Semiotic Domains | LFEd Ep. 001

Luke and Alex talk about semiotic domains and learning from video games.

In our first companion podcast, Alex and Luke talk about Luke’s Low Five Education Project article on semiotic domains in further detail. A brief history and bio of author James Paul Gee is given before explaining his concept of semiotic domains and the active learning that takes place when playing video games. Although Gee’s work in his book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, holds up today, the video game references and examples within are very much outdated. (This is to be expected given its original publishing was in 2003.) After going over some major points on domain learning and how it influenced the education project, Alex and Luke each highlight more modern video games that exemplify semiotic domain learning. Luke comes in with a particularly social studies and classroom specific context, while Alex highlights games that more casual or at home players may enjoy.

Games highlighted within the podcast include: Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, Cities Skylines, Baba is You, Empire of Sin, and more. 

Participation and feedback is encouraged!

Access Luke's capstone project at lowfivegaming.com/education.

Transcript

Luke: 0:08

Hello, hello. My name is Luke, and this is my brother Alex. Hey everybody. And we are LoFive Gaming, and this is the LoFive Gaming Education Project.

Alex: 0:17

Right on. Welcome to your very first companion pod of LoFive Gaming.

Luke: 0:21

What is a companion pod, you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked. Hopefully you have read the semiotic domains article. If you haven't, you can find it in the show notes right now. Right now. Yeah, I mean, it's the whole idea here is that, you know, I wrote the article. We are advocating for the use of video games in education, both in the school, but even like for avid video game households, it's it's become a way more popular thing. So we'll become like kids are talking about playing games with their parents, getting these things passed down. So the times there are changing, and we're just kind of like really bringing to light a lot of the academic work that has been done around it, and just really trying to advocate and push forward for the use of games in the household. So I love it, man. Yeah, you know, I mean, our parents let us play a lot of games, but also they're kind of a lot, there's a lot of hand-wringing about the games we were playing, being like, Am I letting these brains melt? And uh we did all right.

Alex: 1:14

Maybe melted a little bit.

Luke: 1:15

I mean, we melted them a little bit, but like, you know, microwave burritos will not be the greatest for your stomach, but we ate those two. So this introductory article introduces semiotic domains, but also the author behind semiotic domains and very much a kind of home driving force pillar of a lot of the research I've done, a lot of the good, really good research, kind of a leading voice within education, video games, James Paul Ghee. And first off, I'm gonna read off from the Wikipedia a very long list of his academic merit. Sometimes education, if you're if you're in the field, you're gonna know there's a lot of titles, there's a lot of centers named after people, there's a lot of words, a lot of dense acronyms. I work in a district where there's an acronym for everything that's kind of the joke from the moment you get in there. So have some patience. I'm gonna move through this, but uh, I think it's very important to highlight still because especially when we're talking about video games, a medium of media that isn't always been legitimized within the general public to see his vast experience at like some well-known institutions, I feel like lends a ton of credibility to his ideas and his works. Once again, that is James Paul Gee. He got his MA and PhD in linguistics from Stanford University, started his career in theoretical linguistics, teaching initially at Stanford University and later in the School of Language and Communication at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. After doing some research in psycholinguistics at Northeastern University in Boston and at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, Professor Ghee's research focus switched to studies on discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and the application of linguistics to literacy and education, which is a big moment towards this project because you know it kind of builds into that credibility of getting into the world of how we learn and how we understand. So he went on to teach at the School of Education at Boston University, where he was the chair of the Department of Developmental Studies and Counseling, and later at the Linguistics Department at the University of Southern California. At Boston University, he established new graduate programs centered around integrated approach to language and literacy, combining programs in reading, writing, bilingual education, ESL, and applied linguistics. And then from 1993 to 1997, he held the Jacob Hyatt Chair in Education at the Hyatt Center for Urban Education at Clark University of Massachusetts. And then the biggest move for this project is from 1997 until 2007, he held the Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading at the University of Madison, Wisconsin position. At University of Madison, Wisconsin, he'd do a lot of his biggest work around video games and education, and he would also work a lot with Professor David Williamson Schaefer, who's another big voice within this sphere that we're going to be talking about in a future pod. In 2007, Ghee relocated to Arizona State University, where he was the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literary Studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. And then in 2019, he retired, which is actually kind of a bummer because I had read his little retirement kind of goodbye on his website and um real bleak, man. Grew up in the San Jose area, uh, which is now like very much Silicon Valley. And he's just kind of jaded at like the world that he he's come to see where he's worked at all these universities, a lot of well-known places, and he just kind of feels like education is more for profit than it is for education and people, and like that kind of inspiration and hope. He kind of just feels like it's turned into this little capitalist machine of greed. Um it might be onto something. It might be onto something there. Uh shouts out my student loans. Um, and then he also is very upset about like some politics going on. Uh, this is in 2019 slash even now, it's certainly understandable, as well as he's a very religious man and he also has some problems with how the church has handled themselves as well. So um, yeah, a bummer note to end on, but also like his work had always been kind of like cheerful and hopeful to me, especially when I had read it. So it's kind of a bummer to see that, but I digress. The reason I bring him up is his book, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Liter Learning and Literacy, was written when I highlighted back before that uh from 1997 until 2007, he was at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. He made this book when he was there, and it's been a huge piece of my research personally. So the reason that is, is because it validated many of the beliefs and thoughts I had when I've been playing video games these last few years, being like, wow, there's actually a ton of academic merit. Like I've always played video games, sure, like my whole life, as we previously mentioned. Our parents were a little concerned from time to time. Always love video games, and I've always loved social studies within school, and I never really saw how those two, you know, spheres meshed until I got into grad school here at Hamlin, and then I was, you know, I'd be doing some grad school projects, and then I'd get done with my grad school and I'd start playing some video games, and then a lot of the thoughts I was having on education, my thoughts from the classroom teaching, my thoughts from the classroom learning myself, and then also and that was like blending into the way I played video games, and then I was like, there's actually like a lot here.

