Episode 8 Ludic Language Pedagogy with James York of Tokyo Denki University
Ludic Language Pedagogy with James York of Tokyo Denki University
In this episode I connected with James York a lecturer at Tokyo Denki University. In this interview we discussed James’ path towards Toko Denki University; his work with the Ludic Language Pedagogy Journal; his approach to using games for teaching and learning; and the special challenges of teaching language through game play.
James York
James is a lecturer at Tokyo Denki University where he researches the application of games in language teaching contexts. James co-edits the journal “Ludic Language Pedagogy,” which is a space for teachers and researchers to publish work relating to teaching with games. LLP also encourages open conversations about games and play in language teaching and learning on their slack server.
Social links
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cheapshot
Discord: Cheapshot#4786
Research links
Lecturer at Tokyo Denki University https://radata.dendai.ac.jp/tduhp/KgApp?kyoinId=ymbsgsyoggy
Co-editor of Ludic Language Pedagogy https://www.llpjournal.org/
Google Scholar https://scholar.google.co.jp/citations?user=Wqi7k0wAAAAJ&hl=en
Research Gate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_York3
Academia.edu https://dendai.academia.edu/JamesYork
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/yorksensei
Transcript:
Dr. Dave Eng:
Hi, and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. I'm your host, Dave Eng, from Games-Based Learning by University XP. Find out more at universityxp.com. We have a special guest on today's episode, James York. James is a lecturer at Tokyo Denki University where he researches the application of games and language teaching context. James co-edits the journal, Ludic Language Pedagogy, which is a space for teachers and researchers to publish work relating to teaching with games. LLP also encourages open conversations about games and play in language, teaching and learning on their Slack server. James, welcome to the show.
James York:
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Dr. Dave Eng:
So James, can you share a little bit more about how you came to Tokyo Denki University?
James York:
Yeah. Let's think. I came over to Japan after graduating from university when I was 22 years old, and this is about 15 years ago and I wasn't planning on staying in Japan for a long time. I wasn't planning on becoming a language teacher, but I got heavily invested in language. As a language learner, I'm always studying Japanese pretty much full time. Excuse me. Having studied the language, I learned about best practices for language learning and the methodology of language teaching through my own studies. At this point, I decided that I wanted to become a language teacher and I did an MA in applied linguistics and TESOL. Upon receiving the MA, I got my job at Tokyo Denki University. I was basically applying for university jobs to be a language teacher at university, and I was lucky to get this job at TDU back about 10 years ago now. So I've been working at TDU for 10 years.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Wow. When you first came to Japan, were you always teaching at the university level?
James York:
No. I was actually teaching at the elementary school level, originally. Yeah, I was doing research based with young learners in the classroom. It was a bit of a transition, but yeah, I'm happy here now.
Dr. Dave Eng:
I know that we connected originally because we both know Dustin Staats from Board Gaming with Education.
James York:
That's right.
Dr. Dave Eng:
I originally reached out to Dustin because I heard him on a different board game podcast, so I'm glad to be three degrees of separation between you and I right now.
James York:
Yeah. It's a small world, right?
Dr. Dave Eng:
Very small.
James York:
We all know each other.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Yeah. What I'm really interested in, and I heard about this, I don't know how many months ago now, but I know you've been working on it for some time. You started that Ludic Language Pedagogy, the journal.
James York:
Yeah.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Can you tell me more about the journal and your work with it?
James York:
Absolutely. Well, my background, let me explain. As a university lecturer and hopefully professor in the near future, I clearly need a research agenda and something to output academic papers and work. So I'm heavily invested in game-based language teaching and language learning. Excuse me again. Well, obviously knowing about GBL as a broad term in educational research in general, my specific focus is on language learning and teaching with games. Having read a lot of academic papers and journals and books on the subject of teaching languages with games, I became a little bit frustrated with the state of the field in that there's a big disconnect between what's being researched and what's actually being used in the classrooms.
