Newbie

So now what? I’m not a “Newbie” anymore.

Well, folks, it’s time to lower the landing gear and bring this bad boy in for a landing.

This indeed will be the last post on the “Newbie” blog. I’m going to continue my work on the LG2G project, creating podcasts, producing video, writing articles, taking on challenges where I become a “Newbie” again….

But it’s time to let go of this lovely blog.

I’m so grateful to the people who’ve read the blog and especially to those of you who’ve taken the time to send in comments. It felt great to know you were out there. And I pretty much always learned something from what you had to say. Thank you so very much.

And I definitely encourage you to follow the progress of the Learning
Games to Go project, of which this blog is but a miniscule part. It really is an amazing initiative, and I think it’s going to have a huge impact in our classrooms.

It’s been a total blast writing this blog. Learning new stuff, as I’ve written many times, can be a very difficult process. The cool thing, though, is that we can actually steel ourselves against the potential embarrassments. We can learn to keep our eyes on the ball (or in my case, the cursor…) when we know in our guts that the risk of embarrassment is nothing… nothing that is, compared to what we might gain by taking on the adventure.

Learning new things can indeed be hard.

But not learning new things is a silent killer. It can deaden us without our even noticing it, especially as we get older and start to think we know everything we’ll ever need to know.

So have an adventure.

And thanks for coming along for the ride.

So here’s a quote from my very first entry in this blog:

“I try a few different solutions and nothing works. I don’t like being wrong. I try some more. Again, nothing works. I wonder what age group this game is geared toward. I look at the box, but it doesn’t say. After awhile, I go make a cup of tea and start in on some other work.”

Funny, huh? I was describing my experience playing a game called “Crazy Machines.” As a Newbie, I had absolutely no idea what was going on with the game. The whole thing might as well have been in another language - and I guess in a way it was - as far as I was concerned.

Now it’s almost a year later. And I sometimes still have some of those same feelings around playing digital games. But the truth is… well, maybe I’m no longer really a “Newbie.”

I began contemplating this when I recently played the prototype for the Learning Games to Go game. This is the digital game around which our entire LG2G project is built. And it’s very, very cool. The folks at MIT and FableVision have done an amazing job of building the prototype, and I’m sure the game will only get better as it goes through the testing and evaluation process.

Here’s a screen grab from the game:

This particular puzzle is called “The Cafeteria.” The idea is that the player takes on the role of a lunch lady who must figure out what kinds of food the monsters want to eat for lunch. Sounds simple, right? But the tricky thing is that each food item is labeled with a number. Players have to figure out the correct ratios among the numbers in order to know which food items to place on each monster’s tray. I have to say that it’s very satisfying when you get it all right. The monsters slobber away at the food and make a mess that would have made John Belushi (in his “Animal House” incarnation) very, very happy.

Now when I started working the puzzle, I had no idea how to “get it all right.” And I had that horrible “Newbie” feeling again. It’s that kind of lost feeling where I can’t even imagine any possible point in the future when I might be capable of understanding the game (see first blog entry above).

But it didn’t take long before I cracked the code. And then I had that wonderful feeling: I couldn’t imagine not understanding the game. It all seemed so very obvious to me. The game revealed its inner workings and I was savvy enough to use the data it provided and make sense of it. Things clicked in my mind and I understood the language of the game.

And it didn’t take very long, either.

Now you may say that this doesn’t seem like such a noteworthy accomplishment. After all, the game’s intended to be played by middle-school students. And here I am, a well-educated 46 47-year-old man.

To which I reply – a year ago, I would have walked away and been lost.

I just have to accept it. I’m not a “Newbie” anymore.

I think I’ve talked about this before, but I used to have a very anxious relationship with the blank page. That is, I wanted all the ideas to be perfect in my head before committing them to paper. And this meant that I was always late with my papers in high school and college. And of course, that just caused more anxiety for me. It was awful.

I found this image that captures that feeling for me, chained and raw, unable to do what I needed to do and unable to walk away from it too.

So it’s kind of a funny thing that I’m writing a screenplay now.

