Gamification is failing as a mechanism for long-term learning
Guest: Eduardo Nunes, CEO of Kendir Studios, based in Porto, Portugal. Kendir Studios is a development studio for educational role playing and adventure games. They offer their services in the K12 segment in a B2C model.
Frank Albert Coates
Do you want to start off by going a bit more into detail about what your company does, and at what stage you're at?
Eduardo Nunes
Basically, we started our first research project in the university. We focused on why gamification was failing. Due to the pandemic, we saw a lot of platforms, a lot of tools coming out. And we noticed that those weren't having the effects that we wanted in students, especially young students.
We focused on why gamification was failing. Due to the pandemic, we saw a lot of platforms, a lot of tools coming out. And we noticed that those weren't having the effects that we wanted in students, especially young students.
We're like; we're gamifying this, why isn't it working? Or even if it's working; why is it that after a while they, they pretend like it's a regular app, and all of those achievements and progression and rewards and monetization, stuff like that, why isn't that working towards motivation and towards better outcomes? And I have come from a background of gaming, a lot of gaming, but always in the sense of leisure, not as a work tool. I've worked with gamification, but never with games itself, and I started thinking, in this pandemic, when everyone is feeling down and really bored, about work or stressed about going out, why not create games to make people distracted and at the same time learning? And the idea came from that and the research project was started exactly with that purpose for us to evaluate, and to try to understand what kind of impact games could have. And so we looked at a ton of research a ton of previous research, we were talking about, stuff people have been doing since the 80s - since Dungeons and Dragons came out. And after we started looking at some patterns, we started noticing that there are a lot of similarities in terms of research, in terms of outcomes when these outcomes are good. Both in terms of motivation, and in terms of learning outcomes in the long run - they usually have something in common. And that's the RPG mechanisms, the connection with stories. So basically, there's a very positive and very typical connection between learning and stories. And that's something that's not from the 80s, that's something from the 19th century. Everyone knows that when you tell a story to a student, that the student connects the story emotionally, with the content, and they will remember that content for the rest of their lives.
Everyone knows that when you tell a story to a student, that the student connects the story emotionally, with the content, and they will remember that content for the rest of their lives.
So that's a given that in RPG and in adventure games are obviously full of narrative elements. They have characters to which we can connect positively or negatively. The hero itself, the player, is a centerpiece to the story. So they change the story, they interact with it, they see what are the outcomes of their actions, and the actions of others. And so there's a very strong emotional connection to that. But that's not only at RPGs - adventure games have the particularity of connecting both long term and short term gamification mechanisms. So if you assume that storytelling for example, is a long term gamification mechanism, we can look at achievements for example, or small quests, with rewards and all of that; game mechanisms that are usually accompanying quests, those are short term. So basically, we started thinking, if we produce an educational role playing game, we could connect a study session in which you have students learning how to do something.
So basically, we started thinking, if we produce an educational role playing game, we could connect a study session in which you have students learning how to do something.
For the sake of a quest, a short quest, like 15 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, which is awesome for a study session, you can have study sessions, which are very short. And for study sessions, I usually go for younger students, about an hour and a half, two hours maximum, because otherwise their brains will fry. So if you have two hours, you have about two or three quests that the students can do, and then you have the story. And that will keep the player motivated for the next day. Like they want to know what happens in the quest afterwards. How is this going to impact the world? How is this character going to react to me? He was like cold in the in the start, but then I did a quest to help him. And now he's friendly towards me. I want to know that I want to see that. And so we started thinking, we probably should develop this. And so, we started creating this 3D open world RPG, full of quests, full of educational quests. We decided on the sixth grade for our first prototype and which is now MVP, which soon enough will be a full product. And we created a whole world around the around this RPG, which we called Liber Domus, and has the full contents of a curriculum for mathematics and science for sixth grade. And, kids are loving it.
Frank Albert Coates
If we go further into the company itself and the area you're in; why do you think you will succeed? What makes your company and the people special?
