a week, on Friday, a fair number of you 00:12:52.620 --> 00:12:55.970 are going to engage in identity play at a fairly large scale, 00:12:55.970 --> 00:12:58.630 so it's not just a childhood thing. 00:12:58.630 --> 00:13:02.400 I mean, I'm talking about Halloween, obviously. 00:13:02.400 --> 00:13:04.940 And anyone who's ever played World of Warcraft 00:13:04.940 --> 00:13:09.780 or any number of games knows that in fact, through games, 00:13:09.780 --> 00:13:12.530 we play with our identity over time. 00:13:12.530 --> 00:13:15.230 Finally, freedom of effort is the freedom 00:13:15.230 --> 00:13:18.460 to really play hard or play relaxed. 00:13:18.460 --> 00:13:20.490 You cannot make somebody play hard. 00:13:20.490 --> 00:13:23.030 And if you watched the pattern of play, 00:13:23.030 --> 00:13:25.230 people will play intensely. 00:13:25.230 --> 00:13:26.802 They will suddenly ease up. 00:13:26.802 --> 00:13:28.760 Again, stick to World of Warcraft for a minute, 00:13:28.760 --> 00:13:29.926 sometimes you want to grind. 00:13:29.926 --> 00:13:33.110 You just want to do the mindless stuff for a while. 00:13:33.110 --> 00:13:36.010 And sometimes you want to enter into an intense battle. 00:13:36.010 --> 00:13:37.070 They both happen. 00:13:37.070 --> 00:13:39.179 So here's the challenge for us. 00:13:39.179 --> 00:13:40.720 The player's motivations are entirely 00:13:40.720 --> 00:13:44.670 intrinsic and personal, as I've already said. 00:13:44.670 --> 00:13:47.500 And I'm also arguing that obviously, learning 00:13:47.500 --> 00:13:48.930 is happening through play. 00:13:48.930 --> 00:13:50.690 But how do we channel play into learning 00:13:50.690 --> 00:13:52.440 while still allowing for its fundamentally 00:13:52.440 --> 00:13:54.644 open-ended nature? 00:13:54.644 --> 00:13:56.060 So if you, as Rick said, are going 00:13:56.060 --> 00:14:00.010 to be making games in which you want to-- well, 00:14:00.010 --> 00:14:04.520 I hope you're thinking about real learning rather than just 00:14:04.520 --> 00:14:05.900 conveying information. 00:14:05.900 --> 00:14:07.300 And I'll get to that in a minute. 00:14:07.300 --> 00:14:10.200 But whatever it is you're doing, theoretically you 00:14:10.200 --> 00:14:12.240 want to make a good game, they still 00:14:12.240 --> 00:14:14.842 have to have the freedom to play. 00:14:14.842 --> 00:14:16.300 You don't have a game without play. 00:14:16.300 --> 00:14:18.040 You can have something that has the structure of a game 00:14:18.040 --> 00:14:19.220 without play, but it won't really 00:14:19.220 --> 00:14:20.770 be a game if they're not playing. 00:14:20.770 --> 00:14:23.520 But anyway, so that's where games come in. 00:14:23.520 --> 00:14:27.520 That's how we can channel learning sometimes 00:14:27.520 --> 00:14:28.730 while still being open ended. 00:14:28.730 --> 00:14:32.215 And just to use the most absurd example, think about golf. 00:14:32.215 --> 00:14:36.900 It was Bernard Suits who originally used this example. 00:14:36.900 --> 00:14:39.220 But in golf, you're hitting a very small ball 00:14:39.220 --> 00:14:41.770 with a very long stick. 00:14:41.770 --> 00:14:43.920 Anyone golf here? 00:14:43.920 --> 00:14:47.850 Yeah, that's what the normal percentage is in a class. 00:14:47.850 --> 00:14:48.895 But it's hard, right ? 00:14:48.895 --> 00:14:50.520 The first time you swung the golf club, 00:14:50.520 --> 00:14:53.330 you might have missed the ball entirely, right? 00:14:53.330 --> 00:14:54.639 Yeah. 00:14:54.639 --> 00:14:56.930 Sometimes even when you start connecting with the ball, 00:14:56.930 --> 00:14:58.540 it goes the wrong direction. 00:14:58.540 --> 00:15:00.421 It goes 10 feet, 20 feet. 00:15:00.421 --> 00:15:02.170 When you can finally hit it some distance, 00:15:02.170 --> 00:15:04.550 it goes into the water, it goes into the woods. 00:15:04.550 --> 00:15:07.880 It costs $2.50 every time you lose a ball. 00:15:07.880 --> 00:15:10.390 If your goal, after all, is to get the ball in the hole, 00:15:10.390 --> 00:15:12.723 why don't you just pick it up, and walk to the other end 00:15:12.723 --> 00:15:13.860 of course, and drop it in? 00:15:13.860 --> 00:15:15.360 The golf game would go much quicker. 00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:16.640 You'd never lose a ball. 00:15:16.640 --> 00:15:19.580 You have a lot more success. 00:15:19.580 --> 00:15:22.380 But no one chooses to play golf that way. 00:15:22.380 --> 00:15:24.980 If you think about it, people choose 00:15:24.980 --> 00:15:27.720 to play golf by moving the ball to the hole 00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:32.640 in the single stupidest way possible. 00:15:32.640 --> 00:15:34.540 And as Bernard Suits said in this context, 00:15:34.540 --> 00:15:36.130 games are really about overcoming 00:15:36.130 --> 00:15:38.200 unnecessary obstacles. 00:15:38.200 --> 00:15:41.410 And unnecessary is critical here because every game 00:15:41.410 --> 00:15:43.710 is, by definition, unnecessary. 00:15:43.710 --> 00:15:46.810 If you're really playing, it's voluntary. 00:15:46.810 --> 00:15:48.470 It's not required. 00:15:48.470 --> 00:15:50.490 Your survival does not depend on it. 00:15:50.490 --> 00:15:53.274 So by definition, every game is unnecessary, 00:15:53.274 --> 00:15:55.690 and therefore the obstacles in every game are unnecessary. 00:15:55.690 --> 00:15:58.520 And the game is the voluntary overcoming 00:15:58.520 --> 00:15:59.850 of unnecessary obstacles. 00:15:59.850 --> 00:16:01.450 So why do we do it? 00:16:01.450 --> 00:16:03.234 Why would we do all that? 00:16:03.234 --> 00:16:04.650 Well, in games we willingly submit 00:16:04.650 --> 00:16:06.700 to arbitrary rules and structures 00:16:06.700 --> 00:16:09.740 in pursuit of mastery because that's what's going on in golf. 00:16:09.740 --> 00:16:10.370 Even in golf. 00:16:13.760 --> 00:16:17.140 You think it's hard, and yet even though you missed the golf 00:16:17.140 --> 00:16:19.515 ball the first time, you think, I think I can hit it. 00:16:19.515 --> 00:16:20.890 And then eventually you do hit it 00:16:20.890 --> 00:16:22.598 and you say, I think I can hit it further 00:16:22.598 --> 00:16:24.440 and I think I can hit it straighter. 00:16:24.440 --> 00:16:26.739 And in fact, the game gives you feedback. 00:16:26.739 --> 00:16:28.530 The game is continually giving you feedback 00:16:28.530 --> 00:16:31.780 as to how you're doing. 00:16:31.780 --> 00:16:36.170 No matter how ridiculously hard golf is, 00:16:36.170 --> 00:16:38.555 you set for yourself proximal goals. 00:16:38.555 --> 00:16:41.370 I'm going to hit a little straighter, a little further. 00:16:41.370 --> 00:16:43.200 And the game lets you do that. 00:16:43.200 --> 00:16:44.720 No one runs out into the golf course 00:16:44.720 --> 00:16:48.270 and says, stop, you didn't hit the ball far enough, 00:16:48.270 --> 00:16:52.735 or yells at you and says, hit it further, further, right? 00:16:52.735 --> 00:16:54.920 They let you playfully explore what 00:16:54.920 --> 00:16:56.530 you can do with that golf ball. 00:16:56.530 --> 00:16:58.290 And you keep saying I'm getting better, 00:16:58.290 --> 00:17:00.230 and so you keep playing golf. 00:17:00.230 --> 00:17:03.370 And that's true with every game. 00:17:03.370 --> 00:17:06.290 And I'll talk about a couple other examples going forward 00:17:06.290 --> 00:17:07.140 about that. 00:17:07.140 --> 00:17:10.990 So games give you proximal goals which seem worth achieving, 00:17:10.990 --> 00:17:13.250 but only if you can continue to be playful. 00:17:13.250 --> 00:17:15.060 And that's I think the thing we sometimes 00:17:15.060 --> 00:17:18.200 lose sight of when we're making games is the playfulness. 00:17:18.200 --> 00:17:19.789 We remember the goal. 00:17:19.789 --> 00:17:21.830 We remember that there's an outcome that we want. 00:17:21.830 --> 00:17:25.160 And we remember that we want the player to get to that outcome. 00:17:25.160 --> 00:17:27.980 But we forget about playfulness, which means we 00:17:27.980 --> 00:17:29.510 either make a game that's too easy. 00:17:29.510 --> 00:17:31.295 We lead them right to the outcome. 00:17:31.295 --> 00:17:33.920 That's like picking up the ball , and walking to the other end, 00:17:33.920 --> 00:17:35.086 and dropping it in the hole. 00:17:35.086 --> 00:17:37.290 And a lot of games do that. 00:17:37.290 --> 00:17:41.399 Or we just figure I'm going to make it really hard. 00:17:41.399 --> 00:17:43.190 I don't care whether they enjoy themselves. 00:17:43.190 --> 00:17:44.669 They're going to get there. 00:17:44.669 --> 00:17:45.710 And of course they don't. 00:17:45.710 --> 00:17:46.270 They quit. 00:17:53.960 --> 00:17:55.710 It's one thing to define a challenge. 00:17:55.710 --> 00:17:57.130 That's important. 00:17:57.130 --> 00:18:00.030 The real art in it is defining a proximal challenge, 00:18:00.030 --> 00:18:01.244 one that people can reach. 