Why You Should Think Twice Before Putting a Sticker Page in Your Educational Game

"Learning is fun. We don't make it that way," is what Daren Carstens reminded attendees of the 2010 Dust or Magic AppCamp. "It's possible to wreck it," he continued, "It's possible to make it not fun. But learning itself really is fun."

When crafted well, games create an experience that can make the player go "Oh, wow!" They feel a balance of both competence and challenge, familiarity and wonder. When that occurs, engagement should naturally follow. But these days, it isn't uncommon to see extrinsic motivators being used in kids games. The player completes an activity, and is rewarded with a sticker, or other virtual item. But why? Can't we let kids just enjoy the game? If the game is good, wouldn't the child already be motivated to play it?

Some people believe that motivation is something we have to give a child. Take a look at this parent review of the iOS app First Words: Animals:

If the child "loves it," why is it necessary to provide additional motivation? And what effect would that have? 

Extrinsic motivation’s effect on behavior has been studied for decades. Chris Hecker discussed this at length in his 2010 GDC presentation, "Achievements Considered Harmful?" Video of the talk is behind a pay wall, but you can read a summary and see slides on his blog. Hecker cited meta-analysis that reviewed hundreds of these studies. (Deci, Koestner & Ryan, 1999) The findings they agreed on were:

• Expected rewards decrease a person's intrinsic motivation.  
• Verbal, unexpected, informational feedback increases intrinsic motivation.  

Preschool children in particular have been the subject of several studies. Turns out, you can wreck a child's love for drawing, if you tell him you'll give him money for each drawing he completes. Suddenly it becomes all about the money, and when that incentive is gone, what is the point? 

What about those sticker reward pages we see in kids apps and web games? Sure, preschoolers love stickers, and virtual stickers are no exception. But when you offer a reward for doing a task, you send a message that the task isn't worth doing for its own sake. You've created a situation where the reason to do the task is to receive the reward. The focus has been shifted away from any joy or satisfaction that might have been in the activity itself. 

It isn't enough to say "Well, some kids like the stickers. If a player doesn't like the sticker, that kid can ignore it." You've established the dynamic of the whole interaction. Educational games that hook players with real learning and real discovery don't need no stinkin' badges, to borrow a phrase from Jane McGonigal. Your sticker still draws attention away from the inherent satisfaction of the activity.

Of course, extrinsic motivation isn't always a bad thing. It can provide incentive for dull, but necessary tasks. If the goal of a program is to get players to do the chore of memorizing vocabulary words or multiplication facts, or perhaps to practice forming a letter of the alphabet, then sticker rewards or achievement badges might be highly effective. But these aren't really learning games. They're mastery or practice games. It's rare to see something accomplished in these types of games that hasn't been done before, or couldn't be done more efficiently with traditional classroom supplies, like index cards.
If you're designing a game that incorporates stickers or achievement badges, take a close look at the second bullet point above and see if they could be made more effective by placing them in unexpected places, or writing them to be directly relevant to the subject matter at hand.

In designing educational games, we should create experiences that bring out the natural fun of learning, and carve away anything that stands in the way of that. This is why design is difficult. It's all about determining where that balance of player confidence and challenge lies.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Photo credit: Paul Mayne. Shared via Creative Commons license.

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Gamification Hits Education

Although the term ‘gamification’ may only be a couple of years old, the concept has been with education for ages. Gamification attempts to make routine occurrences like doing errands, exercising, and keeping on task at work more game-like. Many implementations thus far involve earning badges for passing certain milestones, and a leaderboard, so you can see who is in first place, who is in the top 100, and so on. For the competitive-minded among us, these badges and milestones serve as motivation to exercise more, or perhaps drive your car more ecologically.

It all reminds me very much of formal education. You go to school. You ‘check-in’ and earn a mark in the attendance records. You’re awarded credits for completing homework assignments, writing essays, and scoring on exams. Passing certain milestones grants you eligibility to ‘level up’ and begin work on the next milestones. Leaderboards are published quarterly in the local newspaper, in the form of an honor roll or Dean’s List. High scorers receive loads of praise, in the form of scholarships and boasting by parents, teachers, and community figureheads. Some students are keenly aware of their numerical rank on the board, even as it updates every semester. It’s common knowledge who the ‘mayors’ of certain subjects are, and who is enrolled in the honors and AP courses. Some students call it out as being ‘just a game’ their parents and society want them to play, and don’t pay much attention to it. But for some students, this game is life. Being on top becomes a separate entity to the value of learning itself.

