| Chieh on Education / Entertainment and Education The reason why people study Shakespeare is for the amount of depth there is to learn within the paragraphs. If we are going to study the psychology of what makes things fun and playful, we must study the World of Warcraft, also known as WOW. Blizzard is the company that produced WOW, and it has done something that no game company has ever done before. It has produced a game that convinced over eleven million people around the world to pay fifteen dollars a month to play the same game indefinitely. Just to put it in perspective for you, the company is rolling in 165 million dollars a month, or around 1.98 billion a year. Their success is unquestionable, and from a psychology perspective, the game is a masterpiece. The game takes place in a virtual reality where you immerse yourself as one of the fighting warriors during the time of a great war. You are a character along with everyone else in the world fighting on either side of the war. Each character plays the game by collecting different missions and quests as the game progresses. Perhaps what may surprise many people is the depth of the game and the amount of learning required to play the game well. There are many races of characters, each with its own abilities and disabilities. Invariably, the players end up learning all races, the geography of the world, the names of the capital cities, rules on auctioning, and monetary policies. Since players are put into the same world, by osmosis people learn how to trade with each other, create fraternal bonds, and appreciate the value of teamwork. Not to mention all the professions inside the world. There is alchemy, mining, fishing, cooking, engineering, tailoring, blacksmithing, and a bunch of others. All these virtual professions, although rather useless in real life, take an enormous amount of dedication and time to acquire. With this example, we notice that people are willing to go to great lengths to get what they want in the end. As for WOW, people end up learning an enormous amount of information unintentionally. Learning was never the goal, but it became a byproduct. Now, what if we can construct our entire education system the same way? Blizzard Uses Goal-Orientated Education When I was doing research on (or addicted to) WOW, all I could think about was the amount of information I learned just by the required repetitions of the game. The game was so well designed that learning was inevitable for any amount of success. But since the game was so much fun, learning became not only valuable, but enjoyable. As absurd as it might sound, players of this game can spend days of research and hard work just to get something as simple as a good sword. On the educational front, it is observable that Blizzard uses goal-orientated education to engage their users. The way users learn anything initially is by going through quests and missions that require that certain new knowledge be gained. Blizzard never sits new users down with a teacher to teach them how to use different interfaces. Blizzard simply tells the users to go accomplish something, and gives them all the resources necessary to accomplish it. Not only does Blizzard already have all the resources to help people to learn, other users just standing around also become sources to ask for help. Once the goal-orientated education system is in place, the only thing Blizzard needs to worry about is how to control the reward system so that people are always motivated to finish the next quest. It is worthwhile to examine what Blizzard uses as motivators. The first obvious reward is gold. Greed, after all, is inherent to human nature. By creating a standard economy for everybody in the game, gold becomes something extremely valuable. With gold, the user can buy the best tools, the best armor, the best horses, and fly instead of walking. The gold in this game has become so valuable that people are willing to pay real money in exchange for gold on eBay. The next reward is gear, which includes armor, swords, bags, etc. Gear is also something extremely important because this is a world of bullies where you can get pushed around. Blizzard plays this part of human nature flawlessly. Nobody likes to get pushed around, so with a Hammer of Death you are able to hit harder and take more hits. All of a sudden, bullies need to be afraid of you. This simply makes people feel good, and players are willing to work hard just to get the best gear. The third and probably most psychological motivator is respect. People are willing to go to great lengths to gain respect. Of course, respect is tied in with great gear, money, and experience. In WOW, there is definite respect from newer players for the higher-level players. Higher-level players are always sought after for their powerful abilities. Upper-level players are also more knowledgeable. To a new player, an upper-level player on horseback with shiny gear is something to be envied. As the players get to higher levels, reputation and guild duties take over. In this world, players are allowed to form guilds similar to fraternities in college. Joining fraternities and guilds is a way of satisfying people's need for a sense of belonging that may not exist in the real world. A person might be working for minimum wages and not respected in real life, but when that same person walks into this game world, he or she is the leader of an army of hundreds or even thousands. They are the generals, wise men, and revered ones. While studying the methods that Blizzard uses to engage their users, it becomes more and more obvious that there is a set way to make things more interesting. If it is done right, people are not only willing to learn everything they can on topics that interest them, they are also willing to pay money for it. And by looking at the factors that control people's motivation, it becomes even more obvious how little effort our schools put into the psychology of the students. In all cases, users in WOW can see clearly how their efforts map to a desired outcome. The act of doing becomes a means to an end. Observing our schools, however, is a different matter. It is not often made obvious how reading The Great Gatsby will benefit us, or why we must memorize trigonometric relations. Making this link more obvious, in my opinion, will yield great benefits for our education system. |
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