Alex: 6:39

Yeah. Yeah. So like so his big word is uh semiotic domains, right? Yes, yes. To put that into more of a video game term would be video game logic, right? Yeah. So video game logic is this idea that when a developer makes a video game, uh, essentially, if you were to start that game up, you will learn to play that game as you play, right? So without maybe reading a tutorial or knowing anything about the game, if it's a good video game, you should be able to figure out how to play that game just by playing it.

Luke: 7:08

Yeah, and it's this process of learning, like as a good teacher, you'd know you gotta layer things, you gotta you can't just give it all to the kid at once, you gotta like make it accessible. Video games, although not made for education, like if we go back to the arcade, a video game, the whole idea is that if the person isn't good at this game and they can't master this game or they're not having fun, they're not gonna play it, they're not gonna put quarters towards it, you're not gonna make any money.

Alex: 7:33

Yeah, I feel like a classic example would be like Super Mario Bros., right? Sure. So in Super Mario Bros., in that first level, like World 1 level 1, you have no idea what's going on in the game, you don't know how to play, but it's it was made for the nest. It was also in the the arcades. As the game starts, uh as you move forward, the screen moves with you, so you can't go backwards. So already you learn that you cannot go backwards in this game. If you press A, your your Mario jumps, right? So you learn that you can jump. Almost right away, you find an enemy, it's Goomba, but you don't know it's an enemy necessarily, but if you run into it, you die. So you learn the same thing.

Luke: 8:07

If you've somehow not played Mario in your whole existence, one, welcome to life.

Alex: 8:13

So I bet you two, I bet you it's a little mushroom thing that walks right by you. I bet you a bunch of people listening to this right now can visually see this happening because if they played that level so many times, if they're like me.

Luke: 8:23

Yeah, and then even like the first time you play it, you run up to the mushroom, it's like wow, you get the sad music, you you you fall off the screen, you have been defeated. So you now know mushroom equals bad.

Alex: 8:35

Right. And although Mario, I'm not gonna go out and say Mario's gonna be in classrooms or anything, but the point is, is that is a perfect example of developers hand holding you through their actual programming, right?

Luke: 8:47

Yeah, so it's it's a great example of the fluidity one gets in the way they learn and the way that these games push you to learn and eventually get better and then even master. So to put a bow on it, a semiotic domain is the idea that words, images, artifacts, and actions have specific meaning attached to the context. In this context, video games. So what is true in life is not true in a video game, but you come to understand that video game, that video game's world, and how things operate there, similar to how in different professions you view things in different ways. So a carpenter is gonna see something different, a chef's gonna see something different than just your casual cook. You kind of learn those worlds and you become immersed in those worlds and their jargon, and all of that is kind of included. Semiotic domain became a great way for me to kind of like teach and conceptualize, like just like the the most broad act of learning, or even learning how to learn, which is a big piece of education as well. Like, you don't just throw content at kids, it's about like how do you give content that is digestible. And video games are almost the perfect example of that because people are usually having so much fun or becoming so comfortable that like they kind of like build up. That first level of Mario, you can see it in your mind. You almost know you know where the hidden blocks are and where you get the all the extra bonuses and all the little hidden secrets and all those things, right? And then what seemed treacherous is now like probably one of the most iconic cakewalks in history. Like you can goof around and get past that first level, even though the first time you played it, you probably died a bunch. That's like that's like a classic video game thing. You learn how to learn. In this project, I was reading this. The book was published around 2003. I had a revised 2007 edition. But the point is, I was like basically in middle school or the beginning of when the book was published, so the games are from that era too. So for me, yeah. Yeah, games have come a long way since then. It's such an ever-changing landscape, which makes it kind of hard to integrate it into education because things in education take time, like well-rooted ideas or like expanding things, like you can just talk to a frustrated teacher, like getting new ideas passed isn't always the easiest thing. And gaming is a bit of a moving target. With this whole project, the idea is that video games are valid learning tools, right? Sure. And we should get them into the schools. There's great reason to get them into the schools, let's get people on board with that. And even if we can't, like if you selectively curate and pick your games, you're gonna learn like some awesome concepts.

