Action Games: Shoot 'Em Up
To get a start thinking about action games, I spent some time playing some classic 80s arcade games, Asteroids and Galaga. One of the things that appeals to me about action games is they usually have a very simple premise. In both Asteroids and Galaga, all you need to do is destroy the dangers before they destroy your spaceship.
As a science teacher, I'm very excited about how apparent the physics are in this category of game. I was most aware of this playing Asteroids, watching the way the speed and trajectory would change when an astroid was broken into smaller pieces. The way the astroids speed up after breaking into smaller pieces is very inaccurate, but asking students to prove that could make a great lesson on conservation of momentum or conservation of energy. If the tools for video analysis are available, it could even be possible for students to take quantitative measurements of the gameplay and perform calculations to decide whether the physics is accurate, like Rhett Allain did with Angry Birds or Frank Noschese did with Flappy Bird.
Action Games: Platformer
Platform games provide levels that are a sort of obstacle course where players must make their way through hazardous terrain, collecting items and defeating enemies as they go. Some classic examples include the Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog games. While these games certainly offer some opportunities to analyze the physics present, they offer other opportunities for use in the classroom, as well.
Many subjects have certain skills or pieces of knowledge that must me automatic for students and the easiest way to develop automaticity is "drill and kill" exercises, where students repeat the skill or information until they simply can't get it wrong. Students (and sometimes teachers!) dread the drudgery of these exercises and are always eager for a way to add some fun. The fast pace of a platform game could make a great environment to encourage quick recall and rapid application of key skills while keeping students engaged.
The boss fights also stood out at me as an interesting opportunity for science classes. The scientific process requires students to seek out patterns in their observations, then use those patterns to make predictions or solve problems. Bosses in these games often follow predictable patters, requiring players to engage in a very similar process in order to find a way to win the fight. If students could recognize this similarity, they could apply the skills they've developed as gamers to become better scientists, as well.
Action Games: First-Person Shooters
For a refresher on first-person shooters, or FPS games, I spent some time playing one of the first installments in the genre, Doom 1. In the game, the player sees the game world from the perspective of a space marine fighting alien demons on Mars. While FPS games may not be known for their involved storylines, they are an incredibly immersive experience. As a player, you see through your avatar's eyes, which always makes me feel like events in the game are happening to me, rather than an abstract character on a screen. Even with graphics that now seem low-quality, I quickly lost myself in the action.
In addition to the opportunity for immersion, FPS games provide a chance to for strategic thinking. The terrain in Doom provides opportunities to gain an advantage over an enemy; shooting an exploding barrel can take out multiple enemies with a single shot or the terrain can be used as a source of cover, limiting how many enemies can reach you at once. This kind of planning can make the difference between making it safely through an area and becoming overwhelmed by enemies.
As useful as planning and strategy can be, an FPS also requires players to remain adaptable and to think on their feet. There is always a limit to how much of the next area you can see, and designers of FPS games are often skilled at finding ways to surprise even the most cautious players. To win the game, the player must be able to adapt quickly and effectively to changing circumstances. Whether in a game, in school, on the job, or in some other setting, the ability to adapt and think quickly is an incredibly powerful skill.
Action Games: Fighting Games
Street Fighter is perhaps the most iconic fighting game, a genre in which players engage in one-on-one combat using a character with unique powers and combos reign supreme. While Street Fighter focuses on quick reflexes, there's also a certain amount of strategy. Since each opponent has specific strengths and weaknesses, the player can tailor their approach to take advantage of that knowledge.
What makes fighting games truly unique, however, is that they rely entirely on the skill of the player. While the opponents get tougher, the player's character doesn't get any more powerful as you move through the game. You can't rely on an ammo cache or a first aid kit appearing at just the right time or learn the perfect route through a level. It all comes down to having the skill to pull off the right moves at the right moment. Whether a player is successful in a fighting game relies entirely on their skill. In case the player reaches a skill level where the computer is too easy, most fighting games even offer an option to play against another live player, requiring new strategies while still relying only on the individual skill of the players.
It isn't very often that you see a situation where your success is entirely dependent on the time you spend and the effort you make to develop required skills. Most of the time, the impact of effort is muddied by luck, opportunity, or the people you happen to be working with. Giving students an endeavor where their success is so clearly tied to skill and effort can send a powerful message.
