Session Title: Nintendo Wii and Learning

Session Number: 140

Room: Fiesta 6

Day and Timeslot: Monday - 9:45am to 11:45am

Formats: Studio/How-To

Session Description: If Paul Revere rode today, he'd shout, "The Millenials are coming! And they're bringing games!" The purpose of this session is to examine game design and emerging gaming technologies, such as the Nintendo Wii, and discuss where and how they might fit into a blended curriculum. Whether you're curious, skeptical or just want to see the Wii in action, join us as we try to make the fun functional.

• How game design mirrors the needs of adult learners
• Immersive features of emerging gaming consoles and how they may benefit training
• One model of how to introduce game-based training to an organization

Led by: Joey Monaco - KPMG

Joey Lynn Monaco is an Associate Director and "Chief Creatologist" for a large accounting firm. With over ten years' training experience, her focus is live virtual classrooms, simulations and gaming.

 Thanks to everyone who attended my session. My "Creatology Henchling" and I hope to continue the discussion about gaming and training in this space with articles, discussions of trends, and reviews of game features that could help build better training.

Hello everyone, my name is Brandon Murray and I will be assisting Joey in the creation of content on this page.  I am an avid gamer with a passion for learning and I hope to provide fun insights into the world of gaming!

What We're Playing

Joey's Picks

• My Spanish Coach: Ubisoft seems to be a leader in educational games for the DS and the Wii. Earlier this month, they released My Spanish Coach, along with My French Coach and My World Coach. My Spanish Coach contains over 10,000 Spanish words broken into 50 lessons. When you create a profile, the program asks you 50 questions to determine how much Spanish you already know and place you in the appropriate lesson. The program is designed to travel with you. It contains a dictionary and phrase book. If all else fails, you can use the scratchpad to sketch the word you're trying to communicate. What really works about this title is that you receive genuine instruction before getting to the games. Definitely worth checking out!

http://mywordcoach.us.ubi.com/my_spanish_coach.php

 

•  Big Brain Academy: How big is your brain? This lighthearted game is a crowd favorite on the Wii. The real fun here is figuring out how to solve the puzzles before time runs out. The energy in the room goes through the roof when people compete in brain training relays -- the people who watch get just as involved in the game as the players.

http://www.bigbrainacademy.com  

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Justice for All and Trials and Tribulations: This trilogy is fabulously entertaining, but don't expect to learn how to be a lawyer. This kind of law only works in Wonderland. The humor and the twists and turns will keep you hooked. How does it relate to learning? Phoenix Wright, an up and coming attorney, must visit crime scenes, interview and cross examine witnesses and present evidence to prove his clients innocent. I like to demo this to clients to show how you could use games to model interviewing skills and data gathering, then have players synthesize the data to produce specific output.

 http://www.capcom.com/phoenixwright

 

• Hotel Dusk: In this game you play Kyle Hyde, disgraced former police detective. Your work as a courier takes you to Hotel Dusk, where all the rooms have names and everyone seems to have a secret. To unravel the main mystery, you have to expose all the secrets. Similar to Phoenix Wright, you have to interview people, locate clues and present evidence. Hotel Dusk also made very clever use of the DS Lite hardware. I won't give it away, but figuring out some of the puzzles might make you feel smug for a while. You can use your stylus to write clues in a totally customizable notebook. Billed as the first interactive novel for the DS, this noir gem is the thinking person's mystery game.

  http://hoteldusk.com

Brandon's Picks

• Super Mario Galaxy: This is a pure example of a labor of love.  Super Mario Galaxy is easily one of the best and most fun experiences on the Wii so far. Brilliant level design, fluid, intuitive controls and a fun factor that's through the roof thanks to new gameplay styles every few levels makes the game very easy to play and almost impossible to put down. SMG is built on a traditional platforming (running/umping) engine, but does so many new things that it makes it a completely fresh experience - so much so that I experienced the same feeling I had when I first picked up a controller as a child.  The game exudes a magical quality that only Nintendo can deliver. 