Now there are a million reasons for my journey from paralysis to something like fluidity of motion. The relevant piece for now, though, has to do with some teachers I had a very long time ago. And I was led to that realization by some of my actual screenplay research.

The main character in my script is utterly closed off to his emotions. He’s consumed by his work and sees everything else in the world as a distraction. My writing partner and I think he’s a great character, but we’re also left with the problem of trying to express this fellow’s internal life. How do we show what he’s feeling when he doesn’t share any of it with the characters around him?

Another interesting aspect of the character is that he was something of a prodigy. He’d read all of Charles Dickens by the time he was 12 years old. And he has a Shakespearean quote for every event that happens during his day. The sad thing, though, is that for a long stretch, his life was a real disappointment. It isn’t until the last third of his life (the part we’re writing about in the script) that he actually becomes who he was meant to be all along.

What does this have to do with games? Learning? Teaching? Anything?

Well, in thinking about this character, I remembered a book that my high school English teachers gave me. It’s this one, “Caligari’s Cabinet and other Grand Illusions” –

I knew this book contained an example of something I could use to express our character’s internal life and his history. It’s this wonderful inscription that my teachers wrote on the first page:

It’s a little hard to read (it has been 29 years after all), but the inscription says:

“May the future give you as much as you have contributed to us.”

I remember when my teachers gave me this book – I was so grateful and even then I felt like they were the ones who’d given me so much, not the other way around. I didn’t fell like I’d given them anything at all really….

So now we’re including a couple of scenes in our script where our main character looks at his old books, and his books will have inscriptions very much like the one in my book. Hopefully, these scenes will help to show what our character’s teachers thought of him; what they hoped for him; and the set of great expectations they gave him to carry through his life. This device will help us express some of what’s going on inside our character, even when he doesn’t talk about it.

And if our movie gets made (and the chances are realistically a gazillion to one…), I hope that these scenes can be my quiet way of thanking the teachers who gave me hope that there was something bigger and better out in the world and that I deserved to someday be part of it.

I don’t envy today’s teachers with all the work they have to do around standards and testing, etc. I can’t imagine that many of them (if any at all) went into teaching so they could help kids become better test-takers.

So it’s important, especially in this educational environment, to remember that the greatest things a teacher can give students are hope and the confidence to turn those hopes into reality. Whether teachers use books or lectures or cool learning games as their tools doesn’t seem to matter all that much. The key piece is that the best teachers give kids the confidence to fill the pages of their lives with who they’re meant to be.

So I spent a night last week trying to hunt down some Webkinz. They’re all the rage right now (this year’s “Tickle Me Elmo,” I understand), and my daughter Nellie had to have one for her birthday. (If you’re a Webkinz newbie, you can learn about them here.

Happily, success was ultimately mine – after visiting more than a few stores, I finally found a couple of the coveted little toys. The neat thing about Webkinz is that they’re really cute plush dolls that kids can snuggle with at bedtime. And even more importantly, having one (and the secret code that comes with it) allows kids to visit an online world that’s a cuddly version of The Sims. Once you’re there, you take care of a virtual version of your little Webkinz pet: you feed it and you keep it entertained.

So last night Nellie (seen to the right in her “wii” incarnation) punched her Webkinz code into our iBook and off she went. She’s only seven years old, but like everyone else’s seven-year-old, she’s the smartest one ever! Still, I usually stick around as backup help anytime she goes on the computer.

When Nellie plays one of my games, she generally seems happy to have me around. She wants me nearby… and she expresses this feeling by sitting in my lap. The same thing happens when she surfs the web. These are activities that we just always do together.

But last night was different.

Nellie seemed happy to get rid of me. Now it was her thing, especially because she knew I had absolutely no experience at all with Webkinz. This was her thing now.

Of course, being a doting (and sometimes doddering…) father, I did stick around. But Nellie didn’t really need me. Not much, anyway. She was able to get all of the pet “adoption” papers processed, and she was soon ready to play with her new doggie friend in the Webkinz world.

Now where’s all this leading?

Well, there are a couple of things here.

