It was brought home to me – fairly forcibly – a couple of weeks ago that the best way for people to learn how to play a game is through actually playing the game itself.
This sounds achingly, embarrassingly obvious, but oddly, this was nothing whatsoever to do with video games.
I help coach my local under-16 rugby team and the Scottish Rugby Union require coaches, referees and anyone else likely to be on the pitch to have attended basic training courses. Very forward-looking and responsible (and another reason rugby beats the hell out of football IMHO…)
Ahem, anyway, old school coaching is drilling, basic skills and standing at the side shouting things like “Don’t drop the $*£!?@ ball!” at players.
The players only get to try the skill you’re currently showing them and they have to queue-up and wait their turn to try it. For a kid’s team, this is boredom and torture combined.
Thankfully, coaching has moved on slightly and the new approach was one I found far more exciting and inspiring than I suspected.
It’s based on learning through playing. You get the kids actually playing the game but change the rules to help teach them specific skills. Again, this seems obvious, but it means that the whole approach to teaching and training is different and is based around the game – which is what they all came along for in the first place.
Over the course of two evenings, I started to look at rugby in a whole new way and the way I think about teaching players has changed entirely. The basic drills and repetition approach – hand holding, lecturing and not letting players try more than one thing at a time now seems so old-fashioned that I can’t believe I used to use it.
Of course, as soon as I started picking up some new video games (naming no names here) and going through various tutorials or early levels, it struck me just how many games are still stuck in the past. You don’t get to actually play the game, or try all the cool new skills. You’re led by the hand and shown one drill after another, forced to try them again and again before you’re allowed anywhere near the actual game.
Why not let the player try things? Encourage them to actually try new things. Reward them if they succeed, don’t punish them (or shout swear words at them) if they fail; but please, oh please just let them play the game.
After all, it’s what they came for in the first place…
-Brian (@flackboy)
Nice post, Brian. You’ve twisted something in my understanding of the teaching through play idea, which is the, “[play] the game but change the rules to help teach them specific skills.”, bit. I am recognizing a ‘one method to rule them all’ mentality that could use a little shake up where I work. I’m also reminded of a successful game that immediately let you play and try things out (even while hints on what was going on in the complex control scheme were being revealed): the initials of said game being A.C. Complaints of ‘bait and switch’ when the character was stripped of these abilities aside, it had the intended effect of learning the system rapidly; and the bonus effect of enticing the player to re-acquire the skills more deliberately. Thanks.