James York:
So I actually consider myself - I am going to call myself - a "boots on the ground teacher." I'm not researcher main, I'm more teacher mean with research as a sub part of my job, if you like. Having read papers and papers and papers about how World of Warcraft has different potentials for language learning and teaching and all these other extracurricular uses of games, I really found that there was a kind of gap of research where a teacher had used a game in their context. So rather than a hypothetical piece, it was more of a teacher-focused practical piece. I thought there was quite a gap this kind of paper was missing. So another thing was that I use board games predominantly in the classroom, and again, the research is heavily geared towards digital games.
James York:
As a researcher, to publish my work on using board games in the classroom in a real context, I didn't really have an avenue to output this work, this research because I can't publish in a CALL journal, which is computer assisted language learning because I'm not using digital games, if you like. Essentially, I identified a gap and we decided, me and my colleague, Jonathan DeHaan, that we were going to start a journal that was focused on not hypothetical studies, but practical studies where a teacher had actually used a game in the classroom with a broad definition of games, which includes play and other ludic activities. That is how the journal started, essentially.
Dr. Dave Eng:
I'm really glad you brought that up because I think that a lot of the listeners, and I know people that asked me about Games-Based Learning, they're coming from a practitioner standpoint, much like yourself, and that they're not primarily researchers. Yes, they see the value of research or they want to know how this is connected to theory, but really at the end of the day, and I'm really glad you brought it up, is that okay, well, that's great that you're using World of Warcraft in a co-curricular context, but how can I use it?
James York:
Exactly, right. Yeah.
Dr. Dave Eng:
...in my classroom. So I'm really glad you started that journal because there's been a great need for that practical aspect, and I'm glad that you and your co-editor are going to start addressing them.
James York:
Yeah, hopefully. We have three papers that have been published so far and we have some more in the works. Yeah, essentially the idea is that the journal is open access, so there's no paywall, it's free to download any of the materials there. We're also experimenting with open peer review. I'm not sure if you're familiar with blind peer review, but essentially, most academic journals, they implement something called blind peer review where you send your paper, and then two or three people read it and they don't know who you are, so you have to remove your name as author.
James York:
You don't know who the reviewers are and it's done double-blind, so they don't know each other. We're experimenting with open peer reviews just trying be more supportive and constructive in the review process, so that, yes, you do know who wrote this and you do know who is reviewing it so that you can actually have a conversation around the document rather than it being blind, and it can get a little bit nasty occasionally, I guess. So, we're doing things like that.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Yeah.
James York:
Yeah, and, Sorry.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Have you identified who you'd like to be the reviewers for your journal?
James York:
Yeah, we have a fast selection of reviewers now from this field, the game-based language learning and teaching field, and we're always accepting new reviewers. We have a Slack channel where people can join up, and if they want to be a reviewer, they can just get in touch with those and we'll add them to the roster. Yeah, we're very open, we're very much about community building.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Great.
James York:
If you're interested in games and language teaching, well ... Not even language. It might not be a foreign language. If you're teaching English in say America or the UK, or if you're teaching the native language or literacy skills, we encompass it all. Yeah, definitely get in touch.
Dr. Dave Eng:
I will include your contact information in the show notes so that anyone that's interested in being a reviewer for your journal will be able to contact you.
James York:
I appreciate it.
Dr. Dave Eng:
So we started out with the journal, which is the research side of this, but it's still going to be based in a practical application sense.
James York:
Yes.
Dr. Dave Eng:
I want to go further down that path. Can you share more about your approach to using games for teaching and learning?
James York:
Absolutely, yes. My approach is I use games as the core of the curriculum, not just as a kind of fun treat, which I think that games are often reduced to this level. They're considered useful for engagement perhaps or as a bit of fun or as a treat after doing some more serious work. So I decided to take games as the actual core and we learned around it, we learned around game place. For example, in basically a seven week structure, where during those seven weeks, we'll only played the game twice. So from my own perspective, I think that board gameplay is very similar to how we learn a language in that you need some kind of receptive skills first, so you're looking at reading and listening and building up your knowledge of the language first, and then you output.
