Mini vs Comple

It can be easy to view mini-games and complex games in a completely dichotomous relationship. Mini-games can be produced cheaply and target very specific learning topics, yet be subject to lazy game design principles and cookie-cutter production (Frazer et al. 2007b). Complex games on the other hand can produce rich, compelling narratives with meaningful game interactions, yet they can suffer from a lack

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of funding or an over or under saturation of learning content (Prensky 2005). Another factor which is not alluded to by Prensky (2005) is that there exists a division between the cohorts of current educational games. Those that are vestiges from the first generation of educational games, derisively earning the epithet “edutainment”, and subsequent generations of games which were a reaction to these games. The former category includes games like Math Blaster, Carmen San Diego and Reader Rabbit. These games can be perceived as shallow by academics, gamers and teachers alike and continue to act as the spectre of failure in educational gaming (Resnick 2004; Okan 2003; Charsky 2010). Bakker (2014) found the use of mini-games in a longitudinal study for increasing mathematical skills in students to be effective at encouraging students to engage better with their maths lessons, while also statistically performing better than their peers.

The argument against mini-games may appear compelling on first-glance. Prensky (2005) argues that mini-games are trivial, irrelevant to younger generations and

lack the necessary depth to capture a player’s attention or enter a flow state. While

Prensky assumes that game players have moved on from smaller-games, the world has changed significantly since the mid-2000s. A new and dominant force in culture has

emerged, which contradicts Prensky’s assertions that children cannot engage with mini-

games. The new trend is the rise of gaming mobile applications, or ‘Apps’. While mobile games do not necessarily have to be considered mini-games, mobile games are typically played in shorter sessions than for PC or dedicated games console games. According to Euston (2014) in a sample of 60,000 Android smart devices, the average amount of time spent playing mobile games in 2014, was 51.8 minutes per day. Furthermore, 17% of the games time accrued per day were in the ‘Brain and Puzzle’ category. Extrapolating this data, the average American who plays games, spends 53.5 hours per year engaged in some form of puzzle, or brain-teaser game. Furthermore, Perez (2014) reports that time spent playing games on a handheld device had increased by 15% in 2014 when compared to time spent playing in 2013. Prensky’s argument that children will not be entertained by games of a more trivial nature can now be called into question. While these games may appear to be complex games, the game mechanics are typically limited in scope, and interaction is typically limited to simpler input schemes. So too is the

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average time spent playing these games, with an average session time of 5 minutes 35 seconds (Hwong 2016), representing very short interactions with these games per session. Although people may spend only several minutes per session on a game, they do continue to return to the game, and mobile games as a genre; an example of where games that can provide meaningful play experiences in a very short period. While educational apps may still be less popular than other non-educational apps, the significance of games with shorter session times has established itself in gaming culture. Recall the Hattie & Timperley (2007) Feedback Model presented in Section 2.2.1.3. The purpose of the model is for students to ask three basic questions:

• Where am I going? • How am I going? • Where to next?

These questions define how a learner, and indeed a player receives feedback from the system concerning their progress. Recall in Section 2.2.1.3 that feedback mechanisms form an integral component of learning (Lieberman 2010) and indeed play (Abrams & Gerber 2013). In the context of mini vs complex games, the application of these questions to the discourse is therefore important. For a player to know where they are going, they must contextualise where they currently are in the game. Mini-games have the advantage over complex games, in that the core gameplay experience is very clearly defined, with highly structured breaks in gameplay. For complex games, where the player is with respect to the game, and indeed the learning content, can be highly variable, and may be obscured through gameplay mechanics which are not enabling the player to consistently identify where they are in the content, and gameplay; more simply, complex games have a harder time contextualising an individual play session into the broader discourse of learning. Secondly, determining the state in which the

player’s knowledge of their goals, or ‘where they are going, and where to next’, is harder

to express in complex games. With the competition of primary, secondary, and tertiary gameplay goals, players may not be always aware of what the goal of learning content is, and what is expected of them. While players may engage in a higher flow state with complex games, due to more in-depth goal setting, this may come at the expense of performing at the required level set out by their teacher.

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It has been identified in the preceding sections that a lack of flexibility in complex serious games has contributed to several deficits in serious game coverage of in-class curricula. In comparison, mini-games may not suffer from an inflexibility to be re- arranged and repurposed for the specific activity; their deficit stems from the inherent simplicity of the gameplay, and the reductionism that may take place when designing them. With these points in mind, it is important to observe that little research into the efficacy of mini-games for literacy has occurred in the last ten years. In the following section, mini-games will be examined further in the context of compendiums, which attempt to alleviate the problems identified by Prensky (2005), and play to their strengths, as outlined in this section. The application of these compendiums for literacy education will be discussed.