Week 10 Blog Post #etlead

Amber Hanson

#Etlead

Week 10 Blog Post

Essential Question: What Leadership Lessons Can We Take from Gamers ?

I feel there are a lot of lessons we can learn from gamers. In the article “Get in the Game, you’ll learn something” It talks about how a successful businessman by the name of Mathew Calkins has primarily developed his leadership skills as a direct result of gaming.  Now, in this instance gaming is referred to as a board game, but the general outcome is the same.  Mr. Calkins is quoted to have said that Games force players to choose which part of focus on them “because so much is happening at the same time, you have to identify and track the essential”. This I believe is something extremely useful for teachers to understand.  In games often times the players are given several different variables, and the gamer must sift through what is the important and non-important pieces that will help achieve their overall goal.  This is definitely something we can use to our advantage, as these students who game may have an advantage in sorting through relevant and non-relevant information whether it be in mathematics, or reading. 

Another aspect of leadership in which we can learn from gamers, is the whole concept of providing immediate feedback.  Usually in a game if something when wrong, the game provides some sort of stats, or feedback that the gamer can use to try the quest or round again. As teachers we should use a similar strategy. By providing students with timely feedback on performances they will better be able to connect with the material, and really understand what they did right or wrong.

More often than not, games are broken down into a set of goals that the gamer much achieve in order to receive the ultimate goal (such as, beating the game).  Players are able to focus their energies and brainpower on these individual goals, without being overwhelmed.  If we as teachers set manageable small goals within our own classroom, students will be less stressed and we’ll be able to help them move towards the ultimate goal of mastery.

Another aspect of people who game, in which appeared several times in my research, as well as in my interviews is the concept of happiness.  Often times people choose to game because it makes them happy.  It makes them happy to think, work and feel successful in something. They more readily accept missions and engage in meaningful work with it’s connected to a game they enjoy.

Lastly, and most importantly is that “gamers believe that there is always a chance of success and that here is something immediately that they personally can do- or even have to do urgently-in order to achieve success”.  Games give people a sense of purpose. It provides an avenue for people to feel successful and feel if they really can make a difference, regardless as to whether it’s in real world, or the virtual one. 

Although I do not game very much personally, I do believe there are a lot of lessons that myself as an educator can learn from gamers.  The main take-away’s I got from the research, as well as the interviews is the importance of feedback, as well as the importance of providing an opportunity for students to feel successful.

Interviewer: Amber

Interviewee: Joe-Teacher in Gambell, AK

1.    Why do you game?

§  It’s Enjoyable, for fun, engages my brain in a way that my normal job or people doesn’t. Keeps my brain in shape and sharp.

2.    How often do you game?

§  Board Games: Online (twice a week a week/2 hours)

                                    In person (twice a week/3 hrs) now, once, 3 hrs

§  Video games: 3 days a week, 2 hours a day.  Before this year it was up to 4 hours a day, 5 days a week.

§  Time depends on setting. In lower 48, play less online because I would play more board games in real life.

3.    Do you prefer games in real life, or online?

§  It’s completely different for me.  In real life board games, it’s for the social aspect. Still a competition, but not as extremely competition because people wouldn’t want to play

§  Video games allow you to play the game, you don’t need to talk to anyone, you can just play.

§  Depends on the mood I’m in

4.    What types of games do you enjoy?

§  Video Games: Role playing games (World of Warcraft, Skyrim) Real time strategy (top down, where you’re controlling a base and units (Warcraft, Starcraft, Invade and Conquer) Grew out of them, they are more a reflex game rather than strategy (how many times can you click the mouse and move your stuff around quick). I don’t care about that as much anymore, I care about strategy.  Simulation games-turn based strategy (Civilzation 5) More Strategy because it’s turned based, it don’t matter how many time you click something.  Instead you do your stuff, then do your turn. You plan your stuff, plan your attack, execute it, execute a strategy for a long period of time.

5.    Do you play any games with family?

           

§  As a kid, both of my grandmothers play card games.  My parents have over a hundred board games, that’s where it really started. Usually it was simple stuff, they didn’t’ get into too much advanced stuff.  They were def an inspiration for it.  Dads had a computer always; I got on his when I was just old enough to see the screen (3 years old).

6.    How do you use technology to play games, like connect with family or friends?

§  I used to a lot more when I was in the lower 48 because of the bandwidth.

§  I used to play a lot of action games, like first person shooters or first person action  with tanks, or planes.  You can’t do it here, the internet is not fast enough.

§  Time zone differences are significantly different, hard to match up times. Died off since I moved here.

§  We used to get home, maybe eat dinner and then be on for a few hours a night.

             

§  Socialize mostly through gaming.  When we got together we would do stuff in person. It was our way to connect, we would also be done with games, and someone would be like ‘hey, I’ve got something going on and we would talk about it then, or even a lull in the game.

7.    What types of games did you enjoy playing with family and friends?

§  Family: Brother, great summer where we played WOW together. We had computers together and we would play together and go on Raids together. I’ll always remember that summer because it was one of those times that my brother was an adult, he was back from college, we could really connect through it.

