Back in 2012, the Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) found that the oral tradition of the Alaskan Native society, which is made up of eight tribal communities, was becoming more and more at risk thanks to slowly advancing outside influences. In addition to their language disappearing, the cultural heritage of their people was in jeopardy as well. In the face of such dire consequences for inaction, CITC decided to invest some newly acquired funds in a very creative way: developing a video game.

Creating the game company Upper One Games, CITC ensured that the game developers worked alongside Alaskan Native storytellers, elders, and artists every step of the way. The result is the game Never Alone: Kisima Inŋitchuŋa, the first addition to the new genre of “World Games,” which strive to bring the diversity of real world cultures into dynamic, interesting game worlds for people from around the world to play. Essentially, the Alaskan Native society wished to go beyond the mere preservation of their culture for historical purposes. They chose to revitalize their culture by sharing who they are in a medium that would reach a whole new audience, where they had a part in the creative process and it was not being done for them.

Never Alone takes a piece of Iñupiaq folklore and makes it into an interactive fable which the player hears more of the further they play. The two main characters are Nuna, a young native girl, and an arctic fox that assists her on her journey to try and stop whatever force is causing the countless blizzards that plague her tribe. The game can be played either solo, where the player switches between Nuna and the fox, or cooperatively, with each player taking control of a character. The game itself is similar to “platformers” such as Super Mario Bros.,  and has the player running and jumping across the snowy landscape and taking advantage of each other’s special abilities.

The difficulty of the game gradually increases the further the player gets in the narrative, with some areas requiring a great deal of teamwork and finesse in order to progress. Interdependence is a key facet of Iñupiat culture, which is explained in the numerous documentary videos the player unlocks as they play through the game. The challenges of living in an environment as harsh as the Alaskan tundra forced native tribes to work together to survive. In Never Alone, this theme is portrayed in both the Iñupiaq voiceover narration as well as the rules and mechanics of the game. Nuna can move objects and wield tools while the fox can jump higher and call upon the spirits of the land to open up new areas. Both characters rely on the other’s special abilities in order to progress further in the game, which implicitly shows the importance of working together in order to succeed.

In this aspect, Never Alone shows how it can lend itself to be used for language learning purposes. Because cooperation is embedded in the mechanics of the game, a language teacher would not have to adapt the game very much in order to take advantage of this in the classroom.  The teacher could have the learners play the game in pairs, with each learner playing a specific character, and the one rule is that they have to communicate with each other in the target language. As they play through the game, they will make mistakes by mistiming a jump or being attacked by a polar bear, but they will automatically respawn at the previous checkpoint so that they can try again. Trial and error is as important for language learning as it is for playing games, so this feature lends itself very well to the language classroom.

When playing a cooperative game such as Never Alone, the learners will naturally have to use imperatives and locative words in order to play the game successfully. The teacher can take advantage of this and design a lesson that focuses on having learners negotiate meaning together and progress through the game in the target language. Normally, the game translates the Iñupiaq narration into English subtitles, but there are several other languages available including Spanish (European and Latin American), French, German, Chinese (Simplified), Italian, Japanese, Portugese, Russian, Korean, Polish, Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, and Swedish. The diversity of languages makes this game adaptable for numerous language contexts, so the teacher can take advantage of this feature if they choose.

These are just a few ways that Never Alone could be implemented in the classroom, but there are other options as well. The game can also be analyzed from a cultural perspective, with the learners breaking down the values of the Alaskan Native society and their inherent world view. Even though Never Alone strives to give players an in-depth look at their culture, the teacher should not use the game to say that all Iñupiaq communities are the same as the one portrayed in the game for fear of caricature. Instead, the teacher should use the game as a vehicle for the learners to compare the cultural values found in the game with their own. Never Alone could have easily been a surface-level game; just another standard “platformer,” only this time it is set in the Arctic. Instead, it is the product of game designers, education experts, and Alaskan Natives all working together to create a brave new genre of game. It is up to us to be aware of the significance of “World Games,”  knowing that when we share the experience of playing this game together, we are truly “never alone.”

