by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, Book, 2003,
MIT Press.
Review by Jon Aleckson
Rating:
In a hurry?
Recommendation
Untitled Document
For a review of four books on game-based learning, including this one, see Jon Aleckson's article. You can order this book by using the Amazon link on this page.
While Raph Koster successfully provides a simple understanding of the theory of fun, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman have written a classic style academic text on creating games with Rules of Play.While fun potentially increases the time spent learning, the experience needs to be controlled by a set of commonsense rules. In their book, Salen and Zimmerman specify that game rules “limit player action, are explicit and unambiguous, are shared by all players, are fixed, are binding, and are repeatable.”
Good games, according to Zimmerman, contain moments of decision making, challenging goals, and rewarding feedback—all key ingredients for good learning. This interactive capability of presenting a goal or challenge and providing immediate feedback is essential for successful game-based learning. Zimmerman stresses the play of a game is not just graphics, audio, and text. Play is an activity, and the educational content of a game should be expressed in that activity. The actual repeated actions, decisions and choices, and thinking processes that the game design engenders should embody what the game is about. As Zimmerman points out, although it is important to keep the game simple, it should “include interactivity designed with clarity of input and output: short-term and long-term goals to shape the player’s experience.”
The key to understanding interactivity is examined in Zimmerman’s discussion of interaction and choice:
When a player makes a choice in a game, the system responds in some way. The relationship between the player’s choice and the system’s response is one way to characterize the depth and quality of the interaction.
Recommendation
The very nature of this player action and game reaction creates an engaging and challenging environment. The book covers game design much like an encyclopedia and thus can be used as a reference book.
