I hate being wrong. In fact, I loathe being wrong. I hate having some kind of demarcation on my record that says that I’ve made errors. I want to have a good record, a clean sheet, or a high score. However, my relationship with being wrong has changed over the years. I’d like to think that I’ve matured, because of this change. At least in video games.
In video games, I can learn from my mistakes. Take for example: Portal. In Portal, I am taught the game’s mechanics and rules throughout the course of the game, and it is up to me to apply them in order to solve the puzzle. The game design is intended to teach its players the rules and the different things that you can do with the portal gun in order to solve puzzles. What makes the game great, is that there is no time limit, and there is plenty of room for the player to experiment and try different things. The game teaches the player without words in a way that the player can understand. Yet, the player still thinks that they figured the game out on their own.
Portal never directly says that portals can only be placed on concrete surfaces, but it does so indirectly. Portal’s game design is subtle and ingenious, so that it gives off the impression of the player figuring things out on their own. This is how game design should be made to teach their players.
Too many games these days directly say to do this or that to complete some objective or to move forward. This method of teaching does, in fact, not teach the player anything. It’s simply following orders, and connecting dots that are numbered. Players are not offered the opportunity to play on their own and learn from their mistakes.
Extra Credits, a Youtube channel and a huge influence on my perspective of video games, discuss gamifying the school system. This makes sense, because a lot of video games are forgiving to the player when they make mistakes. In Super Meat Boy, a puzzle platformer, if a player gets hit, they die immediately. However, when the player dies, they get brought back immediately. Super Meat Boy is absolutely brutal in its game design, yet forgiving. Each level is quick, and packed tightly with puzzles and obstacles for players to figure out the best path through. Shovel Knight is another example of this game design. While the gameplay is different than that of Super Meat Boy, players still have an unlimited amount of lives, and the game teaches players in subtle ways so that it feels as though they have learned themselves. This, I feel is how the school system could be improved.
In school, I remember feeling so much pressure to be right, to get the correct answer, because everything was riding on the experience of me going to school. Now, I realize the trivial nature of the industrialized school system, where answers are merely regurgitated instead of learned. Opportunities to learn are few or not there at all. If school could be more like a video game in its design, where students could learn on their own, make mistakes, and be forgiven and immediately given another chance, students wouldn’t feel so much pressure at school. It would be more of a learning experience, than whatever it is now.
We have this idea of what school should be, and we simply accept it. What if we could change it, though? What if we could redesign it so that students might actually learn something useful, or learn from the classes that are being taught to them without having the teachers feeling stressed about making sure to meet deadlines about grading papers? What if the school system could be a place where students are excited to learn, as opposed to begrudging getting up in the morning just to be assigned homework? I don’t remember much from my classes that were considered “academic” but I do remember the people that I met along the way, and the teachers who taught me more about myself than their curriculum. I have some good memories of school, and none of them came from a text book.