Action Games: Driving Games
To take a look at driving games, I spent some time playing Shut Up and Drive. The frantic pace of these games has never been very appealing to me, but playing with the perspective of a teacher allowed me to see how much physics is clearly apparent in these games. I quickly figured out I had to slow down going into a turn if I didn't want to fly off the road, and the basic principles of circular motion are easily able to explain why. Namely, turning is an acceleration, and the faster you are going, the more acceleration a turn requires. Since a big acceleration takes a big force, a car that is going too fast through a turn risks sliding off the side of the road.
Students could easily be given an assignment to use physics to determine the best driving strategy and adding features, such as alternate surface or banked roads, could provide opportunities to bring more physics concepts into the task. Students could even be challenged to explain the behaviors of cars during a collision. Like the shoot 'em up games discussed above, driving games could also provide students the opportunity to decide whether the physics depicted in the game are truly realistic.
Driving games also have the opportunity fighting games offer to succeed purely on individual skill. While some have power-ups along the track or have mechanisms to soup up your car, the player's ability to drive effectively is still the most important factor in winning a race. Giving students the chance to succeed purely on their merits can send a powerful message on what success requires.
Action Games: Rhythm Games
Rhythm games, such as Rhythm Doctor, require players to use auditory and visual cues to hit buttons on their control in specific patterns. The most obvious academic use for these types of games is in music. Like many students, I struggled with staying on the beat and playing syncopated rhythms during my time in band and piano lessons. Games like this give players the opportunity to practice these skills in a different setting.
Some rhythm games can also be used to get players active. During college, my friends and I regularly played Dance Dance Revolution and would easily work up a sweat on the more challenging levels. This provides an opportunity to bring video games into physical education classes where the primary goal is to help students be healthy and active in the long run. Pickle ball and floor hockey never much appealed to me, but I think I would have been interested had my PE teacher set up Dance Dance Revolution.
Many of these games can also be used to make music history more interactive. Series such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band challenge players with songs from throughout the history of pop music, giving players an exposure to songs they may not otherwise listen to from a variety of eras. In addition, players are not simply listening to the music, but feeling the rhythms and structures of each song they play in the game, opening the door for a much richer exploration of the music than a straightforward listen.
Narrative Games: Text-Based Adventures
Narrative games, also known as interactive fiction, are my favorite genre. As a kid, I spent countless hours on the family computer lost in Sierra's narrative games, including King's Quest, SpaceQuest, and Monkey Island. In college, some friends introduced me to Zork, the game often considered the first the first narrative game. Revisiting the game was a welcome reminder that it doesn't take the graphics of Skyrim or the bursts of action of Diablo or Half-Life to tell an engaging story; well-written text and interesting puzzles can be at least as immersive.
Playing Zork today, I was very quickly reminded of why I had notebooks filled with maps, quotes from conversations, and other notes that I kept handy when playing games like King's Quest (as a side note, it was nice to hear Nick Montfort talk about the use of those kinds of notes to remind me I wasn't a complete dork). I remembered there were reasons to explore Zork's forest before entering the house, but I quickly became lost. I walked in a straight line, figuring I could just retrace my steps, but I'd forgotten that, in Zork, going north, then south can get you somewhere new, rather than your starting point. With a combination of stubbornness and luck, I managed to get back to the house and got out a pencil and paper to track where I'd been.
Text-based narrative games like Zork provide some great opportunities for students as readers and writers. A student who insists they hate to read may find the interaction of a game engaging. The relative ease of programming a text-based game could also give students a non-traditional format to publish and share their own stories.
Narrative Games: Graphic Adventures
When I was in college, my friends and I would gather every Monday to visit Homestarrunner to watch the latest Strongbad e-mail. When the site released Peasant's Quest in 2004, building on one of the e-mails that quickly took on a life of its own, I played through it almost immediately. As intended, the game brought me back to the time I'd spent playing King's Quest and other entries into the genre as a kid.
