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Welcome AEDT 4120, Serious Gaming and Simulations.
Week one, Introduction, video clip three of three.
I’m Professor Bill Kapralos, and over the next few minutes
I’m going to talk you about Play, Games, Video Games, and Serious Games.
However, before doing so, here's our list of Analysis Questions
for this particular video clip.
One. Does play have any educational value?
Two. Why do we play games?
Three. What is a video game,
and what is the difference between a traditional game and a video game?
And finally, four, what is the relationship
between simulation, game, and serious game?
So, we’ll start our discussion off with the term play.
Now play, I’m sure we've all used the term,
we all know the term, and we've all played.
If we look at a formal definition of play,
we can define play as engaging in activity
for enjoyment and recreation
rather than for a serious or practical purpose.
Or, in other words, we’re engaging, engaging in an activity purely for fun.
When we looked at play, we also have this notion of games.
So, game is essentially formalized play.
Or, in other words, it's play with added rules.
And games themselves have, you know, a uniquely human behaviour,
and its associated with enhanced individual and group survival.
So, when we look at a game,
there's typically going to be some form of reward mechanism,
and there’s gonna be this notion of risk,
and success or failure.
And there's always a penalty for failure in a game,
but however, that failure is gonna be much less
than in the real world.
And every good game contains a message about how to think and act
when confronted with real-world problems.
Play itself has been partly responsible for survival of humans,
and through play, our ancestors honed their hunting skills,
established the dominance hierarchy,
learned the importance of following rules,
and discovered values of their societies.
And play itself is fundamental to learning,
and this is evident particularly in the animal world.
So take, as an example, an adult lion.
The adult lion is a very efficient predator
that follows a specific technique to take, to take down its prey.
So, when hunting larger animals, it attacks at an oblique angle
before leaping and throwing one paw over the shoulder
or the rump of its prey, and then using its weight
it takes, the weight and strength, it pulls down its, its prey.
So, how do lions actually learn this tech- this technique?
We certainly don't see a mother lion teaching,
you know, its- he- her cubs in front of a, of a black board.
Well, lion cubs during play often mimic this attack behaviour,
and in fact, they spend hours and hours doing so.
So they practice this particular technique through play,
and as they get older and they hunt on their own,
they become quite efficient with this technique
and are able to take down prey as a result.
Let me just provide a brief history of games.
So, we've been playing games for thousands of years,
and some of the oldest games date back to about 4500 years ago.
And just a couple of examples here.
The game Senet goes back to ancient, ancient Egypt,
and the Royal Game of Ur goes back to Iraq, ancient Iraq.
In, in addition, there's the game – somewhat more recent – the game Go,
which was developed in China about 2000 years ago,
and it’s noted for being rich in strategy
despite its simple rules.
So, there has been several, uh, theories that suggest
that the games we develop and play
are both an indicator of our cultural development,
and a stimulator for further development.
And in fact, most developed civilizations
throughout history had games.
And in fact, there's been a number of ancient artifacts
that have been discovered,
and it has been suggested that these, in fact, are parts of games.
Okay, so we have been using games
and we have been playing them for a long, long time,
but how about their use for other than symbolism and fun?
Have they been used in training – as simulations for example?
And, of course, the answer to that is yes.
So, let's take a brief look at games as simulations.
So, the use of board games to simulate real-world activities
instead of their use for fun, probably began with chess.
So, chess itself was developed approximately the sixth century
in Northwest In- and Indian military strategy
is faithfully reflected in the game of chess.
Games that are explicit simulations began sometime around 1824
with a game called Kriegesspiel,
which was developed by a Prussian military officer,
and in the United States,
there was a game called Mansion of Happiness
that had a, a large simulation component to it,
and it was developed in 1843.
However, the best known simulation game is Monopoly,
which was developed in the 1930s.
So, when I'm referring to games and then simulation games,
just to make the distinction, simulation games are games themselves,
however, they highlight that simulation component.
They were developed primarily for training and education
rather than just for fun.
So, no discussion of games would be complete
without discussing video games.
And of course, in this course,
we are primarily interested in video games.
So, video games
are games that are played by electronically manipulating images
produced by a computer program on a TV screen or on a display.
So, in other words, games, uh, video games are games,
but now instead of playing them on a board, for example,
we actually play them via a computer, on a TV screen, or a computer display.
But video games are games.
There's no difference aside from the medium,
the medium has changed.
We no longer play the game on a board as typical board games,
but now we use a computer to manipulate images
ultimately that are displayed on a television screen or a display.