Eduardo Nunes
That's a really good question, because I don't think that I was aware of that. When I started the company, I just wanted to do the first educational RPG in the world and see how the market would react to it. If it was as effective as research would tell us. And if students and teachers would be as excited about it as we were. So we did not think a lot about what made Kendir special or what made the team special. I just tried to grab people that had the mindset and and the knowledge and the excitement for games. And for RPG specifically, that would make them ideal candidates for the development of this product. And I looked at that not only in game development, but also on the educational side. So we obviously have an instructional designer. And it should be someone focused on RPGs and design as well and all that. So when that happened, I eventually realized that we had like this amazing team, which is actually very difficult to replicate. So we have tons of different people and different mentalities. But, we're all connected through this glue, which is the project that we're doing and what we really feel like is going to have an amazing impact.
So we have tons of different people and different mentalities. But, we're all connected through this glue, which is the project that we're doing and what we really feel like is going to have an amazing impact.
And so we started developing this and we didn't think much of it. We just thought okay, let's develop an educational RPG it's like a regular RPG, but instead of the quest not meaning anything specifically. Like let's bring mathematics and science into this. Recently, we started realizing we've been doing a bit of groundbreaking work in terms of educational game development. Because no one touches this, no one dares to actually develop a full game, a full curriculum. For example, you have game based learning companies and software that focuses on the full curriculum for the whole school year. But that's basically just the repetition.
…no one dares to actually develop a full game, a full curriculum. For example, you have game based learning companies and software that focuses on the full curriculum for the whole school year. But that's basically just the repetition.
That's basically just grabbing 2D mechanisms and going on and on and on and on, and the subject changes, but the mechanisms are just the same. And that brings us back to the gamification issues, which is repetition. After two months, kids are like, bored out of their minds with that kind of repetition, with that kind of mechanism. And there's not much to it, and then you get a few coins, and you can buy a hat for your avatar and awesome. And five minutes later they're bored and they quit. To build a game which has a story and a universe, which starts in one point, and at the end of the school year ends in a completely different point. And which took the students through a journey of 10 months of learning. It's something that no one did, and no one does.
To build a game which has a story and a universe, which starts in one point, and at the end of the school year ends in a completely different point. And which took the students through a journey of 10 months of learning. It's something that no one did, and no one does.
And we're the ones doing it, even when other companies are doing something similar, we've been talking with a few of them, it is something that they usually don't do very well. They're focusing more on the on the graphics, or a few repetitive game mechanisms, but not in the sense of for example, when you grab a specific mathematical or scientific content, like for example, environment, we just don't grab the same puzzle that we want the kids to do, or something that has no connection. We build a biome full of environmental issues. And the student goes there and does a quest, which is related to a bunch of different things from the rest of the world. And so that takes time. And that takes a lot of architecture, and design issues and a lot of collaboration between the instructional designer, the one that's defining the educational objectives, and the designers and the game developers. And we've started to become a bit of an expert on that. And so our team is doing amazing work and things are more and more easy for us than in the beginning. We have everything that we need for us to continue doing this with success. Because we're getting better and better at it.
Frank Albert Coates
You started mentioning a few of the challenges that you have had. What has the biggest challenge until now been and how did you solve it?
Eduardo Nunes
The biggest challenge is always the perspective from the investors and even educators. Because, one of the things that I didn't look at when I started developing Kendir Studios, was that we were doing something radically different from what exists. I didn't consider the issues that would arise from students and specially teachers. And obviously investors because investors that invest in EdTech and focus on EdTech are either usually previous educators or people that have been connected to schools or colleges or stuff like that. All of these people are still in 2.0. visualization. So basically, they're looking at the EdTech world, and the technologies that are being developed about three or four steps behind what we're doing. And so it's really very different for us to explain why we want to develop a full scale game. We even branded the term educational gaming. We don't do game based learning, we do educational gaming, it's a game. And students have the feeling that it's a game. And that's something that is very difficult for even the brightest and the most innovative EdTech investor. They usually struggle when they start thinking, okay, but if this is a full game, how are kids going to learn? And so we need to really dig deep and demonstrate.
The biggest challenge is always the perspective from the investors and even educators. … All of these people are still in 2.0. visualization. So basically, they're looking at the EdTech world, and the technologies that are being developed about three or four steps behind what we're doing. … They usually struggle when they start thinking, okay, but if this is a full game, how are kids going to learn? And so we need to really dig deep and demonstrate.