00:18:01.244 --> 00:18:03.410 And I would argue that if you're talking about games 00:18:03.410 --> 00:18:05.450 in which you want to convey information 00:18:05.450 --> 00:18:08.480 or you want people to learn something, all of that 00:18:08.480 --> 00:18:09.212 has to hold true. 00:18:09.212 --> 00:18:10.920 And in fact, the other thing I'm arguing, 00:18:10.920 --> 00:18:13.260 obviously, is that at in every game, people are learning. 00:18:13.260 --> 00:18:14.801 That the reason you like playing golf 00:18:14.801 --> 00:18:16.530 is because you're learning. 00:18:16.530 --> 00:18:19.110 And Raph Koster sets this out really well 00:18:19.110 --> 00:18:21.650 in the Theory of Fun, the book A Theory of Fun. 00:18:21.650 --> 00:18:23.590 But that basically, the fundamental pleasure 00:18:23.590 --> 00:18:25.690 of gameplay is learning, is learning 00:18:25.690 --> 00:18:28.706 to master the game, which means in a sense, 00:18:28.706 --> 00:18:30.080 if you're doing a game and you've 00:18:30.080 --> 00:18:35.180 got some goal for some learning to happen, all you've got to do 00:18:35.180 --> 00:18:37.320 is make that learning interesting and worth 00:18:37.320 --> 00:18:43.410 achieving by giving people the right set of goals 00:18:43.410 --> 00:18:46.190 to work toward it. 00:18:46.190 --> 00:18:48.880 So I keep talking kind of interchangeably between play 00:18:48.880 --> 00:18:49.470 and learning. 00:18:49.470 --> 00:18:54.120 And yet the four freedoms of play, which I'm arguing 00:18:54.120 --> 00:18:56.290 are the four freedoms of learning, 00:18:56.290 --> 00:18:58.567 are not the four freedoms of school. 00:18:58.567 --> 00:19:01.150 If you think about school, and I'm not talking about MIT right 00:19:01.150 --> 00:19:04.560 now, if you think about your own high school experience-- 00:19:04.560 --> 00:19:08.401 high school is particularly bad-- what kind of freedom 00:19:08.401 --> 00:19:08.900 is there? 00:19:08.900 --> 00:19:09.800 Freedom to fail? 00:19:09.800 --> 00:19:11.150 Not so much. 00:19:11.150 --> 00:19:12.030 Freedom to explore? 00:19:12.030 --> 00:19:17.344 Well, I mean, even a high school science lab, 00:19:17.344 --> 00:19:19.760 everyone is expecting to get the same results by following 00:19:19.760 --> 00:19:22.690 the exact same procedure, right? 00:19:22.690 --> 00:19:26.201 And that's the most experimental you ever get in school. 00:19:26.201 --> 00:19:28.450 Certainly no freedom of effort or freedom of identity. 00:19:28.450 --> 00:19:29.930 You sit in your same seat every day 00:19:29.930 --> 00:19:34.482 and you're expected to behave the exact same way. 00:19:34.482 --> 00:19:36.190 And you're expected to work equally hard. 00:19:36.190 --> 00:19:40.460 You can't come in and say I don't feel like working today. 00:19:40.460 --> 00:19:42.390 So there's very little play in school, 00:19:42.390 --> 00:19:43.980 at least as it's currently embodied. 00:19:43.980 --> 00:19:45.940 And this is why I mention school here, 00:19:45.940 --> 00:19:49.985 is because I think one of the challenges 00:19:49.985 --> 00:19:52.360 if you're an MIT student is that you were probably pretty 00:19:52.360 --> 00:19:54.940 good at the game of school. 00:19:54.940 --> 00:19:57.346 You probably did what was required of you. 00:19:57.346 --> 00:20:00.600 You probably didn't necessarily recognize 00:20:00.600 --> 00:20:03.100 that doing the things that school required of you 00:20:03.100 --> 00:20:04.835 is not when you were actually learning, 00:20:04.835 --> 00:20:06.670 that that was just playing the game. 00:20:06.670 --> 00:20:09.725 That the learning was more self-motivated 00:20:09.725 --> 00:20:11.500 and more self-directed. 00:20:11.500 --> 00:20:13.920 And so frequently people, when they turn around 00:20:13.920 --> 00:20:16.500 and try to make anything to do with learning, 00:20:16.500 --> 00:20:20.130 whether it's a game, or write a book, or create a curriculum, 00:20:20.130 --> 00:20:23.880 they replicate everything that's bad about school. 00:20:23.880 --> 00:20:28.010 And the reason I don't like to say I make educational games 00:20:28.010 --> 00:20:30.175 is because when you think of educational games, 00:20:30.175 --> 00:20:32.300 you think of all the bad games that have replicated 00:20:32.300 --> 00:20:34.220 what's bad about school. 00:20:34.220 --> 00:20:38.070 Games that have largely taken the dead carcass of a game 00:20:38.070 --> 00:20:41.090 and stuffed it full of academic content. 00:20:41.090 --> 00:20:44.450 So you're going to shoot at aliens 00:20:44.450 --> 00:20:47.360 and you're going to memorize your times table. 00:20:47.360 --> 00:20:50.635 Now, what aliens have to do with times tables, I don't know. 00:20:50.635 --> 00:20:52.760 Any I'd even argue that memorizing your times table 00:20:52.760 --> 00:20:54.730 is of questionable value. 00:20:54.730 --> 00:20:57.560 There may be a place for it, but it's 00:20:57.560 --> 00:21:01.620 certainly not what being good at math is about, fundamentally. 00:21:01.620 --> 00:21:04.480 And too often, games for learning 00:21:04.480 --> 00:21:07.875 end up being about simply I'm going to feed you content 00:21:07.875 --> 00:21:09.250 that would be boring in a lecture 00:21:09.250 --> 00:21:10.445 or boring in a textbook. 00:21:10.445 --> 00:21:11.070 And guess what? 00:21:11.070 --> 00:21:12.820 It's going to be just as boring in a game. 00:21:12.820 --> 00:21:14.236 The only difference is we're going 00:21:14.236 --> 00:21:16.970 to surround it with things that we think you think are fun, 00:21:16.970 --> 00:21:18.410 like shooting at aliens. 00:21:18.410 --> 00:21:22.180 So it sort of translates into people 00:21:22.180 --> 00:21:23.770 thinking that what the world needs 00:21:23.770 --> 00:21:26.535 is something like Grand Theft Calculus. 00:21:29.160 --> 00:21:32.464 But in fact, without playfulness, a game 00:21:32.464 --> 00:21:33.880 is just going through the motions. 00:21:33.880 --> 00:21:36.180 It's just gym class. 00:21:36.180 --> 00:21:38.870 Volleyball in gym is not the same as volleyball 00:21:38.870 --> 00:21:41.260 at the beach, and there's a reason for that. 00:21:41.260 --> 00:21:46.601 And even smart MIT kids making games 00:21:46.601 --> 00:21:48.600 when they think there's learning involved end up 00:21:48.600 --> 00:21:52.054 reverting to gym class, to just I'm 00:21:52.054 --> 00:21:54.220 going to make you play this game to learn this stuff 00:21:54.220 --> 00:21:56.560 you don't want to learn. 00:21:56.560 --> 00:21:58.012 Just to talk about the difference 00:21:58.012 --> 00:22:00.220 between a good learning game and a bad learning game, 00:22:00.220 --> 00:22:02.220 let's talk about difference between spelling bee 00:22:02.220 --> 00:22:04.030 and Scrabble. 00:22:04.030 --> 00:22:10.470 In a spelling bee, most of us, when we do a spelling bee, 00:22:10.470 --> 00:22:11.610 are nervous. 00:22:11.610 --> 00:22:12.890 Our palms are sweating. 00:22:12.890 --> 00:22:15.765 We think we're going to fail. 00:22:15.765 --> 00:22:17.140 Eventually the moment comes where 00:22:17.140 --> 00:22:18.223 they say no, you're wrong. 00:22:18.223 --> 00:22:18.790 Sit down. 00:22:18.790 --> 00:22:21.800 You're probably relieved. 00:22:21.800 --> 00:22:24.867 When they say, you're wrong, sit down, nobody says to you, 00:22:24.867 --> 00:22:27.200 well, that was interesting that you spelled it that way, 00:22:27.200 --> 00:22:30.080 or I can understand why you might have chosen to spell it 00:22:30.080 --> 00:22:31.920 that way, because it rhymes with-- no. 00:22:31.920 --> 00:22:33.990 They just say you're wrong, sit down. 00:22:33.990 --> 00:22:35.220 And that's the end of it. 00:22:35.220 --> 00:22:37.940 The end of a spelling bee, one person feels good, the winner. 00:22:37.940 --> 00:22:40.477 Maybe the kid who comes in second feels OK. 00:22:40.477 --> 00:22:42.310 Everyone else is relieved because they don't 00:22:42.310 --> 00:22:44.880 have to do spelling anymore. 00:22:44.880 --> 00:22:48.850 And I first coined this analogy thinking about bad games. 00:22:48.850 --> 00:22:51.716 But I later came to realize that it's bigger 00:22:51.716 --> 00:22:53.340 than that, because if you think about-- 00:22:53.340 --> 00:22:55.089 so I don't know how many of you know this, 00:22:55.089 --> 00:22:56.570 but 7% of the population in the US 00:22:56.570 --> 00:22:58.070 graduates high school saying they're 00:22:58.070 --> 00:23:02.720 good at math, which means we take an hour a day 00:23:02.720 --> 00:23:06.340 for 12 years teaching 93% of the population 00:23:06.340 --> 00:23:08.650 that they're not good at math. 00:23:08.650 --> 00:23:11.180 We would be doing them all a big favor by in kindergarten, 00:23:11.180 --> 00:23:14.860 saying you're not going to do math and just leave it at that. 00:23:14.860 --> 00:23:16.540 Or better yet, we could figure out ways 00:23:16.540 --> 00:23:17.956 that teaching method that actually 00:23:17.956 --> 00:23:20.750 were meaningful and relevant to people, rather than making them 00:23:20.750 --> 00:23:22.250 feel like they're not good at math. 00:23:25.350 --> 00:23:26.661 So that's a bad game. 00:23:26.661 --> 00:23:29.160 And so what I'm really arguing is that school is a bad game. 00:23:29.160 --> 00:23:32.050 School is a game in which we reward people 00:23:32.050 --> 00:23:33.656 for learning how to play at school. 