I listened recently to an Adam Up Live podcast (#48) where Adam gave a summary of how to amplify the learning process by doing what he called “Total Immersion”. Adams podcast used research from NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and child development to enumerate a list of what was needed to encourage rapid learning. I was struck by how close this list seemed to many of the features we provide in our gaming environments.

I have summarized his list of points below, adding my commentary about how I think they could be applied within virtual environments.

• The participant must want to learn. This is usually done by providing some tactical incentives to encourage goal setting and defining a strategic pathway to a higher level goal, in other words, we need to make progress tasty.
• The participant must be engaged in the moment. Not in the past or the future, but right now. I think this could be facilitated by using a first person point of view and immersing the participant in an interactive environment. (i.e. FPS technology)
• The participant must be immersed in the learning experience. The setting, preparation, game state, environmental cues, and timing must all work together to enhance the ability for the participant to “tune in” to the activity. This is a standard game design goal, nothing in the environment should distract the participant from what he/she is doing.
• The participant should use all senses. This comes from the NLP concept of modalities. Learning is best when done in multiple senses, such as Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic. So the environment needs to provide non-exclusive clues in a variety of senses. Visual and Auditory are pretty well covered in modern computer games, but perhaps kinesthetic could benefit from creative leverage of Wii controller manipulation, or at least rumble feedback.
• The participant should get frequent praise and rewards. We’re talking about positive feedback baby! Perhaps the game could come with a hot companion who knows just what to say when you show perseverance and try alternate solutions .
• The participant should be liberated from the concepts of success or failure. Young children while learning rapidly are not daunted by a few failures, or complacent just because they accomplished something. Have you noticed how they keep going? over and over and over, (sometimes making adults crazy!) until they are happy with the pattern? Our environment must reward them for their continued participation, rather than categorize what they do as success or failure.
• The participant must pace herself. When the participant gets tired, it needs to be possible to take a break. Forcing someone to “grind” the same puzzle over and over can be very tiring. We need to provide a way to save the game state, or to context switch to a different goal when the participant gets tired. It may even be possible to detect this state and provide some alternate activities at this point.
• The participant needs time to digest and process their experiences. Usually this involves sleeping for a while. The brain spends the time we are sleeping categorizing our experiences and associating them with other portions of our mind. Trying to do too much without digesting the result (with some good solid sleep) is not good for the ultimate retention of the material.

So how would we develop a game to be educational and fun without being pedantic? What if I wanted to play a game where I could learn to read, write and understand spoken Chinese?

I don’t believe the game design would need to be that different from existing patterns of computer game design, so what is the blockage? Do we have a problem generating content? or do we need to overcome the competitive nature of existing computer games? Or would such a product fail to make enough money?

Just some food for thought!

(A post continuing this thread is here)