Adapting a Commercial Role-Playing Game for Educational Computer Game Production

Educational games have long been used in the classroom to add an immersive aspect to the curriculum. While the technology has a cadre of strong advocates, formal reviews have yielded mixed results. Two widely reported problems with educational games are poor production quality and monotonous game-play. On the other hand, commercial noneducational games exhibit both high production standards (good artwork, animation, and sound) and diversity of gameplay experience. Recently, educators have started to use commercial games in the classroom to overcome these obstacles. However, the use of these games is often limited since it is usually difficult to adapt them from their entertainment role. We describe how a commercial computer role-playing game (Neverwinter Nights) can be adapted by non-programmers, to produce a more enriching educational game-playing experience. This adaptation can be done by individual educators, groups of educators or by commercial enterprises. In addition, by using our approach, students can further adapt or augment the games they are playing to gain additional and deeper insights into the models and underlying abstractions of the subject domain they are learning about. This approach can be applied across a wide range of topics such as monetary systems in economics, the geography of a region, the culture of a population, or the sociology of a group or of interacting groups.  Educators are aware of the motivational power of simulation-based gaming and have diligently sought ways to exploit that power (Bowman, 1982; Malone & Lepper, 1987; Cordova & Lepper, 1996). Advocates of this approach have been captivated by the potential of creating immersive experiences (Stadsklev, 1974; Greenblat & Duke, 1975; Gee, 2003). The intent was to have students become existential player/participants operating within a virtual world with goals, resources and potential behaviors shaped by both the underlying model and the players’ experience and choices (Colella, Klopfer & Resnick, 2001; Collins & Ferguson, 1993; Rieber, 1996). Contemporary exponents of educational gaming/simulations have drawn their inspiration from modern video games (Gee, 2003). Like earlier proponents, they have been captivated by the ability of well designed gaming simulations to induce the immersive, "in-the-groove" experience that Csikszentmihalyi (1991) described as "flow." They contend that the scaffolded learning principles employed in modern video games create the potential for participant experiences that are personally meaningful, socially rich, essentially experiential and highly epistemological (Bos, 2001; Gee, 2003; Halverson, 2003). Furthermore the design principles of successful video games provide a partial glimpse into possible future educational environments that incorporate what is commonly referred to as “just in time /need to know” learning (Prensky, 2001; Gee, 2005). Unfortunately, educational game producers have not had much success at producing the compelling, immersive environments of successful commercial games (Gee, 2003). “Most look like infomercials, showing low quality, poor editing, and low production costs.” (Squire & Jenkins, 2003, p11). Even relatively well received educational games such as Reader Rabbit, The Magic School Bus, Math Blaster, and States and Traits are little more than “electronic flashcards” that simply combine monotonous repetition with visual animations (Card, 1995; Squire & Jenkins, n.d.; Squire & Jenkins, 2003). Approaches to educational gaming/simulation can range from the instructivist in which students learn through playing games (Kafai, 1995) to the experimentalist in which students learn through exploring micro-worlds (Rieber, 1992, 1996) to the constructionist where students learn by building games (Papert & Harel, 1991). Advocates of the latter approach have been in the minority but the potential power of the game-building technologies and their potential as an alternative form of learning or expression is drawing increasing attention from the educational gaming community (Kafai, 2001; Robertson & Good, 2005). We have done some preliminary work with all three of these modes, with most of efforts focused on constructionist approaches (Carbonaro et al., 2005; Szafron et al., 2005). In this paper, we show how our constructivist approach can be adapted to create instructivist classroom materials. On the instructivist side, there are three basic approaches. First, simply use games that were created as educational games such as Reader Rabbit etc. and incur all of the problems manifested in this approach. Second, use commercial games, such as Civilization III (a historical simulation game) (Squire, 2005). However, it can be difficult for the educator to align a commercial game with specific educational topics or goals. Third, adapt a commercial game to meet specific educational goals. This is the approach we describe in this paper. We describe how the same gamebuilding tools we put into the hands of students can be used by educators to easily adapt commercial CPRGs to create instructivist classroom materials in the form of educational computer games.