Total Newbage: First Impressions at Levels 1 - 5

So far, so good.

After making my post about World of Schoolcraft earlier this week, I finally got the chance to sit down and begin losing myself in WoW as though I'd never played the game before. Perhaps the most challenging part in this process has been purposely forgetting what it's like to be an experienced WoW player (or game player in general) since there are so many fundamental bits of knowledge that we gamers take for granted. If you, like me, grew up in the years where games had minimal in-game tutorial information (for instance, most every Atari, NES, SNES, and SEGA title), then you probably became accustomed to learning through trial and error experimentation, teaching yourself the game's mechanics by mashing buttons until something happened on screen. Sometimes the results were positive and you decided to continue provoking them; sometimes they resulted in  massive explosions that forced you to start over (I'm looking at you, Lemmings). After playing several titles this way, the frequent gamer became readily aware of what to expect from all sorts of games as long as the format was roughly consistent (platformers like The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. were generally similar in their controls, as were role-playing games, first-person shooters, and others).

Super Alfred Chicken is just one example of a game that provided the player with no guidance whatsoever.

In an effort to expand upon the self-teaching days of yore, WoW's game designers have combined this long-time, "do-it-yourself" philosophy with a much more detailed pedagogical scaffolding that I refer to as supplemented sandboxing (or, in other words, the inclusion of areas where the player receives helpful, pointed tips while experimenting with the game's controls in a "fail-free" environment). Like digital flight or surgery simulators, there is no discernible risk of "losing" while the player toys with the various key commands that make his or her avatar perform actions within the game. When those commands are too confusing or the player feels ill-equipped to tackle gaming experimentation, the game's built-in tutorial menu provides pop-up descriptions of what to do and how to do it (which for some new players may include tasks as "simple" as running and attacking). From an educational perspective, this is incredibly important in shaping future learning as it encourages the player/student to take academic risks that enable more complex reasoning and experimentation in the future, thus improving the learning process itself.

The game's interface possesses several help settings for new and experienced players.

The game AI provides on-going guidance once the help settings are turned on.

When novel events like killing an enemy or gaining a level occur, short blips inform the player as to what has happened and what the implications of that event are (for instance, how to loot an enemy corpse or find out more about statistical changes due to level progression, respectively). In a way, this makes the first five levels of World of Warcraft mimic open-ended laboratory experiments typically reserved for middle or high school classrooms; all the learning taking place is done through student constructivism with the guidance of a knowledgeable "teacher." The teacher (the game's AI) recognizes when the player is struggling with a given task and adds parameters that simultaneously encourage student-centered experimentation and temper challenge with enough guidance that the game does not become an overwhelming experience. Even though incidents of death are still possible (I encountered that problem myself when I attacked two enemies at once to see if I could defeat them at the same time), the game provides the player with constant feedback about how and why death occurred, thus prompting him or her to try a new method of play without the pressure of following any one path to meet the learning objectives (thereby leaving playstyle completely up to the player). Overall, this  fosters a self-improvement system in which the player can see his or her strengths, troubleshoot weaknesses, and revisit problem areas with an informed perspective on how to do a better job next time.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen...

In-game assignments, known colloquially as "quests," are structured such that the player receives all necessary information to accomplish his or her goals without being forced to spend hours wandering aimlessly searching for whatever he or she has been tasked to find. Interestingly, the game designers have chosen to simplify the questing process by providing the exact location of the materials or enemies being sought (even going so far as to add shiny sparkles to desired quest items).

Here we see a list of quests, a description of the task at hand, and the location of where said task must be completed.

The quest items being sought are often marked with sparkly visual effects that attract the player's attention.

