Dennis

When making an educational game there's always the fear that all the content *must* be seen.

Worst yet, that the content has to be seen in a specific order, or that vocabulary words must be displayed because "how else will the player know that they learned?"

A lot of these fears stem from assessment of these educational games. Assessing an open ended activity is really difficult. But an activity that has a linear structure is much more simple.

If you know a vocabulary word and it's definition shows up about 1/4 of the way through the game, you can include a question about that word in the post test. If the game is non linear you have to do more open ended often qualitative assessments.

Of course, the problem is does this mean that the player understands the concept, or that they're pretty good at picking up the definition of the word in the game?

Let's use the Oregon Trail as an example. Every now and then I hear people say "Did the Oregon trail really teach you anything? I don't remember those dates." or something similar.

I think this really highlights how we assess the effectiveness of this educational game. It's a game about history, so can you tell me dates? (this is a problem with teaching history in general, but I digress)

Really, the goal of the Oregon trail was to have you connect with that period in history in a more meaningful way than just memorizing a timeline or reciting landmarks. Your experience on the Oregon Trail was something you could compare and contrast with first hand experiences.

It was also meant to be played several times. Did you die the first time you played through? Why? How can you do better next time? Was it easier to play as a banker or a farmer? Why? Why does the banker have more money? Did that make a difference?

Also, it's important to note that in the original version of the game if you died, your tombstone would be seen by those who played after you did *and* also those on the same network/instance. You could ask another player how they died to increase your chances of winning.

This comparison/contrast of the individual experience was the goal. If every player had the same experience not only would it be dull, this sharing of stories wouldn't happen at all. Your story wouldn't be different form anyone else's. Your choices would be inconsequential.

But, again, this experience would be hard to assess. You can't assess a player's mental model of life on the Oregon trail by simply asking them what Chimney rock was.

I had the pleasure of talking to one of the creators of the Oregon trail about how he measured the games success. He shared with me that at the end of playtesting 50% of the kids who went through the game died before winning. he thought that was a good thing.

The cool thing is, the mortality rate in the game roughly matched the mortality rate of the actual trail! (because the probability of the events occurring came directly from journals of people who traveled the trail)

Cooler still is that you could have a lively discussion with the class by simply asking them "How many of you made it to the end? Why? How many of you didn't? Why?" Soon your class is talking about snakebites, the best time of the year to leave, and if you should ford your wagon.

Yeah, it can be scary knowing that not every player is going to see all your content, but if the experience is interesting layers will want to see what would have happened if they made a different choice, and will probably replay the game. More time with the content is a win!

If you're going to use a more open-ended game in say a classroom setting I would suggest taking a book club approach like the one above. Have everyone play the game, bring them back to talk abut their experiences, and then let them go back and play it again.

Yes, there is a certain level of trust you have to place in the player here. Some will replay the games and get a deeper experience, some won't... but it's also kinda absurd to expect players to simply absorb content by playing a game once anyway.

We don't expect everyone who reads a text book to learn everything the first time they read it. We don't expect everyone to reach the same conclusions after reading a novel. We're holding the edugame to a higher standard than these materials if we do expect that from games.