Alex: 11:12

Super interesting to me that that Gee's research, you know, on this particular topic started in 2003, or at least that's when the book was first published, right? Yeah. Because that is a time, at least when in what when I recall and I think back about how video games were being covered in the media, etc., they're a very like anti-video game, right? So I think 2001-ish or something is when Grand Theft Auto came out. Yes. I actually remember mom and dad bringing me to this, like uh me and one of my buddies that both loved playing video games together or whatever. Uh, we went to this like community center talk about uh violence of video games, right? We're the only two kids there as all parents, and everybody was kind of like, oh, these things are you know, this these games in particular, Grand Theft Auto 3 is gonna be it's which, you know, I understand there's violence. I'm definitely not advocating to have that game necessarily in a classroom curriculum. My point is here, you know, here's Ghee looking at video games that actually have an educational impact and seeing this uh educational language in them and the use of them, whereas the majority of the media that I think and a lot of the noise around video games at this particular was negative.

Luke: 12:19

Yeah, and it's like that very much clouded the potential of video games because we're we're just gravitating towards the shock and awe and the and the pure, like the scary parts, right? And we're hiding away from some of these positive concepts. And a lot of this has stemmed from like him watching his son play video games. Right. And his son was pretty young, so he's playing games like Pikmin, which is an adorable little adventure on Nintendo, which is actually, you know, it's not all sunshine and rainbows, like it's an incredibly cute aesthetic game, but it's also like there's some doom in the game. You have like a ticking clock and you need to like save your little peoples. But like and a good example like that he gives in this game of like a semiotic domain is that like the different colors of the different Pikmin, they hold different meanings and they have different objectives. The yellow ones are like little bomber Pikmin. So when you're putting together little puzzles, you know you gotta use the little bomber guys to do this task, and you gotta use your other you know, Pikmin's to and then you start combining their abilities, and which is on the spot kind of reminds me, you remember the lemmings game? No. Oh, dude, there's these little lemmings game, it's like this really old school game where you have these different lemmings and they do different, they all a lemming follows another lemming comically off a cliff. So in this game, you have like your little bridge lemmings, you have little stair-building lemmings, little wall chipping ones, and it's this little kind of speed cognitive game where you just had to like quickly find out how to get through the level. And it was like really adorable, but it's another example of like you're mastering this domain, you're like putting together this act of puzzle, you are learning. Parallel I make all the time is comic books, superhero magazines, they were just viewed as like cheap, goofy, brain-melting waste of time. The classic behind your textbook, you have a comic book, it's just like you should be studying. But then as we like actually study the process of reading comics, you're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Right. They have to decipher the image, pair it with the text, and like gather meaning, and there's actually like a ton of decoding going on, and then it gets helped along by classic works such as Mouse or Great Persepolis. Yeah, both of them awesome works, and it just totally changes the narrative in like video games because the fast pace, it's harder to study. I'll get into that different stuff in different works, and then the violence, and then like not all games are super educational, like of course. It's it's a not all books are educational. Nope, it's a it's a vast medium, right? One really good quote from the book that highlights like its learning concepts and potentials of that semiotic domain, learning to learn, learning within that specific field is such learning, just like in Pikmin, encourages exploration, hypothesis testing, risk taking, persistence past failure, and seeing mistakes as new opportunities for progress and learning. That might sound like fluff, but anyone who's played like a few hours of a really good video game, you'll know that you have to try all these different things to figure out what you're doing. Like some of these puzzles are so intricate. So, like, there's real valid learning happening in these games, and if you highlight them and point them out, it's particularly powerful. There's one last thing I would like to relate to this too, and it gets into like careers. So there's this really fascinating excerpt from the book as well, where uh to quote Gee, in interviews my research team and I have conducted with young video game players, we have found a number of young people who have used the domain of video games as a fruitful precursor domain for mastering other semiotic domains tied to computers and related technologies. So if you are the kid that set up video game systems in your house and somehow that made you the tech expert in your whole house and your parents, wow, won't this remote work? Or in the office, yeah. Or in the office, unfortunately. But yeah, it's like you're also like, so if we're talking about the semiotic domain of video games, there's also transfer of domains. Oh, yeah, sure. There's specific type of learning that happens in the classroom. There's specific type of learning that happens, I'm gonna say