Tap the misspelled vocab words before they hit the ground.Since gamification, in its modern incarnation of graphic badges, Facebook integrated progress updates, and local leaderboards has already been applied to so many areas of daily life, it was only a matter of time before someone brought it to education. MindSnacks, a new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, brings these elements to their Spanish vocabulary flash card and speed drill program. Like many gamification apps to date, there isn’t anything game-like about it, beyond the score ranking on the iPhone GameCenter integrated leaderboards. The speed drill quizzes are cute, challenging, and fun, but I don’t think those things truly classify them as a game. Last year, I expressed desire for a term for computer-based quiz programs that are mistakenly labelled as games, for lack of a better word. Perhaps ‘gamification’ is that term we need. 

Games are about so much more than just who wins, or extrinsic motivations like a badge or grade. A well-designed game gives players meaningful decisions to make at every step of the way, and provides the players means to contemplate the consequences of their options. Studying a system, devising a strategy, executing it, seeing how it turns out, and thinking about how you might do it differently next time are higher order thinking skills that students exercise in games. They’re intrinsically fun. Gamification, on the other hand, is closely linked with the concept of dressing up a chore, to turn it into a more enjoyable experience. There’s certainly a place for it in education, because the chore of drill and practice will probably be around as long as there are things to memorize. 

So while it isn’t what I consider a game, I don’t want to leave the impression that I don’t like MindSnacks. Healthy competition with oneself and others is what some people like to keep them motivated to study, and MindSnacks delivers. If you have other friends interested in learning Spanish, it would be fun to set up a routine and keep track of one another’s progress. MindSnacks probably works best as a supplement to other language instruction, because it only covers vocabulary words and spelling, not phrases or language usage. Future editions of the app will cover French, Italian and Mandarin. I look forward to purchasing the French edition, and put my gaming time to good use blowing the dust off all those words I learned in school and haven’t used since. Maybe I'll blow away all of my friends' scores in the process, too.

Things to Consider in Designing Educational Technology & Games for Kids

I just finished a book on kids, technology, and education that was published earlier this year. The tone of the book was that youth today are different from previous generations. According to the author, they multitask more than older people, even young 20-somethings. Their attention spans are shorter than previous generations. His message was that if you don't utilize technology, kids today won’t listen to you.

Initially, I intended to write a review of the book, but instead, it seems better to respond to the common misperceptions that the author was voicing. A review, had I written one, would have read like a tedious list of attacks and counterarguments. I think it's more constructive to instead address this recurring theme that there are special things you need to know to work with this generation of ‘digital youth’. Because really, kids are just kids. No matter how recently they were born, or how much technology they use, children are not cyborgs, I assure you.

Student in the front row is unimpressed with the abacus; state of the art educational technology for 1930.Myth #1: Kids are bored at school because most schools lack sufficient technology.  The fact is, kids have been bored at school for decades. Possibly since the invention of school. Although it may be true that youth today use technology more than previous generations of young people, it isn't correct to assume that technology has become the only way to reach kids. Kids, like all people, are attracted to meaningful experiences in any form. Schools should absolutely incorporate technology, but there are still many great ways to immerse kids in a subject that have nothing to do with technology. 

What this means for designers:  When planning educational content, always think about the experience you are crafting for the learner. Whatever your project is, it's probably costing somebody a lot of money. For heaven's sake, don't let it be boring. What actions could a learner do that might help her become more familiar with the content? It might be a game to play or a simulation to tinker with, but it also might be a series of suggestions on what to do outdoors with a team of friends, or something to try the next time you're at the supermarket, and the cell phone app you've built walks you through the steps. Keep in mind too that the experience you design won't be the only chance the learner has to master the content. Don't bog it down with everything a person should know about the subject. Instead, just feed them what they need to know to have a meaningful, frustration-free experience right now, and leave them hungry to learn more about the topic when it is finished. Research has shown that people who play Civilization have more success remembering what they read in history textbooks than people who don't play. The best games serve as a springboard, not a stand alone lesson.

