1) Orientation
2) Identification of game design teams and brainstorming
3) Generating a project idea
4) Preliminary design
5) Final Design Stage
Each of the five classes began the project with a class discussion on the topic of games. Students were asked to tell about games they liked and why they liked them. In each of the classes, the discussion flowed easily and all students were enthusiastic about contributing. This was a topic they knew something about. It seemed as though no one had ever asked them to talk about games, despite the amount of time they devoted to game playing.
Each orientation was concluded with one more question posed to the students: What makes a game fun? As any professional designer will tell you, this is not a trivial question. The answer involves a complex set of psychological and cultural variables. All students recognized the fundamental importance of the question - games are only worth playing if they are fun. They talked about games they consider fun now and also those they used to enjoy, such as games they played when they were younger. It did not take long for students to focus on the role of challenge, that a good game was hard, but not too hard and also that challenge is a dynamic variable in that it can change even while you are playing the game. As previously mentioned, optimization of challenge is a fundamental characteristic of intrinsic motivation (Keller & Suzuki, 1988; Malone & Lepper, 1987). This complex idea was well understood by all the students, at least tacitly. The orientation ended with students asked to think about games, especially good games, and how they might design their own games incorporating topics they were studying in school.
Although we expected the students to be very familiar with computer games, we were nonetheless struck by how pervasive computer games were in the lives of these children. These students were used to sophisticated 3-D graphics, sounds, and high energy scenarios. This was a technology with which all seemed to have experience. Interestingly, only with Class 4 did attention turn during the orientation discussion to the topic of violence in computer games. We were surprised by the matter of factness students spoke of about violence. One boy, though perhaps hoping for attention, boasted that "killing people [during computer games] relaxed him."
Identification of game design teams and brainstorming
Two teams were formed in Classes 1 and 2 and four teams were formed in Class 4. In contrast, all students in Class 3 acted as one team (this turned out to be problematic, as will be discussed later). The way each team was formed varied from class to class. Classes 1 and 2 were generally determined by the teacher according to where students sat in class, resulting in two teams for each class. The students in Class 4 were permitted to divide themselves into teams and they appeared to do so according to their already established peer groups sharply divided by gender. The result was four teams: two teams of all boys and two teams of all girls. Interestingly, existing social tensions surfaced in Class 4 undoubtedly due to the way teams were formed. For example, the teacher reported that originally there was just one team of girls (by chance, approximately two thirds of the class was male), but this team soon divided into two separate teams due to existing social friction. There was also one boy who seemed to be an outcast, apparently having been ostracized by his peers long before the project began. As a result, there was much tension and antagonism between he and his teammates from the start. (See footnote)
Once formed, the next step for every team was to meet and begin brainstorming possible game ideas, facilitated by an adult. Classes 1 and 2 were directed to design a game that was relevant to the science unit just completed (the laws of motion for Class 1 and understanding plants for Class 2). Classes 3 and 4 were not restricted in what content of the game covered in any way, though it was required that the game had to be considered educational - designing a game for entertainment purposes only was not allowed.
It became clear during the brainstorming that all students valued good ideas and it was interesting to watch how different ideas were evaluated by team members. Most teams had no difficulty in identifying a game topic quickly, probably because they had already spent considerable time thinking about it since the orientation session. The children also seemed a little surprised that their ideas were not being judged by the adults as good or bad, but that they were left to make the final decision. Negotiation did take place, but only in terms of what was possible from the programming standpoint. Many teams had ideas that originated from the computer games they had already played. For example, more than one team had wanted 3-D effects in their games and we had to sheepishly explain that our programming skills were not at that level.
Based on the brainstorming sessions, each team had to reach consensus on the general idea for their game. Students engaged in what Perkins (1986) has called problem finding. They were not trying to solve a problem given to them, but rather to create a new design. "Problem finding constitutes a crucial aspect of thinking characteristically neglected in instruction" (Perkins, 1986, p. 209). Students seemed to enjoy and be comfortable with the brainstorming process. Again, good ideas were recognized as so by team members. However, this stage was clearly most successful when a team consisted of 4-5 members. A team of this size generated sufficient ideas to keep the process moving, but not so many as to be overwhelming or confusing. This was the problem with Class 3 and resulted in many students in the class losing interest in the project undoubtedly because they did not feel part of the process (as it turned out, a small core of students took over most of the actual designing, although over half of the class still contributed in various ways).
