LearnEnglish Minecraft Server

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about a very interesting project to teach the English language to beginners as well as advanced learners: a Minecraft server that provides special learning puzzles and game goals.

Learning a new language is a very challenging task as learners are required to memorize vocabulary, develop an understanding for the foreign language’s gammar, practice the correct pronunciation as well as their listening comprehension skills. While the latter two skills can be easily trained by watching movies and series that are subtitled, expanding the own vocabulary and learning grammar requires a lot of hard work that mostly involves a periodic repetition of the learning content. Unfortunately, traditional learning methods are not very engaging and lack an immediate feedback.

The gamification of learning, however, can improve the language learning quality by turning the key learning aspects into game mechanics that not only provide an immediate feedback, but also give the foreign language an important meaning by using it as a means to solve puzzles or other game goals. Furthermore, by turning the language learning activities into game mechanics, they can also be implemented in engaging, flow-inducing and vivid virtual worlds. That way, students not only experience a higher enjoyment when practicing a foreign language, but also are more motivated to continue playing the game thus repeating the learning content more frequently. Lastly, computer games, due to their reward game mechanics, also encourage players to retry challenges after a failure in a highly motivated way.

Recently, I came across a very interesting approach to teach the English language to beginners as well as advanced learners by implementing the learning activites into Minecraft. The LearnEnglish Minecraft Server project, created and developed by Cacille, provides puzzles and other mini games of various complexity.

For instance, beginners can start to expand their English vocabulary just by exploring the virtual world and meeting Non-Player Characters (NPC) that perform various activities such as running or swimming. Once a player approaches one of those NPC, they inform the student about the activity they are performing: „I am running“. Other beginner puzzles challenge the players to find a way through a maze by answering questions correctly or to count various types of animals.

LearnEnglish Minecraft Server

In contrast to beginners, advanced learners are challenged with more difficult activities like a language based scavanger hunt or a minecart ride that, each time the minecart arrives at a station, requires the player to correctly complete a sentence. Based on the player’s input the minecart will take a different route which might kill the player or safely bring them to the next destination.

Aside from providing the puzzles, the LearnEnglish server can also act as a classroom where students as well as teacher meet in order to cooperatively or competitively tackle the game’s challenges. That way, teachers or parents can utilize the game as a platform to teach the English language in a very engaging way.

Currently, the learning environment is still in development, but already shows its great potential. I am really excited to follow its development and hear about the results when it is tested for the first time.

Great Games do not Force a Player into a certain Direction

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about how the freedom created by open world games attracts a broad variety of player types.

One of the key aspects of open world games is the freedom that is given to the players. Instead of providing them with a linear story which is based on a sequence of pre-defined goals a player must complete, open world games offer various activities to the players thus allowing them to choose what they want to do inside of the virtual worlds. As a result of this, each player experiences a unique story as well as the feeling of being an actual part of the virtual environment which ultimately results in a deeper immersion.

Skyrim

For instance, the role-playing game Skyrim provides players with a main story line, many side quests, various factions that like the player to join them as well as a vast virtual world full of secrets and treasures which can freely be explored. That way, players can decide if they want to follow the main story line, if they want to help out a certain faction or completely ignore the goals provided by the game for the purpose of discovering special places in the world.

In addition, open world and even many role-playing games provide a high amount of various activities players can perform inside of the virtual world without actually requiring them to utilize all of those game mechanics in order to play the game successfully. Hence, players experience another degree of freedom as they can only focus on some of the activities which they enjoy or use every feature of the game. Of course, players who take advantage of many game mechanics might have a better overall performance in the game, but this mostly is important for some very special events a player rarely encounters during the regular gameplay.

Minecraft

For instance, Minecraft, amongst other things, allows players to craft various types of armor which subsequently can be enchanted for the purpose of increasing a player’s capabilities, making the armor stronger or more durable. In addition, players can brew various potions that can have various positive effects on the player such as taking less damage or moving faster. While enchanting and brewing helps players to survive and is needed in order to defeat the strongest Minecraft enemies which only appear when they are summoned, it is not needed for the regular gameplay. Naturally, players who wear stronger armor do not need to be as careful as unarmored players, but this mostly is not important when a player likes to explore the world or build ambitious projects.