A few quests in, I began to wonder about whether or not these guidance tools watered down the game's content too much to merit a comparison of WoW with a real classroom environment (in which the teacher's job is to ensure that students are both engaged and learning at an appropriately challenging level). With that in mind, I turned to several other gamers and educators to hash out a reasoning as to why apparent stretches catering to intellectual laziness made sense in the context of the game's embedded pedagogy. After much debate, we concluded that WoW's designers are actually quite clever for having done what they have here: because Blizzard Entertainment is more interested in telling a captivating story than the process the player goes through to complete individual quests (which generally take a simple verb-number-noun format like "Gather 12 Acorns," "Kill 20 Pirates," or "Place 5 Flags"), they have created their own brand of calculator and spell-check-like tools that prevent mindless, redundant tasks from getting in the way of macroscopic theme acquisition. While calculator reliance is an area of debate amongst math teachers and spell-check's effects on long-term student spelling is an area of contention amongst English teachers, both tools (from a "big picture" standpoint) provide a much more efficient way for students to draw conclusions about major learning objectives than do long-hand division and dictionary use. In the beginning of a pre-Algebra course, it may be helpful to have students read and memorize portions of their multiplication tables in order to learn the process by which two numbers are multiplied, but by the time that same student reaches calculus, the multiplication process is worth far less than the time saved by utilizing a calculator to complete basic mathematical steps. Blizzard is essentially shaping this philosophy of education for their own purposes, teaching the player relevant, overarching story elements without worrying about the finite mechanisms involved in each quest. From my standpoint as a "new" player, I've found the system extremely helpful in that it has afforded me the luxury of worrying more about my effectiveness as a fully-immersed Night Elf warrior and less about where I should wander around looking for irradiated crystals, grizzly bears, class trainers, and dragon eggs. To a student, this could mean the difference between understanding how to use the periodic table in complex, problem-solving situations and missing the point because he or she was forced to memorize contextually useless facts about the 118 individual elements instead.

Short blurbs about objectives save the player time and effort that would have otherwise been wasted wandering around often substantial land areas.

Using the tools afforded to me by the game's designers, Sententiosus can get his training without getting lost in a sea of buildings and non-player characters.

Because I've run into so few individuals in the Teldrassil starting zone (where my Night Elf began his journey), there have been equally few opportunities for me to assess the social implications of playing a game like WoW thus far. Luckily, I found one other player killing the same woodland spiders I needed to for a quest and got to chatting a little bit about how long he'd been playing and what had kept him doing so since WoW's release in February 2005. He, like a few others I've interviewed since then, indicated that the game has retained its potency due to the fact that there are always new, unexplored areas of play that he has not yet tried or mastered, leaving him wanting for more. I strongly believe that this speaks to the unique nature of games in fostering player intrinsic motivation, compelling them to continue learning more and more even after doing so for days, months, or years. Even though the same tools and game elements are being utilized over extended periods of time, the game's narrative format keeps it potent enough to ensure players are logging in day after day. Perhaps, then, this reinforces the message from my last entry in which I highlighted how the ability of teachers and school districts to incorporate more game-like elements may indeed help keep students hungering for learning in the way players like the gentleman I spoke with hunger for more epic gear, bosses, and  refining of his in-game skills.

Non-player characters are awfully trusting with their goods. Why would you give the elements of your livelihood to a complete stranger?

Even though this post mostly refers to learning affordances up to and including level 5, my experiences up to level 14 (where Sententiosus now rests) have included more of the same. My proficiency with the rage resource system has grown rapidly, and I already feel much more competent than I did when I started this journey on Wednesday (a great benefit since in one level I will be able to tank dungeons for other players using WoW's Looking For Group system). Once the process of defending others begins, I anticipate I'll be asking them a number of questions about my effectiveness as a group leader and warrior, as well as how they believe WoW's learning affordances have affected them with regard to the tools I've mentioned above, social interactions (in pick-up groups, raids, guilds, and trade), and other gaming elements I have not yet considered. I can only hope that their responses will yield consistent trends that enable me to better shape my research and seamlessly implement stronger, more effective game-like courses for the benefit of 21st century learners.

Again, if any readers wish to come on-board and join the experiment, I'd be happy to have you! I appreciate your ongoing support and look forward to your future responses as Sententiosus marches down the path to victory!

For the Light of Elune!