Games and Education

I was a speaker at the recent Visual Web Conference along with Lord Puttnam, Margaret Robertson, and Dan Hon on Games and Education. Lord Puttnam's speech was really very good and I was impressed by the depth of his understanding on climate change, games and learning, and his passion for all three. Damn, but it was uplifting.

Dan and I gave short talks on our particular areas (you can download my presentation below) followed by a panel session, chaired by Margaret.

One speaker asked "what gave games developers the right to interfere in education". The question was a good one, and I thought it raised an interesting point. Do we, as games developers, have a right to get involved in the educational debate. After all every 4-5 years a new generation of politicians wade into education and then the teachers often have to spend the next few years adjusting to these changes. Are games companies any different?

My personal take on it is that we want to help, but that to do so we need to be able to justify our claims about the efficacy of serious games. So in our case, a vital part of this is that we have an inhouse educational team (Ian, our creative director, was a teacher for many years, and Hannah and Matt are both experienced scientific researchers). But he is right, games companies wading into the educational debate could be problematic.

But the truth is, the teachers we have worked with have welcomed our input. We have given them tools to engage the pupils which let the teachers get on with their jobs and build on that interest that we have sparked. The teachers we interact with are used to games, and just like me, have grown up with them and understand the uses and the pitfalls.

What also really inspired me was that many of the pupils who most engaged with our games were the ones typically described as "struggling", yet they were very active, and able to help and more importantly, teach their fellow class members.

Perhaps the focus of the question should be: how can games help break down the archaic divide between being taught at, and actually being part of the teaching process yourself.

Which brings me round to another point: Over the last few years Red Redemption has gradually shifted from being a regular games company making games purely for entertainment and profit (a perfectly reasonable goal itself) to making socially conscious, persuasive games for fun and hopefully to help people learn more about important issues like climate change.

One of the most interesting parts about this evolution has been that a set of very clear goals have emerged and become core to our games development. These goals are:

1. Socially-responsible: Consider the end use.
2. Fun to play: Obvious, but essential and too often missed Its a game not a simulation.
3. Focus on real-world: Even if you do so via the metaphor of a virtual world.
4. Scientifically accurate: Source the data!
5. Transparent: You have to build trust. Be open about limitations.
6. Scoring Techniques: You’ll learn while you play by scoring players based on demonstrable knowledge gain.
7. Non-Didactic: Don't preach!

I think that these goals provide a strong basis for discussion, but that is just a start, we need better communication with the education establishment, and more head teachers (like the group I met late last year in Southwark) who can take a practical and positive approach to using games where they can help, but not viewing them as a panacea for poor teaching.

You can download/view my presentation here (PDF, 1066KB).

History of Red Redemption, part 2

Part Two: The Climate Changes
Oh that was a terrible pun...

So we were having a rough time of it, but then everything changed around for us.

2005 April +: Things look up
After she recovered, Hannah got a job as Assistant Project Manager on the wonderful ClimatePrediction.net. If you are not familiar with it, I recommend you give it a try. It is the world's largest distributed computer modelling programme focussed on climate change. Think Seti-at-home, but looking at our atmosphere rather than for aliens.

2006: Videos and the BBC
Along the way as we grew, we did what a lot of other small companies do and took on a number of interesting, and tangentally related projects. This included making a fun video about computational modelling called the "SPICE" project for University College London. Excitingly that video helped them win a massive grant at the Super Computing trade show.

We also developed a number of websites for projects that we were interested in, and some for projects that we were not quite so keen on.

Hannah was still working for ClimatePrediction.net, though she was in the process of moving on to the Environmental Change and Management MSc at Oxford University's excellent Environmental Change Institute. The ClimatePrediction.net project was a wonderful inspiration, and as you do, I started hanging out more and more with the team, and especially Dr Myles Allen who is highly motivated, articulate and knowledgeable. I couldn't fail to be impressed by him.

The funny thing was that he was impressed with us, and immediately saw the potential of computer games + climate change.

So it ended up that one evening at the ClimatePrediction.net retreat, he challenged us to go for it, but he did more than that, he put us in touch with a fab group of people in the BBC and told us that we should talk to them. So we did.

Then an amazing thing happened. The BBC team took a big risk and commissioned us, and everything changed. Then on the back of the extensive development process with the BBC (I think I will write a seperate article on that. Suffice it to say for now that the BBC's team were very supportive and gave us access to testing facilities that really helped improve the game immeasureably), we also won a Climate Challenge Fund award (actually two!) from the UK Department of the Environment to develop a multi-player stripped down version of Climate Challenge for schools.

