Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (20 page)

In many ways, the college-preparatory curriculum is like any other school’s—the students learn math, science, geography, English, history, foreign languages, computers, and arts in different blocks throughout the day. But it’s how they learn that’s different: students are engaged in gameful activities from the moment they wake up in the morning to the moment they finish up their final homework assignment at night. The schedule of a sixth-grader named Rai can help us better understand a day in the life of a Quest student.

7:15 a.m.
Rai is “questing” before she even gets to school. She’s working on a secret mission, a math assignment that yesterday she discovered hidden in one of the books in the school library. She exchanges text messages with her friends Joe and Celia as soon as she gets up in order to make plans to meet at school early. Their goal: break the mathematical code before any of the other students discover it.

This isn’t a mandatory assignment—it’s a secret assignment, an opt-in learning quest. Not only do they not have to complete it, they actually have to
earn the right
to complete it, by discovering its secret location.

Having a secret mission means you’re not learning and practicing fractions because you have to do it. You’re working toward a self-chosen goal, and an exciting one at that: decoding a secret message before anyone else. Obviously not all schoolwork can be special, secret missions. But when every book could contain a secret code, every room a clue, every handout a puzzle, who wouldn’t show up to school more likely to fully participate, in the hopes of being the first to find the secret challenges?

9:00 a.m.
In English class, Rai isn’t trying to earn a good grade today. Instead, she’s trying to level up. She’s working her way through a storytelling unit, and she already has five points. That makes her just seven points shy of a “master” storyteller status. She’s hoping to add another point to her total today by completing a creative writing mission. She might not be the first student in her class to become a storytelling master, but she doesn’t have to worry about missing her opportunity. As long as she’s willing to tackle more quests, she can work her way up to the top level and earn her equivalent of an A grade.

Leveling up is a much more egalitarian model of success than a traditional letter grading system based on the bell curve. Everyone can level up, as long as they keep working hard. Leveling up can replace or complement traditional letter grades that students have just one shot at earning. And if you fail a quest, there’s no permanent damage done to your report card. You just have to try more quests to earn enough points to get the score you want. This system of “grading” replaces negative stress with positive stress, helping students focus more on learning and less on performing.

11:45 a.m.
Rai logs on to a school computer to update her profile in the “expertise exchange,” where all the students advertise their learning superpowers. She’s going to declare herself a master at mapmaking. She didn’t even realize mapmaking could count as an area of expertise. She does it for fun, outside of school, making maps of her favorite 3D virtual worlds to help other players navigate them better. Her geography teacher, Mr. Smiley, saw one of her maps and told her that eighth-graders were just about to start a group quest to locate “hidden histories” of Africa: they would look for clues about the past in everyday objects like trade beads, tapestries, and pots. They would need a good digital mapmaker to help them plot the stories about the objects according to where they were found, and to design a map that would be fun for other students to explore.

The expertise exchange works just like video game social network profiles that advertise what games you’re good at and like to play, as well as the online matchmaking systems that help players find new teammates. These systems are designed to encourage and facilitate collaboration. By identifying your strengths and interests publicly, you increase the chances that you’ll be called on to do work that you’re good at. In the classroom, this means students are more likely to find ways to contribute successfully to team projects. And the chance to do something you’re good at as part of a larger project helps students build real esteem among their peers—not empty self-esteem based on nothing other than wanting to feel good about yourself, but actual respect and high regard based on contributions you’ve made.

2:15 p.m.
On Fridays, the school always has a guest speaker, or “secret ally.” Today, the secret ally is a musician named Jason, who uses computer programs to make music. After giving a live demonstration with his laptop, he announces that he’ll be back in a few weeks to help the students as a coach on their upcoming “boss level.” For the boss level, students will form teams and compose their own music. Every team will have a different part to play—and rumor has it that several mathematical specialists will be needed to work on the computer code. Rai really wants to qualify for one of those spots, so she plans to spend extra time over the next two weeks working harder on her math assignments.

As the Quest website explains, boss levels are “two-week ‘intensive’ [units] where students apply knowledge and skills to date to propose solutions to complex problems.” “Boss level” is a term taken directly from video games. In a boss level, you face a boss monster (or some equivalent thereof)—a monster so intimidating it requires you to draw on everything you’ve learned and mastered in the game so far. It’s the equivalent of a midterm or final exam. Boss levels are notoriously hard but immensely satisfying to beat. Quest schedules boss levels at various points in the school year, in order to fire students up about putting their lessons into action. Students get to tackle an epic challenge—and there’s no shame in failing. It’s a boss level, and so, just like any good game, it’s meant to whet your appetite to try harder and practice more.

Like collaborative quests, the boss levels are tackled in teams, and each student must qualify to play a particular role—“mathematical specialist,” for example. Just as in a big
World of Warcraft
raid, each participant is expected to play to his or her strengths. This is one of Quest’s key strategies for giving students better hopes of success. Beyond the basic core curriculum, students spend most of their time getting better at subjects and activities—ones they have a natural talent for or already know how to do well. This strategy means every student is set up to truly excel at something, and to focus attention on the areas in which he or she is most likely to one day become extraordinary.

6:00 p.m
. Rai is at home, interacting with a virtual character named Betty. Rai’s goal is to teach Betty how to divide mixed numbers. Betty is what Quest calls a “teachable agent”: “an assessment tool where kids teach a digital character how to solve a particular problem.” In other words, Betty is a software program designed to know
less
than Rai. And it’s Rai’s job to “teach” the program, by demonstrating solutions and working patiently with Betty until she gets it.

