Educational games are receiving increasing interest from researchers and educators, yet are seemingly being ignored by the commercial video game industry. Most, if not all, educational games receive far less recognition than their big budget counterparts. In contrast, Kurt Squire (2003), an MIT researcher, suggests that we should be less interested in educational games and more interested in harnessing the power of commercial off the shelf games. Squire (2003) asserts further research in video games reveal “patterns in how humans interact with technology that become increasingly important to instructional technologists as they become designers of digital environments” (p. 3). Essentially, Squire contends that educators could learn how to use popular features from video games in order to integrate games into their own work. While using COTS in the classroom has benefits, we contend that tools such as RPG Maker allow for a type of inferential learning to take place through game design practices. That is, learners and educators can harness the power of popular video game software to inhibit types of learning contingent upon specific learning objects and outcomes.
The educational game industry has largely focused on early childhood type games (Fisch, 2005; Virvou, Katsionis, & Manos, 2005; Shute, Ventura, Bauer & Zapata-Rivera, 2009); however it is beginning to reach out to other demographics. For instance, Sean Duncan (2010) notes the ways in which Minecraft is being used for educational purposes. According to Duncan, Minecraft is a space where players can become engaged in creative acts that lead to further learning. The open world nature and in depth creation tools of Minecraft allow it to be a space to develop other games (games within the game), virtual spaces, and experiential experiments (Duncan, 2010, p. 14). Furthermore, Duncan (2010) writes that Minecraft should be considered as an instructional platform, citing instances such as “Massively Minecraft” which is a community of teachers exploring ways to use the game in their class room (p. 15). What is important to note here is the largest demographic of Minecraft players. Fifteen to twenty one year olds make up the largest demographic at 43%, followed by twenty two to thirty year olds at 21% (Minecraft Seeds, n.d.). Interestingly, the creators of Minecraft have realized the educational potential and have released a version of the game specifically for educators and researchers dubbed Minecraft: Education Edition which was officially released on November 1, 2016.
While Minecraft provides one example of how games are being used in an educational setting, Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire write extensively about using commercial off the shelf (COTS) games as a source for learning. In their study, it was found that many issues with educational games is that they consist of “low quality, poor editing, and low production costs,” thus making them tedious or uninteresting to play. Jenkins and Squire state to counter this, educators should find ways to introduce COTS games into their lessons. The provided example is the use of the Civilization series, a series of games based in moving through the different ages of human history, to provide abstract lessons for understanding that are largely based on the goals players set for themselves (p. 10). The two go on to argue that open ended games like Civilization allow for players to become interested in learning areas that they may not have been:
Squire’s subjects largely hated social studies and resisted standardized school curricula they saw as propaganda. Several minority students were totally uninterested in playing the game until they realized that it was possible to win playing as an African or Native American civilization. These kids took great joy in studying hypothetical history, exploring the conditions under which colonial conquests might have played out differently (Squire & Jenkins, 2003, p. 11)
Thus, in this instance, the students are able to engage with concepts of economics, foreign policy, world history, and the effect of global decisions that ripple throughout the world. On the contrary, a typical social studies lesson may be less appealing to these students. Contextualized play allows for emergent types of learning that may not be possible otherwise.
Another way to use games in an educational setting is the use of game design as a space for learning. For instance, Jerome Bump has employed Second Life in his first year writing classroom. Bump required his students to recreate Oxford’s campus in the game so it could be used as a digital classroom. This activity was viewed by the students as a form of writing. Bump writes “they practiced a radical version of ‘architextual’ writing to explore Friere’s ways to write and rewrite the world in dialog with each other” (p. 119). Furthermore, Bump required his students to use the design features in Second Life to complete their final projects which consisted of rhetorically charged interactive environments. This activity required Bump’s students to learn how to incorporate technology such as PowerPoint and hyperlinks to a virtual world. Although the semester long project did not meet Bump’s expectations, he writes that there was some positive outcomes:
One obvious advantage was that by adding the three dimensions of virtual worlds to multimodal pedagogy we could enhance not only engagement by both sides of the brain, but also active learning, the kind of learning that enables college students to retain what they learned longer than the average of two weeks after the course is over. (120)
Ultimately, Bump’s use of Second Life requires students to learn to compose within a game world. Instead of employing a commercial game’s premade experience, he worked to take control of the game space with his students and, inadvertently, was teaching game design. Nonetheless, the use of in game tools to create, design, and learn also allows for the use of teaching rhetoric, interactive, empathy, storytelling, and more.
It is important to note the intentions of commercial games is, usually, strictly to bring in a monetary return. The purpose of games such as Civilization, Second Life, and Minecraft is not only to elicit a pleasurable gameplay experience, but also to generate revenue for the companies which own the properties. Due to the capitalistic nature of commercial off the shelf games, there are varying limitations regarding how these games can be used in the classroom. That is, the predetermined nature of these games only allow the instructor to go so far until they reach the limits of how the game can be utilized. In contrast, game design tools such as RPG Maker allow for a wide range of uses in the classroom.
In the following paper we contend that developing video games in the classroom is another avenue that researchers should consider. Indeed, we are not the first to suggest this. Many K-12 programs have game development programs, mostly after school; however, we contend that game development and design, particularly through the program RPG Maker can be deployed in a wide variety of learning situations. The upcoming sections of this paper will detail how game creation operates as a collaborative educational space, a history and justification of RPG Maker as a learning tool, and finally a research proposal for the use of RPG Maker in a first year writing class.
RPG Maker in The Classroom - T. Mark Bentley and Charles Ecenbarger 