Playing again as a teacher, I focused on the way these games promote experimentation and creative problem-solving. In most of the puzzles in the genre, there is some logic to the solutions, though it requires players to think about the situation or the items in their inventory in creative, non-traditional ways. However, what most people remember most about the genre are the puzzles with truly ridiculous solutions, which Peasant's Quest seeks to parody with puzzles such as falling in a mud puddle, then hiding in a pile of hay so you can steal some treasure to take to a peasant woman who will give you a baby in return that you then send through a tiny hole, after you've moved the rock hiding it, to enter a hut without a door knob all so you can get your hands on a peasant robe.
These puzzles can be frustrating, but they encourage players to simply try things in crazy combinations until you find something that works. Few games will punish you for trying things and, if something does go wrong, the save files always provide a way to recover. This kind of low-stakes experimentation is not something that you see often in schools. As I've shifted to more inquiry-based instruction, I've had to get students to overcome their fear of being wrong so they will try even when they don't know what the answer should be or the full route to get there. Graphic adventure games, for all their insane puzzles, force you to over come that fear and combine items in ridiculous ways until you somehow stumble across the solution. I occasionally wonder if students would be a little more comfortable with inquiry if they'd played games like King's Quest.
Narrative Games: Action Adventures
As much as I've always loved narrative games, it took me until college to discover the action-adventure sub-genre. A friend convinced me to install a Nintendo emulator on my computer and made sure that one of the first ROMs I tried was the original Legend of Zelda. From there I ventured into other examples of the genre, including Diablo, Morrowind, and Fallout, as well as many of the installments in the Legend of Zelda series. I first played Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past on a Nintendo DS and have found it to be a game I can replay over and over, without it feeling stale or repetitive.
Link to the Past, along with many of the other games in the Legend of Zelda series, keeps at front and center the puzzles that have been a hallmark of narrative games since Zork began the genre, but the nature of playing on a console forced some of the puzzles to shift. On a computer, players have a full keyboard, along with a mouse and other devices, to interact with the game, allowing for an almost endless range of inputs and giving game designers the opportunity to keep puzzles open-ended, with a wide range of commands and inventory items for players to use. A console, however, limits inputs to a few buttons on a controller. The Super Nintendo, which Link to the Past was designed for, had only six buttons besides the directional arrows. As part of the limited inputs, players typically carry only a few items, since it would be burdensome to select from a large inventory.
As a result of these limitations, the puzzles are much more focused on how to interact with the environment in clever ways than how to use oddball items from your inventory in clever ways. The same kinds of challenges that appear in the puzzles from a graphical or text-based adventure appear, they just take on a different form. One of the things that especially appeals to me about the Legend of Zelda games is the way using your environment comes into play even in the action sequences. For example, in the first dungeon, many of the ledges lack a railing, making it possible to push enemies off the side with a well-placed strike or an airborne pot. With a little cleverness and an awareness of the environment, it becomes much easier to defeat enemies without putting yourself in danger.
While the puzzles in the Legend of Zelda series often have much simpler solutions than the ones in a game like King's Quest, they are no less challenging. The limited number of tools the player has and the limited methods of interaction simply require a player to think about the puzzles in a different way.
Narrative Games: MMORPGs
Massively-multiplayer online role-playing games, better known as MMORPGs, have become a huge industry. Players not only pay for the initial game and monthly subscription fees, but pay for periodic expansion packs and even for powerful in-game items. While not the first MMORPG, World of Warcraft made the genre mainstream. My first exposure to these games was in 2005, when my now husband got me a copy of World of Warcraft for our first Valentine's Day as a couple.
The biggest difference between World of Warcraft and other role-playing games I'd played was the importance the game placed on social interaction. Fairly early in a character's progress, a player receives their first quests that require them to enter a dungeon, a task that usually takes five players working together. At the highest levels, the game becomes focused on raiding, where groups ranging from 10 to 40 players must work together to defeat a monster or make their way through a dungeon. While there things a player can do alone, the most powerful rewards are obtained through tasks that take a group.
Working well in an in-game group was often a challenging task. Each player fulfills a different task within the group, such as healing, dealing damage, or drawing enemy attacks, and players must be aware of what each of their party members are doing in order to be most effective. In schools, we try to get students to rely on each other in an effort to promote an atmosphere of collaboration. In World of Warcraft, this was seamlessly built into the game.