• Portal: Addictive and immersive, Portal doesn't give you much explanation about who you are, where you are, or why you're there. A disembodied voice explains that you are a test subject, and you have to solve the puzzles to get out. Basically, you have to create portals to move you from one part of a room to another without touching the floor. Knowing where to place the portals requires understanding the logic of how they work. For example, momentum is conserved when you move from portal to portal, so jumping through a portal on the floor will propel you over obstacles when you come out of a wall. A good example of how to let players experience learning "ahas." Hard to explain, but take a look at this preview: Portal Trailer

• Brain Age: The father of the mass market learning games, Brain Age is a series of quick mind exercises designed to keep your brain sharp. Whether it's how fast you can complete 20 basic math problems or count the number of syllables in a sentence, Brain Age captures an unprecedented sense of excitement while learning.

http://brainage.com

 

• Buzz the Mega Quiz: Designed to be fun for the whole family, Buzz is a wacky trivia game with a zany cartoon host. Other games have attempted to be family friendly but have missed the target because the traditonal controller is intimidating to most non-gamers. Buzz remedies this issue by including four "buzzer" controllers with the game. With one big button and four colored selection  buttons, non-gamers are much more willing to pick up and play this one. With over 6,000 questions and 10 different round types, Buzz the Mega Quiz is most certainly fun for everyone.

          www.us.playstation.com/buzz

• Trauma Center - Under the Knife:  Players assume the role of rookie doctor Derek Stiles in this Emergency Room simulation for the Nintendo DS. You will use all the tools a real surgeon would use, as you race to save the lives of your patients. The game is very successful in bringing a sense of urgency to your operations - as patients vitals begin to crash, your brain kicks into overdrive, and your left wondering "how on earth did I actually save that pateint." Peppered with just enough hospital relationship drama to keep things interesting between operations, Trauma Center is a very successful surgery arcade-simulation mash up.

Recent Gaming Headlines

• Video Game Sales in October top $1.1 Billion - Wii Leads the Pack
• World of Warcraft Reaches 9.3 Million Subscribers
• Rumor: Nintendo Planning a Third DS Model?
• IBM Creates Serious Game
• Nintendo Reveals More Details About WiiWare  

Food for Thought

Passage - a Profoundly Moving Experience

The debate of "games as art" has raged on for years, but "Passage" absolutely closes the book on the issue - this game is art. Regardless of the fact that Passage weighs in at under 500kb, takes place on a very limited screen space, will only take you five minutes to complete, and utilizes graphics and sound that appear to be developed on an extremely dated machine, it has more of an emotional impact than anything I have ever played, seen or read. Without giving too much away, you play the role of a nameless man and woman as they walk along a path.  There are no enemeies, only obstacles and treasure. As you play you start to realize that things are changing and you will draw parallels to your own life once the game is over.

Please, take five minutes to experience this for yourself, I think that this is what Daniel Cook in the article below was trying to get at. Apply this type of idea to a learning process and your students will never forget it.

Download the Game   Read the Discussion

Creating Emotion in Games.

Daniel Cook, a staff writer for gaming site, Gamasutra, recently wrote a detailed piece about conveying emotion in video games. To set the stage,  Daniel creates an imaginary game called Bacchus, which he describes as "a mulitplayer dancing game with a religious theme. The selling point is its ability to evoke intense emotions." He goes into the science of what creates the feeling of different emotions and possible ways game designers can approach achieving different emotions from their players.  It is a very interesting read, and definatelty worth a look for game designers looking to create a memorable learning experience.  Constructing Artificial Emotions: A Design Experiment 

Super Mario Galaxy and Portal - Changing the Way We Play.

