Creating History Gameplay with Twine: An Iterative Approach
Learning through play is powerful. If our task is to move history and social science out of the “boring” category, designing and creating meaningful and fun games is paramount. A week ago I set out to start designing my first digital game using Twine and exploring the Black Death in European History.
While I wrote my plans in detail, I am going to recap a few highlights from that post:
To evaluate and design an effective Game-based learning experience and assessment, educators ought to consider the following key concepts that we will define and explore below: semiotic domains, internal grammar, and external grammar.
A semiotic domain refers to the literacies of any given environment, in this case, the literacies within history. This discipline, like all other environments, has its content properties and symbols. Historians see patterns of cause and effect, continuity and change, and cross-temporal and cultural contextualizations in all human actions and events. “Reading” these patterns is vital to the discipline.
To “read” History, its disciples practice a particular sort of internal grammar through which the discipline functions. Historians reading primary sources, in the original language if possible, and read secondary sources through which historiographies are created to situate our understanding of the topic. This practice is foundational, but historians also study patterns of cause and effect, continuity and change, and comparisons between cultures such that the present can be better understood, and predictions might be made.
But these practices are not done in isolation to run the danger of anchoring our conclusions to misconceptions and unseen bias. Historians and Social Scientists practice a sort of external grammar through which these pitfalls are minimized. Reading, discussing, and debating are the norms within these communities. These collaborations occur through professional presentations and research.
There is a type of procedural rhetoric in any task undertaken that through its use, one may practice and process the requisite skills conducted by a historian. This procedure is valid in traditional approaches to instruction, like reading primary sources, synthesizing that evidence, and writing conclusions and predictions. If this same domain is gamified, alignment needs to be made between the internal and external grammar as well as the tasks are undertaken and skills practiced in the designed game. In truth, this is more difficult than the typical “wow, this video game is about assassins in a Medieval town. Kids would love this, and we’ll learn history!” Assassin’s Creed is tempting. And while it certainly is in the domain, assassinating undesirables while leaping from building to building in an epic session of parkour is not part of the internal or external grammar—though seeing a bunch of historians trying would likely look like this classic scene from the Office.
While less flashy, designing a gamed-based assessment through a tool like Twine will likely serve students. Twine is a non-linear story-telling tool inspired by the classic “choose your own adventure” book series. The software allows a designer to create choice-based events through which a web of events might result in leading to different outcomes. This tool might be leveraged to help students both create and engage in various historical problems. For example, historical actors were forced to make hard choices based on limited information. These choices led to real-life consequences not only for themselves but for their communities and civilizations. Twine certainly could be leveraged to help simulate these sort of choices based on information they know and new information that they would need to interpret.
An exciting and fun assessment in this vein would be a simulation of a rural village in the mid-14th century just as the “Black Death” began to sweep through Europe. In this game, students would take on the role of a village elder in charge of protecting the community. Students would be presented with a series of choices, scenarios, artifacts, and events from which they would need to make choices to ensure the survival of the community. The power of this specific game is that these choices were made by real people in the past and will test their decision making based on evidence, their ability to identify patterns, synthesize information, and make informed predictions about how specific actions might lead to various consequences. These choices reinforce aspects of the internal grammar of Historians. If students make these choices in groups or defend their choices against others at the end of the assessment, aspects of the external grammar are reinforced.
Now having created the first iteration of this game, I see some great potentials and a few pitfalls. But before I give a reflection, please check out the version of this game that I’ve created.
http://philome.la/Jonathandkeck/jonathan-daniel-keck/play
Twine is easy to use and a compelling medium through which to create. It’s free and easy, yes, but to spice it up requires knowing some HTML. And to be honest, that is where I struggled the most. The internet is full of helpful voices and I eventually got things to work somewhat in the way I imagined, but having a little more experience with the tools would be extremely helpful.
I also found it rather easy—too easy—to get swept up in the narrative of the story. Students certainly will find some “Oregon Trail vibes” in this game as a colleague told me. He had fun, so that is a win. He also wanted to know how to survive, because apparently he didn’t through several attempts. It is easy to focus on the “game” and forget the “assessment.” Indeed, I found myself falling into the same trap that I criticized Assassin’s Creed over. Just by experiencing or encountering a historical period and some of its information does not warrant it as a learning medium.
In reflection, the students will experience elements of the internal grammar of the history discipline by reading through scenarios of events and making conclusions based on what they know. However, there is little provided in the external grammar in this current iteration of the game. Ideally, students would have to read primary sources and draw conclusion from the texts, applied to new scenarios. Perhaps adding first-person puzzles using source material might elevate the next iteration of the game.
As I said in my last post on this game as an assessment:
Reflecting on the assessment in its current form, the game falls short in a few key areas according to my Assessment Checklist. The things that I articulated as critical values are the following: (1) critical thinking, (2) creativity, (3) feedback on task and process, (4) opportunities for self-regulated learning, and (5) facilitate multiple means of action and expression. Since this activity is already created for them, creativity will not play a significant role in this assessment. There will also be minimal opportunity for self-regulation (4) and choice in action and expression (5). This assessment certainly does provide an opportunity for some critical thinking (1) and an opportunity for feedback on task and process (3). To some extent, the act of making choices in a digital “chose your own adventure” style game will feel creative since students will get to chose their own story.
Creating a game that fulfills these demands will be tricky and some core elements will need to be revised and revised.
However, making history alive with creativity and fun is critical to the future of the discipline. I will not sacrifice meaningfulness for this fun, but I am convinced that both can exist together in the same assessment. While designing meaningful and fun games is complicated, its value to the students learning is tremendous.