In the larger raids, collaboration becomes a significantly more complex task. In the largest groups, it was typical to have a designated leader who would oversee the battle as a whole as well as individuals who would manage specific aspects of a fight, such as a lead healer. The players who took on these roles found themselves using the same kind of management skills that must be applied when managing a team in a face-to-face environment. While emotions sometimes ran high in the moment, these raids provided a low-stakes environment in which to practice delegation, leadership, and other skills crucial to working with a large team. Given the value of these skills, teachers and schools should absolutely be encouraging students to not only participate in a raid, but to take on a leadership role.
The biggest difference between World of Warcraft and other role-playing games I'd played was the importance the game placed on social interaction. Fairly early in a character's progress, a player receives their first quests that require them to enter a dungeon, a task that usually takes five players working together. At the highest levels, the game becomes focused on raiding, where groups ranging from 10 to 40 players must work together to defeat a monster or make their way through a dungeon. While there things a player can do alone, the most powerful rewards are obtained through tasks that take a group.
Working well in an in-game group was often a challenging task. Each player fulfills a different task within the group, such as healing, dealing damage, or drawing enemy attacks, and players must be aware of what each of their party members are doing in order to be most effective. In schools, we try to get students to rely on each other in an effort to promote an atmosphere of collaboration. In World of Warcraft, this was seamlessly built into the game.
In the larger raids, collaboration becomes a significantly more complex task. In the largest groups, it was typical to have a designated leader who would oversee the battle as a whole as well as individuals who would manage specific aspects of a fight, such as a lead healer. The players who took on these roles found themselves using the same kind of management skills that must be applied when managing a team in a face-to-face environment. While emotions sometimes ran high in the moment, these raids provided a low-stakes environment in which to practice delegation, leadership, and other skills crucial to working with a large team. Given the value of these skills, teachers and schools should absolutely be encouraging students to not only participate in a raid, but to take on a leadership role.
Simulation Games: General
To start thinking about the role of simulation games in education, I spent some time playing a free, online version of Sim City. I spent some time playing the classic EA version of Sim City while growing up and even remember using it in a middle school social studies class. By high school, I started to find games like Sim City frustrating and shifted to other types of games. Playing the game through the perspective as a teacher learning about games in education allowed me to see the value in the aspects I once found frustrating.
Playing the game today, I had a lot of trouble with resource management. I couldn't manage to get the money coming in from taxes, so kept running out of money in my efforts to grow the city. While this was frustrating, it involves valuable skills such as planning and choosing priorities.
The other thing that kept me from getting into the game was the lack of a clear goal or correct path. The game directs the player to build a thriving city, but leaves it up to the player to decide what that means. I realized, however, that I regularly ask my students to make similar decisions about what is important and what success looks like. This kind of open-ended approach can be a powerful tool to develop important metacognitive skills in students.
One of the most unique features of turn-based strategy games is the need to anticipate what an opponent will do. Since each player acts only on their turn, they must be prepared for actions their opponent is likely to take each turn. Since students in science are regularly asked to collect evidence and make predictions, it could be an interesting exercise to have students articulate what they think their opponent will be doing in a few turns, along with their reasoning for that prediction.
Simulation Games: Real-Time Strategy
To experience an example of a real-time strategy game, I spent some time playing Shopping Street, a game where you select stores for a retail area to try and maximize your income. A key feature of the game is that you must make decisions as events happen in the game. This is balanced against the fact that it takes time for enough resources, in this case money, to accumulate to allow the player to take some kind of action, such as building a new store. This provides many of the same challenges that I saw when playing Sim City.
Playing from the perspective of a physics teacher, I was struck by the important role that rates play in Shopping Street. Potential customers appear on the street at a predictable rate and enticements, such as news stands and benches, can be put in place to slow them in predictable ways. Stores can only hold a certain number of people, so finding ways to control the rate that people travel along the street is crucial. The rate that money comes it at is also important since you have a limited amount of time to earn a set amount of money. There are a plethora of interesting calculations students could complete that require skills similar to those required for problems involving velocity and acceleration. This could also provide a new context for the related rates problems common in calculus courses.
