10 Key principles for designing video games

I found this article randomly online. A Singaporean researcher worked on it! (: The article's really long, so here is a rough breakdown so you don't really have to read it.


The paper argues for the use of games in language acquisition. Giving several examples of the use of games even in traditional language classrooms. In one example, she mentions the use of a role-playing game in a chinese classroom, called Family Reunion, where students can take on fictional identities and achieve tasks like constructing a family tree, planning activities etc using the Chinese language. That way, they would be able to pick up the nuances of the language such as family roles and etiquette.

Before choosing video games as a medium of language acquisition, the researchers qualify their stand with a few points:

- Gaming environments should not be conventional foreign language teaching classrooms in a digital gaming format
- Language is used as a resource that players can and need to utilize to carry out various social actions
- Focus on the 'utterance' in interactive contexts.


Her key principles are as follows:

1. Failures should be just as memorable as successes.

Given that it is likely for a learner to make more mistakes than to get it right on the first try, it is prudent to make use of these mistakes as learning opportunities to ensure that it sticks in their mind.

2.Instruction should first focus on meaning, then form

In the traditional classroom (form-focused instruction), educators work to draw the learner's attention to the ways in which various language elements (phrases, word order, etc.) are connected together to create meaning. In meaning-focused instruction, on the other hand, learners begin with meaning-rich content and then work to achieve goals that are not just linguistically based. For example, students may each be given clues to about a fictitious murder mystery in the target language, and then work to determine the killer. Most theorists agree that one cannot learn language with only one of the two; however, trying to make a game by focusing first on form dooms the game to be a boring one.

3. All elements of the game, particularly communication and input mechanisms, should have a playful spirit to them

This is to provide a visual and/or auditory references to the target information.

4. Metalinguistic descriptions and terminology should be presented through optional supporting material, not as part of the core gameplay.

Metalinguistic descriptions and technical terminology can intimidate and discourage a new language learner. These can be kept as optional extras to provide additional help to the player, instead of a requirement to complete the game.

5. Learning content should be organized around tasks, not presented in categories

Learning in categories (such as 'red' and 'green' being taught under 'colours') may not be the best way to produce lexical relations and understanding. From the text: ... our curriculum should start with the question "what are examples of some foreign-language dependent tasks we want the learner to be able to accomplish at the end of this game?" Perhaps we would chose "being able to purchase items from a store." The game designer might then incorporate a task in which the player needs to purchase a red potion from a shopkeeper in order to complete the mission.

6. New concepts should be introduced gradually together with other content before requiring difficult responses from players

Language acquisition, being a long and complex process, does not demand that you fully master a topic (say, past tense) in order to move on to another. One can still use the language even before full mastery of all its component parts.

7. Assessment should be discreet in-game, not presented in test format

Assessment often neglects the fact that mistakes are often signs of progress. For example, parents of children learning English know that they begin by using the word "went" correctly, but then later, start using "goed" instead, generalizing from the regular past participle formation. Some parents might be alarmed at this and try, unsuccessfully, to teach their kids to say "went" again. Most, however simply find it cute, and sure enough, without any specific intervention, the child will naturally resume using "went" correctly again.

8. Consider the full range of gaming platforms available

Different versions can accomplish different goals, as well as reach a wider range of audiences. Hybrid games might also be possible, further enhancing the use of this platform in language acquisition.

9. Games should allow students to spend extra time in activities they enjoy and to minimize time in ones they don’t.

Simply put, people learn better doing what they enjoy. Those who enjoy manga will be motivated to learn Japanese, and those who wish to play MMORPGs with an English-speaking guild will have to learn to communicate in the common language to achieve their goals.

10. Where possible, multiplayer games should provide players with meaningful and distinct roles

Often, when put in the shoes of someone who needs to do something with their ability, the game takes on a whole new 'personal' touch, thus increasing the gamer's enthusiasm for the game.

------


Some other research on the positive influences the use of video games have had on language students:

"Mylene Catel (2008), a college French teacher, reports how incorporating characters from her French literature class into the game Sims 2, students go beyond the existing literary world and begin to author their own creative expansions of the narrative. German teacher Todd Bryant (2007) gets his students conversing with other German players inside the online game World of Warcraft. Rather than brief dialogs fabricated specifically for the purpose of language exchange, his students engage in meaningful dialogs with non-classroom peers in order to accomplish the tasks that arise from playing the game."