the streets, although that's like a but just like that's just a term for outside of when they're like I'm not book smart, right? I'm street smart. I can figure things out in life, but like that doesn't mean I do well within this domain. Video games are their own domain, and like some of them are adjacent to like computer literacy, that's right, communication literacy. If we're talking about like online gaming, like you have to communicate with your friends, so like a lot of work will be done, like when you're working with communication and all these things that like in the previous thing when I was like hypothesis testing, risk taking, persistence past failure, those are things that like all good teachers want to instill in their kids. Oddly enough, that's being done in video games all the time. Sure, yeah. The most popular video game of 2022 thus far is Elden Ring from Soft Game. For those of you who don't know, what you need to know is these games are insanely hard. Yeah, difficult. Infamously hard. So why a game that seems like it was made to punish you? Right. You have to keep doing the same thing over and over and over until you perfect it, until you master it. And it's like that sounds like joy comes out of it, apparently. Apparently so. It's like I don't like math homework. I never liked math homework. Okay, but when you can crack that code. So essentially, professionals in technology and computer science careers linked the skills and mastery gained from video games, and like you can really tie, like it sparks a love in content areas. The semiotic domains will transfer over. So if you have a game based in something, it's gonna spark some love and some interest in that topic as well. There's actual skill transfers, there's like real modeling goes space. So, like, as I mentioned earlier, I really just want to see like this work pushed forward, but it also is in need of some modernization. I feel like the the academic concepts and the understanding, like I read that blurb of all of his education because this man was like working at some of the most prestigious universities, and he's talking about like linguistics, like specifically, like how we decode text, how we read, how we understand. And he's just like, We don't just read words, we're not just deciphering, we are finding meaning, and words have different meaning in different contexts, and images do too. And like, we need to understand this whole world, and these games are providing like this excellent opportunity, and like as we mentioned earlier, yeah, Fortnite, not always the best place for your kid to learn. Are there some concepts in there? Turns out, yeah. Yeah, but for me as a social studies teacher, it was just like I want to pick out some really good games that I think would be awesome in the classroom, and if we can't even get them in the classroom, what are some games that like at your house with your kids, your siblings, yourself that just kind of teach you and nudge you in different directions that are cool? Sure. So yeah, Alex and I have kind of been going back and forth, and he's given more like examples just from like life and from gaming, and I'm very teacher specific. So we've kind of gone over like semiotic domains, what are they, their validity, and just kind of breaking them down and making them relatable. From here, we just kind of wanted to go over some monitored examples from casual or entertainment-based games, and we're gonna kind of go back and forth. And I'm very much gonna be, folks, although I've played games on both sides, so has Al. I'm very much gonna be coming from a perspective of a teacher. So these are my games are ones that I think are gonna be like really good in a classroom, and Alex has kind of kind of come in from a more casual gamer perspective, and just games that like he has learned through, or he can kind of see these learning principles like really shining through.

Alex: 19:37

Right, right. So, like we jokingly, or I jokingly brought up Mario earlier as an example of uh, you know, having that video game language or a semiotic domain, right? These are these are games that are actually maybe showing a better example or showing shining a better light on on this concept.

Luke: 19:51

Yeah, because Mario, you know, that came out in the 80s and just like these games have come so far.

Alex: 19:57

I came out in the 80s, sure.

Luke: 19:59

And you're there's newer models out there, man. But they breed them different, dude. Um, but like the world of gaming and computers, they've it's it's just like I mean, the cell phone's the greatest example. If you would have told someone you're gonna have a calculator and whatever you want to call the cell phone in your pocket at all times, it would have blown people's minds. If you went back to the 80s at the arcades when kids are playing Mario and showed them even the newest entry in the Mario franchise, so with this expanded capabilities comes expanded potential. Um, I'm gonna bring up the first education one. I'm gonna be brief on this because we have like a whole podcast just kind of breaking down this game and like check out our Skyline pod, y'all. Check out the Skylines pod. Uh, I absolutely adore this game. It's a huge reason that I even did this project at all. And it's called Cities Skylines. It is a city builder. You build a city, you simulation. It is not perfect. There's it would not be used necessarily to like train someone how to do the job specifically, but there are a ton of educational concepts like entry level and like great jumping off points for like teaching people different things about city building, city management, all the way from like infrastructure.

Alex: 21:12

For the old heads, this is the spiritual successor to SimCity.

