MIT and Game Design: A Math Game with Monsters
It has echoes of Greek mythology, "Alice in Wonderland" and even the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine." And it's going to teach pre-algebra skills to a lot of middle-schoolers. What is it? It's the LG2G game, of course. And it's described in detail for the very first time in the game design document recently created by Scot Osterweil and his team at MIT's Education Arcade.
The completion of the game design document represents an important milestone in the Education Arcade’s work on LG2G. This document provides a creative, pedagogical and technical framework for the game and is currently being reviewed by relevant members of the LG2G team. Following a cycle of feedback, revision, testing and more revision, the game design document will serve as a kind of blueprint for the game developers who will ultimately build the game.
So what goes into developing a game design document? According to Scot, it's a matter of trying to achieve the game's educational goals while taking into account how, where and by whom the game will be played. For instance, LG2G will be played both in school and out of school (since, in fact, the learning games will be available "to go"…). And teachers will want the game to be flexible so they can choose the math content they'd like to emphasize with their students. These factors, says Scot, had a substantial impact on the "plot" of the game, leading his team to create "a storyline and activities that will be discrete enough for individual classroom sessions, but also lend themselves to a longer episodic story." In short, the game story has to be satisfying in small chunks of classroom play, but also compelling enough to encourage longer periods of play at home as well as lots of repeat play over the course of the school year.
And what kind of story can achieve these goals? Well, in addition to the hints we've offered above, we can say that it's likely to involve a Minotaur, a Sphinx and "olfactory-aware doors"…. And its math content is going to make educators happy, too. It already sounds like a pretty great game.
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