00:23:33.656 --> 00:23:35.280 Sometimes they're smart at some things. 00:23:35.280 --> 00:23:36.946 I'm not saying that there aren't people. 00:23:36.946 --> 00:23:39.580 But largely our goal is to weed people out. 00:23:39.580 --> 00:23:42.250 And we filter some people into some fields 00:23:42.250 --> 00:23:43.460 because they seem good at it. 00:23:43.460 --> 00:23:45.459 For everyone else, we're sort of convincing them 00:23:45.459 --> 00:23:47.520 that they-- whew, I don't have to study anymore. 00:23:47.520 --> 00:23:48.394 I'm done with school. 00:23:48.394 --> 00:23:50.060 I never have to learn anything again. 00:23:50.060 --> 00:23:53.520 That's the way most people end up leaving school. 00:23:53.520 --> 00:23:55.350 Scrabble, you sit down. 00:23:55.350 --> 00:23:56.189 You got your board. 00:23:56.189 --> 00:23:56.980 You got your tiles. 00:23:56.980 --> 00:23:58.396 You're moving around all the time. 00:23:58.396 --> 00:24:01.210 You're being creative even in the downtime just thinking 00:24:01.210 --> 00:24:02.600 about all the words you know. 00:24:02.600 --> 00:24:04.310 If you never win a game of Scrabble, 00:24:04.310 --> 00:24:07.020 you have all sorts of other proximal goals, 00:24:07.020 --> 00:24:09.675 like getting a 50-point word, or getting a triple word score, 00:24:09.675 --> 00:24:11.540 or getting the highest score you ever got. 00:24:11.540 --> 00:24:15.890 Just like golf, it gives you lots of feedback. 00:24:15.890 --> 00:24:17.710 By the way, most people who play golf, 00:24:17.710 --> 00:24:19.090 they're not in a tournament. 00:24:19.090 --> 00:24:21.820 They're not playing to win a game. 00:24:21.820 --> 00:24:23.104 They made their own game. 00:24:23.104 --> 00:24:25.520 Maybe I'm going to get a lower score than I got last time, 00:24:25.520 --> 00:24:27.170 or maybe I'm going to get at a lower score than the person I'm 00:24:27.170 --> 00:24:27.840 playing with. 00:24:27.840 --> 00:24:29.829 Well, at Scrabble, it's the same thing. 00:24:29.829 --> 00:24:32.370 So you're continually setting your own goals within the game. 00:24:32.370 --> 00:24:34.890 The game has goals. 00:24:34.890 --> 00:24:37.050 It has something called victory. 00:24:37.050 --> 00:24:38.920 And we all may aspire to that victory, 00:24:38.920 --> 00:24:41.750 but we have lots of other ways of measuring ourselves 00:24:41.750 --> 00:24:43.360 that are not about victory. 00:24:43.360 --> 00:24:46.380 And every player makes up their own game within Scrabble, 00:24:46.380 --> 00:24:48.820 and golf, and any good game. 00:24:48.820 --> 00:24:51.340 We actually all play a different game when we play a game, 00:24:51.340 --> 00:24:53.720 and that's not a fault to the game. 00:24:53.720 --> 00:25:01.020 So one last thing I sort of want to bring into the conversation 00:25:01.020 --> 00:25:04.832 as we think about this is an expression. 00:25:04.832 --> 00:25:07.415 It dates back to around the same time as the Bruegel painting. 00:25:07.415 --> 00:25:11.480 But in English, we first see the expression all work and no play 00:25:11.480 --> 00:25:12.920 makes Jack a dull boy. 00:25:12.920 --> 00:25:15.140 And at first, your first response 00:25:15.140 --> 00:25:16.680 is that's a good thing, right? 00:25:16.680 --> 00:25:19.204 Yes, play is important. 00:25:19.204 --> 00:25:20.870 So it seems to be a statement in support 00:25:20.870 --> 00:25:21.640 of what I've been saying. 00:25:21.640 --> 00:25:24.181 But the only trouble with it is that it also sort of suggests 00:25:24.181 --> 00:25:26.080 that there is this dichotomy. 00:25:26.080 --> 00:25:27.620 There's work and there's play. 00:25:27.620 --> 00:25:29.470 And I may have sort of suggested it 00:25:29.470 --> 00:25:31.136 by saying it's the thing you do when you 00:25:31.136 --> 00:25:33.390 don't have to do anything else. 00:25:33.390 --> 00:25:35.290 But then I did modify that by saying 00:25:35.290 --> 00:25:37.880 that you do some of these other things playfully as well. 00:25:37.880 --> 00:25:40.080 And in fact, when we go into school, 00:25:40.080 --> 00:25:42.420 we think that there's learning and there's play 00:25:42.420 --> 00:25:44.435 and they're different. 00:25:44.435 --> 00:25:46.810 But in fact, I'm going to go quickly through those slides 00:25:46.810 --> 00:25:48.268 and just go up to here and just say 00:25:48.268 --> 00:25:52.474 I think we really need to think of it more like this. 00:25:52.474 --> 00:25:54.515 And we need to think about situating things here. 00:25:58.970 --> 00:25:59.880 And fun, by the way. 00:25:59.880 --> 00:26:01.640 Let me just be clear about fun. 00:26:01.640 --> 00:26:04.640 Fun is not giggles. 00:26:04.640 --> 00:26:08.260 Fun doesn't even necessarily require a smile on the face. 00:26:08.260 --> 00:26:10.490 If you think about yourself playing a video game 00:26:10.490 --> 00:26:12.560 at age 11 or 12, there were probably 00:26:12.560 --> 00:26:15.580 moments where your tongue was sticking out, 00:26:15.580 --> 00:26:16.960 and you're cross eyed, and you're 00:26:16.960 --> 00:26:18.760 yelling at the screen, that's not fair, 00:26:18.760 --> 00:26:20.330 and you threw your controller. 00:26:20.330 --> 00:26:23.890 And then you beat the game and said, that was fun. 00:26:23.890 --> 00:26:27.460 And Seymour Papert a retired professor from the Media Lab, 00:26:27.460 --> 00:26:30.300 is the one who coined the term hard fun. 00:26:30.300 --> 00:26:32.270 And hard fun is not a special category. 00:26:32.270 --> 00:26:37.110 I would argue that lots of fun is hard fun, maybe most fun. 00:26:37.110 --> 00:26:41.720 Certainly most games are hard fun, 00:26:41.720 --> 00:26:45.780 and that most good learning is hard fun. 00:26:45.780 --> 00:26:49.490 The things you learn that aren't fun, yes, there 00:26:49.490 --> 00:26:51.994 may be some value to memorizing your times tables, 00:26:51.994 --> 00:26:53.660 but it doesn't make you a mathematician. 00:26:53.660 --> 00:26:55.493 That's not where the real learning happened. 00:26:59.010 --> 00:27:03.430 There's things you have to memorize-- although I heard 00:27:03.430 --> 00:27:05.090 somewhere that a 10th grade biology 00:27:05.090 --> 00:27:07.340 student has to memorize more words than a 10th grade 00:27:07.340 --> 00:27:08.960 French student. 00:27:08.960 --> 00:27:11.959 And if you think about it, how many of us, other than those 00:27:11.959 --> 00:27:14.000 of us who go to biology, ever use all those words 00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:15.021 that we memorized about? 00:27:15.021 --> 00:27:15.520 None of it. 00:27:15.520 --> 00:27:19.470 So, I mean, I think too much of our vision of learning 00:27:19.470 --> 00:27:22.980 is still based on memorizing stuff that you then 00:27:22.980 --> 00:27:25.757 get tested on, rather than building up 00:27:25.757 --> 00:27:27.340 cognitive structures that you can then 00:27:27.340 --> 00:27:29.910 work with through the rest of your life, which is what 00:27:29.910 --> 00:27:32.310 we really want people to do. 00:27:32.310 --> 00:27:34.830 That's my point, because I know you're doing 00:27:34.830 --> 00:27:36.700 this work with the Red Cross. 00:27:36.700 --> 00:27:40.500 You have information you want to convey. 00:27:40.500 --> 00:27:42.500 I want to argue that if the information you want 00:27:42.500 --> 00:27:44.730 to convey fits on a 3 by 5 card and people 00:27:44.730 --> 00:27:48.464 can carry it around with them, then 00:27:48.464 --> 00:27:50.130 there's no point in making a game of it. 00:27:54.450 --> 00:27:56.490 So just to do a parallel example, 00:27:56.490 --> 00:28:04.281 I've done games for the working poor, games where the goal is 00:28:04.281 --> 00:28:06.780 to explain to them that they shouldn't take out payday loans 00:28:06.780 --> 00:28:08.817 or take on credit card debt. 00:28:08.817 --> 00:28:11.025 Well, in fact, you could write that on a 3 by 5 card. 00:28:11.025 --> 00:28:12.700 If I handed it to most people and said 00:28:12.700 --> 00:28:14.533 don't take out a payday loan, don't take out 00:28:14.533 --> 00:28:18.390 credit card debt, they would nod, and smile, and agree. 00:28:18.390 --> 00:28:20.400 And then they would go and do it when 00:28:20.400 --> 00:28:22.580 they were in extremis, anyway. 00:28:22.580 --> 00:28:24.660 They don't do it blithely, but they do it. 00:28:24.660 --> 00:28:27.680 But my point is that the understanding that you really 00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:29.951 need is more subtle and more complicated. 