- Amy Bruckman “Can Education be Fun?” (1999)
- Ian Bogost “Gamification is Bullshit” (2011)
- Matthew Farber, “Why Serious Games Are Not Chocolate-Covered Broccoli” (2014)
- What learning games have you played? can you categorize them by learning theory: behaviorism, constructivism, or social nature? if you played more than one which was the most effective?
- Learning games can be divided along behaviorist, “drill and practice” models such as Math Blaster or Logical Journey of the Zoombinis; constructivism and constructionism, focusing on construction and creativity in games such as The Incredible Machine or LEGO Mindstorms; and the social dimension of learning, as seen in communities such as MOOSE Crossing. The best learning games are those that avoid “chocolate-dipped broccoli,” or “gamification” of uninteresting activities by embedding them in something else fun, and instead make learning itself inherently engaging by using mechanisms such as decision-making and role-playing. “Shallow gamification” has been dismissed as “exploitationware,” but “Serious Games” such as Nightmare: Malaria are effective because they integrate their message as part of gameplay.
- Is gamification bullshit? What is Ian Bogost’s argument, and do you agree? Where have you encountered it outside of class, and what was your experience?
- Ian Bogost has perhaps crystallized this argument most strongly, stating that gamification is essentially marketing nonsense and referring to it as “exploitationware” since essentially what gamification does is reduce the rich complexity of games into simple, repetitive elements and then proceeds to sell a simple guide on how to do business with such simple techniques. This, of course, is also the concern expressed by most researchers of gamification: an “unwholesome” design described as being “chocolate-covered broccoli” – taking an underlying difficult learning experience and adding a little bit of fun to drown out the process. If we look outside the classroom, we see one end of the spectrum focusing on trivial point systems, while the other end is focused on Serious Games, which have a tangible impact, like Nightmare: Malaria, which incorporates actual decision-making processes, or health-related apps like Zombies, Run! and SuperBetter, which integrate a purposeful goal into the actual game. If we look at the business world, we again see this spectrum, ranging from the recruitment game America’s Army, to team building game Everest Manager.
- What is a serious game, and why aren’t they chocolate-covered broccoli?
- A serious game, on the other hand, is a piece of gaming created to deliver a specific, purposeful message. Serious games are commonly created for learning or training, with K-12 learners, health professionals, and corporate employees as their common audience. They are different from edutainment because they make learners deal with complex rules and accept feedback immediately within a specific setting, such as recruitment missions in America’s Army or STEM exploration in The Radix Endeavor. Thus, a serious game is not akin to a “chocolate-covered broccoli” game, a metaphor for edutainment whose core is boring, as opposed to its entertaining surface. Serious games, rather, make the process of learning enjoyable at its core. While initial edutainment like the first version of Math Blaster offers rewards for learning, such as shooting mini-games, serious games incorporate learning into essential mechanics of choice, problem-solving, role-playing, and others. A good example of this is the game Nightmare: Malaria, where the dark, intense gameplay, such as evading mosquitoes inside a girl’s bloodstream, is actually part of the game’s mechanics for delivering the danger of the disease. Unlike edutainment, a serious game does not try to avoid the core idea of learning but, by avoiding this, it attempts to make learners embrace what is being learned, not merely the reward for it.