Abstract #1: “All I know I learnt from Zelda” - immersive worlds, immersing minds?

In Role Playing Games (RPGs), players enter and explore fantasy based virtual worlds, taking the role of protagonist on a quest, facing challenges and battles, interacting with mythological inhabitants as part of often complex back stories and gaining an understanding and application of the virtual world rules in order to progress. RPG virtual worlds and their gameplay components create a so-called ‘immersive’ gaming experience, with gamers engaged over extended gaming sessions, for sustained periods of time.

Achieving an immersive experience or ‘flow’ is a desired outcome for digital game designers and given that there is now an appreciation that learning occurs within ‘good’ digital games (Gee, 2003/2006, Shaffer 2005) educationalists are seeking answers to unlock the Pandora’s Box of digital gaming techniques and of games culture in an attempt to apply them to education and training.

This paper explores the gameplay beneath the surface of RPGs virtual worlds, using the RPG genre defining series The Legend of Zelda gameplay mechanisms to unpack some emerging digital games and game-based learning theories. It reflects on the nature of immersion and flow that can be achieved in good games and the issues surrounding the potential application of such experiences for learning, the transference of virtual to reality and player engagement, set against a backdrop of UK education and the interests, needs and motivations of learners in a knowledge-based 21st Century.

Labels: agency, flow, immersion, puzzling, RPG, Zelda

posted by DS at Tuesday, March 10, 2009