Blog - Learning with Games
Wednesday, October 8, 2008I've made an interesting observation lately:
When I'm trying to learn a new skill, I often end up making a game about it.
This is not done on purpose. However, it does make a lot of sense.
Games are active, they're something you do, and the game design has to communicate how the player must proceed. Or to put it another way: they teach.
I guess that as I'm learning something, I compile all that knowledge and attempt to spit it back out again (as a game) much like a test requires you to repeat back all you've been taught.
In an entry I made a while back I mused about game mechanics based on blues dancing principals right after attending a lesson, and continued with talking about the sword-fighting system I developed based on stage combat training I once had.
After my brief stint as a professional DJ, I've always been interested in using the psychological principals a DJ uses to keep people dancing as the basis of a DJing video game. After attempting for the past few years to learn how to freestyle battle-rap (which hasn't worked, by the way) I have even experimented a few times with a game based on the thought processes I was going through while trying it.
They say sleep and dreams are where you sort and compartmentalize all that you learned in the day, helping store such data as long-term memories.
Perhaps game design fulfills a similar purpose for me.
It allows me to sort-out, analyze and reinterpret the incoming data of my life.
Labels: game design
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 7:39 PM
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