Learning by design: Games as learning machines

Abstract

, are long, complex, and difficult, especially for beginners. People are not always eager to do difficult things. Faced with the challenge of getting them to do so, two choices are often available. We can force them, which is the solution schools use. Or, a temptation when profit is at stake, we can dumb down the product. Neither option is open to the game industry, at least for the moment. They can’t force people to play and most avid players don’t want their games dumbed down. For people interested in learning, this raises an interesting question. How do good game designers manage to get new players to learn their long, complex, and difficult games—not only learn them, but pay to do so? It won’t do simply to say games are “motivating”. That just begs the question of “Why?”. Why is a long, complex, and difficult game motivating? I believe it is something about how games are designed to trigger learning that makes them so deeply motivating. So the question is: How do good game designers manage to get new players to learn long, complex, and difficult games? Of course, there are some forces in the game industry that want to dumb games down. That is not a very interesting answer to our question. Another answer that is not interesting, at least initially, is that some good games appear to be made only for people who are already adept game players. These games can be uninviting or frustrating for newcomers. Some thoroughly excellent games that fall into this category are

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