Learning is Gaming

You might think you hate learning, but if you like games, you actually love learning. Most games are designed for having fun, and as Raph Koster puts it in his book, A Theory of Fun, fun is just another word for learning. What you really hate is that schools never implemented any game design.

Now, you might be thinking that school is the furthest thing from a game, but when I say school is just like a game, I specifically mean linear games. In the past when computers were slower, most games couldn't afford to have multiple story lines, so the game designer had to plan every step the player could take. Because of the lack of resources, the games were designed such that the player had to progress step by step on a fixed path where everyone had the same experience. This is exactly how schools are designed such that everyone has to learn the same things and progress at the same rate, but the issue is that schools lack all of the game design techniques that made linear games good.

Firstly, most game designers want their players to finish the game, but in schools, it seems they want the opposite. There's this idea that in order to keep the player engaged, you need to make sure that the game play isn't too hard or too easy. Schools just completely ignore this. If school is too easy for you, they force you to stop playing. If school is too hard, they just leave you behind. Any normal person would stop playing if they encountered these mechanics in a game.

Secondly, it only caters to one playstyle. Now adays, many games try to have as many players as they can, and one way of doing this is acknowledging that there are many different play styles and designing for that. For example, game designers might include an area specifically for those that like competition to test their skills, or they might add quests that give players components to decorate their houses. In school, there is only ever one playstyle, and that is competition, and the thing about competition is that it forces everyone to be the same.

Which brings me to my last point, the story is boring. Every student is told the same story of needing to study so that they can get into a good college which lands them the job where they will work until they retire. With the path so thoroughly laid out, you lose out on that sense of adventure. With all of the decisions being made by someone else, everything about it becomes impersonal and meaningless. It's no wonder that so many students get burnt out and have a mid life crisis. That said, just because you hate school as a game doesn't mean you hate learning. In fact, with some good game design it could turn out that you actually love learning.

To understand what learning would look like if it had great game design, we need to look at how games evolved. As computers got better, there were more resources to spare so that developers could implement a new technique called world streaming. Using this technique, the developers made it so that the game would adapt to what the users were doing by only loading the parts that were immediately around the player and unloading any unused areas. By using this technique, the developers were able to simulate the experience of exploring an open world.

Using a similar technique, we could also turn the linear experience of learning into an open world experience. The way we would do that is to take the school system, turn it into code, put that on to the internet to make infinite copies of the system, and let each individual have their own system. What this would mean is that instead of having to adapt to the system, the system would adapt to each person. So then, each person would be able to personalize their own system. Rather than learning the same thing as everyone else, each person would be able to follow their own curiosity. Instead of forcing everyone to follow one story, each person will be able to embark on their own adventure and be the hero of their story.

If you would like to help beta test, sign up for the waitlist by going to idealite and clicking on the sign up button.