The first one is that ownership is a huge factor in motivating kids to learn. This was Nellie’s pet and it was her game. So she wanted a chair all to herself. She didn’t need my stinking lap anymore! Also, the Webkinz people are very smart about building players’ engagement. They give kids lots of chances to personalize their characters. And this, of course, makes Nellie identify with her doggie friend and want to play with it that much more, both in the real world (her little plush doll) and in the virtual one (its avatar).

The other thing here is that sometimes you think you know something, but you don’t know anything. Let me rephrase that. Sometimes I think I know something, but I don’t know anything! I’ve always known on some level that we learn best by making our own mistakes. But I haven’t really known it, because I haven’t been acting it out. Maybe Nellie needed to climb out of my lap for the light bulb to go off over my head.

As I sat watching her last night, I really saw her figuring stuff out. And I very consciously tried to stay quiet – I didn’t point at anything on the screen or give her any hints (proof that I’m educable too, I suppose). Nellie did make some mistakes (and when that happened, she was smart enough to ask for help). But for the most part, she moved forward by getting lost and then figuring out how to find her own way… by herself.

And I sat by, grateful (for now…) that any mistakes she could make as a seven-year old playing Webkinz were tiny compared to the ones she’ll have the power to make in a few years.

Being OK with losing is a running battle for me (and a big theme of this blog). I don’t know if it’s because of my age. Or maybe it’s just my personality. Actually, I think it’s my personality.

I was never OK with losing even when I was a kid.

So I was more than a little intrigued when I saw an article at Gamasutra called “Losing for the Win: Defeat and Failure in Gaming” by game designer Ben Schneider.

Ben writes that at his first job designers “were strictly forbidden to create scenarios with anything even vaguely resembling defeat or loss in the story-lines.” Since then, Ben writes, things have changed. Lots of games incorporate setbacks into their stories, as per this scene from “Half Life 2”:

That guy getting his butt kicked is the player’s avatar. Ben writes that most players find this fellow’s “setback” (and it does look like quite a setback…) to be an acceptable part of the game. And, in fact, he writes, setbacks can actually make a game more powerful, since they work to “make the subsequent victory that much more glorious.”

It is really interesting stuff and probably much easier to digest for those of you with more gaming experience than I have.

And it got me to think once again about winning and losing.

I have two daughters: Nell is six and Grace is nine. And they have very different attitudes toward playing games.

Nell is almost always up for playing a game – Dominoes, Operation, Don’t Break the Ice – you name it and she’ll play it. She used to cry a lot when she’d lose at a game, but now she does a much better job of accepting that she won’t win every time. Nellie seems to really enjoy game play and the social interaction that comes with it.

Grace, on the other hand, is more like me. She doesn’t want to lose.

While the rest of the family is playing games, Grace is likely to be a bystander or to take on a non-competitive role (like “banker” or something). Grace is less expressive than her sister in some ways, but I’ve no doubt that she feels things just as deeply (and in this way, she’s like me, too). I think it really hurts her when she loses. And I think it really hurts her when she thinks she’s done something wrong. And that is a feeling that many, many of us share.

What’s the upshot of all this?

Well, whether we’re game designers or schoolteachers or parents, we need to remind kids that, as Ben wrote, the setbacks will indeed “make the subsequent victory that much more glorious.” And we need to remind them that sometimes a “victory” can be had not by winning, but merely by playing the game.

OK, so a game that proudly advertises itself as “irritating” might not be ideal for a Newbie like me. But I was feeling frisky, so I tried it.

It’s called “Double Game.” And it exists to taunt. (And its instructions are in French - click the small British flag after you follow the link for an English-language version.)

So Double Game looks like this….

The deal is that you use the mouse to basically keep both balls up in the air. The top section of the game is kind of like Pong-for-one – you bat the little ball with the white slider. And the bottom part is like a seesaw – the blue ball rolls off unless you keep the seesaw balanced.

Now each of these individual tasks is not that difficult. However, when you have to do them both at the same time… with the same mouse (meaning a move that keeps the top ball in the air might doom its brethren below), it can get pretty tricky.

