Socratic Arts

Socratic Arts' Newsletter

A Monthly Newsletter by Roger Schank

Games People Play

I really don’t know why e-learning is such a faddish field. I guess the less actual content a field has, the more it relies on the latest and greatest idea that everyone must suddenly subscribe to. The idea of the year seems to be teaching by the use of games. So, naturally, I found myself thinking about games.

I am not much of a video game person but my son did come by with a violent video game a few years ago and I admit I got hooked for a time. It was great fun to smash other cars off the road with your truck and try to escape from the police. I learned many important and useful things. I learned how to fire a missile and how to go on a crime mission and how to beat up an opponent. I learned important heuristics like:

If you try to steal a police car from the driver’s side you will be arrested but if you go to the passenger’s side first the policeman will exit the car and then you can go around the opposite side and steal the car.

When you are driving real fast and your car flips over you must run as fast as you can away from the car because it will explode.

When my son gave me a second rather similar game, I figured that I could apply what I had learned in the first one to the new game. Now obviously, the heuristics above only applied to the first game but, he pointed out, some heuristics apply to all of these types of games. For example, in these games:

Your character will take a pummeling for a while but you can protect yourself by watching the bar that measures your life force. There is always something (like a pill) that you can find or take that will replenish your life force.

There is always a place where you can get some instructions that will help you get to the next level of the game.

There are always weapons to be picked up or stolen in each game.

So are these games learning experiences? Yes, they are. What do we learn? We learn heuristics that help us win the game. Do these heuristics carry over to real life? That is, of course, the only question about games that should interest the training community.

I’ll bet you think I am going to say you can learn nothing of value from these games. But, wait. I actually built one of the first learning games for business. It was built about 1990 and was called HRM (Human Resources Manager.) In that game you got to run the human resources department of a company over a five year period and had to make decisions about personnel. You hired and fired people and the consequences of your decisions played out over the long term. You could bankrupt the company with bad hiring and firing decisions (for example by not retaining an employee who was capable of helping a competitor.) The company would do well if you made the right moves.

HRM was a pretty good game for its time. There were no fancy graphics or sim characters, but it did make you think about some issues in human resources. So, the question is: what did students who played this game actually learn?

I can tell you what I was hoping they would learn. I hoped they would come to understand that there were real issues that HR people had to deal with that could potentially have serious impact on the bottom line of a company. The students playing HRM were newly hired consultants for Andersen Consulting and the idea was that as consultants they would need to understand the role that HR played in a company. How did HRM contribute to their understanding? My answer was simple: through the important HR stories.

I can tell you good HR stories but why would you care to listen to them? You need to want to hear them to get much out of them. The whole intent of the game was to put students in a situation that caused them to want to listen to experts saying what they thought was the right or wrong thing to do in a given situation. The game created the situation, the student made a move, bad things happened, and then a story was told. Or, the students asked for help and a story was told. Story receptivity was the point of the game.

The point was not – I repeat - was not - that the student would learn to win the game, although surely some were better players than others. A compressed five year period never happens in real life. Our students were never going to experience life the way it unfolded in our game. We knew this of course. We were not intending to produce VPs of HR any more than my son’s game is intended to produce criminals. The game was just a backdrop for the stories. (I am not sure what violent video games are the backdrop for. I worry about this sometimes.)

To relate this to modern day simulations and games in the training world – a game can really only teach how to win the game. It cannot teach how to do real world things unless one is really doing those real world things in the game (like preparing a report or making a presentation.) Making decisions in a game is really not much like decisions in real life. In real life there are real consequences. Shooting at the police is an easy decision to make in a video game.

So there are two reasons and only two reasons to use games in training.

1- If the game actually reflects reality, that is, if the experiences in it are almost identical to real life experiences, then it is worthwhile. Anything less will teach only game playing skills.

2- If the game sets up situations in which one can learn from the ideas being entertained. In order for this to happen, ideas must be discussed, and the story format is the best way to do this.

Beware of games that mostly teach how to win the game. They won’t harm anybody but they won’t do much good either.



