GETTING
SERIOUS ABOUT
GAMING Games from the Game Design programme at the Wits School of Digital Arts tell important stories, and allow for solutions to many realworld problems. SHIVAN PARUSNATH
SHIVAN PARUSNATH
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lay is a concept as old as work. Many species, including ours, play often during childhood. The games played serve as a vehicle for lessons needed later in life, such as hunting or defending themselves. In today’s world, gaming is perhaps the most popular form of play. However, it is generally seen less as lesson learning and more of an escapist pastime – delving into worlds or systems that differ drastically from the one in which we live. Educational games are not new, but they tend to be veneers of the promise of fun pasted over a conventional learning system. These veneers tend to be thin, and are seen through by the intended audience who quickly realise they are being duped into learning something. “Just sprinkling game design on top of learning content doesn’t make it a game – it is still a multiple choice test if you take away all the effects and visuals,” says Henrike Lode, who heads up the Serious Games course offered as part of the game design degree in the Wits School of Digital Arts. Serious games are those that have a narrative that is educational or informative without compromising on the quality and enjoyment of the gameplay itself. Importantly, games of this nature can bring empathy to other human experiences – helping people understand what it’s like to be someone else, by exploring themes such as sexual identity, language and privilege.
MAKING TEACHING FUN
“I struggled with education and authority in high school. It killed my love for learning, because it was about authority, and not about the excitement of finding out more,” says Lode. This drew her to the idea of making games that offer education through playful interaction. “Gaming can transform education with joy,” says Lode.
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Many of Lode’s students were drawn to game design for the same reason: learning through games is more effective than traditional teaching methods. Alice Seremane, a 2019 alumnus of Wits game design, chose to take this course because of her challenges with traditional teaching methods for complex subjects like physics. “Schooling is not something that people typically describe as enjoyable – but if you can incorporate fun into teaching, where the person is unconsciously learning, you can expose learners to more information without them even realising it,” says Seremane. “I found physics very challenging in school and there were many concepts I just couldn’t grasp – but seeing physical models and demonstrations made it so much easier.” This made her think that if physics could be explained in a more fun and practical way, it would be so much more accessible and easier to understand. Seremane designed a game called Time’s Up!, in which players use a variety of electrical components such as electric wires, batteries, resistors and switches to create a closed circuit with a specific set of components and requirements. Levashan Pillay, a 2020 alumnus of game design at Wits, found a gateway into gaming through difficulties with traditional learning at school. “I found that my maths skills improved dramatically when I started playing on an educational gaming console in my spare time,” says Pillay. “Aside from the fun that you experience when playing an educational game, there is a real sense of feedback and accomplishment when you get something right, and that is missing in traditional learning systems.” Pillay’s game Code Wiz centres around teaching the player the logic of programming which can be transferred and used in any form of programming language.
