Four to Five Years: Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

Time-to-adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

The term “serious games” has been coined to describe games that have an educational purpose and non- entertainment goals. Educators are taking a hard look at one type of serious game, massively multiplayer educational games, and finding strong potential for teaching and learning. These games are still time- consuming and often expensive to produce, but practical examples can easily be found. Interest is high and developments in the open-source arena are bringing them closer to mainstream adoption year by year.

Overview

The interest and trend of educational gaming has accelerated considerably in the last year. Discussion and research has continued, identifying games that are goal-oriented and those that are more social in nature; games that are easy to construct and play, and those that are more complex and time-consuming; and games developed expressly for education versus commercial games that are appropriated for educational use. One genre that offers interesting potential for education is massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, which bring many players together in activities that are sometimes collaborative and sometimes competitive, generally goal-oriented, and often tied to a storyline or theme.

Like other kinds of games, educational MMOs combine a carefully crafted setting with specific educational objectives. What makes these games especially compelling and effective is their multiplayer nature—students can work in small or large groups, or can pursue goals solo, all in the context of a larger community of player-learners. Role-playing is a possible, but not essential, component. Other possible interactions include mentoring of newer players by more experienced ones, competitive team activities, and collaborative world-building.

Although it is common to picture these games in the setting of a 3D virtual world—and indeed some of them take place in such spaces—that is not a requirement, and many popular MMOs are text-based or built on simple graphical interfaces. Experiments with educational massively multiplayer games date back ten or more years to MOOs and MUDs (text-based multiplayer environments); educational examples encouraged learners to describe and build parts of the real world, or immersed them in descriptions and interactions in other languages.

We are now seeing a resurgence of interest in educational MMOs. For example, the Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University is creating an MMO, set in a 3D virtual world, about the life and times of William Shakespeare, in which students are transported to Shakespeare’s world and learn about the customs, language, and events of the time. In general, these games are still relatively rare, due to the difficulty and cost of producing them. Cost will become less of a factor as open-source MMO gaming engines are further developed, and within a few years it is likely that educational MMO games will be commonplace in a variety of disciplines. Open- source efforts like WorldForge (www.worldforge.org), and low-cost engines like Multiverse (www.multiverse.net) may be successful in lowering the barrier to development of these complex games.

Relevance for Teaching, Learning, and Creative Expression

It seems clear that games can be effectively applied in many learning contexts. They can engage learners in ways other tools and approaches cannot, and their value for learning has been established through decades of research. MMOs in the entertainment sector have been seen to attract and retain players; as of July 2006, there were over thirteen million active subscriptions to MMOs worldwide (see www.mmogchart.com).

Increasingly, we know more about how games work and how to apply them to teaching and learning. Over the past year, awareness and interest in educational gaming has grown, research has continued, and further forays into bringing games into the classroom have advanced our understanding and led to a more widespread acceptance of this trend. As work progresses on open- source MMO engines, it will eventually become more common to see MMOs that offer immersive, engaging experiences in a variety of disciplines. It will still require effort and thought to create appropriate spaces and design compelling problems, but the very nature of MMOs lends itself to use by many people, spreading the benefits to many students.

Another aspect of MMOs that is of value to the educational community is the types of activities they make possible. These games offer opportunities for both discovery-based and goal-oriented learning, and can be very effective ways to develop team- building skills. It is possible to design activities that cannot be completed by a single player; a group must work together to strategize, develop a solution, maximize the various talents of the team members, and execute their plan in concert to succeed. The game teaches much more than just the controls required to move through the world.

A sampling of massively multiplaye reducational gaming applications across disciplines includes the following:

• Study foreign language and culture. MMOs offer the opportunity for virtual immersion, not only in a visual or design sense, but also in reading, writing, listening, and even speaking. A world based on an ancient or modern culture could include quests that require players to read instructions, listen to non-player-characters speaking clues, and write their own responses or answers, all in a foreign language and in a setting that allows them to feel what it was or is like to be part of that culture.
• Develop leadership and management skills. Even in non-educational MMOs, leadership and management skills come into play. Research has shown that players who take on the responsibility of leading a guild (group of affiliated players) or a raid (smaller group of players who team up to complete a specific objective) develop skills which are transferable into their lives at work and at school (Life as a Guild Leader, Nick Yee, March 20, 2006, p.10.).
• Practice strategy and apply knowledge competitvely. Multiplayer games offer an opportunity for students to practice what they have learned. For example, a free online game called Rich Man Game pits players against each other on a weekly basis to make business deals and build up their net worth. Although it is not set in a 3D virtual world, Rich Man Game is a massively multiplayer online educational game.

Examples of Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming

The following links provide examples of applications for massively multiplayer educational gaming.

• Games, Learning, and Society
  Offered at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, the Games, Learning and Society minor is designed for students who are interested in game design, the impact of games on culture, and gaming in education.
• Immersive Education
  Immersive Education, developed at Boston College’s Grid Institute, combines interactive virtual reality and sophisticated digital media with collaborative online course environments and classrooms. The press release describes the project.
• Innovation Awards
  The University of Wisconsin System is encouraging faculty to explore the potential of gaming in education by offering grants for research and development of faculty-designed games.
• Synthetic Worlds Initiative
  The Synthetic Worlds Initiative is a research project at Indiana University whose aim is to promote innovative thinking about virtual worlds. A multiplayer game about the life of Shakespeare and an academic conference embedded in the context of a live-action game are just two of the projects underway now.
• Thinking Worlds
  Thinking Worlds is an educational games authoring engine and a community of user-developers; once created, games can be shared within the community.

For Further Reading

The following articles and resources are recommended for those who wish to learn more about massively multiplayer educational gaming.

• Digital Game-based Learning: It’s Not Just the Digital Natives Who are Restless (Richard Van Eck, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 2, March/April 2006: 16–30) This article discusses why digital game-based learning is effective and engaging and outlines educational applications.
• Games in Education Video (Mark Wagner and Michael Guerena, retrieved December20, 2006)This 20-minute video includes interviews with Jim Gee, Clark Aldrich, and Henry Jenkins on the topic of educational gaming.
• Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs) in the New Media Classroom (Aaron Delwiche, Educational Technology & Society, 9 (3), 2006: 160-172) This paper reports findings from two MMO-based courses in the context of situated learning theory.
• MMOG Research (Constance Steinkuehler, University of Wisconsin—Madison, retrieved December 20, 2006) A bibliography of research papers on the topic of massively multiplayer online gaming in education.
• Serious Games Initiative (Retrieved December 20, 2006) The Serious Games Initiative helps develop collaborations between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy.
• del.icio.us: Educational Gaming (Horizon Project Advisory Board and Friends, 2006) Follow this link to find resources tagged for this topic and this edition of the Horizon Report, including the ones listed here. To add to this list, simply tag resources with “hz07” and “educational_games” when you save them to del.icio.us.