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So Gaming Horizons is a European funded project, where we’re interested in, kind of the discourses around video gaming.  We’re looking at gaming as having kind of cultural and social potential, we’re looking at the uses of gaming in education and the impact it has on peoples’ lives more widely.  As part of the project we’re interviewing people like you, who have an interest and a relationship with gaming and technology.  We’re interviewing around sixty to seventy people; the interviews, like this one, are going to last between thirty and forty minutes, and we’re interviewing people who have an interest from the point of view of being designers of games, players of games, people in education, in research and in policy.  
So the transcript from our interview today will end up in a kind of pool of transcripts that we’ll look at, using a discourse analysis approach, to ascertain the kind of discourses that are going on around video games and the ways in which different groups of people are talking about them and framing them, and understanding them.  Does that make sense?
Yes.  I’m speaking for myself and not on behalf of European School Net. 
That’s absolutely fine; and the way in which you take the questions is totally up to you, the way in which you interpret the idea of video games is totally up to you, the context in which you’re talking about it.  So obviously different people have different understandings of what constitutes video games.  Go with whatever works for you.  
The interview itself, I’ve not got a fixed list of questions that I’m going to work through.  Essentially I’ve got some areas that I’d like to ask questions in, so we’ll maybe drift about a bit, they’re very open questions, and just take the way that interpret them, if that’s okay.  
Okay. 
Great.  Before I start any other questions?
In the report are you naming people or anonymising?
A very good question, the transcripts will be anonymised.  Has Carlo sent you a consent form?
No. 
I will send you a consent form afterwards, I don’t need that signing beforehand, but it talks about how we’re going to anonymise the transcripts, but essentially we are taking names off transcripts.  Obviously anything you say that identifies you otherwise will be in there; if there’s anything you want taking out that you’ve said, obviously you can tell us that, but essentially we’re going to be anonymising the transcripts, and we’re going to be looking at the transcripts in kind of groups.  So we’re looking at the transcripts of the researchers and the policy makers.  We’ve got another site that will be looking at the transcripts of video games and developers, so your transcript will be anonymised and it will be kind of put together with other transcripts by other people.  
Yeah, that’s okay.  
So that kind of sets the context for you, but if you feel that you say anything that identifies you more than you want to, then feel free to retract.  
I’m going to start then, my first question is really just a question to ascertain your background, so what’s your background in relation to technology and video games, and what’s your current role?
I used to be a language teacher in a secondary school in the UK, and started using computers way back in 1984, but in particular to motivate kids who didn’t want to learn French in Redditch, which is a Birmingham overspill and deprived communities and so on.  So right from my start, for me using technology was for educational reasons, but the educational reason was motivation through play.  
I was a publisher of games for language learning back in the 1980’s and earned a little bit of royalties.  Since then I became National Coordinator for Languages in a big UK initiative in the 1990’s, then I worked at what was NCT Vector, which closed down in the early 2000’s, when I moved to European School Net and I’ve been working for them for seventeen years now.  All the time on education, innovation, modernising schools and so on, and exploring new ways of technology. 
So you’ve talked a bit there about your initial interest in games as motivators, as motivators in your context, language learning.  In terms of how games work, is motivation where you see their biggest potential laying in terms of education?
It’s got a bit tricky that, because it’s a question of carrot really, and are you kidding young people?  I’ve become more sceptical of games over the years in education, particularly when, to exaggerate a bit, when educators design a game to put across a serious point, like poverty or starvation around the world, the third world and so on, or even difficulties and abuse and so on, because I feel a little bit that kids are being conned.  It’s teachers using their entertainment and what they do out of school pretending to be on their wavelength and doing something that is supposed to appeal to kids and motivate them a bit.  It’s that kind of area which I’m a little bit suspicious of; there are plenty of other ways of motivating kids which are not quite as cynical. 
That makes sense.  In terms of language learning and that kind of area that you started talking about, have you kind of, also become sceptical about games for that kind of learning as well?  Or is it the more kind sociocultural stuff that you’re talking about?
If games are explicitly games, such as quizzes and so on, then I’m not sceptical at all, it’s all part of the enjoyment of language learning let’s say.  It’s when you use games as a reward for learning something in a kind of manipulative way.  It doesn’t happen in languages as much as in social issues, and [0:07:33] I’m thinking of a number of examples with European funding.
Okay.  If we’re thinking about games and how they work, and games that kind of do the kind of things that you talk about, they’re often talked about as serious games, or applied games.  Do you make the distinction between entertainment games and serious games, is there a difference between those types of games in your opinion?