The first computer game was Tic-Tac-Toe,
and it was implemented in 1952 at the University of Cambridge.
And the key to this game
was the fact that it had a simulated comp- uh, opponent.
So, now you had a single person playing against the computer.
But here in this version of Tic-Tac-Toe,
the simulated opponent couldn’t lose.
And as we'll find out later on,
playing a game that you can never win is not much fun,
and actually, you'll lose interest in it very, very quickly.
In 1958, Tennis for Two became available,
and it was developed on an oscilloscope,
developed and played on an oscilloscope,
and this really led the way to th- the game Pong.
In 1961, Spacewar, which simulated a battle in space,
became the first commercially available video game,
and it was known as Computer Space,
commercially, it was known as Computer Space,
and it was released in 1971.
So, whether or not you accept the premise
that video games are all in some sense simulations –
which, for now, take my word for it, they are –
most video games marketed after Spacewar
do have a significant simulation component to them.
And believe it or not, video games are actually all about learning,
and there is plenty of learning that takes place
as you're playing a video game.
So, whether or not you accept the premise
that video games are all in some sense simulations,
which, in fact, they are, and we'll talk about this more later on,
uh, most video games marketed after Spacewar in 1971
do have a significant simulation component.
Believe it or not, video games are all about learning,
and there is a tremendous amount of learning
that takes place in video games,
and you are learning as you're playing the game.
And more specifically, as you're playing the game,
you're learning the paths, the rules, the actions
that permit you to win the game.
Now, of course, this learning, you may not necessarily be aware of it,
and it may not necessarily be the learning
that we, as educators, are after,
but nonetheless, there is plenty of learning going on.
So, in order to progress from the start of the game to the end of the game,
or in other words, to beat the game,
you have to progress through various levels
and you have to overcome various adversaries.
Many of these adversaries, initially, you can’t defeat,
but over time you learn how to actually defeat them
and defeating the adversary may be a matter
of simply choosing the appropriate weapon
that you use against them.
So, the inherent learning that's coupled with simulation,
uh, the simulation component,
makes video games a natural choice to teach.
And of course, this leads into this whole notion
of video game based learning, or serious gaming.
So, what exactly are serious games?
Well, they’re games, video games that don't have entertainment,
enjoyment, or fun as their primary purpose.
Now, this is somewhat of a misnomer
because the whole point of using games for education and training
is to take advantage of that fun aspect,
to take advantage of the engagement and the motivation
that video games offer, and apply it to learning and training.
We will discuss this as the course progresses.
So essentially, serious games leverage the power of video games
to captivate and engage players for a specific purpose
such as develop new knowledge or new skills.
And as I pointed out earlier, most video games
do have a very large simulation component,
and video games are all about learning.
And I just wanna reinforce that,
that there is a tremendous amount of learning inherent in all video games.
The most consistent supporters and developers of games for learning
and professional development, or serious games,
were really th- the military.
And in particular, the United States mili- military
has been using games for training and education for over 30 years now.
And the first likely serious game was Battle Zone,
an arcade game that Atari developed in 1980.
And a version of this game was known as Army Battle Zone
was designed to train army gunners.
Now, Army Battle Zone itself was not particularly successful,
but it was the beginning of the Army's use of gaming
and virtual reality-based, um, technologies for training soldiers.
So, we have this notion of simulation,
we have this notion of a game, and we also talked about serious games.
And serious games, the term itself,
dates back to about, oh, 20 years ago in early 1990s.
Prior to that, serious games were known as simulation games.
So, when I’m referring to a simulation game,
it's essentially a serious game,
or at least in my view it's a serious game.
So, a serious game is itself a game, and a game is itself a simulation.
And this is a very important relationship and it was,
this is modelled after, um, Becker and Parker.
So again, every serious game is a game, and every game is itself a simulation.
So, we've been using simulations for training
and education for thousands of years.
We've been playing games, games for thousands of years.
Why not take advantage of games and apply them to learning,
and hence we have serious games.
So, there's really no difference than using a serious game,
um, as opposed to a simulation for education and training.
And with a serious game we actually tap into the fun
and motivating aspects associated with video games.
So, this brings us to the end of video clip three,
and it brings us to our list of Synthesis Questions.
So, number one, what is the relationship
between problem-based learning and video games?
Number two. Can video games facilitate problem-based learning?
And finally, number three,
with all the video game hype and the benefits of serious games,
why are serious games not prevalent in every part of education?
Or, in other words, discups- discuss some of the difficulties
and drawbacks with serious games and game-based learning.
That concludes video clip three. Thank You.