One Reason Video Games Work: Clear Goals

To many, the difference between a game and play is the introduction of a goal. Sure, you and your friends can casually splash around the pool and swim a few laps but when someone says “I bet I can beat you to the other end of the pool” suddenly play time is over and a game has been formed.

Image from Dragons Lair laserdisc video game published by Cinematronics in 1983

The simple introduction of a goal adds purpose, focus and measurable outcomes. You now have a method to measure the quality of play or, at least, certain aspects of the play. Exploration of the pool and the surroundings are over and a focus on a specific outcome now becomes the main activity. Introducing a goal or a series of goals to a casual play situation usually creates a game.

As stated in Salen and Zimmerman/s work Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals
“Goals are fundamental to games…at the outcome of a game, the goals are either reached or not reached and this quantifiable outcome is part of our definition of games.”

Game goals, unlike instructional goals which are often broad sweeping statements, are specific and unambiguous. Typically, there is no doubt whether or not a game goal was achieved…either you rescue the princess or you die trying, you solve the puzzle or you can’t figure it out, you take over territory or you forfeit ground.

In many games, goals are clear and visible both figuratively and literary. In the causal game of Tetris, the goal is to prevent the blocks from reaching the top of the screen. As you are playing the game you see your progress on the screen by observing how far away the blocks are from the top of the screen. You see, at every point in the game, exactly how you are doing.

Even a simple game like Tic-Tac-Toe provides visual cues as to how each player is performing. You can see where your opponent placed the X’s and the open spots left for your O’s. The swimming race described before provides visual cues as to progress. You can see who finishes first. In fact, that visual cue determines who wins.

Visually understanding how far you are from a goal provides incentive, feedback and an indication of progress as well as a measurement against others. “Hey, I scored 21,001 in that game, that’s one better than you.” The goal of the game is the primary device for determining level of effort at a certain point in the game, strategies, moves and ultimately who wins. The goal sustains the game and keeps players moving forward.

But goals have to be well structured and sequence to have sustained meaning and to motivate players to achieve those goals. In instructional terms, you have to create a terminal goal and support that goal with a series of enabling objectives. Small incremental steps that allow the player to move from one accomplishment to the next.

The reason for this is twofold. First once a player accomplishes the goal of the game, the game is over. Achieving the goal of the game means the game is over. Once you’ve solved the puzzle, rescued the princess or taken over all the territory you are done. “In this sense, a game’s goal is the death of play.” (Page 259, Rules of Play).

The second is that a goal can be difficult to achieve without building skills necessary to achieve the goal. For example, one cannot rescue the princess unless they first learn to slay dragons. In games, defeating the final villain or enemy often requires learning a combination of skills, often at different levels in the game, and then using that combination of skills to defeat the game or, in other words, to achieve the ultimate goal.

So when you are thinking about creating an instructional game, keep in mind the importance of goals, the use of sub-goals to support the accomplishment of the goal and in making the progress toward the goal as visible as possible. Think of how to craft instruction to mirror how goals are in a game. Often in an instructional situation, the learner has no way of knowing how close or far they are from accomplishing the learning objective because we wait until the end and measure in an all or nothing assessment (usually multiple choice) and that is not engaging, motivating or even close to how they will use that knowledge to accomplish on-the-job tasks.

Let’s grab a lesson from the game designers as we help learners achieve learning goals.