In the end, digital games that can be played in various ways and do not force players to perform certain activities mostly attract a broad variety of different player types as everyone can focus on a particular aspect of the game that matches the own interests.

Driving Safety

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about how realistic racing simulations can improve a player’s driving skills but also increase the awareness for potential risks and dangers at the same time.

In #120, I discussed the effects of playing racing simulations which resulted in an alternation of my perception of speed and an improvement of my spatial attention as well as reaction time. Furthermore, racing simulations, in case they are played with a force feedback steering wheel and pedals, share similar demands with real world driving, thus training a player’s car control knowledge which easily can be transferred from the virtual environment to the real world. In sum, racing simulations improved all my skills that are relevant for car driving thus helping me to become a better and safer driver.

Risks of racing

However, racing simulations also demonstrated me the risks and dangers of driving cars at their limits and showed me the human limits. For instance, trying to recover a car that started to oscillate at speeds exceeding 200km/h by using only a single hand on the steering wheel is a very challenging or, depending on the car’s characteristics, even impossible task. Similarly, driving very close behind a different car might result in good opportunities to overtake the car ahead in a racing scenario, but it also exponentially increases the risk of colliding with the other vehicle. In addition, it applies some pressure on the driver that is being chased, which of course is wanted in a racing scenario, but causes an unnecessary safety risk on public roads.

With those experiences made in the safe environment of a racing simulation, I feel much better prepared for potential situations that might arise while driving in the real world. Unfortunately, the knowledge gained by perfoming virtual racing on a frequent basis resulted in a feeling of precariousness when I drive on public roads, too. Frequently, I see other drivers with only two fingers on the steering wheel or have to endure a car that drives only a few meters behind me. Of course, there always is the potential that the drivers possess well advanced driving skills, but chances are high that those people are not able to correctly react to critical situations thus creating an unnecessary risk. In addition, even when they would have well trained driving skills, then this behavior still results in an increased chance of causing an accident as they can not predict what other drivers do or if there is a bump in the roads that upsets the car. Finally, having advanced driving skills would also result in a behavior that reduces risks to a tolerable minimum.

In the end, computer games create effective training environments that can greatly improve our skills but also demonstrate risks in a safe environment. It is time that we start to use them on a more frequent basis in education to achieve better learning outcomes.

Long duration flights

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the rewarding moments of playing realistic open world simulation game.

Several years ago, I used to play Microsoft Flight Simulator X Professional on a frequent basis. Aside from doing short duration flights between two airports that are only a few flight minutes away from each other, I also did some long duration flights in order to reach interesting destinations such as Iceland or Spitzbergen.

Those virtual journeys, I mostly used Berlin Tegel as my starting point, took me several days as I splitted them into shorter, about 1 hour long flights. However, this was only possible until I eventually reached a point from which on only open water separated me from my destinations thus requiring me to do several hour long flights in order to complete my goals.

Surprisingly, although nothing special happened during those long flights, it was still very entertaining as it gave me the challenge of managing the flights and communicating with the simulated Air Traffic Control while completing other tasks such as cooking, eating or cleaning. Furthermore, the real-time flights provided me with a very rewarding experience as it really felt as if I would have accomplished something meaningful after crossing the open water between the Faroe Islands and Iceland.

Unfortunately, since those days of long duration flights in Flight Simulator X, no other simulation game really provided me with a similar opportunity for such ambitious projects. This is mostly due to the fact that the scope of the games is too limited or the simulation itself is not immersive enough to motivate me to attempt those endeavors. However, Kerbal Space Program makes a slight exception as flying to the Mun in real time could be one of those challenging endeavors. The only problem is that, in contrast to my Flight Simulator X flights, there will be absolutely nothing to do between the moment of finishing the Trans-Munar-Injection burn and beginning the Orbit-Insertion burn.

Hopefully, the ultra-realistic simulation games will experience a new boom, soon, and provide fans with a huge and open virtual world they can explore unrestricted and in an authentic way. Personnally, I miss those games a lot!

Minecraft’s automatically changing environment: fascinating and sometimes problematic

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about Minecraft’s game mechanics that provide players with the impression of being a part of a living virtual world.