James York:
So you'd have the productive skills following the receptive skills. Now, with board gameplay, I'm sure you're familiar yourself, but you actually have to read a rule book or watch some online videos of how to play the game before you play. This really fits in nicely with the idea of automization and building up your repository before you actually play the game. Yeah, I spend a full week on learning the game and then the following week we'll play the game so we're out putting the language. A huge part of my teaching is the use of transcription activities. You're probably aware of the idea of cognitive load, and if you have too much cognitive load you're not able to focus on the learning well. From a language learning perspective, this means that if the game ... well, in this perspective even, if the game is too complex and you're focusing on the rules too much, you're not going to have enough cognitive capacity to output the second language or the foreign language.
James York:
I actually transcribe gameplay and I say, "Okay, use as much English as you can. If you don't know the English, you use your native language, you use Japanese, it's fine. It's absolutely fine. Do not punish the use of the mother tongue at this stage," because it's all being recorded, transcribed and then we analyze the gameplay like... Okay, you used Japanese or you used the mother tongue in this particular instance, or you used English here, but it's slightly incorrect. Can we change this? Can we improve this for then a following gameplay session? So it's learn the game, play the game, analyze mistakes, that's three weeks, and the fourth week will be a replay session where hopefully they've improved their language a little and can use these new items or new vocabulary, new grammar points in their second gameplay session. I'll use this cycle over and over again with various different games. Yeah, that's the general ...
Dr. Dave Eng:
I really like how you focused it in ... you're using the game as the medium for learning, and you're not using it's ... You don't want to be in a position where you're an educator that is really relying on the game to do a lot of the heavy lifting, but it seems like you're-
James York:
Yes.
Dr. Dave Eng:
... partnering with it in order to use it as not a replacement for teaching, because we know that good educators still need to be an active presence in the classroom, but really using it as that medium. But my follow up question, James, is when I talked to Dustin about this, he had a list of some TableTop games that he referred to. Are there any go-to games on your list that you use for language learning?
James York:
Well, in my particular context, I tried to find games that do promote conversation. Of course, a lot of board games have conversation almost as the main game mechanic. If you look at hidden role games, the game is progressed through conversation between players. So these kinds of games, if you're looking to build speaking skills, obviously lend themselves very well to this type of class. Yeah, hidden role games and cooperative games as well, like Pandemic or Sheriff of Nottingham or ... cooperative games like this. I actually steer away from competitive games. The problem with competitive games in the classroom is that generally it's not team competition, you're playing you versus other players. It's actually a hindrance, if you like, to output the language because you want to keep things secret to yourself. If it's one versus one versus like a competitive game, then there's not a lot of communication between players.
James York:
One way that you could get around this is if you put players in pairs and you get them to discuss their strategy together during the game, but then you need a lot of people to play the game. At the moment, I don't use so many competitive games. Just to bring you back on to that point about the game not being a replacement for the teacher, I think that's an absolutely key point, Dave. I'm glad that you picked up on that because I think a lot of teachers, they maybe think that games are a magic bullet that as long as the students have the game, then the learning will just happen. In my own context, I find that this is not true, which is why I supplement games play with three or four extra classes where I can give them grammar instruction or we can analyze their game plan. You really need to slow things down and think about your role as a teacher during the classroom as well. Yeah, great point. Thanks for that.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Okay. I also wanted to know, since you brought up specifically about competitive games, do you ever use any games that require a negotiation element? Because the ones that immediately come to mind are something like Cosmic Encounter, or Empire by Wiz Kids where you need to ... You brought Sheriff from Nottingham before, but any other games that you've used with that negotiation aspect?