I can understand the kind of conceptive frameworks but serious games is almost a tautology, if it’s not playful and play is never serious.  But of course play, you see animals playing, it’s actually learning, so it’s a very complex area and the whole definition of games anyway, of digital games, is so vast from simulations and applications related to health and army games and so on, then the whole field is so vast it’s difficult to say.  
One of my fundamental points over the years really is that despite the potential of games and improvement potentially of games in the wider sense in education, the uptake has been quite slow by teachers.  
I work on the Horizon-K12 Expert Board where we look at trends across the world in technology in education and for a number of years games appeared on the horizon, two or three years away, and they’ve never come over that horizon. It’s almost, always been a little bit beyond the present.  So I think there is a serious structural problem with games in education, it’s partly because many teachers, let’s say the majority, plus politicians, media and parents, consider schools to be a serious and expensive business, so the place of play is questionable, particularly for older children.  So with that mind-set the potential of games in education, formal education, is quite small I think.  
We’re going to see more and more virtual reality headsets and amazing simulations and virtual visits and so on, which with a bit of tweaking could be considered games as much as experiences.  So it will come, but I think the problems with education is to stop using the word ‘games’, and that’s what ‘serious games’ tries to do, but it doesn’t really convince people.  
You talked there then about games being, always thought to be on the horizon and there’s not really this uptake there and you talked about how they have the potential.  Maybe, I don’t know if this is the kind of work you do, but a kind of image problem, or-?
Yeah, it’s a perception.  
Is that something that you subscribe to?  Do you feel that that perception of them is correct, or would you be more enthusiastic about using games in education?
It’s the problem of definition really, that games cover such a wide range from a simple quiz to an immersive experience, which is indistinguishable from reality, with massive multiplayer games and things like that.  
No, I remain sceptical; particularly perhaps about the immersive ones.  It’s partly for mental health reasons as well, you know the well-being of young people is the primary concern at schools.  Although I’m a techno enthusiast, I have been for many years, I do worry about screen time let’s say.  Why should things happen in schools just because they happen outside schools, like game play?  It may be formal education is a place where different things happen, like games and so on take place outside school in an informal context, perhaps picks up, this is a bigger subject, but through artificial intelligence big data, so kids’ successes in games or their learning in games is registered, tracked and is part of a portfolio of achievement; that’s a bigger story. 
There’s a number of different directions we could go in, I’m trying to think where to go next.  I think, maybe that idea of, if maybe, as we seem to be leading towards, school isn’t necessarily the place for games, however we’re describing them, is there a potential do you see for games that have a, what we might call a broadly positive impact, on peoples’ lives outside of school?  Is there a place for gaming in the kind of – or is there a possibility of serious games outside of the classroom that people could play that could have a potential positive benefit?  
Yeah very much so, as I say it’s a question of what, the definition of games and the examples you have in mind when you’re thinking.  So there’s one game called Mathletics, which is very popular around the world where kids in and out of school can pair up with others and compete to do times-tables, sums and so on; proven to have benefits, very motivating and fun, and there’s no reasonable harm or addiction worries about it.  So if that was my example of a game then I’d say, fine from every point of view.  But the whole area – we haven’t talked about gamification either, but it’s all part of a big subject and it’s easy to generalise perhaps that’s what I’m trying to say. 
Yes, absolutely, I think you’re absolutely right and that’s really helpful that you’ve kind of used the specific example there of a maths game.  You talked earlier about the kind of perceived trickery involved in a game that’s trying to teach people about poverty, or a social issue; are there any games that you’ve got in mind that have that kind of cultural impact, any specific games that you could talk about that maybe take that, I don’t know, that approach to society, rather than specific academic learning, have you got any other examples of games that you think tackle those sorts of issues?
I’d rather not mention it because they were commission funded, and colleagues of mine at European School Net were involved in that. 
Yeah, that’s fine. 
They’re not the only examples, it’s when you put a sugar coating of play, or scoring of some sort, or competition on something which is essentially serious.  So the problem was, in all of these, the designers and the builders of games were not sufficiently involved and the language of, even if they are, the designers and the game people don’t understand the world of education, and the education people don’t understand the world of games.  So one or the other suffers, or even both.  
So you end up with an unsatisfying game, because it’s poorly designed, poorly executed and an unsatisfactory piece of learning because it hasn’t got good pedagogical principles.  
Yes. 
That’s perhaps my important point on games in schools.
So given that kind of experience, or given that you’ve seen that kind of product that’s not been successful, do you think there is a potential for a more successful product if you had a closer relationship between those parties, the designers and the educators?  Or if they were one and the same, or do you think that that’s still a problematic thing to be kind of using games to deliver something else?