We spent tons of time demonstrating what we're doing, and creating videos and creating images that help us explain how we want things, and why we want them that way. And then when people start looking at our demos and start playing, and start looking at the videos carefully, then that challenge becomes an advantage, obviously, because they start thinking about it. And they're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, now I get it. And people get on our side. But, it's not an elevator pitch. It's not something that I can steal the attention of someone for five minutes in and bring them in. No, it's something that takes me an average of one to two hours to convince. Because there's a lot of questions. For example, we've developed the game engine, we develop tons of systems, which will allow us to develop further games much quicker than this initial game, because the system's already developed. And we already have massive amount of scripts and encoding developed. And that's not something that I can explain very quickly. Well, I just did, but it's still usually in the middle of a conversation that raises the question. Am I going to spend two years developing each game? No, I'm going to spend much less than that, when spend six to nine months developing each game because everything is built already, except for the story and the 3Ds. And that's something that's specific for each game. When people start talking with us, and understand the methodology behind everything, they start to really get on our side. But until then, that is a massive challenge.
When people start talking with us, and understand the methodology behind everything, they start to really get on our side. But until then, that is a massive challenge.
Frank Albert Coates
So if if you look forwards, in the next few months, what is on top of your mind, and what's keeping you up at night?
Eduardo Nunes
Everything - we want to go so many places. I mean, we already have, we're still developing the full scale game. We're already testing it in schools and feedback has been amazing. I mean, you won't find students more focused, and having fun at the same time and learning things faster than with our games, and they're loving every minute of it. But we're still developing the full scale game. So we're about 66% done right now. And we'll focus on that for the next month. But it's not only that; we started focusing on optimization, because we know that kids, especially those that have less of an income, they struggle with laptops, and usually the laptops that they have are not very good. And so we started focusing on optimization of graphics and performance. And because kids started asking us for tablets, we're also developing the mobile version. We also have two countries in which we are developing adaptations of Liber Domus. So basically, one of the things that we did is that we created an architecture and the game itself, which is very adaptable. So we're adapting it to the educational objectives of each country. And we want to test those objectives in other countries, obviously. And teachers also started asking us for multiplayer abilities, so basically the option of using our game mechanisms and 3D environments as a way of teaching remotely or in classrooms. And so we also started developing that. That's further down the line. We already have started working with AWS for the multiplayer architecture, and they got behind the idea. We also have a team of technicians from them, which are helping us with that.
We already have started working with AWS for the multiplayer architecture, and they got behind the idea. We also have a team of technicians from them, which are helping us with that.
Our objective is basically to keep doing this and keep developing.
Frank Albert Coates
And if you look at everything you've experienced till now, is there one piece of advice that you would give other EdTech startups that are just getting off the ground?
Eduardo Nunes
I don't know if my advice is worth anything, honestly. Because what I'm going to say it's probably going to sound really, really strange and not very advice like, but I would say to not be afraid of doing something very different.
I would say to not be afraid of doing something very different.
And I'm saying this without having the full idea if we are going to succeed or if we're going to be one of those firsts that are not going to succeed and it's going to be the second and third that arrives, that's going to succeed. But, to be the first will always give you an edge on certain things and team is one of it.
…to be the first will always give you an edge on certain things…
We work with game developers and anyone in EdTech knows the struggle of working with coders, with people that are constantly on demand by the rest of the market. For projects that will pay them four, five, ten times the value that you're going to be able to pay them as a startup, if you're going to pay them at all, at least in the beginning. And the thing is, they're going to stay with you because of who you are, obviously, and your vision, but also because of the project. Because coding means nothing if it's not for a good purpose, and they know it, and they love it. They want to be a part of something, we all want to be a part of something greater. That's why I started the company. That's why I keep pushing on this project, even when I feel like quitting. Because in education we're working for, I know this sounds cliche, but we're working for a better future for us and for our children. And that's one of the greatest purposes that we can have in life. And it's not only for the founder, which can be someone who codes or not, it's going to be for your team as well. And that's going to help you stay with the project for quite a while even when things get rough.
…we all want to be a part of something greater. That's why I started the company. That's why I keep pushing on this project, even when I feel like quitting. Because in education we're working for, I know this sounds cliche, but we're working for a better future for us and for our children. … And that's going to help you stay with the project for quite a while even when things get rough.
