January 4, 2007
Iterative "Playtesting"
Innovate - Resolving Conflicts in Educational Game Design Through Playtesting
This article from Innovate (free registration required), describes a case study in iterative design of educational games.
The article highlights the dilemmas encountered in any design situation when trying to bridge disciplines. In this case, game designers, pedagogy experts, and content experts have difficulty merging ideas into a unified product. I have had similar discussions with colleagues around the industry recently as we have seen conference after conference with great game companies, who do not understand learning and great instructional design companies who make very boring games. In reality, however, a good game designer knows how to build good learning into a game. It is usually just invisible to the player. A great instructional designer, in contrast, builds engaging and energizing learning solutions (whether game-based or not). It is all about good design and knowing how to empower the user to get what they need from the experience. I am not debating the fact that there are disagreements when you bring people together to create a product (any product requiring the input of more than one person) but I believe we short-change a product by playing to the middle.
I am a big fan of usability...errrr, playtesting, and I appreciate how this team allowed the user data to guide its final product. There are clearly vast improvements as it moves through the process. The unanswerable question is whether the product would have arrived at the same state of quality if only one design perspective + subject-matter expertise had been used in the same iterative fashion. Certainly the result of the development would not have been the same product, but did having multiple designer inputs improve the learning outcomes? Or, would a great designer from either field (learning/gaming) have achieved the same or better product without having to compromise?
One of the more intriguing aspects of this article is that you can see (and play) each iteration of the game as it moves from one iteration to the next. The final version, called Life Preservers, is now available).
Posted by Rovy at January 4, 2007 5:48 PM
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