Be proactive: This is the habit of doing, rather than waiting. Any game player soon learns how important this is – you don’t beat a game by waiting around for things to happen to you. You have to be there making decisions, testing strategies, defending, attacking and pulling information from the players and characters you meet.
Begin with the end in mind: This is the habit of having a clear goal from the start. This habit gets quickly absorbed by game players, since it’s pretty much impossible to succeed at any game without it. In fact, the essence of game playing is creating strategies to reach goals, and then executing them successfully.
Put first things first. This is the habit of not neglecting the “important” for the “urgent.” All game players quickly learn that while you are doing the immediate tasks such as arranging pieces, fighting and building, it is always necessary to be thinking about and doing tasks that support longer-term objectives.
Think Win-Win: Although the popular press often stereotypes game players as “solo killers out only for themselves,” the reality of today‘s multiplayer gamers is quite the opposite. You can’t complete a mission in Battlefield Vietnam without a group of others whose complementary skills support the team. These teams require and foster mutual support among players.
Seek First to Understand, Then To Be Understood: Communication between players is at the heart of today’s game playing, whether through chat or voice. Successful players make sure to understand the needs and motivations of their fellow players (as well as those of potential opponents) before committing themselves to any particular team or course of action. Players who don’t listen first and do only what they want are highly unsuccessful at multiplayer games (and, of course, at life).
Synergize: To synergize is to find new combinations or strategies that make the union stronger than the sum of its parts. Game players continually experiment, create and come together in ways that the game designers did not anticipate.
There are lots of different kinds of games that can be used with different purposes. You can learn more about language learners and video games by watching this presentation by Graham Stanley and Kyle Mawer, or by visiting their blog Digital Play.
The game I decided to try is called Dark Visions. The players must solve the mystery of a murder in a mansion. It's super engaging because there is not one only way to solve it, you can freely move around the mansion searching for clues. In class you can pause the game while playing, you can have students tell what they are doing, describe the different scenes, work with unknown vocabulary (there are lots), work with the game's walkthrough, etc: the possibilities are endless!
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