Vygotsky & Video Games

Video game developers are masters of teaching, coaching and learning. We as educators know well that young people are not always eager to do difficult things. When adults are faced with the challenge of getting them to do so, two choices are often available. We can force them, or we can dumb down the product, two options that are exercised too often in education today. Neither option is open to the video game industry. They can’t force people to play and most avid gamers don’t want their games short or easy.

For people interested in learning, this raises an interesting question. How do good game designers manage to get new players to learn their long, complex, and difficult games and not only
learn them but pay to do so? It not enough to say games are ‘motivating’. It seems that there is something about how games are designed to encourage learning that makes them so motivating. The answer, according to researchers Bereiter and Scarmolia, is this: the designers of many good games have hit on excellent methods of getting people to learn and to enjoy learning. They have had to, since games that are difficult to learn don’t get played and the companies that make them lose money.

Those above mentioned researchers have found that that there are at least four features of video games that educators would be wise to incorporate into their curricula:

Video games empower their learners

Good learning requires that learners feel like active producers not just passive consumers. In a video game, players make things happen. They don’t just consume what the game designer has placed before them. Video games are interactive. The player does something and the game does something back that encourages the player to act again. In good games, players feel that their actions and decisions – and not just the designers’ actions and decisions – are co-creating the world they are in and the experiences they are having. What the player does matters and each player, based on his or her own decisions and actions, travels different path through the game world.

This empowerment promotes ownership, buy-in, and engaged participation. It is a key part of motivation. The curriculum should be shaped by the learner’s actions and reflect on the learner in meaningful ways.

Video games offer customized content

Different styles of learning work better for different people. People cannot be agents of their own learning if they cannot make decisions about how their learning will work. At the same time, they should be able (and encouraged) to try new styles. Good games achieve this goal in one (or both) of two ways. In some games, players are able to customize the game play to fit their learning and playing styles. In others, the game is designed to allow different styles of learning and playing to work. Classrooms adopting this principle would allow students to discover their favored learning styles and to try new ones without fear. In the act of customizing their own learning, students would learn a good deal about how and why they learn.

Good video games are ‘pleasantly frustrating’

Learning works best when new challenges are pleasantly frustrating in the sense of being felt by learners to be at the outer edge of, but within, what Vygotsky calls their ‘zone of proximal development . That is, these challenges feel hard, but ‘doable’. Furthermore, learners feel – and get evidence – that their effort is paying off in the sense that they can see, even when they fail, how and if they are making progress .

Good games adjust challenges and give feedback in such a way that different players feel the game is challenging but doable and that their effort is paying off. Players get feedback that indicates whether they are on the right road for success later on and at the end of the game. When players fail to complete a level, perhaps multiple times, they get feedback about the sort of progress they are making so that at least they know if and how they are moving in the right direction towards success.

School is often too easy for some kids and too hard for others even when they are in the same classroom. Motivation for humans lies in challenges that feel challenging, but doable and in gaining continual feedback that lets them know what progress they are making. Learners should be able to adjust the difficulty level while being encouraged to stay at the outer edge of their ZPD, but still within their level of competence. They should gain insight into where this level is and how it is changing over time. Good games don’t come in grade levels that players must be ‘at’. They realize that it doesn’t matter when the player finishes or how he or she did in comparison to others – all that matters is that the player learns to play the game and comes to master it. Players who take longer and struggle longer at the beginning are sometimes the ones who, in the end, master the game most easily.

Videos games expose their players to ‘cycles of expertise’

In their work, Surpassing Ourselves: an inquiry into the nature and implications of expertise, Bereiter and Scardemolia tell us that whether it be learning a second language, playing tennis, or learning to read, expertise is formed in an area by repeated cycles of learners practicing skills until they are nearly automatic, then having those skills fail in ways that cause the learners to have to think again and learn anew. Then they practice this new skill set to an automatic level of mastery only to see it eventually be challenged again. In fact, this is the whole point of levels and bosses. Each level exposes the players to new challenges and allows them to get good at solving them. They are then confronted with a newer level that makes them use these skills together with new ones they have to learn, and integrate with the old ones, to beat the boss. Then they move on to a new level and the process starts again.

When we think of games, we think of fun. When we think of learning we think of work. Games show us this is wrong. They trigger deep learning that is itself part of the fun. It is what makes good games deep. There are no ‘special’ learners when it comes to video games. Even an old guy like me can wander the plains of Morrowind long enough to pick up the ropes and master the game. The world doesn’t go away, I can enter any time, it gives me constant feedback, but never a final judgment that I am a failure, and the final exam – the final level – is willing to wait until I am good enough to beat it and master the game.