Educational Gaming Commons - Press Start

Brett Bixler
Manager, Educational Gaming Commons at Penn State

Introduction

For the past several months, I've been playing an online game named Kingdom of Loathing (KoL). This is a simple turn-based game, using very simple (stick-figure) graphics and text as an interface (see Figure 1). This sounds very old school, and it is. Yet there are gaming elements here that I find fascinating and motivating. I'll start by explaining the game basics, what makes something a game, then move into why I believe KoL is so great. Finally, I'll discuss the educational possibilities for a KoL-type game in higher education.

Figure 1. Kingdom of Loathing Main Screen

KoL Game Basics

When you first sign up for KoL (at http://www.kingdomofloathing.com) you must create a new character. Your character is your presence or role in KoL. You name your character, provide a password, etc., then you must choose a character class. Classes are typical in most role-playing games. Each class usually has strengths and weaknesses. In KoL, there are three main classes - Muscle, Mystic, and Moxie. Muscle = Strength, Mystic = Magic, and Moxie = Coolness, Hipness, etc. All classes receive unique bonuses and adventures.

In the Strength class, you can choose to be a Seal Clubber or Turtle Tamer. (For those of you offended by "Seal Clubber" or other things that follow, please understand I am not advocating that KoL itself be used for educational purposes. I am more interested in why this game is so engaging, and what we can learn from it for educational game design.) Both Seal Clubbers and Turtle Tamers rely on strength to get the job done.

In the Mystic class, you can choose to be a Pastamancer or Saucerer. If you adventure as one of these, you rely on your spells and mysticality to accomplish tasks.

In the Moxie class, you can become a Disco Bandit or Accordion Thief. As a bandit or thief, you rely on your coolness to get by in the world.

As you might have gathered, KoL is a bit silly. If fact, it's very silly. KoL if full of veiled references to pop culture, adding a bit of silly fun to each encounter.

Ok - so you've chosen your class - now what? Well, you log into the game and visit the Toot Oriole (Figure 2). The Oriole gives you some basic tasks to perform, to acclimate you to the game mechanics and interface.

Figure 2. The Toot Oriole - All Beginner Tasks Completed

You are allotted 40 adventures each day you play KoL. Each turn uses one adventure, so the average game play per day is less than one hour. By eating and drinking, you can gain extra adventures, but the amount you can eat or drink on a particular day is limited. I've managed to snag an extra 40 adventures on a given day, and it's possible to acquire more. Once your adventures for the day are used up, you have to wait 24 hours until you can play again. You can also rest to recover lost MP - Muscle Points, Mana Points, or Moxie Points, depending on your class - at your campground or clan you join - at the cost of one adventure per rest period.

The coin of the realm is meat (I did mention that KoL is silly!). You acquire meat by fighting monsters and via other, non-violent encounters. When you fight monsters stronger than you, you lose MP. You need meat to buy items that allow you to complete quests, to improve your armor, for potions that enhance your health, and so on.

You can acquire a variety of familiars, or creatures that work for you and assist you in your quests. Some familiars are easy to acquire; others are nearly impossible to obtain. For some adventures, having the right familiar is critical.

You communicate with other players via KoL Chat, a text chat tool, to arrange trades, get help on some hard quest, or just hang out. KoL mail is also available for asynchronous conversations. You can battle other players one-on-one in your campground if you choose to do so.

You can also join a clan (Figure 3). Joining a clan has many benefits. You have an alternative place to rest and recover MP. You can acquire free meat on a daily basis. You can contribute unneeded items you acquire to the clan stash, build up stash credit, and then take items you need from the stash. Recently, a new clan adventure was added to KoL, where you can adventure with other clan members, sychronously, using KoL chat to communicate.

Figure 3. A Typical Clan Area

Once you finish the Toot Oriole's tasks, you are free to wander about the Kingdom, acquiring quests from a variety of places and persons, building your strengths, and eventually facing the main boss of the game - The Naughty Sorceress.

Once you defeat The Naughty Sorceress, you are free to hang out, gather meat and items, and prepare for ascension. If you choose to ascend, you are basically starting the game all over again. You get to choose another class, and you do get to keep your items, meat, and familiars. Your familiars also start from scratch in terms of power. Your items and meat are held in storage for 1000 adventures, but you can withdraw a small amount from storage each day. Once the 1000-day limit passes, you have full access to all your belongings.