Playing from the perspective of a physics teacher, I was struck by the important role that rates play in Shopping Street. Potential customers appear on the street at a predictable rate and enticements, such as news stands and benches, can be put in place to slow them in predictable ways. Stores can only hold a certain number of people, so finding ways to control the rate that people travel along the street is crucial. The rate that money comes it at is also important since you have a limited amount of time to earn a set amount of money. There are a plethora of interesting calculations students could complete that require skills similar to those required for problems involving velocity and acceleration. This could also provide a new context for the related rates problems common in calculus courses.
Simulation Games: Turn-Based Strategy
Turn-based strategy games, such as Risk (based on the classic board game), have several players take on the role of generals to take turns commanding their military toward some goal. Playing Risk, I had to prioritize how I would use the limited units provided by considering the most important objectives, as well as the potential reward vs. the likely risk, of any action I took. This was similar to the challenge of resource management in other types of simulations, such as Sim City. Most turn-based strategy games have a military theme, and many use historic settings, making them a natural fit for history and social studies classes seeking to give their students experiential learning opportunities.One of the most unique features of turn-based strategy games is the need to anticipate what an opponent will do. Since each player acts only on their turn, they must be prepared for actions their opponent is likely to take each turn. Since students in science are regularly asked to collect evidence and make predictions, it could be an interesting exercise to have students articulate what they think their opponent will be doing in a few turns, along with their reasoning for that prediction.
Other Games: Card Games, Board Games, & Games of Chance
The other category encompasses digital versions of card games, board games, games of chance, and similar games. I got sucked into the online version of Yahtzee when exploring this category of games. Part of what made it more appealing to me than the poker and Chinese checkers games in the quest was the fact that Yahtzee is the only one I came into the quest already knowing how to play. The random nature of dice also means Yahtzee gives rewards on the kind of unpredictable schedule that tends to tickle the human brain, likely keeping me playing a little longer than I may have otherwise.
The most obvious uses of these games in the classroom are the same as their analog versions. For example, I've known math teachers to incorporate card and dice games into lessons on statistics. Using a computer game for these activities can remove some cognitive load from students by keeping score and ensuring the rules are followed, allowing students to focus on the content appearing in the game.
For my own classroom, I've made use of games from this category where students use a knowledge of physics to solve a problem or achieve a goal. I've had students use PhET's Electric Field Hockey to reinforce the ways a charge will move in an electric field. World of Goo (or the similar, but free Huje Adventure) requires students to apply concepts like force and torque to get goo blobs to a goal. One of my childhood favorites, the Incredible Machine, is a great way to get students to not only play with simple machines, but with concepts like energy and momentum. Getting students to apply physics concepts through games like this is a powerful way to help students develop a strong conceptual understanding of the material and provide the kind of experiences that produce a lasting memory, ensuring students retain that understanding.
Other Games: Puzzle Games
I played a couple different puzzle games, including Construction Fall, a physics puzzler similar to Angry Birds, Bloxorz, a geometric challenge, and the classic Tetris. These are the types of games that I always have on my phone, waiting to fill an idle moment and had no trouble getting into this trio of games. All three have very simple gameplay and challenges that steadily increase.
This category of games are what I can most easily see using in a physics classroom. Tetris and Bloxorz require players to apply a functional knowledge of geometry and transformations to solve the puzzles while Construction Fall requires an understanding of projectile motion, forces, and torque. By putting these concepts into action, a player has the opportunity to develop an excellent intuition for how they affect objects in the game. With some creativity, games like these can even become assessments for the concepts. For example, students could use physics to explain why their solution to a level in Construction Fall was effective.
Other Games: Abstract
Line Rider provides players with some unusual game play. With no clear goal, players simply draw a hill in whatever shape they can imagine, then release a sledder that will glide along the hill as best as possible. While the possibilities for creating the hill are completely open-ended, the sled's motion along the line is controlled by a basic physics engine.
As I played the game, it struck me as an interesting way to introduce some important physics topics. For example, I frequently have students play with PhET's Energy Skate Park to explore conservation of energy. At the beginning of a unit, however, students are sometimes overwhelmed by the variety of settings they can change and get lost in the new vocabulary. The simplicity of Line Rider could allow students to make crucial observations, such as that the starting point must be the highest and the steepness of the hill doesn't affect the speed at the bottom, that lead naturally into defining kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy as well as into the law of conservation of energy, without overwhelming students with too much new information at once.
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