MIT and Game Design

Scot Osterweil, the leader of the Learning Games to Go team at MIT's Education Arcade, has a pretty clear idea of the path that a large creative project like LG2G generally takes: "First there's maximum hope and optimism when you start to have ideas. Then comes anxiety and dread around pulling it all together. And then there's the 'click'… when everything falls into place. That's the best part."

And Scot should know, since he's pretty familiar with the "click" that comes at some point in all successful projects. He designed the very popular "Zoombinis" series of video games. Those games teach complicated mathematical concepts within the context of some really fun game play and have proven to be a hit with kids and teachers. Scot is hoping to build on his "Zoombinis" work in the pre-algebra games that he and his MIT team will create for LG2G.

And how does one start work on a project like LG2G? According to Scot, you play some games. "Our team spent a fair amount of time playing games together and talking about them," he says. "We really tried to find common interests." And it turned out that Scot and his research assistants Kristina Drzaic and Dan Roy have skills that complement each other extraordinarily well. "Kristina has lots of strengths in storytelling and art," Scot says. "I have some of those skills and a math background, too. Dan has worked in the game industry and has programming experience that neither Kristina nor I have. I'm happy to report that it’s a great team."

Scot's great team is now beginning work on conceptualizing the LG2G games. At this early stage, he says, "the real challenge… is finding a way to let lots of ideas come up to the surface without making anyone feel like they have to commit to anything right away." Scot feels that you've got to cultivate those new ideas if you want to reach that "click" moment. It sounds to us like the kind of approach that is bound to lead to a very cool game.

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