Video Games and Problem-Solving

Video games were a big part of my childhood. I played games like Sonic the Hedgehog and X-Men for SEGA, Super Mario World and Jurassic Park for Super Nintendo, Legend of Zelda, Tetris, and Pokemon on the Gameboy and Gameboy color, Diddy Kong Racing, F-Zero X racing, Star Wars pod racing, and Super Smash Brothers for Nintendo 64, and various games for Sony Playstation 2. 

Today I still own some of those games, though I do not play them anymore. I am more likely to play Angry Birds Star Wars or another mobile game application on my iPhone. I may even head over to the PacMan Arcade machine while at a restaurant, bowling alley or movie theatre. Occasionally I still play Gran Turismo or Need for Speed Underground (NFSU) racing games for my Playstation 2 (it still works!) because I like car racing, especially formula 1 race cars. Before today, I hadn't played NFSU2 in months, but the video footage below suggests I can still push buttons to work my car quickly around the tracks.

NFSU2 and other car racing games can be challenging for those who do not recognize how the increase in the difficulty of the game hinges on the player's ability to not simply push the button that controls the virtual car's gas pedal and throttle. To get his or her car to drive fast times, the player must recognize and fix the problems associated with traveling along pathways that are not the shortest distance "travel-able," accelerating while turning, entrance into and exits out of turns, and when to let off the gas, brake, use the emergency brake, or use a combination of these options. One must identify and solve these problems for each track or turn and account for and respond to competitive drivers' behaviors to master the more difficult levels of gameplay in car racing games. I like to think that playing so many racing games growing up has been good for my real-world driving skills; my problem-solving in the game seems to have spilled over into real life (e.g. I quickly brake and turn to dodge a bad driver who was about to crash into me). [Disclaimer: I don't do things in a car that I would in a virtual in-game car like drifting or driving at high speeds, nor do I recommend it. Take that interest to a game console or racetrack, not the streets].

Reflecting back on all of my gameplay as a child and as an adult, I cannot help but wonder if playing the games I played helped me develop problem-solving skills that I transferred to other experiences. Even in my youth I occasionally felt like I experienced gains in my problem-solving skills from my gameplay. If so, then it was certainly a fun way to not only exercise my skills, but also develop my abilities to transfer my skills elsewhere. From an "instructional design" or "learning sciences" point of view, I can understand how playing a car racing game could help develop important driving skills and how using different sets of controllers that progressively get more like the tools we use in real-world driving scenarios (a steering wheel) could facilitate transfer of those important driving skills to real-world driving. However, from the same point of view I struggle to see how playing a car racing game can develop and facilitate transfer of general problem-solving skills in ways that sufficiently help people be more prepared to solve any problem they encounter. I am not sure that any game could do this.

Can we design game or simulation experiences that can develop and facilitate transfer of general problem-solving skills in ways that sufficiently help people be more prepared to solve any problem they encounter? If not, why not? What is the best that we can do to get as near as possible to it? 

This fall I will be blogging about the relationship between games, learning, and problem-solving experiences. I hope to explore others' answers to the questions posed above and their analyses of the problems these questions represent. I will attempt to work out my own answers along the way.

In my next post, I'll take a close look at James Paul Gee's thoughts on the importance of both learning and problem-solving to the enjoyability and effectiveness of games. For now, I will leave you with a glimpse at Gee's thoughts in the video below.

James Paul Gee from New Learning Institute on Vimeo.