Now concerning the taunting, let’s chart my progress.

On my very first try, you’ll see at the bottom of this screen grab that I was “almost as smart as a poodle.”

It was the “almost” that really hurt.

After quite a bit of failure, I managed to make it up the food chain of achievement, reaching the same status as an oh-so-famous heiress/gal-about-town….

Now the game wasn’t just taunting me. It was taunting poodles, too!

Finally, after a good chunk of afternoon, I reached the pinnacle….

I was not “amazing,” but I was “sufficient”… for someone like me, that is.

Talk about setting the bar low!

Why did I keep playing this game?

Well, for one thing, the game is quick. I didn’t have to make a big time investment each time I played. It was generally just a few seconds and then I could try again. Or not.

The other thing is that the game is simple. Or at least, the mechanism of the game is simple. There aren’t a million layers, a bunch of characters, tons of tasks to achieve. It’s all there on that one screen.

And because of that, it seems like I ought to be able to win.

The simplicity makes it feel winnable, in a way that “The Sims” and other really complicated games never feel for me. I KNOW I’m going to be bad at those games. But “Double Game,” in its simple elegance, invites me in and says “Welcome, Newbie. Go ahead and win now.”

And then it taunts me. And even worse, it taunts the poodles….

OK, so sometimes a thing is just too cool.

I recently discovered such a thing here. It’s a game called Line Rider. And it’s amazing.

Basically you draw a course for a penguin (at least, I think it’s a penguin…) who slides down and up and sideways on a sled. There’s no course when you come to the site. You make it all yourself. The goal is really just to make the coolest course you possibly can. It’s fun. And it’s addictive… even when you’re bad at it like me –

Lots of people are playing this game – there are more than 50,000 video clips of it at YouTube. Two of my favorites are this one and this one.

What’s special about this game? Well, one thing is the simple and elegant design of the thing. The physics are quite something. I actually felt the WHOOSH of the movement as my little guy slid to his demise. And I have to say that it was pretty exciting.

The other thing that’s special about this game is that you make it. As I already mentioned, there’s no course when you start – it’s a total blank slate. So your experience with the game is totally up to you. And that’s pretty much the best game design in the world, as far as I can tell. Because, well, there’s nothing more engaging than making our own stuff, whether it’s out in the world or in some kind of virtual environment. I think that a lot of the best games are great because they give players a context to be creative and to feel that WHOOSH (no matter what kind of WHOOSH that might be…).

Give it a try. I’d love to hear what folks have to say about it.

I hit the big four-seven recently (see above). And I hit it hard. To reference an earlier theme on this blog, I feel about as old as these skates….

You know how it goes. Little aches and pains don’t go away anymore. I forget stuff more often. Etc. Etc.

Now I’ve heard that there are ways to withstand the aging process, at least insofar as it relates to our gray matter. Sudoku. Crossword puzzles. Learning a language. Learning a musical instrument. All of these things are supposed to keep the gears in our minds well lubricated.

But I think the best way to stay “young” is to have hope.

My kids are six and nine, and they pretty much always have hope. They just expect things to work out for them. They’re ready to take on new challenges because they haven’t had lots of disappointments yet. Most of the stuff they’ve tried has worked out pretty well. They are naturally game for just about anything.

Me? I have to work at being game (and as readers of this blog know, that’s especially true when it comes to games…).

I got to thinking about all of this because of some recent reader comments. One was from MetalheadMissy74 (and as an aside, I can’t believe I have a reader who calls herself MetalheadMissy74 – thank you so much!). Like me, she’s had struggles with the game, Crazy Machines, and she wondered if I’d been able to figure out the puzzle I described here. The other comment was from the less colorfully named, but just as terrific, Carolyn. She offered me encouragement to return to my own personal Waterloo… that is, The Sims 2. Carolyn even explained how I might be able to feed my Sims avatar should I decide to play the game again. (Thank you, Carolyn!)

So the thing that really struck me was that both of these readers were hopeful. One was hopeful that she could find a better way to master a tricky game. And the other – let’s call her a dreamer (!) - was hopeful that I might find a better way to master a tricky game.