§  Same with Diablo 2, also Civ 5 he plays, only sometimes if we’re not busy playing magic the card game, online.  But then again, internet is kind of slow for a turn based game.

§  Friends: World of tanks, War thunder (war planes simulations) Dota 2 (Moba-top down)

I know you play Magic online, How do you play it? Is there an online program you use?

§  Yes, there is an online client that is the same company that created the card game. It’s called Magic the Gathering online.

§  Can buy virtual packs and cards.  same game as card game. but it’s nice online because in person, someone may make a mistake and forget a rule. and not abide by the rules, but online the game wont allow for certain things, as it only plays by the rules.  You go to the card store to socialize, to meet people, to socialize.  You go online to purely play the game.  Because the game is played perfectly.

§  Have played games through Skype with another person.  Right now my fiancé and I play android net runner.   We started playing it in person over the summer, and now we can play it in Skype pretty well. 

8.    Do you think it enhances relationships to be able to have this technology where you can play these types of games with people so far away?

§  100%, like for me, the reason I was able to maintain my relationship with my best friend, it through video games. I had it all through undergrad and into my early adult life; we always had video games to play.  Moving to Gambell has been a detriment.  My other friend from high school, we’ve actually drifted apart because we didn’t have it. Online gaming is awesome.

9.    Do you/have you ever visited wikis blogs or anything like that to help you understand a game?

§  Definitely.  I have two examples. With board games there is a site called boardgamegeeks.com that gives overviews, rules, and clarifications for games. Sometimes if I knew we were going to play a game over the weekend, I’ve totally gone online to look for rules and basic strategies for that. When I was playing wow, I read a couple of blogs and a forum on how to, it’s call mid maxing, where you’re trying to make your character the best it could be and wow used to be a very technical game where people would experiment with the builds, trying to find out what the best gear was, what the best rotation was for when to cast your spells, when to do these things. it was very technical. There was a big difference between those who really knew how to play, and those who were casual gamers.  The only was to do it was to go to those blogs to figure out exactly what to do. There is still a little bit of that, but that game is 9 years old, it’s still online which is incredible, but they’ve dumbed it down for more casual gamers, having to look at blogs Is now less of a necessity and now just extra.

10. Have you ever contributed to any of those blogs that you’ve looked before?

§  Yes. In a couple of the blogs I would upload my build and my damage meter so people could better understand it. a lot of people did this.  I didn’t analyze the data but I did contribute to the data.

11. Aside from looking at rules, can you think of other reasons that you would look for outside help on a game?

§  Cheat codes, walk-through’s on games and also for magic online, there is a podcast that I listen to every week, it’s about 2 hours long and it automatically downloads to my iphone each week and I just listen to it when I have time, and it’s great because all it talks about is strategy.

12. All games that have an end goal, can those be won/completed?

§  Yah.

13. And what’s the secret to playing it?

§  Depends on the game because some of it is reflexes, and other games is strategy.  If you increase the difficulty, you have to outthink the computer; you need to anticipate what they are going to do. And you also need to look at what your peers are doing and adjust your strategy to match the things that are working.

14. Do you think it’s easy to complete a game by yourself, or with others?

§  Others.

15. Why?

§  Because a computer could do many things, but it can only do what it’s programmed to do. And the more people who try to do against the computer game, they are going to discover what exactly the program is programmed to do, so it just takes several attempts to beat it.  And so the more people who do that and talk about it, the more likely we can discover the secret to beating it.

16. What encourages you to continue playing?

§  Often times a challenge in a game is a good thing. I don’t want to  just be like ‘oh here’s a wall, click x, oh here’s a wall, click x, like that’ s stupid.  But if you have different types of challenges, the game makes you think ‘how am I going to solve this?’ like I said before, it really stimulates my mind and my problem solving, however, some games you’ll get up against this barrier and you’re like ‘I’ve tried these 10 different things and I can’t get passed it.’ and even though I know I can just Google it, I just think ‘this is stupid’ and some games I just get frustrated with.  If I think a game is poorly designed, like ‘this doesn’t make sense to me’ then I will quit it.

17. How often do you read the rules or directions before you play a game?

§  Board games-Always, I always read them.

§  Video games-Often have a built in tutorial and depending on the genre I may or may not even do that. If it’s a first person shooter, I may just hop in because they are the same.  I kind of stopped reading rulebooks for games a long time ago, because controls for many video games have been standardized, which is another reason why you can just hope into it.

References:

(2013). Can the lessons we learn from gamers help us to solve world problems? In Debate Wise. From http://debatewise.org/debates/1781-can-the-lessons-we-learn-from-gamers-help-us-to-solve-world-problems/

Buchanan, L. (2013). Get in the game and you’ll learn something. In inc. From http://www.inc.com/magazine/201306/leigh-buchanan/games-and-leadership.html

Shertz, M. (2013). What can we learn from gaming? In Philly Teacher. From http://philly-teacher.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-can-we-learn-from-gaming.html

Thomas, D., & Seely Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change.