As someone who spends the majority of my free time in front of a TV with a controller in hand, I like to think that I've got a finger on the pulse of the industry. Over the past 10 years or so, gaming has seen a huge surge in its ability to reach mass market appeal. Games like Grand Theft Auto and the Madden NFL franchise were very attractive to males in the 18-30 demographic. Playing video games was no longer for kids or the socially awkward - frat houses, basements, rec rooms and the like were littered with Playstation controllers, XBOX LIVE subscription cards and strategy guides.  As the big name game companies saw success in the mass market, a certain laziness set in, employing the age old addage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or "If it's profitable, leave it alone." During this time the industry began to get very stagnant and lack the creativity that it was based on.  Developers were creating sequel after sequel making only marginal improvements to the previous game. During the late 90's and early 00's you had basically three choices: A game like Madden, a game like Halo, or a game like Grand Theft Auto. Seeing countless rehashes of what boils down the same three or four games made it hard for gamers like me to find something truly enjoyable. And up until now, I've been getting by on the here-and-there low budget, indie releases, but 2007 was a great year for gaming - and marks a turning point in gaming innovation.

The Wii was released in late 2006 and was responsible for challenging developers to rethink their approach to game design. With motion controls and a completely unique controller set up, many new IPs were launched, but after the first few months, developers saw that the best and easiest way to cash in on the Wii's success was to release a party game with various little mini-games.  So, on came a slew of mediocre party games. But the promise of Nintendo's mascot, Mario, coming home at the end of 2007 gave us all hope.  Super Mario Galaxy is the flagship Mario title on Nintendo's new console, and it does NOT dissapoint. Galaxy is a platformer - where the basic idea is to run and jump to the end of a level. The industry has also been drowned in half-hearted attempts at games in this genre over the years, but Nintendo put everything into re-inventing the genre. Like the name implies, Mario Galaxy takes place in outer space - this idea lends itself to undeniable fun mechanics - like jumping from one asteroid only to get caught in the gravity of another asteroid above you. Now you're upside down, but at no risk of falling to your doom. 

From a learning perspective, the game does little in the way of holding the player's hand. For instance, one level sees Mario in a race, and instead of saying "This is the race level. Run as fast as you can to the finish line, and get there before your opponent" The level starts with a 3-2-1 countdown. Instinct tells us that 3-2-1 means "GO!" so instinctively, I started running. Many of the levels are like that - and some allow you to come up with your own solution to the problem presented.  The amount of different gameplay mechanics crammed into this title is absolutely astonishing. Every level you are doing something different and this certainly helps to keep players from getting jaded in Mario's universe. This is one of the two most purely enjoyable games I've played in the past three or four years.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's Portal. A First Person Shooter that challenges the user to countless tests of mental dexterity. Another market that has become incredibly stale, First Person Shooters are a dime a dozen these days (actually they're about $60 a piece, but why ruin a perfectly good cliche?).  It seems as though every other game these days is a first person shooter, and very few make any effort to do anything different. Valve, the developers behind Portal, threw risk to the wind and created something completely unique. The player still holds a gun from the first person perspective, but there are no enemies to shoot at. Instead you are creating Portals in the walls, and you're only enemy is the environment. The concept of Portals is difficult to explain, but you can check out my brief synopsis above for a link to the trailer. Just like Mario Galaxy, there is very little instruction on to how to complete your objectives - so when you do figure out the dilemma, there is a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

Portal has challenged other developers to think outside the realm of the basic First Person Shooter, and Mario Galaxy has done the same for the Platforming genre. From a instructors/developers point of view, I would challenge you to really think outside the box, and it doesn't have to be the revolutionary console experience that these two games were, but think outside the Jeopardy themed trivia game, and the candybar prizes - really strive for learning innovation! People will respond to it, and who know's, maybe you've got the next Mario on your hands.

Visit www.warioworld.com for the Software Development Support Group for authorized Nintendo developers. There are separate sections for each of their platforms. Visit this link for the announcement of Wiiware development software.

Many questions in session arose regarding development tools for the Wii.  "The Wire" has a release that speaks to this possibility, available here:

http://www.thewiire.com/news/662/1/New_Wii_Development_Tools_Planned

The Nintendo-Revolution blog has details on the tool that allows the Wii remote to "learn" motions, as opposed to requiring expert programming to remember motion patterns.  See here:

http://nintendo-revolution.blogspot.com/2006/10/nintendo-announces-livemove.html

 Joey Lynn said that her favourite game was "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney".  She says that this is a great game for helping build confidence/competence in speaking with people and getting information from them.  See official website here:

http://www.capcom.com/phoenixwright/

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