Now all of this might seem obvious and not that important, but I think it’s really meaningful. We old folks have to notice hope. After all, it’s hope that fuels our new adventures, whether we’re six… or nine… or even 47. It’s just that when we’re 47, we have to work harder to feel that hope. We have to seek it out. Unlike the youngsters, we know that things can go badly. But if we’re hopeful, we wind up giving it a shot anyway.

So thank you, MetalheadMissy74 and Carolyn. I am going to go back to Crazy Machines and The Sims 2. I don’t necessarily feel any younger today, but I do feel more hopeful and maybe even… game.

So I’ve always heard a lot about the game, “The Oregon Trail.” It came a little too late for me to play it in school (well, a lot too late – we didn’t have computers in my school, we had cave paintings). The other day, I got curious enough to look up “The Oregon Trail” at Wikipedia:

“An entire generation of schoolchildren grew up on the various incarnations of The Oregon Trail. Thus, it has entered popular culture. Characters suddenly dying of a disease, such as cholera and dysentery, or drowning while trying to ford across a river are plot aspects that are fondly remembered.”

Cholera, dysentery and drowning are “fondly remembered”??!!

I guess nostalgia can make anything sound good.

As I understand it, the first versions of the game were of their time, meaning that they were simple (as you can see in this screen grab from… April 25, 1848!):

Kids loved this game. And it taught them a lot about American history. And it suggests that you don’t necessarily need a load of bells and whistles to make a compelling game, just exciting game play that makes players want to keep playing and playing.

So contemplating all of this led me to think about a few other things, foremost among them, “exploring.” I’ve written a lot about us old folks having to be brave as we face the new world of technology. It’s easy to feel stupid when we try new things (and it’s especially easy when those new things are easily mastered by most eight-year-olds!). But having courage in the face of embarrassment is the only way to learn things. It’s how kids learn at school. And it’s how grown-ups learn at work. And it’s how all of us learn at home. We’ve got to be explorers….

Kids are quite naturally explorers, while we adults are a little more careful.

But one thing that definitely makes it easier to explore is if you’ve got some company along the way.

I’m lucky enough to work with a group of folks on the Learning Games to Go project who are really, really brave. They’re at the forefront of a movement to bring cool, effective learning games into classrooms around the country. And if this plan of theirs works, it will make a huge impact on how teachers teach and how students learn. And it will make things better.

I don’t think I’ve ever actually been involved with something that was truly “new” in my adult life… until now. I’ve always marched along trails that had already been made by others. It’s so exciting to be an explorer!

I just hope none of us gets cholera….

So as you likely already know, the Learning Games to Go project (of which this blog is but a small part) will ultimately yield a learning game to be played by middle-school pre-Algebra students. Recently, I was lucky enough to play a demo of another game that teaches math to kids. It’s called Dimenxian and the game’s motto is “Learn math or die trying!” Now given my utter lack of game-playing expertise, I must admit that I found this motto/threat to be more than a little disturbing. If I didn’t learn the math (as I suspected I wouldn’t), would I, in fact, “die trying”? As it turned out, though, I survived the experience and liked the game a lot.

The first thing you notice about this game is that the graphics are way cooler than you’d expect from a typical learning game. You move through a well-designed 3-D space, you experience beautiful colors and textures, and you feel like you’re playing the game for fun (and not to learn algebra). Here’s a bit of what the game looks like -

The first game, the one in the demo, involves working with x and y coordinates on a graph (and in the 3-D space of the game) to locate and download urgent data from the weather stations (or something like that…). Amazingly, I was able to navigate myself around and actually do it. I had my struggles, but I didn’t feel like a moron when I played this game.

One really helpful thing about Dimenxian (especially for a Newbie like me), is that you get lots and lots of feedback. There is a voice that guides you and there are on-screen warnings when you’re straying too far from your goal. In short, you’re allowed to mess up, but the game also holds your hand a bit so you’ll have a good chance to succeed.

I think that the folks who make this game are really onto something, and I look forward to playing the rest of it. You have fun while you learn – what a concept!!