Interesting observations about games and motivation, but the article and responses lack a little historical perspective: Clark Abt's Serious Games at the end of the 70's started a pattern which burgeoned for a while of developing elaborate, multiplayer simulations to examine behaviors required for success in many different spheres. Actually, Clark's book came after Abt Associates developed a very large "game" for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). The simulation showed, pretty clearly no matter who were players, that a guerrilla army would almost inevitably beat a western, mobilized, and automated foe. For almost ten years, DOD had an open request for a proposal to rewrite the game, since they couldn't rewrite the war.
Games and simulations have had decades of study. They have also had decades of application, way before computer games became intriguing mechanistic devices. Don't people look at stuff before 1990 in libraries?
[quoting Quinn, 23 Jan 97] Anyone have any pointers to empirical studies of the outcomes of any forms of "edutainment?"
Empirical studies ought to include marketing information from those infotainment producers most educators ignore. The behavior to be learned is equivalent to the product to be sold, since both engage change in the values, activities, and adoption pattern in the consumer. A lot of this discussion could be shortcut by moving into marketing information if students could be more clearly equated as consumers of educational services (including games).
Yet I believe that we can create games that will lead to retention if that's our goal.
Retention of what? Of information? For how long and for what purpose? Those questions are probably more critical to evaluating the impact of gaming alternatives to other instructional techniques, but no one seems interested in such evaluations. On the other hand, measures of the impact of gaming behaviors WITHOUT such contrasts do not seem particularly interesting, instructive, or productive.
If you constrain the world so that there are "gates" that require a test of knowledge to pass (embedded thematically, not arbitrary), you can allow exploration of a bit of the world (where they can discover some relationships), but not allow them to another part of the world until they demonstrate they are ready. This actually fits well with the structure of stories.
It also fits quite well the structure of imagination. And, such a fit illustrates why structures like this fail to reveal much about the actual application of such concepts. Maybe a little reference to phenomenology or structuralism might infuse these models with greater instructional (or therapeutic) impact: The suspension of disbelief in a theatrical (whether simulation or presentation based) event engages the consumer (viewer, player) beyond the scope of the immediate situation and in a world (environment, perception, or phenomenon) constructed by the author. That suspension is the structure whereby the information from the author is transformed into the knowledge of the participant. We are thereby moved to tears or glee, depending on the wisdom of that author.
Gee, sounds like Aristotle to me.