In the fall of 1997, an elite team of artists and engineers took a risk worth hundreds of millions. Weeks before their company Valve was expected to release a blockbuster video game, they pulled the plug on the project, shocking people worldwide. “We needed to start over,” Senior Engineer Ken Birdwell wrote, “because our game wasn’t fun.”
While some firms would have launched it anyway, Valve went back to the drawing board to make its action-adventure title, “Half-Life,” feel more engaging. Through an unusual collaborative process, the Washington-based studio transformed Half-Life into one of the most successful games of all time.
Its success is relevant today because of “gamification”: Colleges are using games to help students internalize ideas and make learning more fun. Last year, Marston Science Library and the UF Digital Worlds Institute used mini-games to teach students about the ethics of intellectual property.
To the extent that games facilitate deeper and more enjoyable learning, near-perfect titles like “Half-Life” offer blueprints for “gamifying” education. Birdwell and his colleagues’ experience translates into three practical tips for students and teachers.
First, professors must embrace interdisciplinary collaboration. Valve established a group of artists, engineers and business people, many of whom had never worked together directly. “Include an expert from every functional area (programming, art and so on),” Birdwell wrote. “Arguing over an issue that no one at the meeting actually understands is a sure way to waste everyone’s time.”
The extra time commitment was initially frustrating, but it boosted everyone’s creativity.
When I was a science writer for Massachusetts Institute of Technology about two years ago, professors at the Institute referred to these partnerships as “collisions” — as in particles colliding. After World War II, a shortage of space prompted MIT to cram linguists, physicists and engineers into the iconic Building 20. Collisions in that workspace catalyzed innovations such as the first video game, Bose sound systems and Chomskyan linguistics.
The second insight from “Half-Life” is that students must think “the world” cares. When players shot barrels in the game’s first version, the objects barely moved. When they smacked windows with a wrench, glass didn’t shatter. Behavior had no observable consequences.
“If you want players to care about the world,” Birdwell wrote, “the world should care about players.”
Likewise, students may lose interest in the world of college if it doesn’t offer cues reflecting their progress. The ideal solution — professors giving personal feedback — seems unreasonable for UF classes with hundreds of students, but software can help. Existing ISIS and e-Learning data could be used to monitor science and math skills across courses, and students could receive a text message for improving their skills as if they were “leveling up” in a video game.
Third, students should know when to blame themselves for failure. “If the game kills (players) off with no warning, then players blame the game and start to dislike it,” Birdwell wrote. “But if the game ... shows players a way out and they die anyway, then they’ve let the game down, and they need to try a little harder.”
In other words, we should be aware enough of our mistakes to know whether we should blame the education system or ourselves.
I learned this lesson while taking a newspaper reporting class at UF. My first assignment received an F because I typed an extra letter in someone’s name. My lab instructor patiently explained why small details matter.
The success of “Half-Life” shows games are powerful. Played on a football field, a card table or a computer, they immerse students in an exciting imaginative world. When gamification is done well, following the three insights from this classic game, it can bring greater meaning and joy to the classroom.
Cody Romano is a UF public relations senior. His columns appear Thursdays.