Luke: 21:15

Yes, and it's more than although there is the natural disasters DLC, so you can mitigate tornadoes and stuff, like I know that was the big thing back in the day with SimCity. It's just this, like, my favorite example, and I'll end with this for just this game, is that road hierarchy. It is the most boring subject I think I could possibly bring up as a social studies teacher. If I walked into my classroom tomorrow and was like, we are talking about road hierarchy. What is road hierarchy, sir? And I'd be like, it's when six-lane roads lead into four-lane roads that lead into two lane roads to control the flow of traffic.

Alex: 21:49

You know, it's funny, especially on this particular topic. I have a little anecdote. I was at a wedding recently, and a college buddy of mine was there, and he he is a city planner now, right? Sure. So perfect for the city skylines example. He was recently in DC lobbying to get an extra lane added to 94 near a city because there's always a traffic backup there. And I just kind of chuckled because I've been playing a bunch of Skylines, but that's real life stuff, man. Whereas in Skylines, I may be like using my mouse and I'm laying down a road, but that's that's a real life application of something that's happening in this game, right?

Luke: 22:18

Right. And uh and it's not like so. If I, you know, if I brought that up in front of my class, I the eyes would roll into the back of their head and their AirPods couldn't save them for how uninteresting this was. Now, in City Skylines, if you do not use proper road hierarchy, you're gonna run into traffic issues. And the game's like pretty addicting and like fun and engaging. So you'll be building this city, and all of a sudden you're having all these traffic issues, and then they're like, Why is it that all of these play like why is why is all this traffic issues? Why is it all happening? And you just kind of freak out. And I have this happened to me.

Alex: 22:54

I had a lot of anxiety over that idea.

Luke: 22:55

Yeah, yeah. No, this happened to me when I was playing and I was done with my grad school work, and then I'm on YouTube and I'm like, how do I fix my traffic? And then I'm like watching these videos on like a city planner plays is an actual YouTube account. Oh, cool, and he plays different strategy games and he has a ton of videos on City Skyless, and he just breaks down road hierarchy and how it works in this game and how it works in real life. And I was like, that is the most interesting conversation I've ever had on road management and traffic mitigation, and that's because I had somewhere to apply it to and some in a in a goal I was trying to meet in something that was fun and engaging to me. Now, is every ninth, eighth grader gonna be super cheesed to fix their city? No, but like are we gonna be caught? We're gonna be catching up some kids who like have some increased vocabulary and like are just really getting into the detail and they're gonna like fall in love with this process.

Alex: 23:51

Yeah, dude, it's uh yeah, you know, I I brought up uh a little bit ago Sim City in SimCity 2000, right? So I remember playing hours of Sim City back in the day, and the way that our computer was set up, it was like in the family room area, right? And then that was adjacent to the kitchen. I remember mom and dad being in the kitchen, and I was just burning hours, just getting kind of late, just going at it on Sim City, right? And I overheard mom and dad talking. I think my mom, I think mom was like, should we have him like you know get off? Like he's been going at it for a while now. And I remember dad being like, Oh, I don't know, this like seems kind of interesting. Like maybe you'll be a mayor someday. Spoiler, I'm not a mayor, yeah. But you know, I think he he did see some of that value in managing that digital city.

Luke: 24:30

Yeah, and it's so it's like it's not a perfect educational experience, but like there's a ton of inspiration and there's there's a springboard for a lot of conversations, and there's like real content in there. What's uh let's jump to you, what's like one of the games that you've played that kind of grips you in a certain type of way?

Alex: 24:45

Uh, you know, there's a few of them in this particular context, I think that uh a fun example is either Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing, right? Sure. So those are two different games. Boy, have I wasted some hours on those games. Oh it's so easy to do, right? So they're um it's almost they're they're life sims of sorts, right? Yep. Farming. But uh yep, farming life sims. In the case of Stardew for sure. And Animal Crossing, there's a bit of that as well. You can get some cross-pollination flowers and also you really do. Yeah. But the idea is that you go in here, uh, you go into this game, uh, either of these games, and you have this person, you basically decide how to live their life, and you get to interact with other characters and you build these relationships with characters. So, specifically in the sense of Stardew Valley, you can go in and it's a very big sandbox. You build relationships with folks in town, or you can ignore them completely. It all depends on what outcome you want for your character. And you're also uh the the idea though, without going too far into this game, is uh you are this far this farmer that takes over your your deceased grandpa's farm or whatever, yep, and you bring it back to life. So you can't.

Luke: 25:47

Jebediah was my farmer name, right? Jebby's farm was my farm name.