	Socratic Arts' Newsletter A Monthly Newsletter by Roger Schank Games People Play I really don’t know why e-learning is such a faddish field. I guess the less actual content a field has, the more it relies on the latest and greatest idea that everyone must suddenly subscribe to. The idea of the year seems to be teaching by the use of games. So, naturally, I found myself thinking about games. I am not much of a video game person but my son did come by with a violent video game a few years ago and I admit I got hooked for a time. It was great fun to smash other cars off the road with your truck and try to escape from the police. I learned many important and useful things. I learned how to fire a missile and how to go on a crime mission and how to beat up an opponent. I learned important heuristics like: If you try to steal a police car from the driver’s side you will be arrested but if you go to the passenger’s side first the policeman will exit the car and then you can go around the opposite side and steal the car. When you are driving real fast and your car flips over you must run as fast as you can away from the car because it will explode. When my son gave me a second rather similar game, I figured that I could apply what I had learned in the first one to the new game. Now obviously, the heuristics above only applied to the first game but, he pointed out, some heuristics apply to all of these types of games. For example, in these games: Your character will take a pummeling for a while but you can protect yourself by watching the bar that measures your life force. There is always something (like a pill) that you can find or take that will replenish your life force. There is always a place where you can get some instructions that will help you get to the next level of the game. There are always weapons to be picked up or stolen in each game. So are these games learning experiences? Yes, they are. What do we learn? We learn heuristics that help us win the game. Do these heuristics carry over to real life? That is, of course, the only question about games that should interest the training community. I’ll bet you think I am going to say you can learn nothing of value from these games. But, wait. I actually built one of the first learning games for business. It was built about 1990 and was called HRM (Human Resources Manager.) In that game you got to run the human resources department of a company over a five year period and had to make decisions about personnel. You hired and fired people and the consequences of your decisions played out over the long term. You could bankrupt the company with bad hiring and firing decisions (for example by not retaining an employee who was capable of helping a competitor.) The company would do well if you made the right moves. HRM was a pretty good game for its time. There were no fancy graphics or sim characters, but it did make you think about some issues in human resources. So, the question is: what did students who played this game actually learn? I can tell you what I was hoping they would learn. I hoped they would come to understand that there were real issues that HR people had to deal with that could potentially have serious impact on the bottom line of a company. The students playing HRM were newly hired consultants for Andersen Consulting and the idea was that as consultants they would need to understand the role that HR played in a company. How did HRM contribute to their understanding? My answer was simple: through the important HR stories. I can tell you good HR stories but why would you care to listen to them? You need to want to hear them to get much out of them. The whole intent of the game was to put students in a situation that caused them to want to listen to experts saying what they thought was the right or wrong thing to do in a given situation. The game created the situation, the student made a move, bad things happened, and then a story was told. Or, the students asked for help and a story was told. Story receptivity was the point of the game. The point was not – I repeat - was not - that the student would learn to win the game, although surely some were better players than others. A compressed five year period never happens in real life. Our students were never going to experience life the way it unfolded in our game. We knew this of course. We were not intending to produce VPs of HR any more than my son’s game is intended to produce criminals. The game was just a backdrop for the stories. (I am not sure what violent video games are the backdrop for. I worry about this sometimes.) To relate this to modern day simulations and games in the training world – a game can really only teach how to win the game. It cannot teach how to do real world things unless one is really doing those real world things in the game (like preparing a report or making a presentation.) Making decisions in a game is really not much like decisions in real life. In real life there are real consequences. Shooting at the police is an easy decision to make in a video game. So there are two reasons and only two reasons to use games in training. 1- If the game actually reflects reality, that is, if the experiences in it are almost identical to real life experiences, then it is worthwhile. Anything less will teach only game playing skills. 2- If the game sets up situations in which one can learn from the ideas being entertained. In order for this to happen, ideas must be discussed, and the story format is the best way to do this. Beware of games that mostly teach how to win the game. They won’t harm anybody but they won’t do much good either.
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