You may also choose different ascension paths. For example, you may choose to ascend as an Oxygenarian, meaning you cannot eat or drink after you ascend. This limits you by cutting down on the number of bonus adventures you can acquire each day by eating and drinking, but you do acquire special rewards upon your next ascension.

So the essence of KoL is to adventure and quest, building skills and acquiring items to defeat monsters and complete quests, defeating the big boss, and then ascending so you can start the entire process all over. Of course, there is much more happening than that on the affective level! Summarizing KoL in this way is like saying that all of Bach's music can be summarized by the typical I - V - I chord progression. So what is it about KoL that reaches players affectively? To answer that, I first need to describe the basic elements included in nearly all games.

What Makes a Game a Game?

The list below is a synthesis of essential game elements developed from a variety of related research. You can read more about this in the "What is a Game?" article on the Educational Gaming Commons Community Site. It is listed here because KoL embodies all these elements.

• Voluntary Participation

• Rules
  • Verify appropriateness of strategies
• Goals
  • Challenging
  • Limit usable strategies
  • Have defined outcome(s)
• Feedback
  • Used to measure progress against goal(s)
• Interactions
  • Conflict (overt or covert)
  • Competition (with the game, others, or self)
  • Opposition (with the game, others, or self)
• Representation
  • The game mechanics, graphics, etc. all blend together to define what the game is all about
  • An abstracted story of reality
• Separation from Reality
  • A safe environment – consequences are not externalized
  • May contain fantasy or "impossible" elements

KoL is, of course, voluntary. It contains many rules and limits that lead to carefully-crafted strategies that are shared in various web sites. The goals are simple - advance in power until you can defeat the Naughty Sorceress. Along the way you face many challenges and sub-quests where some strategies for success are far better than others. Outcomes are clear - you win the battle, acquire the needed item, etc. Feedback is very clear inthe form of status bars that indicate your current level, your hit points, and so on. You can't take on the Naughty Sorceress until you are level 13, for example. Interactions are quick and often, in the form of battles, Player vs. Player battle (if you opt to do so), and other encounters.

The game flows - it is fast paced and due to the use of text and simple graphics works well even on slow internet connections. The interface is "settled" in that it's gone through many revisions and is dead simple to use. The creators do try new things from time to time on a trial basis, implementing them if user feedback is good, making some improvements optional, and killing others as need be. After you play for some time, the game does begin to feel real in a way. The game story has a history, and you can even travel back in time to experience earlier aspects of the kingdom. It's definitely fantasy and also safe. You can't die, but mistakes might cost you time and meat.

Why is KoL a Great Game?

So, KoL passes this game litmus test. Yet many games also pass this test, but to many gamers are merely OK, not great. Why is KoL a great game? To answer this question, I'll turn to a seminal article by Richard Bartle. Richard was the co-author of the first multi-user dungeon (MUD), has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence, and has pondered deeply the psychology of games in an article titled Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDS. He identifies four player types - Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers.

Achievers play the game to build skills and achieve high levels. Explorers just love to poke around, figure out all the tricks of the game and how it works. Socializers want to talk to others about the game, their personal life, and so on. Killers are in the game to impose their will upon and destroy other players.

Figure 4 below illustrates how these different player types want to interact with the game. Killers and Socializers are more interested in people; whereas Achievers and Explorers are more interested in the game and environment.

Figure 4. Bartle's Player Types Interests

This is only a brief synopsis of Bartle's excellent article. It is a good lens to view KoL through, as it provides a robust explanation of why KoL is a good game.

Achievers in KoL have plenty of opportunity to act on the world. Through the numerous quests and ability to ascend multiple times, achievers will find happiness. In KoL you can collect trophies for your accomplishments and proudly display them for all other players to see. You can collect items and become a top collector. You can collect tattoos and display them. You can sell items you find or win to other players. The built-in mechanics of KoL make it easy for an Achiever to show the world exactly what s/he has achieved.

One of the bragging rights (important to Achievers) you can obtain in KoL is the ability to ascend as rapidly as possible. This is deemed by the playing community to be a status symbol. Some players claim to be capable of ascending in a single playing session. It takes me over a month to do so!

Explorers in KoL have no end of interesting places to explore. The world is fairly big, but not overwhelming. Add to this special adventures you can find by using a certain item or by belonging to a certain class, and the exploration space of the game becomes even larger. The fact that you are limited to a certain amount of turns each day stretches explorations out, adding a dimension of time to game play that makes the world seem larger.

