Emerging practice with games-based learning - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 59

identities. There is also game 'modding', where players can actively modify a game,
which is possible with open-ended games. Examples of computer games where play-
ers create their own game and characters are also referred to as evolutionary games,
the best known example of which is Second Life . This open-ended game has very
few rules and roles as users create and develop everything themselves (Spring-Keller
2010).
More recently there has been the emergence of the Serious Games movement,
which is a genre of games that 'layer social issues or problems with game play,
helping players gain a new perspective through active engagement' (Johnson et al.
2011). There is also the development of massively multiplayer online (MMO) games
designed for learning. The commercial counterparts to these are entertainment
focused - for example, World of Warcraft - or training based - such as America's Army ,
both of which bring together multiple players to work on exercises that require
cooperative, strategic problem-solving. These games are complex and include solo as
well as group goals, which are collaborative, but can also be competitive. MMOs are
organized around a storyline or theme and are often goal-oriented, but 'the highest
levels of interaction and play require outside learning and discovery' (Johnson et al.
2011: 21). What makes MMOs so compelling is the variety of sub-games, or paths
of engagement, available to players, with short- and long-term goals to attain and
interesting back stories that set the context. The challenge that needs to be addressed
is that of embedding educational content into the nature of such immersive and
compelling games.
Having outlined commercial games above, it is important to distinguish between
recreational games and learning games, where the former are framed by leisure and
play and the latter by an education context. Games that a learner chooses to play on
their own machine where the main purpose is play are differentiated from digital
learning games, where learning is the main purpose; for this, the term 'digital games
based learning' (DGBL) applies.
The development of educational content is gaining more interest; there are exam-
ples of single-player online games, such as those developed by Persuasive Games,
which explore advocacy issues and engage players in serious questions concerning
health, policy and social problems; and Oligarchy , a game that focuses on interna-
tional oil drilling (Johnson et al. 2011). The premise behind these educational games
is that learners read about a topic, which is then actively explored through online
playing. As Johnson et al. (2011) assert, these games lend themselves to curriculum
content, requiring learners to discover and construct knowledge in order to solve
problems.
The New Horizon Report (Johnson et al. 2011) outlines recent examples of devel-
opments in augmented reality games (ARGs) and educational content. For example,
the ARG World Without Oil is a 'collaborative, social imagining of the first 32 weeks of
a global oil crisis'; and Superstruct , is a game in which players face 'daunting environ-
mental, political and health challenges in a world ten years in the future' (Johnson
et al. 2011: 21). Similarly, The Tower of Babel is designed for schools, for learners of all
ages, for learning languages other than their own. These three examples are designed
specifically to outline curriculum content, which help learners gain new perspectives