I think it is problematic and I’ve yet to see a good implementation.  Of course I’m working on the e-confidence project at the moment with [Biella 0:17:16] and people.  I’m not really referring to that one at all, because we’ve yet to see, to gain.  But one big problem with European Commission funded games is that the project is both development and testing an exploitation, or is in three years, and I’ve seen so many times because I’ve been at it a long time, where the final product isn’t good enough for use with people with busy lives.  It finally becomes okay six months before the end of the project, and everything happens in a rush to test and validate, and then the project ends.  
So to be successful, I think the game would need to be developed over a long time period and perhaps focus either on developing a game, or testing a games that’s more or less ready for the consumer.  But to both develop and pilot is impossible within three years; even though the games industry turns games round quickly, but they’re not trying to catch onto education, that’s where the problem sets in.  
You’ve addressed there funding and the kind of constraints of funding.  If you were kind of changing the funding model in those situations, would you advocate for longer funding of these things, or would you feel that that wouldn’t be a good use of money and actually this kind of stuff isn’t the kind of stuff we should be doing with the European Funding?
Ah, I’m tempted to say it’s not the kind of stuff we should be doing, because I’ve yet to see a good product to be honest.  The products widely used in education, the games, as far as I know none have been developed with public funding, it seems to me inimitable to good game production. 
But developing projects, I was involved in one, an anti-bullying one where they had hackathon’s over the weekends and so on, including young people in the design teams and that.  That was quite good, but even so the fundamental premise of treating a serious issue in a game environment is very hard to achieve.  I’ve seen developers produce avatars, where you interact as a bully or as a victim with other people, but it’s all so stereotypes and simplistic compared to reality.  That’s perhaps one of the problems of games as simulations and changing behaviour is the model of reality is [0:20:29].  The graphics can be good but the underlying models are poor, and kids see through them; that’s the other objection I have, it’s this patronising attitude to young people that’s visible in many games, many educational games or serious games.  
You mentioned gamification earlier as well, and I’m maybe assuming, so I shouldn’t assume, that you have a similar kind of perspective on gamification?
(Laughs) I’m pushing myself into an extreme position here.  No, I’m all for playful learning and having fun, and in a way I have more sympathy with gamification than serious games, if there is a distinction.  
I think the distinction lies where we make it doesn’t it?  And I think, you’ve talked about playfulness and I, personally I would see playfulness as quite a different thing maybe to gamification, and again that’s quite a different thing to serious games, and then serious games are wide areas, so all of these are kind of, as you said, video games, gaming, is such a massive area that when we’re talking about these things then, I suppose we’ve kind of had to define our terms.  
If you’re talking about being positive about playfulness, how would playfulness manifest itself in education?  What would be a positive kind of playful experience?
Again there’s the language of education, the language of games, but one of the kind of intersects of interest is instant feedback, so any product that provides that can be turned into something playful, entertaining and fun, as well as matching the evidence from research about what good learning is.  One of the weaknesses of education without technology is that kids don’t get much feedback, not until they take an external exam or something, and that doesn’t motivate most kids, whereas instant feedback does, particularly if it’s sort of appropriate and helps staff for the next steps, and that’s where technology is extremely good, and that’s where gamification could come in as well, without even using the term.  Yeah, the student goes through an experience using technology, which provides lots of feedback to explore, to test out hypothesis and so on; the feedback comes instantly.  Is it learning, is it play, who cares, provided the learning takes place, that’s my thing. 
Yes, absolutely.  So in that kind of feedback that technology provides that is part of games, that’s maybe a positive implementation of what could be considered, I suppose, a game mechanic in learning and it’s not necessarily a game mechanic but it is a feature of games. 
Yes.  
Do you play video games yourself at all?
Ha-ha, I don’t play video games, whatever they are these days, no I don’t like the mass multiplayer games; I’ve looked at Minecraft and so on.  No the games I play are more like mathematical games or crosswords, not really on the horizon of video games.  
I don’t know why, it’s this, I don’t find it a satisfying experience, I prefer reality. 
That’s definitely a justifiable position to take.  
I know I’m in the minority here, but I’ve tried.  
You mentioned Minecraft there and that’s a game that’s one of those games that kind of is everywhere and has kind of grew out of being an entertainment game and then found its way into other spaces.  Are there any other kind of big games that you’re aware of that you would see have any kind of potential?  Is there any kind of entertainment game I’m thinking that has ever caught your attention in terms of learning and its potential?
I can’t say because I’ve not been working in this area for a while really, and things have moved on fast in games.  So no I can’t really answer that one. 
No, that’s fine.  