James York:
Negotiation. The game, it's called Dragon's Gold. Are you familiar with this one?
Dr. Dave Eng:
Is that an IELOO game? It sounds familiar, but I feel like it might've been re-branded.
James York:
I'm not sure...
Dr. Dave Eng:
But I'm not familiar with it. If you couldn't describe it.
James York:
Absolutely. Dragon's Gold is an interesting competitive game where each player is ... imagine each player is a little gang and there's four dragons on the board, and each player can choose which dragon they attack. Once the hit points of the dragon ... Sorry, once the attack damage of the players combined is more than the dragon, the dragon dies and some spoils of war, if you like, some treasure comes out. So once the dragon has died, the players that helped to defeat that dragon, they have to negotiate on who gets what treasure.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Oh, I see. Okay.
James York:
For example, you could have four blue coins, three red coins and two yellow coins, and then two players that have to share that between them. So this is an interesting negotiation game. Also, they only have one minute to make this negotiation. So for example, player one might come out and say, "Oh, I want all the red coins because I'm collecting those," but then the other player could say, "Well, if you have the red coins then I want all the rest," and you know so... It's an interesting negotiation game. If they don't decide who gets what coins within that one minute, then neither of them get anything so...
Dr. Dave Eng:
Interesting. I have to check that out then. I know that you brought up here your philosophy behind using games for teaching and learning, but can you identify any other special challenges about teaching language through gameplay?
James York:
Absolutely. I think that the level of difficulty of the texts actually is a big challenge because if you imagine a textbook that you're using for language teaching, the content of that textbook has been leveled, if you like, for the learners. You'll have introduction level, intermediate level, advanced level where the vocabulary has been through a filter, if you like, and matched to the level of the student. Well, if you're using real authentic Off the Shelf Games, the rule books can be quite daunting. It's interesting to see students, you give them a rule book and they'll start to read it from start to finish, whereas if it was me or you, we'd go, "Okay, that's the story. I don't need that. I just need to look at the rules," so we can actually skip parts. Yeah, the rule books are a big challenge obviously because they're not leveled, and then talking of texts, I also consider native speaker gameplay videos as part of the texts as well.
James York:
So if I want students to see how native speakers would play the game, then we'll go on to YouTube and we'll perhaps watch TableTop or the board game related channels. Again, the native speakers are extremely fluent. Their language is not leveled to the students. They're not taking their time, they're talking over each other. Again, to decipher and to help students understand what's going on in the gameplay with a lot of idiomatic expressions and things like that, that's a real challenge, which again is why the teacher's role is very important there. We can go in, watch a video with the students, pause it, ask them to reflect and translate things as needed. Yeah, that's the challenge. Yeah. Again, the final one would be the cognitive demands of the gameplay, which again is why I rely heavily on transcription and supplementing the gameplay with multiple weeks of non-gameplay activities. Yeah.
Dr. Dave Eng:
I see.
James York:
Essentially, level of difficulty of the texts and the cognitive demands of gameplay, they are the challenges I think.
Dr. Dave Eng:
I see. This is a side question that came up now that you've mentioned it before, but I think I read or watched somewhere that being able to speak a language in an idiomatic level is one of the highest achievements you could, I guess, earn as a new language speaker. Is that something that you agree with or have any opinions about?
James York:
Absolutely. I'm not sure about other languages, but English is chockablock, if you like. Its' really idiomatic. We have so many idiomatic expressions that, yeah, it's very difficult for students. Yeah, I agree. Yes, that's true.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Yeah. I know we talked a little bit before about not using games as a replacement for teaching, but using it as the medium to teach. But other than that, what do you think is another common perception that people have about your work that is wrong?
James York:
I don't know about my work. I don't think that I'm actually being looked at, but in terms of language teaching in general, I think that, yeah, the idea of games is a frivolous waste of time, that nothing can be really learned from them. I think that that misconception comes from the idea that games are just a treat or just something to do to fill the time and then not being supplemented with extra activities. That's one thing maybe, the games are frivolous. That's a common misconception. Another one is that yeah, games are only useful for promoting engagement.