-Ben Pearson

After a great summer, we’re back in class and working on several projects related to digital games, including a book that should be out next year. One concept we discuss in the book is the idea of ‘game-informed’ second/foreign language teaching and learning (L2TL), which means using theories and principles from game design and games studies to inform L2TL, even when it doesn’t involve a game. In laymen’s terms, this is ‘gamification’, or taking non-game activities and applying game principles to reinvent them or see them in a new way.

One concept we introduce in our book is ‘goal-orienting’, a different way of seeing ‘goal-orientation’. Every activity, whether in learning a language or playing a game, has a goal, a purpose, or an objective. We use the phrase ‘goal-oriented’ to describe someone or something that keeps this goal in mind when completing the activity. Instead of ‘oriented’, however, we argue that the term ‘orienting’ is a better way to think about this concept, since the progressive form ‘orienting’ reflects the agency of the doer rather than a state or quality. If we think about working towards goals not as something that is an inherent quality, but rather as an ongoing, dynamic process of continuous choice-making, we are forced to recognize that an actor is involved.

In game playing, players are constantly goal-orienting. They know why they’re playing, what the object of the game is, and what they can do next, based on the individualized, just-in-time feedback provided by the game. Their choices are directed (but not dictated) by the game design to lead players to do what is appropriate for their level. Choices must have discernable impact on gameplay, or else they seem pointless.

There’s a parallel in the L2TL concept of task—an activity that learners complete in order to meet an objective.  What game design tells us, however, is that if the learners themselves aren’t doing the goal-orienting, that is, making relevant choices, targeted at their individualized level, based on just the right amount of feedback, just when it is needed, then they’re probably not learning effectively. Goals might be set by the instructor, assessment demands, or implied by a learning theory, but if the learner is not aware and involved, the activity is probably ineffective. Perceived agency is key.

So what are the game-informed implications of this idea? For one, make sure learners know the objective of a particular task, and guide them to set their own objectives whenever possible, to align with curricular objectives, but also provide for choice. Ask both open-ended and limited set-answer questions (e.g. yes/no, true/false, or multiple choice) on a single concept to help learners gauge how much or what parts of a concept they understand. When possible, accept multiple answers and let learners make explicit what they know about a particular concept, and what they do not. Allow learners to choose from a variety of activities on an assignment, or to choose which questions or activities should be weighted more on a test. Consider using tests as instructional tools, where learners take a test multiple times, with partial credit for corrected answers. Any of these techniques can give learners a sense of agency, and ultimately develop a sense of goal-orienting as something one does, rather than as something one has.

One of the questions we are often asked is where to start.  Playing games themselves is one of the most important steps.  Since selecting which games to play can feel very overwhelming to those just starting to play, here is a list of three free online recommendations. These are by no means the only choices, but are a good place to get your feet wet.  Feel free to add additional games that might be useful in the comments section! The key to this post is that they are free or very low-cost games.

(1) Farmville (free online; can be played via Facebook; commit to two weeks of gameplay)

Farmville is a wildly popular, casual social game. Playing it is a good way to learn how repetition and collaboration are built into games.  It doesn’t really develop expertise, but instead relies on a reciprocity dynamic with other players, your neighbors—in other words, it relies on our feelings of social obligation and desire to “keep-up-with-the-Joneses”, by asking us to constantly visit, help, and give to others, with the understanding that they’ll help us back.  It is very user-friendly and can be played in a wide variety of languages.

If you’re interested in seeing how a farming game might be different, check out Free Farm Game (available in French and English) for a more complex, non-social, management farming game. It’s a little more realistic with regards to what’s really involved in farming. Another farming game with a social responsibility message is Third World Farmer (available in Spanish and English)—it has a critical, educational orientation. Comparing all three games can give you insight into how game genre is separate from game content.

(2) Diner Dash (free online or on a mobile device; commit to one week of gameplay)

This is a great game for understanding how games teach skills incrementally, and how these skills add up to ‘levels’.  Pay special attention to how the game implicitly teaches you to play it–many games these days don’t come with a manual, but instead rely on the leveling mechanism to teach players the game as they play it.

(3) World of Warcraft (10-day free trial; commit to 10 hours of gameplay over the course of two weeks)

Trying a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) like World of Warcraft is a good experience for anyone interested in working with digital games.  As you play, pay special attention to how the game promotes in-game player collaboration, how it provides feedback and its leveling mechanism. Although the learning curve is steep, and you may not use it with your students, as the number one selling MMOG it combines many of the elements that we believe make up a powerful learning environment.