Minecraft provides players with unique and vivid worlds they can freely explore and change. Furthermore, the open world game has no clear goals players need to complete in order to progress with the game. Instead, players are unrestricted and can do what they want as soon as they enter a Minecraft world. As a result, the most common things players do are exploring the world, digging deep into the earth to find caves full of valuable resources or building more or less ambitious projects such as large houses, huge temples or even colorful towns.

The vividness of a Minecraft world is achieved with various types of digital creatures that inhabit the virtual environments. Some of them are friendly, others are neutral or even hostile and try to kill the players once they get too close to those creatures. Also, a few of the creatures can be tamed and subsequently start to follow the players everywhere they go.

A Creeper in Minecraft.

Moreover, the virtual environment can not only be changed by the players, but also by some of the virtual creatures. Creepers, withers as well as ghasts can cause explosions that destroy parts of the landscape when they attack the players and nethermen can even pick up arbitrary blocks in order to move them around thus slowly changing the virtual worlds over time.

That way, Minecraft gives players the impression of being a part of a living world that reacts on them and even changes as time progresses. However, the changing world game mechanic also has a few downsides as it requires players who focus on building ambitious projects to be extra careful to avoid causing an explosion and to frequently check the environment if endermen have moved some blocks away that were an integral part of a particular building. As a result of this, some players turn off this game mechanic in order to be able to build spectacular projects that will never be changed by the game itself.

In the end, Minecraft’s approach of creating a living virtual world is especially fascinating due to the automatically changing terrain which is a feature only a few games have implemented so far. Personally, I very much enjoy this feature as it provides me with the feeling of being able to witness some kind of erosion which is an event I would like to see more frequently in open world games.

Early Access: Not all changes are great for everyone

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about one of the major risks when it comes to playing an Early Access version of a computer game: the game can get changed in a way that does not match the players‘ interests.

Playing an Early Access version of a computer game can provide a gameplay experience that is completely different from the gameplay of a final release version. This is mostly due to the fact that those computer games are still in development and hence periodically receive new game mechanics and balance changes. Depending on the features that are added with a particular update, the whole gameplay experience of a game might change and provide players with new ways of interacting with the game and/or new challenges to overcome. As a result, players of Early Access games often experience a higher playtime than players of a final release version.

However, major development steps might also negatively affect the gameplay experience of long-term players who are playing the game since the beginning of its Early Access phase. This mostly is the case when new game mechanics which drastically change a particular aspect of the game are added.

Skills in The Long Dark

For instance, before the „survival“ skills were implemented in The Long Dark, players just increased an activity’s chances of success each time they performed this activity. This simplistic experience system gave players the feeling of self-improvement without affecting the gameplay too much. With the new skill system in place, players are gaining experience for various skills that unlock powerful abilities once a new skill level is reached. Such a skill system is a common game mechanic in many role-playing games (RPG) that focus a lot on the development and specialization of a player’s avatar. However, not all players enjoy the aspect of experience-based character advancements and highly preferred the simplistic approach. As a result of this, the implementation of the new system has negatively impacted the gameplay experience of some seasoned players.

In the end, that is a risk players must accept when they start to play an Early Access version of a computer game. Depending on the stage of the development, major game mechanics and general design ideas might have not been implemented yet thus providing a different experience than ultimately intended by the developers. However, although it is impossible to satisfy every player type, game developers need to listen to their community when they launch an Early Access version and sometimes even rethink certain design choices. Ultimately, it is the developer’s game and hence they have the final call in which direction the development goes.

Learning a new raid boss

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about why learning a new boss fight has become a simple task for many World of Warcraft players.

One thing that always amazes me is a raid’s ability to learn and memorize the key characteristics and mechanics of a new raid boss within just a week. Raids are groups of people who teamed up in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) in order to collaboratively tackle the most challenging foes that mostly can be found in so-called raid instances.

Last week, „The Nighthold“, a new raid instance, opened in World of Warcraft and challenges players with 10 new boss fights of which each features a unique set of game mechanics. In addition, World of Warcraft, in the current version 7.1.5, offers raids the option to choose between three different difficulty levels: normal, heroic and mythic. While the raid size can scale from 10 to 30 players on normal and heroic, a mythic raid must consist of 20 players. Also, higher difficulty levels can add additional game mechanics to boss fights in order to make them more challenging.