James York:
There's a lot more that you can do with games, especially nowadays with smartphone games. I mean, you can play games anywhere, so you can do a lot more than just promote motivation in the student. For example, you could go online and join a guild, or you could go on the forums and get involved. You can go on Reddit and learn about a game. Spaces around gameplay are not directly within the game but you can tap into as authentic L2 texts, if you like. So yeah. Let's do more.
Dr. Dave Eng:
I think that a lot of that gets held up, I feel, with educators when we tell them about us using games for teaching and learning, and then the immediate go-to is something like Jeopardy or Family Feud or a trivia game. At the time, I'm just like, "There's more to learning than just declarative factual knowledge," other ways you can use games and it just doesn't have to be about engagement or about learning facts or anything else. So I'm glad that you said that because it doesn't have to be. There's many other ways you can use games.
James York:
Absolutely. Also, the other misconception is that you're doing it to be popular. I've been told in the past that, "Oh Mr. York, you're only using games because you want to be popular with the students." Well, actually, at the start of my semester, I hit the students over their head with, "We're not just going to be playing games this semester. We're going to be doing some serious analytical work. You're going to be scratching your head while you're watching YouTube videos. You're going to be making presentations about your game and whether you'd recommend it to other people or not." So I really hit them over their head at the start of the semester, just to squash that idea that I'm only playing games to be popular or to have fun. There's loads more that you can do with games.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Oh yeah. Are you known at your university as the professor that uses games in his teaching and learning?
James York:
I am because it's very hard not to see me walking down the corridor with a big box full of six or seven different board games, because actually my course, the way that it's structured is that the first semester, the spring semester, we only play games that I've chosen, and there's a very specific reason for that, so that I can make sure that everybody's playing the same game, I can give the same instruction after gameplay and just to get people used to the cycle, like the play that ... sorry, the learn, play, analyze, replay and report cycle. In the first semester, I'm just taking a few games down to class.
James York:
But in the second semester, I just give the students a bad bones worksheets with all that we've done in the previous semester. But this time it's a game of their choosing. So what happens in the second semester is that you might have five or six or seven different groups that are playing different games. So I have to lag these games around the corridor, which of course people see, and it's like, "Oh, there's Mr. York with these games again," and I'm like, "Huh, huh, huh." Yeah.
Dr. Dave Eng:
I hope you have a board game bag or something else to carry all of them in.
James York:
Oh, I have a huge box, like a milk cart, if you like, that I take them with me. Yeah.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Other than your milk cart full of games, are there any other specific resources that help you to get to where you are right now?
James York:
That's a good question. Yeah. In terms of pedagogy and learning about how to teach, then obviously reading about this particular field. I don't want to throw my own but if you look at something like our language pedagogy now, you can see how teachers are actually using games in their classrooms, what kind of teaching approach they're using. So knowing about SLA, which is second language acquisition, knowing about different approaches to teaching, knowing about how people are using games, that's a great resource. Second one, for me particularly, would be Board Game Geek, which is a website where you can learn about the up and coming board games, the different types of ball games. You can join forums to talk about board games.
James York:
There's even a ... not language, sorry. There's a teaching forum, so you can meet other practitioners on that particular forum and discuss how you're using board games in your classrooms. That's a great resource. Then just playing lots of different games by being a gamer, by improving my gaming literacy, I guess, is a great way to think or consider how you might perhaps use a game in the classroom. For example, you might know Hey Listen Games by Zack?
Dr. Dave Eng:
Yep.
James York:
He is constantly putting out this is a game that you might go to use in the classroom because of these things. So even if you don't play the game, Zack will play the game for you and tell you how you could use it. So those resources are very useful I think.