2007: Climate Change
In January of 2007 we launched Climate Challenge with the BBC on BBC Science and Nature. The game took off in a much bigger way that we had ever anticipated. 82, 000 people played the game in the first week ad we received global coverage in the Sunday Times, LA Times, El Pais, Gamasutra, Serious Games Source, Sustainable Industries Journal, and many more. We also received some great blog coverage from Worldchanging, a number of games blogs and even some climate critic blogs.

Even better our research showed that the game was actually having a strong effect.

The user figures just got better and better with the game rapidly passing 500,000 players. It was being used in ways we had never anticipated. For example the World Economic Forum used Climate Challenge in their seminars in the run up to Davos 2007 to train executives in risk management. We were exstatic.

Then in July at the House of Commons we launched the multi-player Operation: Climate Control. This was the DEFRA funded game and was squarely aimed at 14-16 year olds studying climate change in the UK. The launch event had an unusual focus, it used the game to illustrate how serious games / socially conscious games could bring together disperate groups on a common issue. Namely in this case groups of muslim and jewish teenagers to team up and tackle climate change. That was cool :)

The projects kept flowing and we developed the Trouble Shooter game for EDF Energy and also launched the ClimateX website with the Environmental Change Institute.

2008: Socially Conscious Games
At the beginning of the year we were fortunate enough to have Klaude Thomas join us as Managing Director. Klaude has a wealth of experience built up over many years in the games industry and was previously MD for Eidos Hungary as well as being an Exec Producer for Eidos. If his name isn't familiar, his games probably are. Here's a short list:

• Battlestations: Midway
• Shogun Total War
• F1 2000

Klaude brought more than just his experience though. He immediately set to work helping Red Redemption to clearly define its core strategy and to focus even more tightly on socially-conscious games.

Red Redemption has its 8th birthday!

This is a little late...but I am proud to announce that Red Redemption has had its 8th anniversary of founding and its 6th anniversary of actual operations beginning.

So given that, I thought I'd write a short potted history of our little company in two parts:

Part One: MMO Dreams

2001: Kindred Spirits
Whilst working at Gameplay I realised that I wanted to work for myself, and when Hannah introduced me to Matt Harvey I knew I had found someone I shared my work dreams with. So around the middle of the year the ideas began to coalesce into Steel Law Online.

Steel Law Online was based on the roleplaying game called Steel Law (later Broken Shield), authored by me. Its a gritty science fiction setting that deals with issues like consequence, power and the perception of truth. That sounds grandiose, and it is, but mostly the game is about playing cops in a future London, or Agents in the wider universe.

Anyway, we decided that Steel Law would make a great MMO. I had written a long piece, which if I can find I will repost here, about the failings of MMOs, and we thought that we could address a lot of those failings. Anyway... I digress...

Suffice it to say we wanted to make fun games, for adults.

2002-2003: Awards and Bedroom Coding
Matt and I apply, successfully for a Department of Trade and Industry Smart Innovation Award. The purpose of that award? To develop an Adpative Client and Server using Steel Law Online as a test bed.

Matt and I spent a memorable Christmas period 2001-2002 creating the prototype for the game in good old fashioned bedroom coder style. Over a two week period the first iteration of Steel Law Online was created. It was certainly rough around the edges, but it worked!

We made terrific progress on the game, and the Smart Innovation Award allowed us to devote the time it took to really flesh out the complex technical elements of the game. After all we were making the entire game in Java and there were more than a few technical bumps in the road.

We grew as a team, taking on some fabuous people and things progressed.

Oh and along the way I got married :)

2004: Steel Law Online reached beta.
We were all scared t death the day we finally went beta with Steel Law Online. Within minutes we had many players in the game, and also many bugs that needed fixing, but that was okay, because basically it worked!

Over the next few months, we improved the game, taking it through countless revisions, and the team grew to add to that capacity as all of us were working flat out all the time developing and running the game.

2005: Everything went pear-shaped!
Now with a beta and everything we went out looking for investment, but several horrible things happened all at once that made sure that we were going to have to change plans:

1. My wife, Hannah, became very ill. Very ill. We were a very small team (~4) so this hit us all hard.
   
2. Two of the UKs biggest games developers, Argonaut and Elixir, both closed their doors. Neither of those closed because the games industry was in trouble, rather both closed for internal reasons, but you try explaining that to investors who have never even played a game. Totally understandably, they were spooked, and were I in their shoes, I would have been spooked too :)
   

But that was not the end for Red Redemption, oh no. In fact we were just about to embark on a path of relentless growth and success, and everything was going to change.

You could say that the whole environment was about to change...