If WoW is too memory-intense for your computer, another popular MMOG is Runescape. It’s entirely online, and is available in English, German, French, and Portuguese.

In this TED video, Seth Priebatsch discusses what he calls “the game layer on top of the world”. He explains that several principles fundamental to digital game design are found increasingly in other areas of culture and society. It’s interesting to think about Priebatsch’s principles in terms of their application to L2 pedagogy.

His first concept, the appointment dynamic, is a game dynamic that operates such that a “player must return at a predefined time to take a predefined action” in order to succeed. Wildly popular games like Farmville work this way, where all one needs to succeed is to discipline oneself enough to show up somewhere or do something at a specific time. Many everyday activities in life operate on this dynamic, for example, cooking, or gardening. In the classroom, the practice of ‘participation’ or ‘attendance’ points makes use of this dynamic, where we give learners credit simply for being in the classroom, or merely taking part in an activity. It’s an important, but sometimes dismissed motivator. Developing self-discipline and becoming self-regulated are important parts of the learning experience, and rewarding this ‘appointment dynamic’ behavior reinforces this.

Priebatsch also offers influence and status as a game dynamic, which he explains is the structure of a game that affords the “ability of one player to modify the behavior of another’s actions through social pressure”. Social pressure is a reality of every social group, whether a family, a group of friends, a community, a school, or a classr. The question is, whether a teacher or curriculum should recognize or take advantage of this fact for the purpose of pedagogy, and to what degree.

In the classroom, we are faced with a dilemma if we want to recognize achievement with influence and status publicly. Certainly, recognizing high achievement with some sort of truly desirable reward can be motivating to others, but often, teachers are so concerned about discouraging students who do poorly that they don’t recognize or provide rewards to top achievers in front of other students. Some decide to reward everyone, but this may not be effective, since it can result in high achievement losing its status. A better way to avoid damaging self-esteem would be to give those who achieve less on a particular activity, quiz, or test an opportunity to catch up to the high achievers by dedicating more time and effort, that is, by incorporating judicious use of the appointment dynamic, like extra credit. Another solution might be to reward groups instead of (or as often as) individuals, by incorporating frequent collaborative/competitive group activities (where students collaborate in groups to compete against other groups), but mixing up group membership occasionally so that each student ends up on the winning team at least once. A third solution might be to use a point system with rewards at particular milestones or levels, rather than associated with each activity/quiz/test–everyone would then realize a reward was waiting for them, and it was just a matter of when, rather than if, they would achieve it. This is how the old ‘gold star chart’ system worked.

A dynamic similar to this ‘gold star’ solution is Priebatsch’s progression dynamic, where “success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks”. Digital game players will recognize this dynamic as being part of practically every game out there, in the form of point systems. An important part of this dynamic is that the contribution of every single task towards achievement of a desirable goal is made explicit, no matter how small. Points are never taken away, so that the player never sees regression–only fewer points are awarded for less well done tasks. Priebatsch notes this ‘regression’ happens all the time in education, where a student receives say a C on an quiz after getting an A on an earlier one–a very deflating experience.

Many instructors find point systems effective, especially if students can figure out how many points they have at any time during the semester or year. Another reason point systems are motivating is that they show students that even a few points, perhaps fewer points than hoped for, are still points, and count towards achievement. If there are other means of earning more points, students will be less discouraged, even though these other means might require more effort.

So should we award points for every classroom activity, from attendance to group activities to tests? Should we reward students when they reach certain levels, rather than assign them As or Bs? Should we provide alternate routes to achievement, that is, ways to earn extra points? For internally driven, highly motivated learners, maybe such systems are unnecessary. For others, however, providing an external structure like a point system might be useful if we expect motivation to be internalized. Game designers know this, and the best designed games are so motivating that players spend hours playing, learning, and developing new skills, without anyone asking them to. L2 instructors and curriculum designers might benefit from these game-informed insights. Some might even realize that they have been incorporating aspects of them all along, because they seem to work, without realizing their similarity to game dynamics.

– J. Reinhardt