At this stage, it was important for the team not only to reach consensus over the general structure and purpose of the game, but also to effectively communicate this structure to the adult programmers. A prototyping process was used where a working model of the game was developed as soon as the fundamental game structure was established, even though few game elements had yet to be developed (e.g. graphics for the game objects). For example, if the design called for players to answer questions to progress through the game, the game prototype would have a "placeholder" for where the question would go. This allowed the students to see and play their game as it was being developed. The game prototype also provided the relevancy and authenticity for doing the actual development in the next design phase.
It's worth noting that the design of the games show an astonishing complexity. Most adults get quite confused when they read the directions to many of the games, not because the directions are poorly written, but because understanding the rules is quite a challenge. For example, click here to see the directions for "Maze of the Minotaur."
It's interesting to note that several of the other games use "money" as rewards: the lesson of the "value of a buck" has not been lost on these students.
This stage involved constructing or developing all of the game elements contained in the preliminary design. Students were responsible to generate all the game graphics (using KidPix or HyperStudio, depending on the class), write game directions, and whatever else was included in the preliminary design (e.g. game questions). Students found that this phase required hard work and deliberate effort on their part. For example, writing game directions is more difficult than it sounds. Though students could easily talk about the rules of the game and how it was supposed to work, transforming these rules into written form took considerable effort. Again, the authenticity of the task - all the students understood that games require directions - meant that the teacher did not need to invent a rationale for the writing. Writing game directions also turned out to be an excellent language arts activity for the students.
As another example, the preliminary game design of both teams in Class 2 called for questions about the parts of a plant and how plants grow, but at this stage they actually had to write the questions. Interestingly, research shows that having students generate their own questions is an excellent learning strategy (see Wong, 1985), but convincing students that they should invest such effort can be a challenge for a teacher. In this project, the students themselves decided they needed the questions and although they found writing questions difficult, they understood and accepted the task as important. Interestingly, the two teams in Class 2 decided to share questions, thus cutting the work load effectively in half - a creative, collaborative idea.
These design phases were followed in varying degrees of formality and the time taken to complete all the stages differed from four consecutive school days to two months. For example, the project was conducted the most formally with Class 1 and was essentially completed over the span of only four consecutive school days (more planning was done simply because this was the first class to participate in the project). Class 2 had the benefit of playing the games produced by Class 1. Therefore, they had a much clearer sense of the intended goals and outcomes. The project lasted for about three weeks with Class 2, but with about the same amount of class time formally devoted to the design process. The design process for Class 3 lasted for about two months and was the most difficult game design to manage simply because it was very difficult to reach consensus with so many students and so many ideas.
Having learned some valuable lessons from the first three classes, we used the design phases much more effectively with class 4. Not surprisingly, the children in all of the classes naturally wanted to use the computers as much as possible, even though many aspects of game design could be done well with paper and pencil (such as writing game directions, game questions, or sketching game graphics). They simply wanted to use the computer, partly due to its novelty and partly due to the feeling of being directly involved in creating computer games. This class had access to HyperStudio, another multimedia authoring tool, in their school's computer lab. Therefore, we constructed a "Game Designer Stack" using HyperStudio to give students simple word processing and graphics tools set in the context of game design. Not only did they enjoy using the stack, it also clearly organized the game design process for them (it's important to note that these students had never used HyperStudio before, but quickly mastered the tool sufficiently to use this stack). The stack also made it much easier for us, as the programmers, to collect and manage the various game elements constructed by the students. Each student also had his/her own disk containing the game designer stack, thereby giving each student physical ownership of their contribution to the game project.
Footnote. We never learned the full story about this boy or how he eventually became part of the team. We assumed that the teacher had a role in determining which team he joined.