I’m going to skip back to, you were talking earlier about how it may be in some ways problematic to use games in the classroom, to bring games into education because of the perceived kind of, what schools are for, and what time should be used for in classrooms.  That’s probably an ethical question, or it’s an ethical issue in terms of how we’re taking up children’s time in their education.  Are there any other kind of ethical issues that you think games bring with them that make them maybe problematic or challenging for use in educational context?
A big question.  I’m thinking, one of the other projects I’m working is about competence developments and so on, and that’s a big agenda in Europe at the moment, and these are digital competences or twenty-first century ones, you know, collaboration, creativity and so on.  
I think games, as I said, they do have an image problem and they have a niche problem as well, this is looking at it from the education perspective, but the language and the parameters of games don’t seem to match the agendas of educators and policy makers, whatever the games.  This has been the case for the last ten years and more; if teachers are hostile, or some teachers, or policy makers are even more hostile, so.  
We had a project called Imagine, eight or nine years ago now, and one of the recommendations that came out of that was not to use the word ‘game’.  And that, it was all seriousness, it’s probably the way forward, you know, when a project is developed with an education purpose, digital and the education purpose, funded according to that.  The fact that it’s playful or a game, or uses those kind of algorithms should be of secondary importance and played down.  
Thank you, that’s an interesting point.  
My final question, I’m not going to talk particularly about the future in terms of gaming research, if I could just broaden it out to talk more about technology and the potential for the use of technology in the kind of context that you’re looking at, so this doesn’t have to be games now.  In terms of future directions for where technology might take us, in terms of education, culture, society, are there any particular developments or innovations that you see coming in the future that you would be particularly excited about, or positive about in terms of learning and education, coming from the kind of technology realm?
At the moment a lot of the technologies have promise, but also threat, and that’s been more so than in the past I think.  Ten or twenty years ago it was all about opening doors and a brighter future.  I think now with the global reach of Google, Microsoft and Amazon and the others, the issues of privacy and being manipulated for commercial gain are so worrying, I think.  
It impinges on politics as well, and government and big things, way beyond games and education.  So take artificial intelligence, wonderful, you can imagine big datasets and so on, creating personal learning paths for kids, which has long been a dream instead of lock stepped learning in classrooms.  But the price of that is to give up a lot of personal information and to lose control over it as well.  
You know, you can imagine some wonderful games developed on the basis of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and the rest, but I think it leaves the big, big question, which is getting bigger, does that create good citizens and better human beings. 
Do you think that’s a question that’s currently being asked enough?  Is that the kind of thing that you’re seeing research around?  
I think there’s still this general tide that technology’s a good thing in education, but there are voices being raised.  There are a number of books published like The Internet is not the Answer, is one, with a simple idea that if something is free it’s working for them, yeah.  Facebook, we’re all working for Facebook, Google and the rest.  
But to me I don’t think people are aware enough yet of what this means and what they can do about it.  Where legislation should catch up, way beyond games, but in a way it might all come to a head in games, if people are engaged in simulations and so on, or what are they giving up in exchange for entertainment. 
So this portion maybe is something that we need to be thinking about in the future, or at least we need to maybe ask questions that we’re not asking at the moment, or not strongly enough.  
Yeah, I mean I’ve mentioned competencies earlier, and of course the big is digital competence, including media literacy and so on, and I do think that needs to be strengthened, as part of growing up to be a citizen.  So if kids play games, or join social networks and so on, they understand the risks and the opportunities, what it means for them. 
Yes, absolutely and maybe as adult we’re not fully understanding them, then we need to shift how we’re thinking about them. 
No, I quite agree.  Probably in our heads we think of games developers as little people, or consortiums, or small businesses, as enthusiastic geeks or whatever, but behind that part of the model is big mega players with interests which are necessarily those of the individual.  Call me a conspiracy theorist but it’s where I’m heading (laughs).  
No, I think it’s a really important perspective to have, I think it’s a really important perspective that you’ve given, so I’m going to end it there, but say thank you very much for talking to us.  
That’s genuinely really interesting to talk to you and a really, I think, valuable perspective to have as part of that discourse around video games and technology more widely, so that’s really important, thank you. 
You’re welcome.  I hope I’m not the only voice like that?
No, I think the aim is we have a range of different people saying different things, and we’re certainly not just looking for people who are enthusiasts and pushing for games, we certainly need other perspectives in there as well.  So no, that’s really valuable, so thank you ever so much for talking to us, very much appreciated; and enjoy the rest of your day. 
Right, if you need anymore, don’t hesitate to come back. 
That’s very kind, thank you ever so much.