00:28:29.951 --> 00:28:32.450 You really want to give people some functional understanding 00:28:32.450 --> 00:28:33.210 of something. 00:28:33.210 --> 00:28:35.376 So when we did that game, what we really tried to do 00:28:35.376 --> 00:28:38.340 is put people in the situations in which they might otherwise 00:28:38.340 --> 00:28:41.065 get loans and help them see what the alternatives were. 00:28:41.065 --> 00:28:44.360 That that was the important learning, and helping them 00:28:44.360 --> 00:28:46.670 recognize those moments. 00:28:46.670 --> 00:28:49.720 The learning was sort of helping them, and helping 00:28:49.720 --> 00:28:52.777 them feel empowered to be able to make decisions. 00:28:52.777 --> 00:28:54.735 So we were doing lots of stuff beyond conveying 00:28:54.735 --> 00:28:58.470 the information don't take out of credit card debt. 00:28:58.470 --> 00:29:01.210 And so similarly, I think you're doing games where you probably 00:29:01.210 --> 00:29:03.540 think you want to convey information, 00:29:03.540 --> 00:29:06.870 but that's all information that could fit on a pamphlet, 00:29:06.870 --> 00:29:09.097 or on a 3 by 5 card, and you probably really 00:29:09.097 --> 00:29:10.680 don't want to make a game out of that. 00:29:10.680 --> 00:29:12.950 You probably really want to make a game that's 00:29:12.950 --> 00:29:17.690 going to be about helping people through some experience master 00:29:17.690 --> 00:29:19.670 something. 00:29:19.670 --> 00:29:22.490 And through their sense of mastery, change them. 00:29:22.490 --> 00:29:25.600 So I think that's it in a nutshell, what 00:29:25.600 --> 00:29:29.850 I want to say, and just use the rest of the time for questions. 00:29:29.850 --> 00:29:32.117 And then you're to see your paper projects 00:29:32.117 --> 00:29:32.950 with everybody else. 00:29:36.650 --> 00:29:37.260 Any questions? 00:29:41.451 --> 00:29:41.950 Yes. 00:29:41.950 --> 00:29:43.363 AUDIENCE: So a lot of your initial description, 00:29:43.363 --> 00:29:45.250 it actually sounded like grad school. 00:29:45.250 --> 00:29:46.554 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah? 00:29:46.554 --> 00:29:48.054 AUDIENCE: So I feel like grad school 00:29:48.054 --> 00:29:50.924 is quite the opposite of what you're saying school is. 00:29:50.924 --> 00:29:51.590 PROFESSOR: Yeah? 00:29:51.590 --> 00:29:54.100 Say a little more, because not everyone knows. 00:29:54.100 --> 00:29:56.822 So [INAUDIBLE] and fail, because [INAUDIBLE] 00:29:56.822 --> 00:29:58.274 why did you go to grad school? 00:29:58.274 --> 00:30:00.788 Because you can explore things. 00:30:00.788 --> 00:30:02.084 You can fail. 00:30:02.084 --> 00:30:04.028 You can do a project that doesn't work, 00:30:04.028 --> 00:30:06.134 that nobody's really going to get mad at you. 00:30:06.134 --> 00:30:07.926 You just do the next paper. 00:30:07.926 --> 00:30:09.759 Afterwards, you can try as hard as you want. 00:30:09.759 --> 00:30:12.218 And there are days when you don't 00:30:12.218 --> 00:30:15.185 feel like [INAUDIBLE] too much. 00:30:15.185 --> 00:30:16.662 I'm not sure about identity. 00:30:16.662 --> 00:30:17.370 PROFESSOR: Right. 00:30:17.370 --> 00:30:19.380 Well, a lot of people enter grad school 00:30:19.380 --> 00:30:20.330 thinking they're going to do one thing 00:30:20.330 --> 00:30:21.700 and end up leaving doing something else. 00:30:21.700 --> 00:30:22.993 They have that freedom to. 00:30:22.993 --> 00:30:24.530 I mean actually, that's true of undergraduate too. 00:30:24.530 --> 00:30:26.760 I would say undergraduate, and certainly at MIT, it 00:30:26.760 --> 00:30:28.176 seems to me slightly more playful. 00:30:28.176 --> 00:30:29.070 Well, I don't know. 00:30:29.070 --> 00:30:29.910 I'm not familiar. 00:30:29.910 --> 00:30:32.370 I don't know what it's like the freshman year, when 00:30:32.370 --> 00:30:33.630 you're doing all those psets. 00:30:33.630 --> 00:30:35.510 I don't know what that's like. 00:30:35.510 --> 00:30:37.886 I was a theater major at a different school, 00:30:37.886 --> 00:30:39.260 so I don't know what that's like. 00:30:39.260 --> 00:30:41.843 But I do see, and particularly in upperclassmen, a fair amount 00:30:41.843 --> 00:30:44.680 of play in your work. 00:30:44.680 --> 00:30:45.710 But I think it is true. 00:30:48.720 --> 00:30:50.160 What I'm really arguing at core is 00:30:50.160 --> 00:30:53.320 that what real education is about is learning how to learn, 00:30:53.320 --> 00:30:55.050 is learning all the kinds of things 00:30:55.050 --> 00:30:58.760 you need to do to know how to learn. 00:30:58.760 --> 00:31:03.000 And some of it means just having your natural curiosity 00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:06.590 positively reinforced instead of negatively reinforced. 00:31:06.590 --> 00:31:08.180 Kids are naturally curious. 00:31:08.180 --> 00:31:11.607 They don't have any trouble asking questions. 00:31:11.607 --> 00:31:13.190 We slowly start doing things that make 00:31:13.190 --> 00:31:15.090 people stop asking questions. 00:31:15.090 --> 00:31:17.050 We killed the curiosity in most people. 00:31:17.050 --> 00:31:18.970 And so I'm really arguing that education 00:31:18.970 --> 00:31:23.150 should be about maximizing your curiosity 00:31:23.150 --> 00:31:25.430 so that you continue to ask interesting questions 00:31:25.430 --> 00:31:28.360 for the rest of your life. 00:31:28.360 --> 00:31:31.650 So my example of math, I don't see 00:31:31.650 --> 00:31:33.760 why there's no reason why everyone who graduates 00:31:33.760 --> 00:31:35.260 high school couldn't, when they then 00:31:35.260 --> 00:31:37.150 hear a politician quote a statistic, 00:31:37.150 --> 00:31:39.260 say how does he know that? 00:31:39.260 --> 00:31:40.770 Where did that statistic come from? 00:31:43.330 --> 00:31:45.570 And when you read a survey, say that question 00:31:45.570 --> 00:31:50.760 doesn't seem like a good survey, or that's 00:31:50.760 --> 00:31:52.330 correlation, not causation. 00:31:52.330 --> 00:31:55.110 Those are all things we can learn in high school math, 00:31:55.110 --> 00:31:55.670 for example. 00:31:55.670 --> 00:31:59.970 So it's much more about learning how to think than it is about-- 00:31:59.970 --> 00:32:03.150 and for statistics, it's far more important to know how 00:32:03.150 --> 00:32:07.790 to ask those questions than it is for everybody to know what 00:32:07.790 --> 00:32:09.240 the r value is of something. 00:32:09.240 --> 00:32:11.680 I think that's a term in the statistics, isn't it? 00:32:11.680 --> 00:32:13.360 Yeah. 00:32:13.360 --> 00:32:14.640 I haven't taken statistics. 00:32:17.759 --> 00:32:19.300 And the reason I'm going back to sort 00:32:19.300 --> 00:32:22.330 of trying to talk to you about what education should be about 00:32:22.330 --> 00:32:25.410 is because if you do games for learning, particularly 00:32:25.410 --> 00:32:28.140 because they're games, get you've 00:32:28.140 --> 00:32:31.090 got to shake the false model of learning is 00:32:31.090 --> 00:32:34.362 and go for the truly playful model-- 00:32:34.362 --> 00:32:36.070 because otherwise, it'll be the same kind 00:32:36.070 --> 00:32:38.820 of boring educational game that probably made you look 00:32:38.820 --> 00:32:41.780 askance at having to listen to me at all in the first place, 00:32:41.780 --> 00:32:42.460 because that's what you thought I 00:32:42.460 --> 00:32:43.710 was going to be talking about. 00:32:46.436 --> 00:32:47.360 Yes. 00:32:47.360 --> 00:32:50.835 AUDIENCE: What's your opinion on games that by structure makes 00:32:50.835 --> 00:32:56.550 it easy or hard for the players who play with a lot of effort, 00:32:56.550 --> 00:33:00.001 like hard work, or play without a lot of effort? 00:33:04.084 --> 00:33:05.500 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: You can do a game 00:33:05.500 --> 00:33:09.050 that's all-- requires nothing but 100% effort. 00:33:09.050 --> 00:33:11.887 And in a sense, the play is who decides to play that game. 00:33:11.887 --> 00:33:13.720 The people who are willing to put themselves 00:33:13.720 --> 00:33:17.830 through 100% effort all the time, they voluntarily do that. 00:33:17.830 --> 00:33:19.551 And so you've found your audience. 00:33:19.551 --> 00:33:21.550 I'm not saying you couldn't do a game like that. 00:33:21.550 --> 00:33:24.175 I'm saying that it's likely that in the course of most people's 00:33:24.175 --> 00:33:28.840 gameplay, they're going to have this need to-- a game 00:33:28.840 --> 00:33:31.200 where you get on the rails and the clock is going, 00:33:31.200 --> 00:33:33.700 and you guys [INAUDIBLE]. 00:33:33.700 --> 00:33:35.370 That's why there's usually plateaus 00:33:35.370 --> 00:33:36.370 of some kind or another. 00:33:36.370 --> 00:33:38.550 There's an acknowledgement that people 00:33:38.550 --> 00:33:40.220 need to stop and take a breath. 