What this means for educators:  If using technology in the classroom frightens you, or you don’t have the resources of time or money that you wish you had, that's OK! Work with the mediums that are your strengths, whatever they are, and branch out when you feel comfortable doing so. Try to craft engaging, interactive experiences without technology. The word 'interactive' doesn’t have to be synonymous with technology. You could create an interactive activity where you tell a short story, then turn students loose in groups to do some problem solving related to the story. After they've worked for awhile, use the input from their work to continue the story and repeat the cycle. There are many themes and subjects that could be made into interactive activities like this. Just use your imagination!

Myth #2: Technology always makes for a more immersive experience than books or lectures.  The book I’m not reviewing in this post spent a chapter making this argument.  I would say that the inverse is often true. To me, immersion is when you forget other responsibilities and distractions and focus solely on the experience at hand. Sorry to say, there’s no magic quality of technology that makes it instantly immersive.  Novelty might make a new technology engaging for a short period of time, but a truly immersive experience takes a lot of design work. It can be easier to become absorbed in a novel than a video podcast or even a video game. It all depends on the design, and your interest in the subject matter.

Short attention spans can always be overcome if you have engaging content, and a delicious user experience. Have you seen the thickness of some of those Harry Potter books?  You can’t look at the line of kids who lined up at book stores as recently as 2007 to buy this fat novel and say this is a generation of youth with short attention spans. If kids are getting bored with your content, you need to try harder to craft an engaging experience. It isn’t easy. Involving kids in your development process and getting their feedback on alpha builds (or maybe even earlier!) is a good way to start.

Myth #3: Kids today have to multi-task. They won’t concentrate on one thing at a time.  Distraction in the classroom is not a new thing. It doesn’t matter if a student would rather text message than listen to a lecture, or if she’d rather draw doodles in the margins of her notebook. The end result is the same. The problem is not the technology. It’s the lack of engagement. The solution is not to remove technology from the classroom, because you could never eliminate all distractions. The solution is to make education more engaging, across all methods of instruction. No method is inherently bad. There’s room for improvement and innovation in all forms.

However tempting, it's important not to overuse gross generalizations, like "Kids today all ______." Just like any previous generation of people, the youth of today are individuals with unique qualities and preferences. Some kids boldly try every button when you place a new technology in their hands, and some wait and watch what others do with it first. Some teens seem to text all day every day, but sixteen year old Abby Sunderland wasn't texting all day when she attempted to sail around the world earlier this year. I have met teenagers who say they don't 'get' Facebook. You could probably find at least one teen or tween in any classroom who wished his or her friends wouldn’t always resort to social networking sites and text messages as their preferred methods of communication.

Kids today are not so different from you as a child. Sure, the world has changed, and experiences of generations of youth always vary from decade to decade, but don’t lose sight of the commonalities. Kids are still kids. They love a good story, and anything that’s pure fun. They like games and toys that encourage creative thinking. They worry what their friends and classmates think about them, just like you probably did. Personal relationships with the adults in their lives are important to them too, even if they don’t always say so. Think about these things when you design, and always question your own assumptions!

Photo credit: Nationaal Archief of The Netherlands

Kid-Friendly Board Games You Should Know (Card Games, Too!)

Earlier this month at Dust or Magic AppCamp, we spent part of an afternoon with a panel of kid gamers, aged 4 to 13.  They passed the mic around, and were asked to say what their favorite game was.  The 4 year old said "Ladybug," and we adults in the audience pressed her for more information about it, because no one had heard of it.  She said it was a board game.  Everyone laughed.  Poor kid.

We Americans don't take board games very seriously.  Video games are at the forefront of consumers’ minds these days.  A recent article in Wired magazine suggested board games lack popularity in the US because most American board games don't ask players to strategize very much, and the winner is generally determined early on in the game.  That leaves the other players to painfully and politely play along until the game is complete, which in the case of Monopoly, could take hours.  But not all board games are this boring.

As a game designer, I feel playing board games gives me an edge, because board game mechanics are more obvious than those in video games.  For example, if a game is 4 rounds of 3 turns for each player, you can think about why the designer made it that way, why he chose all of the elements the game includes, and how the game would be different if you changed any one of those things.  You can see all the parts of the game right in front of you at once.  In fact, many video game designers build paper prototypes of their games and playtest them with friends before they begin investing time developing a computer version.

