I came into this project with a rather outdated view on learning games. In my mind, educational games were often designed to maximize learning at the cost of sacrificing fun. One memorable example is when I played one of the Oregon Trail games in elementary school — the game, in my mind, was frustrating and random in order to send a message. Some other games, I thought, were designed to be fun and had learning outcomes slapped on it as an afterthought.
With that in mind, I totally thought that the game that comes out of this project would be a serious (dare I say, boring) game that teaches players some information about a specific topic. However, I could not have been more wrong. Cave Talk turned out to be a wildly chaotic and dynamic game filled with silly sounds, body language, and exclamations. The mechanics, while designed to teach the implicit skills and self efficacy related to communicating in an unknown language, ended up promoting super fun dynamics that made each play of the game memorable. The aesthetics of fellowship that we designed the game around changed my perspective on what a learning game can be. It reminded me that the most effective games are memorable, whether it is a learning game or not. Players, after playing our game, walked out with onomatopoeic catchphrases relating to the syllables that they used during the game. Every time someone evokes that memory, they are brought back to relive the experience, and the lessons that we designed to impart on the players resurface again. As a designer, seeing players interact with the game on that level made me unbelievably proud.
After designing our game, I realized that learning games can also teach in a dynamic and not-so-dry way. Our game was able to deliver its learning outcomes by reinforcing behaviors that were both conditions for succeeding at the game, and skills that are transferrable to real situations. Going forward as a player of games, I will keep my eyes peeled for what I can learn from the games that I play.
Our group is filled with ambitious people, but we decided to keep our hubris in check this time around for scoping purposes. We decided on doing a game of fellowship because they can be fun with few core mechanics, which would give us more time during this busy quarter. However, I learned that scoping small can lead to much greater refinement in our product. It felt like we started with a good concept and made the game monotonically better. Contrast this with Golden Ark from 247G, which was more like putting out a growing fire at every checkpoint. This experience was overall less stressful, so going forward I will be more selective when deciding scope for a project.