Alex: 25:51

Continue. I like it. Yeah. But the the point is, is you start as you play the game, you discover more things and you learn about different seeds and you learn about the farming aspect of it. And you can also go uh spurlucking in the caves or whatever, and you find things that are able to help make your farm a better place. So, you know, the reason I chose these two games and started was focused on Stardew, but the reason that I chose this is because you go through there and the game kind of teaches you how to do these different things, but you have this you have this ability to do whatever you want, right? Yep. Uh, but with the main goal of walking around and learning how everything works in order to accomplish the goals that you have set out for yourself.

Luke: 26:30

Yeah, I just for the last minute I've just wanted to yell managing systems, mastering systems. Because, like, you know, for those who might not be as like video game savvy, you craft a lot in these games, you make things, so you collect this many pieces of wood, this many pieces of this. You have to figure out how to improve and upgrade your farm. So there's like a lot of maintaining, but there's also like crafting and putting things together. Right. And once again, that leads right into other domains like coding. And so, like, Minecraft is like another one where like it always kind of like gets paired with coding and like just that kind of lifestyle and that kind of like educational concept. And Star Who Valley is just a ton of fun, man. It is a fun one, yeah. And it's there's so many little intricacies to learn, and like we're gonna actually talk about it in some future companion podcasts because some of our other themes around identity specifically, uh, and like civic identity or like environmental identity, very much all kind of integrate into that game.

Alex: 27:28

So excellent choice.

Luke: 27:30

Right.

Alex: 27:30

And you you bring up coding, so I'm gonna jump into one of my other um one of the other games that I thought of, and it's a more recent game, it's called Baba Is You, right? Cute names ever played it. It's cool, man. I haven't played a ton of it, but um it's a puzzle game, and they're integrating coding into this game in a very interesting, puzzle-like way, right? Yeah, so you're always trying to find you're trying to get uh you're trying to get Baba, your sheep, to the end goal to the to get to the next level, right? That's very much coding. So you can move Baba around, but there's also other pieces of of coding language, uh, you know, kind of hidden coding language, where it might say like water is death. So if Baba is you, water is death. If Baba goes to the water, you lose, he dies. Now, if you move the is, so there's a little there's a little sprite for is, and if you move is in front, if you move it away from the death, then all of a sudden, you know, it's not attached to the death anymore, right? So baba or like water is death, is isn't attached anymore. Following? Yeah, so it's it's kind of hard to explain this like visually over uh an audio medium, right? But the point is that you can move these things around and you can they become layers of code to get to the end of the game. So uh, for example, if all of a sudden if water is win, so if you move is in front of win, then if you move Baba to water, then you win. That's that's the idea. Super fun game, though. And the idea is like the reason I bring it up is because I think it'd be a super fun way to get kids to start thinking about coding language, because that's how coding language works, right?

Luke: 28:56

Yeah. And it's actually it really nails the it's the nail on the head, uh, in the sense of water is death. You would never say that in life. That holds no super coding within this specific video game context that now means something, and you can you can learn and you can master the languages as they shift in front of you in this game, and you are constantly adapting and using your brain and like really engaging within this world to meet this goal. Simply put, it's like a puzzle. Exactly. Simply, simply put, but that's almost oversimplifying because you're doing all this decoding, you're doing all this reading and all these like really intricate thought processes.

Alex: 29:33

Um yeah, I like it a lot because it really I mean, one, it's a super fun game, it's like a great puzzle game, but I also love like that coding language that's integrated into it. And it does it in a way that you're not even necessarily thinking about the fact that you're learning about coding, but you are.

Luke: 29:48

There is a game where I'm a social studies teacher, and this project, when I'm talking about like the different lenses, I really focused on environmental education. I focused on social studies concepts, and I focused a lot on like identity and like career based ideas. There's this game. It's recently made. And it was very much made to be like just a little bit educational. Sure. But like but kind of like almost like secretively educational. So like this still it's still like made to look really cool, fun. Cause that's like actually very important for a game to be fun. If you think about it like I mean that sounds like so it might sound obvious that a game's fun. Duh. But also like there are like academic texts that I've been going through and research that I've been doing that it's like yeah like when students aren't engaged with the game they're playing they have a tendency to bypass and skip non-crucial information to the game. So like when they're having fun they're actively learning. You can't just like it's not just as simple as gamifying what you're doing like they have to be having fun. They had like the game has to be good. But anyway imagine Earth the idea is that Earth has been wasted by industrialism. Once again oh no feels a little real we have over polluted Earth we have need to colonize a new planet a need to move out a need to kind of start over and it says like kind of this race to settle and like set up a new planet and like you're this corporation competing with other ones to do so and the big appeal to this specific game is that you need to balance the needs of growth with the capabilities of this new planet or you're doomed to repeat the exact same mistake. It's like actually teaching kids about resource management. It is giving you a lesson on sustainability. It's giving you a lesson on the impact. Yes you need to grow you need to be successful you need to make money you need to like get people all the materials they need but if you go at too fast of a pace if you go at an unrealistic pace if you do not balance with the needs of your planet you're going to throw your system out of balance. So like those are like awesome skills and that's I'm someone who has literally taught about environmental decay resource management and like environmental concepts in a social studies classroom and it's it's sometimes it's it's a heavy topic. Sometimes it's like a hard thing to talk about because it's a lot of doom and gloom. So this is like a fun way for kids to interact and they learn those lessons on sustainability resource management responsible care yeah and like industrialism.

