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 Budapest, November 2005 – Pal Honti is CEO of mimosa Ltd, which is a Hungarian company specialized in infotainment development. One of their productions received the Technical Merit Award at the Flashforward Festival 2003 in New York. At ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN he will elucidate his experience in online community building and gaming.
In the following interview, Mr. Honti talks about his session and his work.
You are head of the section "Games and Gaming Strategies in eLearning”. Please summarize what the lectures are about: Which strategies and games will be presented? Who should attend?
Pal Honti: We will focus on the practical side of how to use gaming in education. There will be presentations about ongoing programs for different target groups and disciplines. We are going to show good examples for high school, Master’s degrees and enterprises as well.
Who should attend? If you have thought about using a game for educational purposes lately, or if you have been told not to use them, or if you are just a gamer, you should certainly come.
Edutainment that works - What are key characteristics of a good training game?
Pal Honti: In these games teachers sometimes become students. Everybody can gain some new knowledge and skills during a game. Therefore use peering as much as possible since it is one of the best ways to circulate knowledge quickly and efficiently. Learning by doing with the help of a friend holds the key!
As a tutor or teacher, do not try to lead them through a game but participate in it, become a real partner – or behave as a mentor rather than an instructor. Instructional design is also an important part of designing a good game. The user interface of a training game should be a “full” one: beautiful to watch, but useful to navigate and to understand!
Games are fun, but are they sustainable, too? Production is expensive and the image is still not the best.
Pal Honti: Image - Think about the fifties when parents were afraid of rock music, while youngsters fell for it pretty much. It is the same game with games. Ten years ago gaming was a waste of time for teenagers; now we have adults (with kids) who played games during their childhood and keep on playing them (once you’ve played you will play) -- the average gamer is 29 years old now. As time passes, more and more people are going to accept games in everyday life and the image will change.
Production - I’ve seen very bad games that cost a fortune and have played for hours with a simple one. Sometimes producers got their game concept after visiting a big shopping mall. In these malls you can find everything well explained and “ready to…”. You do not need your imagination to consume, but imagination is one thing you can and should lean on during gaming. Therefore stick with the story, the interface, and the language you are planning to use and finish it with the expensive and time-consuming 3D graphics and rendering. To build a simulacrum that resembles reality costs a fortune. Why shouldn’t the players build by themselves and we just give them the tools? It costs almost nothing; let’s let immersion and creativity take place. You have to make the story and the rules very nice.
Train the Playstation generation - do managers have to rethink? Will we see more and more games because for the young generation competition and winning are everything?
Pal Honti: Yes, we will see more and more games because games and education have a lot in common. Take storytelling, which is one of the oldest of the knowledge transfer methods; good storytelling is also crucial for games.
We need our memory more and more; therefore systems like the Loci method are becoming widely known and practiced daily. To fulfill a game, a player must venture through a certain path. These virtual paths are not so different from those we navigate in our real world. While gaming, we are constantly training our mind without even acknowledging it.
Some educational experts are saying that in a few years, a good portion of e- Learning materials will be simulations. I like this idea since simulation is one subset of games. Games are closed systems where we (subjectively) represent a part of the real world, while in simulations we (objectively) represent a part of the real world either in a physical or a symbolic system.
What is your favourite training game?
Pal Honti: Luiz the Filmez, which we produced, but I also admire the works of NESTA futurelab a lot.
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