Seven ways to avoid your games-based learning getting old.
Making sure your learning games outlive their ‘shelf life’
A key criticism of games is that they have a shelf life. Once a player has completed a game, or ‘nailed’ it’s strategy, will they want to carry on playing? In games-based learning, this could be a huge problem — if there’s no engagement, there’s no learning.
There are a few ways to make sure this isn’t a problem for your games-based learning. Although, take note: the first things is to make the experience as fun as possible from the start.
Just stop playing soon enough
The first and easiest way is to make sure that the learning aims are met before this becomes an issue. I’m developing a learning game at the moment for humanitarian aid scenarios, which has some ‘spoilers’ in it. Once you know how a certain part of the game works, it won’t work quite the same way a second time.
But that’s okay, because the game isn’t designed to be played a second time. It’s a one-shot per group deal, and that’s okay. Design your games-based learning experiences to end at the point where they’ve delivered the learning value, before boredom sets in.
Design endgame challenges
Jesse Schell makes the excellent point that a game is only a vehicle for an experience. So, focus on the experience. Yu-Kai Chou talks about the endgame as a specific phase in a player experience, where they’ve mastered the game’s main ‘game loops’ of action and feedback, and are at risk of losing interest.
Designers of commercial videogames tackle this with new challenges for experienced players. Often these challenges are ‘available’ from the start, but the players lack the skills or resources to attempt them, like a quest that requires a magic sword. Take a leaf out of their book and make sure that your games-based learning adds in challenges and changes for advanced players.
Make expert players into mentors
If players are so expert that the game or experience presents few challenges, then give them a new one: introducing and helping others. Most people like to pass on their skills and be recognised as experts, and teaching and coaching often gives us new perspectives on a topic.
You could even recruit expert players into being co-hosts or co-designers. What did they learn from mastering the game? How would they change things? They’re a resource that you may be able to tap to improve the game or experience, while also keeping them engaged.
Make it asymmetrical
If a player masters play in a game where there is only one player role, they’ve mastered the game. If there are two ‘sides’ in the game and they master play of one, they’ve mastered only half the game. Many games make the core experience similar, but noticeably different depending what character or group a player chooses.
This taps into Jesse Schell’s point about an experience. If you design four experiences in one piece of games-based learning, because each of four characters plays differently, it will take players a long time to feel they’ve ‘beaten’ it. In a management game, what if players could be the managers, the team members, the suppliers or the customers, each having their own challenges?
Make every time different
If a game is played on a board that never changes, it’s always the same game. If the board is made out of interlocking pieces that change configuration each time, it could be a different game each time. Perhaps the best example of this is Dungeons & Dragons and other roleplaying games, where every game has different characters and storylines. Some people keep playing this their whole lives.
In practice, this can be difficult to design. But, while designing games-based experiences, keep an eye out for ways you can make the experience bespoke or changeable each time, and look about for examples of games that do this well. Dominion, Civilization and Minecraft are all good examples.
Have them compete with each other
If some players are at a level above most other players, have them compete with each other. It could be in an elite tournament, or by means of ‘all-time’ leaderboards and achievements. For some players, being good is not good enough — they want to be the best.
This can be especially good if rather than a single simple score, there are lots of metrics or types of achievement. They may have done it best, but can they do it quickest? They may have done it quickest, but can they do it most elegantly?
Tap into the completist drive
There’s finishing or beating a game, and there’s fully completing it. Commercial videogame designers often design in ‘easter eggs’ that make players search every area to find them all. Or use achievements spread throughout the game, displaying progress: ‘you’ve completed 21 or 30 achievements’.
Some players will replay a game again and again with the goal of getting that one last achievement. Depending on your games-based experience, you may not need them to play as often as all that, but the lure of a step towards completion can still be useful in keeping them engaged.
