“My career would be over if Trump came out as a Call of Duty player or Boris led a raid in World of Warcraft”
“I‘ve started identifying with father figures in games — Joel in The Last of Us and, more worryingly, Kratos in the most recent instalment of God of War.”
These are the words of Matthew Barr, a leading teacher of games development in the UK. Rather than mimic Kartos and cross Sparta carrying double-chained blades, Matthew lectures at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of a new book on graduate skills and game-based learning and, we’re excited to say, an advisor to our Game Academy venture.
David Barrie (Game Academy): You’re a powerful advocate for people learning from playing video games. There’s a growing awareness of this. For you, what would be the breakthrough moment?
Matthew: Of course, my career would be over if Trump came out as a Call of Duty player or Boris led a raid in World of Warcraft- to steal a thought from games designer Richard Bartle!
Realistically, only time will provide proof, when esports is a popular, mainstream live team sport — which it will be — and the average gamer sees the potential of their in-game talent in real life.
In a very very short time, millions of people are watching games online. On You Tube and Twitch, games are a spectator sport. Designers are now making games for spectators. Spectate modes are being introduced to shooting games. These are massive developments in the way in which we appreciate and interact with games — and mark a growing acceptance and sophistication of games in mainstream culture.
What skills can be learnt from games?
Critical thinking. Resilience. Strategic thinking. Social awareness. Exploration of others’ identities.
How and why do and can we learn skills from games?
Games give authentic and complex opportunities to practice skills. Those opportunities are meaningful but not real. However, when people play, it’s happening in real time — and often feels like real life. It becomes meaningful to the player. People play regularly and the way we learn…it’s about practice.
OK. But games are designed experiences. Pre-determined stories played out. Surely the player is much like being a mechanical hare in a dog race.
No. A lot of games are ‘open world’ and ‘sandbox’ — experiences that offer freedom, lots of latitude, things not tested. A game like Warcraft is a joy to play because it offers capacity for new strategies. Dark Souls is infamous for providing little or no instruction to the player, aside from a few, early cryptic messages. Sure, there are rule sets to games but they define opportunities and problems, not solutions.
You’ve just published a book on games and learning. Tell us more.
My new book focusses upon commercial games and their capacity to develop skills in graduates related to employability. Previously, the capacity to learn through games has emphasised the use of games developed specifically for educational purposes. I focus on games like Portal 2, Borderlands 2, Lara Croft, Warcraft and Minecraft.
Why?
Commercial video games are very available, accessible and offer immersion and agency.
Educators have used certain commercial games to support their teaching of subject-related material — urban planning using Cities: Skyline, sociology and infrastructure management using SimCity and English as a foreign language using role-playing games (RPGs) that are full of spoken dialogue and written text, such as Final Fantasy.
The best-designed games typically comprise a series of coinciding or intersecting goals, with short-, medium-, and long- term conclusions.
Games like Team Fortress 2 and Warcraft III demand sophisticated modes of communication to understand and relay relative positions of players and share certain resources. They demand an understanding of self in relation to others and as part of a larger social context.
‘Simplistic’ games like Super Mario Bros and Super Meat Boy are designed to enable players to discover concepts for themselves.
Our first Game Academy course is devoted to decision-making: ranked Number 1 as a skill of the future by the ‘Innovation Foundation’ NESTA. What’s the relationship between decision-making and game play?
Sid Meier, the creator of Civilization, said “a game is a series of interesting decisions”. At every turn, game play is a series of making decisions at a micro and macro level. For me, decision-making is about critical thinking, exercising judgement and that’s what makes games fun.
For my book, I interviewed games developers. One fascinating thing was the design of Borderlands II — which can only be described as deliberately fuzzy. Paul Hellquist, Creative Director and Lead Designer on the game identified how the player’s application of critical thinking is embedded in the game’s design. The game intentionally obfuscates the absolute merits of in-game items like weapons — giving players a series of different stats for weapons, rather than a single, standard ‘damage per second’.
Are in-game skills transferrable to real life?
Ask any reasonably experienced player if they believe video games might help develop useful skills and competencies in those who play them, and the answer is likely to be yes. Also, we know from our student studies that games can play a role in developing their attributes. The important point is that game play is seen to be credible. Look at how academic institutions put team sports on their marketing materials, associating them with skills and talent. What’s the empirical evidence that sports are ‘useful’ to developing skills and talent? There isn’t much. Yet we still believe and trust in team sports.
You’ve agreed to support Game Academy as an advisor. Why?
I was delighted to be asked! I’m excited to see a company take seriously the idea that video games can exercise the very skills that employers are looking for. I know from my research that video games can develop these skills. Game Academy could challenge some of the myths about video games and you could generate some really positive and interesting outcomes for players.
A final question…Kratos in God of War… Joel in The Last of Us…what other characters in games do you like, admire or identify with?
Other than these father figures: Ellie, Joel’s opposite number in The Last of Us, the ever-sympathetic Clementine in The Walking Dead and Alyx, the resistance fighter in Half-Life 2. So, I guess, well-written female characters. As a Dark Souls fan though, it’s hard not to have some affection for the skilled warrior Solaire of Astora — oh, and an intense dislike of the trickster Patches.
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Matthew Barr’s new book, ‘Graduate Skills and Game-Based Learning’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) is available via his website. The eBook is out now, and the print version is due 29 October.
Want to know more about Game Academy, and sign up to our first course on Decision-Making? You can register via our first landing page.
Want to help us develop Game Academy and get closer to the development of our venture? Be great to have you involved. Just join our private Facebook group.
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