Identifying Learning Objectives and Student Needs - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 190

n You are Poirot, a murderer

s worst nightmare!
n Gun down the forces of evil!
n New and unique weaponry!
n Secret Belgian finishing moves!
n Hyper-realistic character models!
n Blood spatter effects with accurate physics!
n Custom tailored wool, cotton, and silk body armor!
n All new waxed moustaches targeting system!
n Power Packs include tisanes and fois gras!
n Health bar tracks Poirot

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' s hunger!

Probably not. However, Agatha Christie readers are puzzle solvers. Mysteries are a
string of puzzles. As each one is solved, more of the truth of the story is revealed.
As a puzzle in a video game is solved, the story and the player advance. As I ve

written in my book, Character Development and Storytelling for Games, action is
not simply fights and car chases.

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A commentator can describe a chess match as
filled with action: two minds battling it out with move or countermove. A sharp
exchange of dialogue in a courtroom drama is action.

“

Knowing that puzzles were
the connection between Agatha Christie and video games helped me immensely.

�

The important thing is to know your audience. Educators interested in trying to
implement the multiplayer classroom must know their audience as well. Happily
for teachers, we usually know quite a bit about our audience: its age, gender
distribution, learning abilities, and so on. We also know what it is we ' re meant to

'

teach. Whether it s calculus or the First World War, we are preceded by

generations of teachers. The coursework is established. We not only know it
for a specific class assignment, but we also know where that assignment is meant
to fit in the continuum. Calculus should probably not be taught before addition
and subtraction. The First World War should probably not follow World War II.

We ve even been given some pointers on how to teach it. But even so, it can be a

struggle. As I pointed out earlier, it

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s very much like writing and designing an
alternate reality game. The classroom is not a hermetically sealed chamber. It is
part of the real world. Time passes. Real people enter with certain expectations

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