00:33:40.220 --> 00:33:44.080 Even if it's just a plateau, a savepoint, 00:33:44.080 --> 00:33:45.650 there's some acknowledgement of that. 00:33:45.650 --> 00:33:47.150 I think games where there's actually 00:33:47.150 --> 00:33:50.660 some combination of really intense play and more 00:33:50.660 --> 00:33:54.240 relaxed play can sometimes be more satisfying. 00:33:54.240 --> 00:33:57.310 So I'm not saying that a game can't be all hard-- 00:33:57.310 --> 00:33:59.061 or the other side of it, Farmville clearly 00:33:59.061 --> 00:34:01.310 was very popular with lots of people who really wanted 00:34:01.310 --> 00:34:02.610 to do kind of mindless stuff. 00:34:02.610 --> 00:34:04.490 I guess we all have the need sometimes 00:34:04.490 --> 00:34:07.700 for non-taxing-- so there's nothing wrong with a game which 00:34:07.700 --> 00:34:11.480 requires almost all in or very little in. 00:34:11.480 --> 00:34:14.650 It's just that the reality is, the player is 00:34:14.650 --> 00:34:17.073 going to move fluidly from one state to the other. 00:34:17.073 --> 00:34:19.489 And if your game can accommodate that, so much the better. 00:34:22.810 --> 00:34:24.476 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE], there's something 00:34:24.476 --> 00:34:27.130 that I want to comment on [? that. ?] 00:34:27.130 --> 00:34:31.679 It is totally possible to play Farmville extremely 00:34:31.679 --> 00:34:32.663 in hard fun, isn't it? 00:34:32.663 --> 00:34:34.631 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah. 00:34:34.631 --> 00:34:37.583 AUDIENCE: I had a interesting [INAUDIBLE] 00:34:37.583 --> 00:34:40.781 just playing [? for them ?] and that required very, very 00:34:40.781 --> 00:34:42.503 precise timing [INAUDIBLE]. 00:34:42.503 --> 00:34:43.979 So it is possible [INAUDIBLE]. 00:34:43.979 --> 00:34:45.219 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah. 00:34:45.219 --> 00:34:47.630 And the point is that Phillip chose 00:34:47.630 --> 00:34:48.919 to make it that kind of game. 00:34:48.919 --> 00:34:50.294 And everybody will choose to make 00:34:50.294 --> 00:34:52.840 it that kind of-- too many games, 00:34:52.840 --> 00:34:55.130 I think we freely make the mistake of imagining 00:34:55.130 --> 00:34:57.315 a certain path for a player on the win state, 00:34:57.315 --> 00:34:59.250 and we design the game around that player, 00:34:59.250 --> 00:35:01.240 following the path to the win state. 00:35:01.240 --> 00:35:03.570 And we forget to think about all of the time 00:35:03.570 --> 00:35:05.520 that players are likely to spend either 00:35:05.520 --> 00:35:08.520 trying to break the game, or play in different modes, 00:35:08.520 --> 00:35:10.204 or in fail state. 00:35:10.204 --> 00:35:12.370 I mean, one of the things I encourage students to do 00:35:12.370 --> 00:35:14.786 is make sure that the failure is the most interesting part 00:35:14.786 --> 00:35:17.490 of your game, because if your game is at all challenging, 00:35:17.490 --> 00:35:21.270 people are going to be spending a lot of time in failure mode. 00:35:21.270 --> 00:35:24.580 A, you want to reward them and say that's OK. 00:35:24.580 --> 00:35:27.565 We're happy to see you here. 00:35:27.565 --> 00:35:29.940 And b, you want to make sure that it remains entertaining 00:35:29.940 --> 00:35:33.900 while they're in failure mode so they don't quit. 00:35:33.900 --> 00:35:35.900 Like I said, I think it's an easy mistake 00:35:35.900 --> 00:35:38.170 to fixate on what's the path to success look 00:35:38.170 --> 00:35:40.710 like, and not think about what the whole gameplay 00:35:40.710 --> 00:35:42.940 experience is like. 00:35:42.940 --> 00:35:45.790 And that gets worse when people have an agenda, 00:35:45.790 --> 00:35:49.200 like a game for the Red Cross. 00:35:49.200 --> 00:35:50.470 We really fall into that trap. 00:35:50.470 --> 00:35:53.270 And that's why so many serious games seem 00:35:53.270 --> 00:35:58.030 so serious, and earnest, and humorless, 00:35:58.030 --> 00:36:01.470 because all the designer thought about 00:36:01.470 --> 00:36:04.670 was the player earnestly achieving the goals 00:36:04.670 --> 00:36:07.174 that the designer set out for the player, 00:36:07.174 --> 00:36:09.090 rather than thinking about the player playing. 00:36:12.502 --> 00:36:13.418 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 00:36:18.358 --> 00:36:20.828 AUDIENCE: I guess this goes back to your example about golf 00:36:20.828 --> 00:36:24.286 [INAUDIBLE] and not having somebody yell at you for not 00:36:24.286 --> 00:36:25.587 hitting the ball straight. 00:36:25.587 --> 00:36:27.003 How do you think that kind of goes 00:36:27.003 --> 00:36:30.708 with the existence of golf teachers, who 00:36:30.708 --> 00:36:34.166 are paid to essentially tell you you're doing it wrong? 00:36:34.166 --> 00:36:36.142 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: [INAUDIBLE]. 00:36:36.142 --> 00:36:39.140 AUDIENCE: I guess I'm thinking of my own dad and [INAUDIBLE] 00:36:39.140 --> 00:36:42.615 my sister, who have very different opinions about a golf 00:36:42.615 --> 00:36:44.387 coach telling them to do it right. 00:36:44.387 --> 00:36:45.970 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: So the relevant thing 00:36:45.970 --> 00:36:48.706 there is that they elected to have a golf coach tell them 00:36:48.706 --> 00:36:51.570 to do that at a certain point in their-- if you started somebody 00:36:51.570 --> 00:36:54.035 with a golf coach yelling at them-- now, 00:36:54.035 --> 00:36:57.220 it could be very gentle, loving, helpful person, in which case 00:36:57.220 --> 00:36:58.230 it might go fine. 00:36:58.230 --> 00:37:01.516 But chances are if you started somebody with someone standing 00:37:01.516 --> 00:37:03.890 over their shoulder telling them what to do every moment, 00:37:03.890 --> 00:37:06.410 they probably would never develop a real interest in it. 00:37:06.410 --> 00:37:11.820 So the point which you elect to have somebody there, 00:37:11.820 --> 00:37:13.030 you have your reasons now. 00:37:13.030 --> 00:37:14.071 You have your motivation. 00:37:14.071 --> 00:37:17.280 And so that's a different experience at that point. 00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:19.190 I think lots of kids who get turned off 00:37:19.190 --> 00:37:23.950 to musical instruments or sports because too 00:37:23.950 --> 00:37:25.900 early in the experience, they're forced 00:37:25.900 --> 00:37:29.520 into sort of just reproduce the results that some adult wants 00:37:29.520 --> 00:37:33.860 you to reproduce, rather than explore this and figure out 00:37:33.860 --> 00:37:35.010 where your motivation is. 00:37:39.851 --> 00:37:41.300 Well, thanks. 00:37:41.300 --> 00:37:43.800 But I'm sticking around, so if you have any other questions, 00:37:43.800 --> 00:37:45.247 I'm happy to take them. 00:37:50.720 --> 00:37:52.260 PROFESSOR: Another reason I wanted 00:37:52.260 --> 00:37:54.150 to ask you to come and talk to class. 00:37:54.150 --> 00:37:56.670 So we mentioned a couple of the other game classes we have 00:37:56.670 --> 00:37:58.150 at MIT that we're teaching. 00:37:58.150 --> 00:38:00.910 And you teach 615, the Games for Social Change? 00:38:00.910 --> 00:38:02.920 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Games for Social Change, yeah. 00:38:02.920 --> 00:38:03.860 PROFESSOR: Next fall, right? 00:38:03.860 --> 00:38:04.840 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah, that'll be next fall. 00:38:04.840 --> 00:38:05.690 PROFESSOR: Can you say a little bit 00:38:05.690 --> 00:38:06.960 about what that class entails? 00:38:06.960 --> 00:38:07.876 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah. 00:38:07.876 --> 00:38:09.050 And Sabrina took it. 00:38:14.345 --> 00:38:18.830 It's sort of taking the same principles that I was talking 00:38:18.830 --> 00:38:23.380 about and using them to think about if you're 00:38:23.380 --> 00:38:26.900 interested in social change and how you could use for that, 00:38:26.900 --> 00:38:30.180 understanding that you can't make people change. 00:38:30.180 --> 00:38:32.630 And so the question is, how can you use play 00:38:32.630 --> 00:38:35.090 to actually encourage change? 00:38:35.090 --> 00:38:37.480 And so probably we're looking critically 00:38:37.480 --> 00:38:38.680 at how society works. 00:38:38.680 --> 00:38:42.504 And the task we're trying this year for the first time-- well, 00:38:42.504 --> 00:38:44.170 you're doing two big projects this year. 00:38:49.070 --> 00:38:55.060 We're just now finishing a project on the theme of walls 00:38:55.060 --> 00:38:57.680 to go in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the Berlin 00:38:57.680 --> 00:38:59.620 Wall coming down. 00:38:59.620 --> 00:39:02.190 And that's going to be on display at the Goethe 00:39:02.190 --> 00:39:05.608 Institute, which is a place in Boston, 00:39:05.608 --> 00:39:07.233 and it may also be on display in Munich 00:39:07.233 --> 00:39:10.195 at the same time, the games. 