Stories and Games at Christmas
People learn more when they play.
They remember more when they do.
They engage more when they share.
So why is most learning so ineffective and boring?
Christmas is a time when our lives are filled with ‘Games’ and ‘Stories’. Our TV’s are packed with stories, both old and new. We gather together with our families and play games, like Charades. Asking such questions like is it a Book, Movie or TV program. Our DVD’s come now with software that un-package the movie so that is can be played on multiple devices such as iPad’s, iTouches, iPhones, or even on your Laptop. Books can be played on Kindles, iPad’s, and read the old fashioned way on stuff we call ‘paper’.
Whichever medium we experience these Stories there are ‘Seven Basic Plots’;
• Overcoming the Monster
• Rags to Riches
• The Quest
• Voyage and Return
• Comedy
• Tragedy
• Rebirth
One theme that resonated this Christmas was the Hero’s Quest or Hero’s Journey. A hero is faced with a challenge and has to overcome various obstacles to achieve some goal. The focus is the achievement of the goal or objective and this can be in this world or another.
Joseph Campbell’s used the term monomyth, when referring to the hero’s journey and this was described by Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).
Campbell held that numerous myths from disparate times and regions share fundamental structures and stages, which he summarized in The Hero with a Thousand Faces:
‘A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.’
This can be broken down into various Acts and Stages as shown by the following diagram:
What was also evident this Christmas was the Quest theme was being used not only in movies, but also in games, as we see below:
Questing in Role-Playing Games: the basic PLOT……
The quest in a role-playing game may begin with setting the objective of finding a lost artefact, or treasure, or some form of knowledge. This artifact might be in several pieces, and to collect the various components results in overcoming one or more challenges by the hero.
By designing the quest around specific challenges, various skills may be taught, improved, honed to excellence etc. thus a carefully designed quest may allow the heroes to shine and show the qualities that make them heroic or just improve them. Basically certain traits can be built into the game structure so that the architect of the game can teach the player or hero to learn through participating in the role-play and thus attain certain skills or improve those skills.
A Few Examples:
The Hobbit, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Indiana Jones series, etc.
The basic quest story can be broken down into a series of stages:
1. The Call – the hero has a calling from someone or due to an event that must result in a long difficult journey to achieve some sort of goal or objective.
2. The Journey – the hero sets off (with or without companions) on a long tortuous journey encountering a series of trials, challenges, or ordeals. For example, battling monsters, dealing with temptations, travelling between two different kinds of opposites or worlds.
As part of the journey there must be capture or daring escape’s, hospitality or life threatening ordeals, helpful advice or cunning trickery, wisdom or guidance and other themes can be built into the storyline to enhance the skills that want to be transferred to the hero.
3. Arrival and Frustration – the hero sees the goal, can almost get there but then new barriers, or obstacles or challenges arise that block him or her from the goal. At this point the hero is often at a low ebb and must dig deep to summon the strength to overcome these last challenges to reach the goal.
4. The Final Ordeals – here the hero has to undergo a series of final tests or challenges, or tasks to prove that they are worthy of the prize, be that an artefact, treasure or knowledge. There may be a guard or monster to the artefact which requires a battle to overcome them to release the prize.
5. The Goal – the hero finally overcomes the last obstacle in a death defying feat and wins the prize, or secures the knowledge, and lives happily ever after…..
So this structure within the role playing game has the capability to be designed in a way to teach certain skills or hone certain characteristics and in a highly effective way:
Which is why we are leading with the following messaging in 2012:
Learning via games:
Engages our curiosity
Encourages active decision making
Taps into deep human needs for challenge and mastery
Connects human desire for novelty and reward
Breaks learning up in to bite sized chunks
Activates more of our brain than traditional learning methods.
This ‘youtube’ video gives a very pictorial representation of the Hero’s Journey from a Joseph Campbell (sort of) perspective using Star Wars, Harry Potter and clips from the Wizard of Oz to highlight key points – the author of this video accentuates 5 key themes:
