Jonathan Blow: “Video Games and the Future of Education” | Hacker News Reader

Jonathan Blow: “Video Games and the Future of Education”

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Perhaps of interest: the dragon speech, delivered by chris crawford at the first video game developers conference in 1992 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBrj4S24074

It was not the first GDC (CGDC at the time), that was in 1988 (and founded by the same Chris Crawford!)

The greatest video Jonathan Blow has ever done on Video Games and the Future of education is 0:10:36 long and is just him going over the first part of his video game "The Witness".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDSrYiheVow

We have him demonstrating:

* Starting off any new concept with trivial examples that nonetheless convey important information about the problem space and how to interact with it.

* Making the progression to the next problem or related problems obvious and intuitive.

* Adding in 'curve balls' that help to jog the player into thinking critically.

* Whilst showing clear progression to alternative ideas, also allowing freedom to approach different problems

* Showing how video games can give immediate feedback to 'show not tell' nuanced ideas

* Showing how understanding of concepts grows over time

* Showing how decomposition of ideas can make them easy to understand individually and then composition of them is intuitive and immediate

The Witness is a thesis on learning/pedagogy, motivation/reward, truth seeking and self fulfilment. To that end, I would recommend playing it to anyone who has an interest in video games and how they relate to the future of education.

An interesting addendum to this is this piece by Zach Gage (another indie game developer: Spell Tower, Really Bad Chess, Card of Darkness). http://stfj.net/DesigningForProblem-Solvers/

TL;dr Gage believes constructivist learning can be good in real life because you can have a teacher to tailor and guide the learning, but is not so good for video games (especially for tutorials) because you don’t have that.

Interesting article! Thanks for sharing.

I'd have loved to have been able to read his mother's paper. It sounds very interesting.

Jonathan Blow has been a huge influence on (independent) game developers. However, The Witness contains puzzles that are impossible for colorblind and hearing impaired people. I'm not sure I can classify this as "a thesis on learning/pedagogy, motivation/reward, truth seeking and self fulfilment."

I don't understand what you mean. There are two sets of puzzles that are inaccessible so that means that all of it is invalid?

Also, are you confusing "thesis" with "masterclass"? I'm not saying that The Witness is the best at anything it does by any measure - I'm just saying that it's an examination of those themes in a way that most puzzle games aren't.

I'm colorblind. Which means my defects in color vision are a thing I deal with regularly. I'm entirely uninterested in the idea lack of colorblind accessibility could torpedo the themes of the game.

In this game - much like in life - a section was inaccessible to me but was not blocking overall progress. I still got to experience the whole.

FWIW: I went to that section of the game, figured out the gimmick, bailed, and was still excited to go play all the other sections. Figured I'd watch the spoilers on youtube if I cared.

Jon has talked about that, and IIRC his assessment is that any accessibility measure applied to those puzzles would trivialize them and make them meaningless, and if you're going to do that then you may as well just look up a walkthrough to bypass them. Which is what he recommends anyone in that situation do if they really want 100% completion.

Watched the whole talk and find Jonathan's insights very good.

But he kinda "lost" me at 02:09:40 https://youtu.be/qWFScmtiC44?t=7780 when he says:

"I'm not sure to what extent destructive game addiction is a thing" ...

Video Game Addiction very much a thing. And someone in the Video Game Industry is turning a blind eye to it. We have a 24 year old cousin in our family who is so hooked on video games he cannot function as an adult. Lives at home with retired parents. Never leaves his room. Plays games obsessively. No (IRL) friends. "gaming disorder" is recognised by the World Health Organisation: https://www.who.int/standards/classifications/frequently-ask... and _many_ people suffer from it. =(

This is a classic case of:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ~ Upton Sinclair

Otherwise good insights.

Very insightful talk. I went in thinking I'd more or less not get anything new, but I found myself saying "Huh, he's right" and nodding along and piecing together novel ways to think about the topic most of the way.

[2020]

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