At Quest, these teachable agents replace quizzes, easing the anxiety associated with having to perform under pressure. With a teachable agent, you’re not being tested to see if you’ve really learned something. Instead, you’re mentoring someone because you really have learned something, and this is your chance to show it. There’s a powerful element of naches—vicarious pride—involved here: the more a student learns, the more he or she can pass it on. This is a core dynamic of how learning works in good video games, and at Quest it’s perfectly translated into a scalable assessment system.

Secret missions, boss levels, expertise exchanges, special agents, points, and levels instead of letter grades—there’s no doubt that Quest to Learn is a different kind of learning environment, about as radically different a mission as any charter school has set out in recent memory. It’s an unprecedented infusion of gamefulness into the public school system. And the result is a learning environment where students get to share secret knowledge, turn their intellectual strengths into superpowers, tackle epic challenges, and fail without fear.

Quest to Learn started with a sixth-grade class in the fall of 2009, and it plans to add a new sixth-grade class each year as the previous year graduates upward. The first senior class will graduate from Quest to Learn in 2016, and potentially from college by 2020. I’m willing to bet that that graduating class will be full of creative problem solvers, strong collaborators, and innovative thinkers ready to wholeheartedly tackle formidable challenges in the real world.

Either I’m going to kill myself or I’m going to turn this into a game
. After the four most miserable weeks of my life, those seemed like the only two options I had left.

It was the summer of 2009, and I was about halfway through writing this book when I got a concussion. It was a stupid, fluke accident. I had been standing up, and I slammed my head straight into a cabinet door I didn’t realize was still open. I was dizzy, saw stars, and felt sick to my stomach. When my husband asked me who the president was, I drew a blank.

Some concussions get better in a few hours, or a few days. Others turn into a much longer postconcussion syndrome. That’s what happened to me. I got a headache and a case of vertigo that didn’t go away. Any time I turned my head, it felt like I was doing somersaults. And I was in a constant mental fog. I kept forgetting things—people’s names, or where I’d put things. If I tried to read or write, after a few minutes my vision blurred out completely. I couldn’t think clearly enough to keep up my end of interesting conversations. Even just being around other people, or out in public spaces, seemed to make it worse. At the time, I scribbled these notes: “Everything is hard. The iron fist pushes against my thoughts. My whole brain feels vacuum pressurized. If I can’t think, who am I?”

After five days of these symptoms and after a round of neurological tests that all proved normal, my doctor told me I would be fine—but it would probably take an entire month before I really felt like myself again. In the meantime, no reading, no writing, no working, and no running, unless I was completely symptom-free. I had to avoid anything that made my head hurt or made the fog worse. (Sadly, I quickly discovered that computer and video games were out of the question; it was way too much mental stimulation.)

This was difficult news to hear. A month seemed like an impossibly long time not to work and to feel this bad. But at least it gave me a target to shoot for. I set the date on my calendar: August 15, I would be better. I believed it. I
had
to believe it.

That month came and went, and I’d barely improved at all.

That’s when I found out that if you don’t recover in a month, the next likely window of recovery is three months.

And if you miss
that
target, the next target is a year.

Two more months living with a vacuum-pressurized brain? Possibly an
entire year
? I felt more hopeless than I could have ever imagined. Rationally, I knew things could be worse—I wasn’t dying, after all. But I felt like a shadow of my real self, and I wanted so desperately to resume my normal life.

My doctor had told me that it was normal to feel anxious or depressed after a concussion. But she also said that anxiety and depression exacerbate concussion symptoms and make it much harder for the brain to heal itself. The more depressed or anxious you get, the more concussed you feel and the longer recovery takes. Of course, the worse the symptoms are and the longer they last, the more likely you are to be anxious or depressed. In other words, it’s a vicious cycle. And the only way to get better faster is to break the cycle.

I knew I was trapped in that cycle. The only thing I could think of that could possibly make me optimistic enough to break it was a game.

It was a strange idea, but I literally had nothing else to do (except watch television and go on very slow walks). I’d never made a health care game before. But it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out my alternate reality theories in a new context. I might not be able to read or write very much, but hopefully I could still be creative.

I knew right away it needed to be a multiplayer game. I’d been having a lot of trouble explaining to my closest friends and family how truly anxious I was and how depressed I felt, how hard the recovery process was. I also felt awkward, and embarrassed, asking for help. I needed a way to help myself tell my closest friends and family, “I am having the hardest time of my life, and I really need you to help me.” But I also didn’t want to be a burden. I wanted to
invite
people to help me.

As with any alternate reality project, I needed to research the reality of the situation before I could reinvent it. So, for a few days, I spent the limited amount of time I was able to focus—about an hour a day at that point—learning about postconcussion syndrome online. From various medical journals and reports, I pieced together what experts agree are the three most important strategies for getting better and coping more effectively—not only from concussions, but any injury or chronic illness.

First: stay optimistic, set goals, and focus on any positive progress you make. Second: get support from friends and family. And third: learn to read your symptoms like a temperature gauge. How you feel tells you when to do more, do less, or take breaks, so you can gradually work your way up to more demanding activity.
⁷

Of course, it immediately occurred to me that these three strategies sound exactly like what you do when you’re playing a good multiplayer game. You have clear goals; you track your progress; you tackle increasingly difficult challenges, but only when you’re ready for them; and you connect with people you like. The only thing missing from these recovery strategies, really, was the meaning—the exciting story, the heroic purpose, the sense of being part of something bigger.