00:39:10.195 --> 00:39:11.820 And then we're going do a project where 00:39:11.820 --> 00:39:15.390 we try to actually look at some system 00:39:15.390 --> 00:39:18.330 in society, like school, which is a bad game, 00:39:18.330 --> 00:39:20.420 and try to redesign it as a good game. 00:39:20.420 --> 00:39:23.970 Not make a game about school, but rather redesign school 00:39:23.970 --> 00:39:26.794 itself as if it were a game. 00:39:26.794 --> 00:39:28.210 Every year we try different stuff. 00:39:28.210 --> 00:39:29.170 The one thing I like to try to do 00:39:29.170 --> 00:39:30.753 is come up with projects that actually 00:39:30.753 --> 00:39:33.960 have-- for which you're doing it with somebody besides just me. 00:39:33.960 --> 00:39:36.364 I don't just want students doing stuff for me. 00:39:36.364 --> 00:39:38.280 I want them doing it for some bigger audience, 00:39:38.280 --> 00:39:39.850 and we try to do that in every game, 00:39:39.850 --> 00:39:40.850 every semester [INAUDIBLE]. 00:39:40.850 --> 00:39:41.290 And that's [INAUDIBLE]. 00:39:41.290 --> 00:39:41.810 PROFESSOR: Cool. 00:39:41.810 --> 00:39:42.010 Yeah. 00:39:42.010 --> 00:39:42.820 So if you really like what you're 00:39:42.820 --> 00:39:45.190 doing right now with the Red Cross/Red Crescent project, 00:39:45.190 --> 00:39:47.220 and you want do more of this kind of stuff, 00:39:47.220 --> 00:39:48.670 take a look at that in the fall. 00:39:48.670 --> 00:39:50.940 And if you're looking for some help or insight 00:39:50.940 --> 00:39:54.930 about the design of your project this semester, 00:39:54.930 --> 00:39:57.240 the Games for Social Change materials 00:39:57.240 --> 00:39:58.870 are on the OpenCourseWare website. 00:39:58.870 --> 00:40:01.340 And we'll post those readings and materials there 00:40:01.340 --> 00:40:03.210 so you can take a look at that. 00:40:03.210 --> 00:40:04.918 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: It's a bit of a seminar, 00:40:04.918 --> 00:40:06.290 so I think there's no lectures. 00:40:06.290 --> 00:40:07.540 And so I think there's a lot-- 00:40:07.540 --> 00:40:08.200 PROFESSOR: The readings. 00:40:08.200 --> 00:40:08.660 SCOTT OSTERWEIL: Yeah. 00:40:08.660 --> 00:40:09.860 And they're not always explicitly 00:40:09.860 --> 00:40:11.810 about what we end up talking about in class. 00:40:11.810 --> 00:40:13.910 So I don't promise that they'll always be helpful. 00:40:13.910 --> 00:40:16.240 But anyway, they're more like thought starters 00:40:16.240 --> 00:40:17.525 than [INAUDIBLE]. 00:40:17.525 --> 00:40:18.400 PROFESSOR: All right. 00:40:18.400 --> 00:40:19.787 So it's 1:48. 00:40:19.787 --> 00:40:20.870 Take a really quick break. 00:40:20.870 --> 00:40:25.030 And then set yourself up into your five groups, 00:40:25.030 --> 00:40:26.510 and set up your play test. 00:40:26.510 --> 00:40:28.710 We'd like to start doing play test at 2:00. 00:40:28.710 --> 00:40:30.600 So 12 minutes from now, if that's possible. 00:40:30.600 --> 00:40:31.850 Do you think it's enough time? 00:40:35.460 --> 00:40:38.150 So we're about to get started. 00:40:38.150 --> 00:40:41.580 How many stations do you have for testers? 00:40:41.580 --> 00:40:43.620 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] many [INAUDIBLE]. 00:40:43.620 --> 00:40:45.990 PROFESSOR: How many are you going to have? 00:40:45.990 --> 00:40:46.890 Three? 00:40:46.890 --> 00:40:47.650 All right, three. 00:40:52.033 --> 00:40:53.160 Cool. 00:40:53.160 --> 00:40:56.810 If you're not using your computer to run a game, 00:40:56.810 --> 00:41:00.340 then close it or set it aside so people know. 00:41:00.340 --> 00:41:03.037 How many stations are you going to have over here? 00:41:03.037 --> 00:41:04.230 AUDIENCE: Two. 00:41:04.230 --> 00:41:06.260 PROFESSOR: Two? 00:41:06.260 --> 00:41:08.160 And group behind you, how many workstations? 00:41:08.160 --> 00:41:08.660 Four? 00:41:15.207 --> 00:41:17.040 How many workstations are you going to have? 00:41:17.040 --> 00:41:17.857 Two? 00:41:17.857 --> 00:41:18.940 And in the back, how many? 00:41:18.940 --> 00:41:19.440 One? 00:41:24.250 --> 00:41:28.310 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12. 00:41:28.310 --> 00:41:34.280 So basically if you have-- there's one, two, three, four, 00:41:34.280 --> 00:41:39.050 five testers, plus let's say each team send out 00:41:39.050 --> 00:41:42.510 two people to test other games. 00:41:42.510 --> 00:41:43.350 Remember to rotate. 00:41:43.350 --> 00:41:46.120 We're going to do this for about 20 minutes, 00:41:46.120 --> 00:41:46.980 as long as it takes. 00:41:46.980 --> 00:41:49.807 And then see where we are and do it again 00:41:49.807 --> 00:41:51.640 to get some just quick testing and make sure 00:41:51.640 --> 00:41:55.060 that the five of us get to play a good number of your games 00:41:55.060 --> 00:41:57.320 and give you some feedback on that. 00:41:57.320 --> 00:42:00.230 So remember, if you're using digital-- if you're not, 00:42:00.230 --> 00:42:02.080 if a computer's not being used for testing, 00:42:02.080 --> 00:42:05.080 close it or make it look like it's not being used 00:42:05.080 --> 00:42:06.520 for testing by typing on it. 00:42:09.880 --> 00:42:10.650 Let's get started. 00:42:52.450 --> 00:42:55.730 Can I get everyone's attention really quick? 00:42:55.730 --> 00:42:57.620 Can I just get a really brief report? 00:42:57.620 --> 00:43:00.520 How many teams-- how many tests did you guys get? 00:43:04.296 --> 00:43:06.460 AUDIENCE: Two rounds and three [INAUDIBLE]. 00:43:06.460 --> 00:43:09.737 PROFESSOR: So you feel like you did a good amount of testing? 00:43:09.737 --> 00:43:12.070 For the team close up here, how many rounds did you get? 00:43:12.070 --> 00:43:15.401 How much testing did you get? 00:43:15.401 --> 00:43:19.610 AUDIENCE: We got about four [INAUDIBLE]. 00:43:19.610 --> 00:43:20.986 PROFESSOR: Four? 00:43:20.986 --> 00:43:22.247 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]? 00:43:22.247 --> 00:43:23.830 PROFESSOR: How many tests did you get? 00:43:23.830 --> 00:43:25.163 How many people played the game? 00:43:25.163 --> 00:43:25.980 A good number? 00:43:25.980 --> 00:43:29.820 AUDIENCE: We had two who played [INAUDIBLE]. 00:43:29.820 --> 00:43:30.500 PROFESSOR: Cool. 00:43:30.500 --> 00:43:31.891 I'm just trying to get a sense. 00:43:31.891 --> 00:43:34.515 You guys feel like you've got a good sense of number of people? 00:43:34.515 --> 00:43:37.239 Did you guys get four or five? 00:43:37.239 --> 00:43:39.155 And in the back, how many players did you get? 00:43:39.155 --> 00:43:41.081 AUDIENCE: We only had one [INAUDIBLE]. 00:43:41.081 --> 00:43:42.330 PROFESSOR: Has it been useful? 00:43:42.330 --> 00:43:42.770 AUDIENCE: Yes. 00:43:42.770 --> 00:43:43.353 PROFESSOR: OK. 00:43:46.450 --> 00:43:50.620 So let's close off testing for now. 00:43:50.620 --> 00:43:54.200 If you'd like to test later today or later during the class 00:43:54.200 --> 00:43:55.480 period, you can. 00:43:55.480 --> 00:43:58.840 Go ahead and finish off whatever testing you're doing right now. 00:43:58.840 --> 00:44:02.320 And at 2:50, we're going to come down 00:44:02.320 --> 00:44:05.140 and each team's going to give a brief, two-minute description 00:44:05.140 --> 00:44:08.960 about the state of their game and your product backlog. 00:44:08.960 --> 00:44:10.820 And those are actually going to get recorded 00:44:10.820 --> 00:44:14.669 so that we can send them to Pablo and the rest of his team, 00:44:14.669 --> 00:44:16.460 so they can see what you've been working on 00:44:16.460 --> 00:44:19.240 and give us some feedback about it. 00:44:19.240 --> 00:44:20.150 OK? 00:44:20.150 --> 00:44:22.680 So 2:50. 00:44:22.680 --> 00:44:23.650 Everyone set? 00:44:23.650 --> 00:44:24.566 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 00:44:33.230 --> 00:44:35.570 PROFESSOR: So Snap, come on up. 00:44:35.570 --> 00:44:37.439 And again, two minutes. 00:44:37.439 --> 00:44:38.480 Talk about your features. 00:44:38.480 --> 00:44:42.720 Talk about what's in your game now, what will be in your game. 00:44:42.720 --> 00:44:46.460 Also, give a really brief description of the topic 00:44:46.460 --> 00:44:47.490 your game's about. 00:44:47.490 --> 00:44:51.210 So this is for our clients to know what we decided 00:44:51.210 --> 00:44:54.050 to do for all of our topics. 00:44:54.050 --> 00:44:55.620 AUDIENCE: So we're Snap. 00:44:55.620 --> 00:44:59.100 So we've decided to [? return ?] Snap into a multiplayer game. 00:44:59.100 --> 00:45:03.630 So it'll be all everybody playing at the same time. 00:45:03.630 --> 00:45:06.310 Right now we have a game that looks pretty similar to what 00:45:06.310 --> 00:45:08.930 we played in class, where you can enter words 00:45:08.930 --> 00:45:14.490 and you can snap with anybody else who has played the game. 00:45:14.490 --> 00:45:16.342 Right now we don't have any fiction 00:45:16.342 --> 00:45:18.050 and we don't have any indication of score 00:45:18.050 --> 00:45:20.175 other than just the number of times you've snapped. 