A personal observation that Bartle doesn't touch on, perhaps because his 1997 article was written before Web 2 tools existed, is the ability of Explorers to easily share their hard-earned arcane knowledge with others. It's possible that Explorers have a need to not just find out how the world works, but to share it with others. KoL has a very well-developed wiki site players often turn to when attempting to figure out how things work - and it's been fleshed out by Explorers that came before them and have shared their knowledge. Message boards and personal walkthroughs also exist in abundance. Explorers can also use KoL Chat to share their expertise, giving them a synchronous method to share knowledge.

Socializers have several opportunities to use KoL as a backdrop to engage in discussions. KoL Chat is one. Message boards are another. Clans exist with their own message spaces, and recently the creators of KoL added a synchronous quest where you can chat with other clan members as you take on the challenges of the quest. The quest is built in such a way that it's far better to go in as a team. In fact, some clans insist you join the chat if you want to participate in the quest.

Killers have perhaps the least opportunity to experience what they like to do. In KoL you have a campground area, your personal resting space. By default, this is a safe area - no one else can intrude upon you. However, you can voluntarily choose to forego this safety and battle other players. Thus, Killers do have an outlet; albeit only with other Killer-like players.

KoL does support all four player types, and it seems to do so in balance. Bartle stresses the importance of balance - if too many game elements support one player type over another, your game will not be as effective. For example, if your game has a great deal of socialization built in to the exclusion of being able act on the world, you'll lose your Achievers. No Achievers, and the Killers may be able to take over, as Achievers usually can successfully battle and thus balance out the Killers. It is this element of balance between player types in KoL that makes it a great game.

By addressing all four player types, KoL achieves what in education is seen by many as a desired but difficult state - customization to the individual's needs. Educators using technology continue to strive for products and situations where the technology adapts to the user's needs at that moment, delivering just the right information in just the right way. KoL achives this perhaps not on the cognitive level, but definitely does so on the affective level.

Having written that bold statement, you may play KoL and find it boring, silly, or both. There are many elements that must come together to make a game great for an individual. Bartle's player types are only part of the answer.

The Educational Possibilities for a KoL-type Game in Higher Education

KoL is fast-paced, pokes fun at the status quo, and allows only a few minutes of play a day. It reaches a breadth of player types. In other words, it's perfect for the traditional-aged college student! You don't have to read much about the Net Generation to pick up on their acclimation to short bursts of intense concentration. The pacing of KoL is a perfect match for them. The interface is simple enough that a few minutes of play is all it takes to get into the game. So, what would a KoL-type game for higher education look like?

Well, what about a game that introduced a prospective student or freshman to "The Unversity?" Imagine a virtual landscape you could travel about in, picking up relevant points of information on this college here, that social opportunity there, and so on. By tying achievement to possible real physical rewards (T-shirts, discount cards, etc.) you provide external motivation to players, complimenting the intrinsic motivation the game generates. You could choose a college in place of a player type, learn all about that college and possible careers, ascend, and then try another college out. Adventures could be tied to real-life support services for students, so they could learn all about them in a fun way. As real-life opportunities appear (concerts, guest speakers, etc.) these could be woven into the game as special events - play them and learn about current activities you might want to go to. Maybe you could even earn a free pass to these events. At a more micro level, this type of game would be great at reinforcing basic facts and concepts.

KoL reaches players at the affective level. Between the psychomotor, cognitive, and affective domains, the most difficult domain in which for instruction to evoke desired individual change is the affective domain. Yet I'm not sure KoL does actually change affect; rather, it is a gateway to facilitating cognitive changes (learning). If so, consider what KoL or any good game can accomplish. By reaching a player affectively, motivation, attention, and desire to accomplish goals all rise. A raise in affect is a good indication that the desired cognitive changes have a better chance of happening. Perhaps all good games accomplish this?

Conclusion

KoL is an excellent template for educational game design. The pacing, mechanics, and interface all speak to the traditional-aged college student. It contains al the essential game elements. It encompasses a breadth of player types, thus adapting to playing style preferences. Finally, it reachs players on the affective level, lowering the barrier for acquiring cognitive skills. A KoL-type game for education could take many forms, making it somewhat content independent. In the near future I'd like to see a development kit that encompasses both the hardware needed to run such a system, plus the tools to easily drop in curriculum and establish learning communities that support it.