Here are some kid-friendly board games I think any children's game designer would find interesting:

Aquarius:  Ages 5+  This game operates much like dominoes.  Cards have colorful illustrations of air, earth, fire, water, and ether on them.  On your turn, you lay one card down on the table, the next player must attach a card that connects to one of the elements already in play.  The goal is to connect seven cards of your goal element together.  I confess that part of the appeal of this game for me is that the rules state the player with the longest hair goes first, and with waist-length hair, that is usually me.  There isn’t much strategy in this one, other than trying to fool your fellow players into thinking your goal element is something other than what it is.  If you're too obvious with your moves, your friends may try to block you. 

Fluxx:  Ages 8+  This card game is very simple.  Each player starts with 3 cards and on your turn, you draw one card from the deck, and play one card from your hand.  Pretty soon, it becomes more complicated because cards in the deck allow you to modify the rules.  Certain cards allow you to set a goal for the game that determines how to win.  But of course that can change too, if you play a card with a different goal.  It’s very silly, and it appeals to kids because who hasn't wanted to change the rules now and then?  It's also a good exercise in reading directions and following them, which is something kids we all have trouble with sometimes. 

Guillotine:  Ages 8+  Another card game.  This one's a bit morbid, but in a comic way.  In Guillotine, you play an executioner, and your goal is to kill only the people the public despise in order to get the highest score.  One set of cards forms a line to the cardboard stand-up guillotine, and on your turn, you collect the person at the front of the line.  Action cards in your hand allow you to strategically change the order of the line.  Not super educational, but you do have to strategize when the right time is to play each action card in your hand, and the French Revolution theme may expose a child to people he didn't know about before, like Robespierre, and Marie Antoinette.  

Blokus:  Ages 8+  A visual strategy game where each player has an identical set of polyomino pieces, which is just a fancy word that says all the pieces are made out of different arrangements of squares, like Tetris pieces.  Unlike Tetris though, the pieces are made out of different numbers of squares.  Your goal is to use as many of your pieces as you can, and the winner is the player who finishes with the least number of pieces left over.  A great visual math game.  The manufacturer says this game is for ages 5 and up, and while young kids may be able to play, you need a level of sophistication in thinking to really plan a strategy.  Without that ability, young children may get bored.

Chrononauts:  Ages 12+  In Chrononauts, you play a secret agent with a mission that you must travel back in time to achieve.  It’s another card game, but in this one you create a sort of board by laying out many of the cards in a timeline that goes back to the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865, and has a card for many significant events through 1999, the year the game was published.  If playing this with children, I highly recommend also purchasing the recently published "Gore Years" expansion so you’ll be playing with recent history she’ll be able to remember.  This expansion continues the timeline through the election of President Obama in 2008.  The game is very interesting, because actions players take reverse events in history, which cause 'ripple' effects that alter other historical events.  A great game to play with kids studying history.

Settlers of Catan:  Ages 12+  A classic that is recently gaining fame in the United States.  It's a good strategy game to start with because it appeals to a lot of people.  It's a crowd-pleaser.  The game features a board of hexagonal tiles that you layout, and can thus alter in subsequent games.  Each player settles cities on different areas of the board, and you win by building roads and increasing the size and number of your cities (not unlike trading up from houses to hotels in Monopoly).  Settling in different locations gives you different resources.  Forests mean you'll have wood, meadows mean you can raise sheep, fields mean you'll have wheat and so on.  It's difficult to get all the resources you'll need on your own, and so you'll have to negotiate with other players to get the resources you'll need.  The game is so popular that it's been released in video game form on XBox Live, and iPhone.  It'll be released in mid-June on the PS3.

Quizzes ≠ Educational Games

I’ve heard it said that the English language is inadequate.  Because we have fewer words than other languages, there are some things we can’t say or accurately describe.  One of these instances is that we have no word or phrase for ‘educational quiz program’.

Browse things labeled as ‘educational games’, and you are sure to find many of them.  Programs where the ‘player’ (or perhaps in this case, ‘user’ is a more accurate word) is asked a series of questions.  Which one of these items will fit in the gap shown?  Click the word that starts with the letter L.  Sort these numbers into powers of 2 and powers of 3.  There are a few different definitions of the word ‘game’ out there, but set ups like this don’t really fit into any of them.