00:45:20.175 --> 00:45:21.880 We're hoping to change that. 00:45:21.880 --> 00:45:23.890 We got a lot of really good feedback today, 00:45:23.890 --> 00:45:26.720 and we've thought new ideas for how to convey feedback 00:45:26.720 --> 00:45:29.695 to the player and some improvements to the UI, 00:45:29.695 --> 00:45:31.070 because right now we don't really 00:45:31.070 --> 00:45:33.430 express much to the player. 00:45:33.430 --> 00:45:34.990 That's about it. 00:45:34.990 --> 00:45:37.012 PROFESSOR: Any challenges that [INAUDIBLE] 00:45:37.012 --> 00:45:38.896 leading up to where you are now? 00:45:38.896 --> 00:45:42.193 Is there anything [INAUDIBLE] questions [INAUDIBLE] 00:45:42.193 --> 00:45:43.591 risks that you have right now? 00:45:43.591 --> 00:45:46.090 AUDIENCE: So the networking is still a risk, as we just saw. 00:45:46.090 --> 00:45:48.461 It's a lot more confusing when something doesn't work, 00:45:48.461 --> 00:45:49.335 why it's not working. 00:45:52.320 --> 00:45:56.090 We also do want to confirm that the game that we build 00:45:56.090 --> 00:45:58.860 is similar enough to Snap in terms of satisfying 00:45:58.860 --> 00:46:00.390 the client's goals. 00:46:00.390 --> 00:46:03.050 So we don't want to change the game, even if it's more fun. 00:46:03.050 --> 00:46:04.800 We want to make sure that the game still 00:46:04.800 --> 00:46:06.780 satisfies the client's requirements 00:46:06.780 --> 00:46:08.905 and that they'll still be able to use it and gather 00:46:08.905 --> 00:46:10.490 the information they want to. 00:46:10.490 --> 00:46:12.410 And that will require some careful testing 00:46:12.410 --> 00:46:14.430 to see what people end up doing with Snap. 00:46:14.430 --> 00:46:16.080 PROFESSOR: And what did you decide on? 00:46:16.080 --> 00:46:17.940 Have you decided on tech yet, or are you 00:46:17.940 --> 00:46:19.176 still trying out multiple-- 00:46:19.176 --> 00:46:19.800 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:46:19.800 --> 00:46:22.010 So I think we have a tech. 00:46:22.010 --> 00:46:24.840 So we have a server running on Node. 00:46:24.840 --> 00:46:26.950 And we're going to use Phaser for the front-end 00:46:26.950 --> 00:46:30.028 so that we can make a more expressive game. 00:46:30.028 --> 00:46:31.694 For now, we're not using Phaser, though. 00:46:31.694 --> 00:46:36.350 The current prototype doesn't use Phaser at all. 00:46:36.350 --> 00:46:38.790 AUDIENCE: One thing you asked earlier was [INAUDIBLE]. 00:46:42.539 --> 00:46:43.914 Does that basically mean that you 00:46:43.914 --> 00:46:46.036 have to run on two different flight, or-- 00:46:46.036 --> 00:46:46.910 AUDIENCE: Yeah, yeah. 00:46:46.910 --> 00:46:48.720 So the idea would be to experiment 00:46:48.720 --> 00:46:53.820 with what sorts of entire group visualizations 00:46:53.820 --> 00:46:57.100 would be interesting to put up for the entire room. 00:46:57.100 --> 00:46:59.840 And the back-end team might work on what sort of visualizations 00:46:59.840 --> 00:47:02.680 we want to show separate from what we want to export 00:47:02.680 --> 00:47:03.826 at the end of the game. 00:47:06.640 --> 00:47:08.394 PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE] anybody else? 00:47:08.394 --> 00:47:09.310 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 00:47:09.310 --> 00:47:10.260 AUDIENCE: Thank you. 00:47:14.050 --> 00:47:15.800 PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE] Cholera is Awesome. 00:47:26.075 --> 00:47:26.700 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:47:26.700 --> 00:47:28.950 So the current state of our game, 00:47:28.950 --> 00:47:30.869 we spent a lot of time thinking about design 00:47:30.869 --> 00:47:34.140 and how exactly we want to do things. 00:47:34.140 --> 00:47:36.760 So we're currently making sort of a game 00:47:36.760 --> 00:47:39.010 where you control-- or don't control. 00:47:39.010 --> 00:47:41.090 You take care of a bunch of villages. 00:47:41.090 --> 00:47:43.320 So you see different villages, how infected they are, 00:47:43.320 --> 00:47:45.153 and how many people are dying sort of thing, 00:47:45.153 --> 00:47:47.820 and then implement measures to prevent cholera spreading. 00:47:47.820 --> 00:47:50.460 So you give people soap to wash their hands 00:47:50.460 --> 00:47:54.365 or set restroom facilities, or use vaccination, 00:47:54.365 --> 00:47:56.050 and that sort of thing. 00:47:56.050 --> 00:47:58.800 And so a lot of the feedback that we 00:47:58.800 --> 00:48:01.590 got on a lot of questions that we're facing basically 00:48:01.590 --> 00:48:04.935 revolves around the issue of making this game realistic 00:48:04.935 --> 00:48:08.660 versus making this game more fun sort of thing. 00:48:08.660 --> 00:48:11.970 So you can make a really unrealistic game that 00:48:11.970 --> 00:48:13.990 can be tons of fun, but we also want 00:48:13.990 --> 00:48:16.073 to stick to reality because at the end of the day, 00:48:16.073 --> 00:48:18.860 we do want to teach the people that are playing how to prevent 00:48:18.860 --> 00:48:20.320 cholera from spreading. 00:48:20.320 --> 00:48:22.740 So there's sort of this trade-off that we have to make. 00:48:22.740 --> 00:48:25.320 And the second trade off is sort of like you 00:48:25.320 --> 00:48:29.370 can make a blantanty educational game that just throws back 00:48:29.370 --> 00:48:31.578 at you that can sort of be fun for the first time you 00:48:31.578 --> 00:48:33.578 play it, but doesn't have a lot of replay value. 00:48:33.578 --> 00:48:36.639 And it's sort of hard to make a great educational game that 00:48:36.639 --> 00:48:37.930 also has a lot of replay value. 00:48:37.930 --> 00:48:40.424 So we're thinking, maybe consider maybe we don't 00:48:40.424 --> 00:48:41.590 want that much replay value. 00:48:41.590 --> 00:48:45.120 Maybe this is a game that these people will play once or twice, 00:48:45.120 --> 00:48:47.620 learn what they need to learn, and then never play it again. 00:48:47.620 --> 00:48:50.559 So it's sort of trade-offs that we need to think about. 00:48:50.559 --> 00:48:52.934 PROFESSOR: So you're still working on the paper prototype 00:48:52.934 --> 00:48:53.898 that you need [INAUDIBLE]? 00:48:53.898 --> 00:48:54.380 AUDIENCE: Yes. 00:48:54.380 --> 00:48:54.862 PROFESSOR: OK. 00:48:54.862 --> 00:48:55.362 Cool. 00:48:55.362 --> 00:48:56.308 Thanks, [INAUDIBLE]. 00:48:56.308 --> 00:48:56.548 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:48:56.548 --> 00:48:58.381 But we're starting to build up the back-end. 00:48:58.381 --> 00:49:00.880 And we're going to be using Phaser to [INAUDIBLE]. 00:49:00.880 --> 00:49:01.986 PROFESSOR: So you've already [INAUDIBLE]? 00:49:01.986 --> 00:49:02.486 OK, cool. 00:49:08.650 --> 00:49:09.947 Forecast-Based Funding, right? 00:49:09.947 --> 00:49:10.530 AUDIENCE: Yep. 00:49:14.700 --> 00:49:16.840 Hi, we're Forecast-Based Funding. 00:49:16.840 --> 00:49:19.930 The general idea behind our concept 00:49:19.930 --> 00:49:21.960 is that planning ahead for disasters 00:49:21.960 --> 00:49:23.840 is much better than trying to react to them. 00:49:23.840 --> 00:49:26.615 So if you can have operating procedures or ways of planning 00:49:26.615 --> 00:49:29.320 for them [INAUDIBLE] afford that, 00:49:29.320 --> 00:49:34.110 you can reduce loss of lives in the event of disasters. 00:49:34.110 --> 00:49:36.240 We are actually between two prototypes 00:49:36.240 --> 00:49:39.590 right now that we're testing to try and get at the ideas. 00:49:39.590 --> 00:49:44.090 The first one is a sort of higher-level city-based 00:49:44.090 --> 00:49:47.910 simulation of a city that's at risk of disaster, which you 00:49:47.910 --> 00:49:50.035 then have to fortify, [INAUDIBLE] train volunteers, 00:49:50.035 --> 00:49:53.200 or preparing for upcoming disasters 00:49:53.200 --> 00:49:56.466 in order to prevent too much damage from happening to them. 00:49:56.466 --> 00:49:58.590 One of the problems that we're seeing with the game 00:49:58.590 --> 00:50:01.810 is that's kind of abstract and not as interactive 00:50:01.810 --> 00:50:03.270 for players to connect with. 00:50:03.270 --> 00:50:04.978 But they are getting a good understanding 00:50:04.978 --> 00:50:07.218 of the idea of planning ahead. 