I’m preparing for a talk at NYU and G4C. (I’ll have links and more details in a few days.). I will discuss my method for creating game mechanics and assessing how well they teach.
My method of creating novel game mechanics is called GAME (hehehe). Player has to Gather data Assess Make a hypothesis Experiment and Gather data (feedback) and Assess…. When you know that these are the parts of a game mechanic that you need to create then creating a novel game mechanic is easier. If you want to teach something crazy like science or history with a game you’re going to need some novel game mechanics.
You can just map your topic onto a game mechanic that’s well known, after all this is what civilization the huge belief popular strategy game did. However, not everyone likes the place civilization or has the time to play it. We might teach history with something a lot simpler and a lot faster to play… Or we might teach an entirely different aspect of History, such as the social aspect of History by playing a game like Sood Society. Different learning objectives, different player preferences, different settings … The point here is just that if you’re going to try to teach somebody something with the game you’re probably going to be coming up with some novel game mechanics.
I reached out tonight to talk to my mentor, who’s a game based learning expert in Australia: Camille Deane-Dickson. She game me good advice on presenting, “Own your space. This is your little bit of how you are going to keep the world spinning. Let them ask you questions, thank them for their input, you do what to know what they think. Say thank you. Pause then say, I am thinking this….” Dr. Deane-Dickson gives great advice.
It was a hard day today for fibromyalgia…so this is short. Tomorrow I will spend my work day on the chemical reaction simulation game. I spent a little bit of time with pen and paper thinking more broadly about what other user experiences I might want to include before I nail down the products plan. By the end of this week I need to nail down the architecture of the unity project so that we can have a playable build by the end of the semester which is another 10 weeks!
So goodnight. Make good things! Keep in touch!