Alex: 32:14

Sure. Another one that I thought about are a couple because they're very similar games Gangsters Organized Crime which is a game that I played back in the day so much boss. Yep. And then Empire of Sin which is kind of basically the spiritual successor to that that series. Now this isn't a game that you would necessarily bring to the classroom because of the violence involved etc. Although not graphic implied right yeah but you know this is a game you know it's a type of simulation game again you're a mob boss and you recruit your mafia and you take over a town right yeah but to do that you had to find the right you know the key players to be in your mob you have to it's more um inventory management system management again but this whole idea of kind of working with an ecos ecosystem right that's against you because obviously the other rival mafias don't want you to take over so you have to figure out in this game how to basically overcome your obstacles using the resources at hand and a lot of strategy right yeah if I can mention the amount of hours I watched over your shoulder as a younger brother you playing this game and having no idea what was going on and being like I wish he would play the cool games where I knew what's going on. It's more Red Baron.

Luke: 33:24

Yeah yeah oh God no no yeah and like so okay if you're like well I don't really want my kid in school or at home to play gangsters there's a ton of like tycoon games they're called but like roller coaster tycoon zoo tycoon. There are new versions more polished versions like the classic like lemonade stand quite literally type games of like your kid is creatively building a park. Right. Your kid is managing prices if you set your prices too high no one's gonna come to your park or if you set them too low yeah if you set them too low you don't have any funds to expand and like just kind of like understanding like base economics which sounds like it it's something that once again like some of the best ways for students to learn this is that trial and error back to City Skylands where you're building a city like you fail all the time I fail all the time and we're adults and we're supposed to be smart. Sure. In these tycoon games there's tons of mistakes that you're gonna make but like it's a safe space to make those mistakes and that's something that like really needs to be focused on because like I'm a kidbox game right yeah sandbox being like you create what you create there's no like story necessarily it's just like you play in it. Right. But yeah I was a kid who didn't like making mistakes in school and I I like wouldn't take chances because I didn't want to like look stupid and like we want kids to do more projects these video games really offer like a fun canvas to give them that. Totally do you have another game you'd like to bring up before I know I have one more that I'll wrap up with after yours.

Alex: 34:58

I'll just throw out there Wordle Words of Friends Draw something those are all mobile games that have taken the world by storm.

Luke: 35:04

Yeah and those are it's hard to get mad at my students when they're not paying attention when they're playing Wordle. I'm like you're learning but like stop it.

Alex: 35:12

More those ones are more on the nose in the sense that you're like it's a it's a game where you're it's a they're word games right or draw something is a you're drawing stuff but you're trying to you're playing with another person via the internet trying to just it's uh like Pictionary basically yeah but the reason that I included them here is you know like I said they're a little bit more on the nose but there's uh these systems at play like Wordle's a good example I think there when it first came out there might be a small blurb that gives you an idea of how to play the game. Yeah. But essentially the colors signify you know how things are going. So you have to guess this I I can't remember off the top of my head how how many letters it is seven five five five letter words maybe yeah it's five and then if you do a five letter word and you don't get any of those uh letters correct then uh it's like shaded out black or something like that. I don't remember uh but if one of those letters is correct in the right place then it's green. Now if one of those letters is correct but in the wrong place the the spot for it uh turns yellow right so it's using these flags to show you that you're you're making your way there but you didn't get you didn't get the word quite right yet right and you've got uh a handful of attempts to figure it out so interesting interesting play at uh video game language there and then obviously I had some fun with it but uh you know like I said more on the nose uh because you're actually like they're word games but interesting how they're done simple and just and then uh words with friends is basically Scrabble via via the internet uh but another fun one you know and it's uh they're just examples of ways to get kids excited about you know maybe having some brain teasers going on or something like that.

Luke: 36:46

Yeah I mean and right off of that there's uh there's geography based ones right and as a social studies teacher like specifically I was like my man um I need you to do my warm up and he's like I am warming up I'm like I'm gonna let you keep doing this but like come on do both and then uh because like the the geography there's like global there's um worldal okay yeah yeah yeah and like so it'll give you like the outline of a country and you have some guesses and it'll tell you how far you are away and it's like really that gamified learning.