For instance, the „Star Augur Etraeus“ boss features 25 different game mechanics on normal, 28 game mechanics on heroic, and 34 game mechanics on mythic difficulty. Of course, not all of the game mechanics are important for every player, but it is still critical to be aware of all of them in order to master a boss fight.

Currently, I am a member of a relatively casual raid that assembles twice a week for the purpose of experiencing the game’s content without having the clear ambition of beating the highest difficulty. During the first week, we managed to defeat 7 of the 10 bosses and were about to learn the 8th boss as the second raid evening came to an end. Now, in the second week since the release of The Nighthold, we managed to defeat all of the 8 bosses we saw in the first week during our first raid evening. That is quite an improvement!

The reason for this good improvement probably is twofold: on the one hand, most raid bosses reuse already known game mechanics; on the other hand, many good video guides got released and explain the boss fight mechanics in details. Although Blizzard Entertainment, the developers of World of Warcraft, try to challenge players with unique boss fights, most of the game mechanics can be reduced to a few main principles: do not stand in damage causing effects, eliminate additional enemies that join a boss fight as soon as possible, react accordingly when the boss applies a certain negative effect to you or a fellow raid member. Hence, instead of acquiring completely new knowledge, players are only required to generalize the game mechanics used in order to learn a new encounter. It only becomes difficult when a short reaction time is required as this is a human ability that has to be trained separately.

Also, in order to get a good basic understanding of a boss fight, many players watch video guides that explain a raid encounter in details thus providing them with all the knowledge needed before personally seeing the boss for the first time. However, this approach is a bit strange as it takes away most of the challenge of playing World of Warcraft.

In the end, learning a new boss fight rarely requires the acquisition of new knowledge. Instead, learning a new encounter requires players to apply their World of Warcraft experience gained over their whole gametime in order to classify the game mechanics. Therefore, learning new encounters is more of an iterative learning process that starts in the moment when a player starts playing the game for the first time.

Unobtrusive Tutorials

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about different ways how games introduce new players into the gameplay without breaking the immersion.

Most of the current computer games start with a tutorial or at least provide a tutorial as an option in the game’s main menu. A tutorial explains new players the general gameplay and introduces them into the game controls in order to facilitate the start of a new game. In general, a tutorial is a well structured small mission that provides players with clear instructions and clear goals. For instance, at the start of a First Person Shooter (FPS), players receive accurate instructions about the movement controls and subsequently are required to perform a small task, such as running up a hill or collecting an item, during which they can practice using the controls.

RimWorld informs players about game mechanics with small text boxes.

Unfortunately, most tutorials break the immersion of a game as they heavily restrict a player, use a high amount of text to convey the information and often are not directly tied into the rest of the gameplay. However, there are also very good exceptions that inform the players about the game mechanics without actually forcing them to perform a certain activity. The colony simulator RimWorld, for example, displays small text boxes with information when the player has reached a certain point or encountered a particular problem. Players then can read those information in order to learn more about the relevant game mechanics or just ignore them. This way, the game introduces the players to the gameplay without actually forcing them to perform a certain activity.

Astroneer unobtrusively informs players about important game mechanics.

Alternatively, some games almost ignore the player and only display tiny bits of information the player has to know in order to progress with the game. For instance, Astroneer, a space exploration as well as building game, only displays the key binding activating a certain game mechanic when the player has reached a certain point for the very first time. During the gameplay, players need to gather different resources using a so-called Terrain Tool which can be activated by pressing ‚Q‘. As soon as a new player approaches a patch of resources for the very first time, the game just informs the player about the tool without actually explaining how to operate it. This allows the player to activate this game mechanic and subsequently to try it out on their own thus learning the game controls on the fly. Moreover, Astroneer displays buttons on machines or vehicles when a certain activity can be performed without directly explaining what the button does. This again allows players to observe the functionality of the game mechanics and to learn the gameplay from scratch. In the end, Astroneer’s tutorial is hardly noticeable by the players as it does not break the immersion and allows players to continuously play the game.

As a conclusion, tutorials are important as they inform players about game controls they can only guess. However, it is important that the information are presented in a very unobtrusive way in order to avoid breaking the immersion and allowing players to learn the gameplay from scratch which can even result in a rewarding feeling as it gives players the impression of having discovered something on their own.