To me, programs like this are not games because you either know the answer, or you don’t.  If you do, you might enjoy yourself because it feels good to be correct, and computers are good at giving positive feedback.  But if you don’t know the answer, you’re generally left to guess.  Maybe the program will have helpful feedback that you’ll be in the mood to listen to and remember, but maybe not.  In any case, the experience isn’t likely to feel game-y at all, if you don’t know the answers the program is looking for.

Take the experience of many of these so-called educational games, and try to recreate them in person with a child.  If another person asked the child afterward, “Did you enjoy the game,” I venture to guess the child would say something along the lines of “Oh, we didn’t play a game. The lady just asked me a bunch of questions.”

So why are so many computer quiz programs calling themselves games?  Beats the heck out of me.  I suppose it’s part of the “Kids won’t even realize they’re learning!” phenomenon.  I don’t know where that comes from either.  Adults who use this phrase must have hated learning when they were growing up, if they can’t remember what is inherently fun about it.  My question is, why are these adults attempting to teach, if they hated learning so much?  Another possibility is that adults who don’t play games observe that children enjoy playing video games, and they assume children will find anything to be fun, so long as it is delivered via a video game system or computer.  Clearly these adults do not really comprehend games at all.

There are times when drill and practice is necessary to master a topic, and a computer program might well be a useful tool.  But ‘game’ is not an accurate word to describe the experience.  Shall we try to coin a new phrase?

My stake in the matter is that I want ‘educational games’ to have less of a dirty stigma.  The number of educational quizzes poisoning the educational games category is so pervasive that many kids assume that’s what all educational games are.  Parents sometimes fall in this trap, too.  I recently read a review of an educational game where a parent left one star and said, among other things, “The game never asked any educational stuff.”  Ouch!

Last week, I sat down with my Girl Scout troop to play Fluxx.  Before I even had the cards out of the sleeve, one of the girls said, “Is this an educational game?  I’m not playing an educational game.”  I told the girls I had a theory that all games were educational, it was just a question of what you were learning.  A different girl said “What about Hide and Seek?”  I paused to think about it a moment, and responded, “Well, to play Hide and Seek, you have to think about the people you’re playing with, and where they might hide, or where they would look, right?  That’s creative thinking.”  Actually, I suppose it’d be more accurate to say it’s metacognitive analysis.  But Hide and Seek is clearly a strategy game.  The first several times you play, you may hide and look in the same few places.  Under the bed.  Under the kitchen sink.  In the closet.  But play it enough and many players get more creative.  They hide behind the billowy curtains that reach all the way to the floor.  Or under a pile of stuffed animals.  Maybe in an unmade bed with a lot of pillows and blankets.  I remember sneaking from one hiding place to a place I had already heard the seeker check.  That’s leveling up into Advanced Hide and Seek!  (Or maybe it was just cheating.)  Regardless, there was clearly learning going on.

I don’t think we’ll ever reach a point where most kids seek out educational games.  Kids do spend hours in school each day, and no one could blame them for wanting to relax and not purposefully learn something every moment of the day.  And then there’s always the social stigma of not wanting to appear too smart.  Educational games will probably never be as cool as action games or fighting games, at least in the popular sense of the word 'cool.'  But I’m okay with that.  I just want my genre to get more respect!

What is an educational game then, you may ask?  (If the one star review parent above is reading, I hope she asks.)  I believe an educational game is one that was deliberately designed to make the player think about, or experience something academically or practically useful.  Some examples would be Lemmings, World of Goo, and Enigmo.  In each of these games, the player must think about how to solve a new problem each level, using only a limited number and type of tools and supplies.  The Carmen Sandiego series games give children an experience of real world geography as they do the familiar video game task of pursuing a criminal.  The Oregon Trail simulates the experience of leading a family across the country in a conestoga wagon, with challenges the pioneers would have faced. 

Many of these examples have been around for decades, are still popular with kids today, and are fondly remembered by those of us who grew up with them.  See?  Educational games don’t have to be experiences to endure just because they’re good for you.

Photo by ArSISa7, shared via Creative Commons.