00:50:07.218 --> 00:50:08.120 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:50:08.120 --> 00:50:09.780 And so to try and address those issues, 00:50:09.780 --> 00:50:11.430 we have a second prototype right now, 00:50:11.430 --> 00:50:16.840 which is about trying to actually rescue 00:50:16.840 --> 00:50:18.570 people in a flooding city. 00:50:18.570 --> 00:50:21.320 And so that hits the other end of the scale, where 00:50:21.320 --> 00:50:25.200 the player is told ahead of time this disaster 00:50:25.200 --> 00:50:28.320 was planned for versus this disaster was not planned for, 00:50:28.320 --> 00:50:31.742 and the appropriate effects for each. 00:50:31.742 --> 00:50:33.200 And then they have to rescue people 00:50:33.200 --> 00:50:35.320 under those two different conditions, 00:50:35.320 --> 00:50:37.220 and then they get to directly compare 00:50:37.220 --> 00:50:42.240 what the experience of is for acting in one 00:50:42.240 --> 00:50:44.190 circumstance versus the other. 00:50:44.190 --> 00:50:45.815 AUDIENCE: Over the next couple of days, 00:50:45.815 --> 00:50:49.235 we'll be looking at what we learned from both of them 00:50:49.235 --> 00:50:51.560 and trying to either combine them or pull out 00:50:51.560 --> 00:50:56.182 the parts that we thought were really useful to [INAUDIBLE]. 00:50:56.182 --> 00:50:58.174 PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE] on this? 00:50:58.174 --> 00:50:59.170 This was the hard one. 00:50:59.170 --> 00:50:59.668 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:50:59.668 --> 00:51:00.626 PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE]? 00:51:02.819 --> 00:51:04.860 AUDIENCE: I think it was stated a couple of times 00:51:04.860 --> 00:51:07.720 that we should be looking at people that are policymakers 00:51:07.720 --> 00:51:10.987 or donors in the sense of sort of people who would be 00:51:10.987 --> 00:51:13.970 allocating funds from governments or non-profits, 00:51:13.970 --> 00:51:15.261 things like that. 00:51:15.261 --> 00:51:17.510 Basically we make it appear that this type of planning 00:51:17.510 --> 00:51:19.510 ahead is a good idea. 00:51:22.880 --> 00:51:25.426 PROFESSOR: And have you decided on technology yet, 00:51:25.426 --> 00:51:28.077 or are you still pondering it? 00:51:28.077 --> 00:51:29.660 AUDIENCE: We're probably using Phaser. 00:51:35.050 --> 00:51:36.020 PROFESSOR: All right. 00:51:36.020 --> 00:51:36.520 Thank you. 00:51:40.430 --> 00:51:40.930 Heat Wave. 00:51:48.585 --> 00:51:49.126 AUDIENCE: Hi. 00:51:49.126 --> 00:51:51.430 So as you guys have all heard, Heat Wave 00:51:51.430 --> 00:51:53.800 is going to be a game that will hopefully 00:51:53.800 --> 00:51:58.210 be used to help Red Cross volunteers help people in areas 00:51:58.210 --> 00:52:00.068 that are either suffering from or about 00:52:00.068 --> 00:52:02.320 to suffer from a heat wave. 00:52:02.320 --> 00:52:05.710 So what we did was we decided we wanted 00:52:05.710 --> 00:52:09.700 to test out a very simple digital prototype, not 00:52:09.700 --> 00:52:12.890 with the same type action as our final prototype, 00:52:12.890 --> 00:52:16.260 but not in Unity because having a working 00:52:16.260 --> 00:52:18.051 game in Unity at this point we didn't think 00:52:18.051 --> 00:52:19.380 is a viable option. 00:52:19.380 --> 00:52:21.450 So we made a Python test base game. 00:52:21.450 --> 00:52:23.860 And people were able to choose what 00:52:23.860 --> 00:52:26.430 they were going to do based on the scenario and the people 00:52:26.430 --> 00:52:28.360 they were interacting with. 00:52:28.360 --> 00:52:33.450 And what we really want to test it was how does this work. 00:52:33.450 --> 00:52:36.300 Is playing a good way to learn? 00:52:36.300 --> 00:52:39.490 And if so, how can we make more learning come out of the fact 00:52:39.490 --> 00:52:42.620 that they're playing a game and then making these choices. 00:52:42.620 --> 00:52:46.740 So what we did was we showed people, and a lot of times, 00:52:46.740 --> 00:52:48.156 people noticed right away, well, I 00:52:48.156 --> 00:52:50.590 don't want to sit there and do nothing, which is 00:52:50.590 --> 00:52:52.180 what we wanted them to notice. 00:52:52.180 --> 00:52:56.110 And oh, this person passed out even though they were 00:52:56.110 --> 00:52:57.613 only outside for three hours. 00:52:57.613 --> 00:52:58.365 Why was that? 00:52:58.365 --> 00:53:00.140 So we did see a lot of that. 00:53:00.140 --> 00:53:02.850 But something we didn't see was people sometimes 00:53:02.850 --> 00:53:04.185 got stuck in a pattern. 00:53:04.185 --> 00:53:06.700 It's just like, well, I'm always going to do the same thing. 00:53:06.700 --> 00:53:07.845 And then they don't get different results 00:53:07.845 --> 00:53:09.680 and they don't really learn anything. 00:53:09.680 --> 00:53:12.950 So we want to give people more interesting options and more 00:53:12.950 --> 00:53:15.470 options in our actual game so that they try more things 00:53:15.470 --> 00:53:16.340 and they learn more. 00:53:16.340 --> 00:53:18.967 So that's what we're going to do. 00:53:18.967 --> 00:53:20.550 PROFESSOR: So you already [INAUDIBLE]? 00:53:20.550 --> 00:53:21.945 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:53:21.945 --> 00:53:23.060 Any other questions? 00:53:25.837 --> 00:53:26.795 PROFESSOR: [INAUDIBLE]. 00:53:26.795 --> 00:53:27.288 AUDIENCE: [? Great. ?] 00:53:27.288 --> 00:53:28.274 PROFESSOR: Thank you. 00:53:31.725 --> 00:53:33.204 [INAUDIBLE] Animal Village. 00:53:41.585 --> 00:53:42.720 AUDIENCE: Hi, everybody. 00:53:42.720 --> 00:53:44.930 We're saving the Animal Village. 00:53:44.930 --> 00:53:50.240 Our goal is to empower around 8 to 13-year-olds 00:53:50.240 --> 00:53:56.760 to reach into their community and learn more 00:53:56.760 --> 00:54:00.990 about what cholera is, what its symptoms are, 00:54:00.990 --> 00:54:03.780 and how they would convince people 00:54:03.780 --> 00:54:06.240 that cholera is actually happen. 00:54:06.240 --> 00:54:11.090 Our play tests were focused on bringing as many minigames as 00:54:11.090 --> 00:54:13.340 possible, and to testing. 00:54:13.340 --> 00:54:16.840 So in this case, we had four minigames. 00:54:16.840 --> 00:54:20.160 The main feedback we got on those games 00:54:20.160 --> 00:54:24.774 was that they were far too easy and simplistic. 00:54:24.774 --> 00:54:28.090 And we agree, it turns out. 00:54:28.090 --> 00:54:31.280 Our goals moving forward are to essentially 00:54:31.280 --> 00:54:33.727 improve our game beyond just reading 00:54:33.727 --> 00:54:37.430 an informational pamphlet, and to do things 00:54:37.430 --> 00:54:43.390 where it requires actual abstract thought 00:54:43.390 --> 00:54:47.530 and in general, more effort from the player 00:54:47.530 --> 00:54:50.240 to think of the behaviors and actions they 00:54:50.240 --> 00:54:55.240 need to potentially change or encourage in their community. 00:54:55.240 --> 00:54:59.030 We found a lot of success with this in our game already 00:54:59.030 --> 00:55:01.000 present in the mayor dialogue. 00:55:01.000 --> 00:55:04.640 And we hope to branch that up as moving towards, 00:55:04.640 --> 00:55:08.030 we begin to implement our game in Phaser. 00:55:10.757 --> 00:55:11.340 Any questions? 00:55:15.633 --> 00:55:21.370 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] what's the upside of having minigames 00:55:21.370 --> 00:55:23.722 versus one [? full ?] game? 00:55:23.722 --> 00:55:25.680 AUDIENCE: So our goal with the united minigames 00:55:25.680 --> 00:55:31.066 is to be able to drill down and be 00:55:31.066 --> 00:55:33.430 very specific about which behavior 00:55:33.430 --> 00:55:35.700 we want people to show. 00:55:35.700 --> 00:55:40.450 There are approximately three to four core behaviors 00:55:40.450 --> 00:55:43.910 that are very necessary to prevent cholera. 00:55:43.910 --> 00:55:48.090 And having one minigame devoted to each of them in theory 00:55:48.090 --> 00:55:56.679 will allows us to focus more and teach more, as a result. 00:55:56.679 --> 00:56:00.610 AUDIENCE: That's a good statement. 00:56:00.610 --> 00:56:02.764 Just riffing off something else that you said. 00:56:02.764 --> 00:56:05.180 I haven't looked that closely at the cholera documenation. 00:56:05.180 --> 00:56:07.590 I'm not so sure if convincing people that cholera 00:56:07.590 --> 00:56:10.862 is a problem is necessarily the thing you need to do, 00:56:10.862 --> 00:56:13.320 but convincing people to change their behavior and whatnot. 00:56:13.320 --> 00:56:15.771 AUDIENCE: So not convincing people cholera 00:56:15.771 --> 00:56:18.477 is a problem because obviously. 00:56:18.477 --> 00:56:21.270 It's convincing people to report cholera 00:56:21.270 --> 00:56:26.605 as it happens instead of waiting to see if that one isolated 00:56:26.605 --> 00:56:31.880 case of diarrhea is actually a symptom of an outbreak or just 00:56:31.880 --> 00:56:33.444 someone eating something bad. 00:56:33.444 --> 00:56:34.110 AUDIENCE: Right. 00:56:34.110 --> 00:56:36.290 So one of the things is like this early alert thing 00:56:36.290 --> 00:56:36.990 [INAUDIBLE]. 00:56:36.990 --> 00:56:37.490 OK. 00:56:37.490 --> 00:56:37.990 Cool. 00:56:37.990 --> 00:56:38.690 All right. 00:56:38.690 --> 00:56:39.890 PROFESSOR: Thank you. 00:56:39.890 --> 00:56:40.723 AUDIENCE: All right. 00:56:40.723 --> 00:56:41.740 Thanks.