Alex: 37:15

Now the the last game that I'll bring up is uh a little bit more of a stretch for the for the classroom but it's an interesting one that I played through recently and that's Portal. Now I can actually see that being used in a physics classroom yeah so that's why that's why I bring it up is uh you know Portal is a it's a first person shooter meaning that the perspective is uh basically uh through the eyes of the player right POV point of view is that through uh so that's um so anyways you explain jargon with more jargon so you have to explain the second piece of jargon totally so your your your point of view is through the eyes of your character so you're seeing a first person view and you're running around and you end up getting this gun that uh opens portals right so you're trying to make your way out of this building but the reason that I bring this up is because of the physics involved one it's a puzzle and a brain teaser yeah and two the physics are actually extremely good in this game so it's very interesting because if you choose to put one portal on the ceiling and the other portal on the side of the wall and if you walk through the side of the wall portal you're gonna drop through that ceiling and you're going to uh start you know velocity is a thing right science so but if you if you like look down and you shoot your portal then at the ground it changes that portal the first portal to the ground and you'll fall through that and then you've click created a like a cylindrical portal right and you just keep falling and you wouldn't necessarily do this again but the br the reason I bring it up is your characters can go faster faster faster faster right yeah so there's different parts in this game where you may need to get to one side of the room to the other but you can't quite do that uh with your portals you have to do that through projecting yourself through your portals right so playing with physics and trying to figure out how the to manipulate the physics of this game in order to get to your end goals so I think it was just a very interesting science based example of of how this uh a game that could be used in the classroom.

Luke: 39:02

There's like a fun narrative to it and I haven't played but I know there's like an actual storyline right yeah it's uh it's like a side it's good yeah and people like really like it so like if we extend this you know we've kind of talked about some different classes that these different things fit in like there's actually like a large space for like English to be involved in the uh the great humor in this game so like as far as like uh dialogue and just you know it could be in itself could be a a class in in humor. Yeah and it's I get so social studies specific it helps like one the video game conversations even on like a pod where we specifically pick one topic we're always spiraling all over the place and it's fun and it's good banter but like when I've been trying to do like specific study you just find yourself going down all these different directions and I I almost have to like try so like a lot of like to narrow it down. So a lot of mine I'll get back to social studies and that's very much reflected in my game choices and my last one coming up the narrative storytelling possibilities in video games it's like it's a whole nother way to tell stories. It's cool. It's an incredibly interactive way to tell stories so like that's a that's a topic that we we kind of touch back and forth on in some of the future ones but to conclude the OG of them all Oregon Trail Oregon Trail Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail unless you want to really upset some people in Oregon for just kidding guys just kidding just kidding just kidding y'all but yeah I mean it's it's the original right it was kind of created for the classroom and I I remember being obsessed with like the hunting mechanic and like they'd be like you have 700 pounds of buffalo meat you were able to carry back 20 and being like oh this isn't gonna help me survive but that was fun it's a great example of one how is it that most of our memories of video games in school are still just the Oregon Trail like we have so much more capabilities. So on one hand it tells you that you don't need a lot to have like a super impactful like good learning moment but on the other hand it's also like why haven't we moved past this game is like why haven't we learned from that and like really expanded upon that why is there like math blasters and Oregon Trail why not like learn from that why not bring in more why is it that this limited game is it it also like kind of tells you it like teaches you real things like obviously it's not super realistic like not everyone constantly got dysentery and bit by all the rattlesnakes but like it really taught you in a grueling way the hardships of getting out west. Right if if anything that is definitely what that game teaches you. Yeah but on the other hand it also like it's what I call like a sticking moment like it gives your learning something to stick to a lot of times students and you know just anyone wants to visualize what they're learning. We'll say a lot of things like oh I'm more of a physical learner I like to see the visuals like video games allow of that. And then when you're talking in class about just like what I said with road hierarchy you now have something to stick that to now with the Oregon Trail you had something when kids they could be imaginative. They can be like oh I remember trying to get out there all the rattlesnakes are we gonna cock it are we going to float it? What are we gonna do? We're gonna try to trudge through right so it's it's it's the OG of all the games uh we should be way past it but it's still a great example of a tried and true educational game. Right on. So yeah this was uh you know hopefully you were a little bit entertained you could have read a lot of my examples but hopefully you know Al's more casual gamer focused ones kind of help strengthen the point give some inspiration points reach out add some comments if you want to throw down some games that you think that kind of fit this theme if you're like why didn't you talk about Zelda puzzles? Great point why didn't we talk about Zelda puzzles? Add some comments have some fun contribute to the conversation and most of all thanks for listening.

Alex: 42:43

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