Dr. Dave Eng:
I'm really glad you brought up game literacy because I feel that's one of those things that we take for granted, especially you're used to play in a lot of I'd say maybe heavier Euro type TableTop games or maybe you play a lot of social deduction games. Whereas the games you play are like your diet, right? Where if those are the games that you play most often, those are the games that you feel most familiar with, the most comfortable with, but they may not be the best for your students for their learning outcomes. I think that's something that I've recommended a lot of educators and other designers, which is just play a lot of different varying games. Play TableTop games, play social deduction games, play Mega games or serious games. Or play with anything else. So I'm glad you brought that up.
James York:
There's something called the TPACK. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this concept.
Dr. Dave Eng:
No, what is that?
James York:
T-P-A-C-K, which ... It stands for technological and pedagogical content knowledge. It's essentially a scale to see how familiar you are with the content that you're teaching, how familiar you are with pedagogical approaches, how familiar you are with technology and the devices that you can use in your classroom. So basically, it becomes like a radar chart where the more you know about that particular aspect, the better you are as being a teacher, if you like. Or this can be also extended to games as well. So you can have the idea of not just pedagogy and content and technology. Well, I guess games would be a technology, but how game literate you are. That's also very important if you want to be using games in the classroom.
James York:
You could argue that if the students have expertise and they bring the games into the classroom that they want to use, then it's very student-centered and you can perhaps learn from them. But I also think that as an educator, you should have that content knowledge, that game knowledge, when you're coming into a class, in case, for example, a student is stuck on a particular rule. You might take 10 minutes to read that if you don't know the game yourself. But if you do know the game, you could perhaps show it in five seconds by moving a few cars around or something. So the idea of having game literacy is very important. Yeah.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Yeah. I know that you've shared your journey and your story to where you've come ... where you are right now, but is there anyone else that you think has been very influential in where you are right now, what you're studying, your desire to teach others and your using games for teaching and learning?
James York:
Yep. My colleague, Jonathan DeHaan, is definitely one of my biggest mentors. He has been using games for language teaching since the early 2000s, and when I was originally looking for other work, his name came up again and again, and now I'm working with him on the journal. So he's been very influential to me in terms of research and teaching, and he's a good friend as well. So yeah, Jonathan DeHaan. I also think that there's a book called The Grasshopper, which is about gameplay and it's written by someone called Bernard Suits, maybe Bernard Suits. But this book, it talks about what is a game, and it's just a really comical, interesting dialogical book between a grasshopper and some ants.
James York:
So the ants are saying, "Why are you playing games all the time? You know you're going to die in the winter." The grasshopper comes back with a retort about why he plays games and what games are, and it really maybe opened my eyes up to, might sound a bit of a cliche, but the idea of life and living and being ... existing as a sort of game as well, if you like. So that really was interesting for me. I like that book a lot, I recommend it. It's just called The Grasshopper.
Dr. Dave Eng:
The Grasshopper by Bernard Suits?
James York:
Yes.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Yeah.
James York:
And then finally, I would say that Alfie Kohn. He wrote a book called Punished by Rewards. Now, maybe some of your listeners are big into gamification. But for me personally, I try to steer away from that. I had a brief experience with it back in about 2011, but since reading Alfie Kohn and the idea of rewards being kind of punishment in disguise, and maybe you can foster more intrinsic motivation without these rewards, that was a big influence on my teaching. I don't gamify my class, I don't use anything like XP or try and sugar coat things like that. No. I think there's a term nowadays called quest-based learning. I think, again, this is just a jargon term for giving students choice, so student-centered learning and giving them a choice. I try to keep away from some of these jargony terms. But yeah, that's a good book if your listeners haven't read that. It's called Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn. Definitely worth a read.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Thank you. So what do you think has been the biggest lesson that you've learned at your time at Tokyo Denki University since you've been there?
James York:
To embrace the freedom. My university has given me lots of freedom in how I teach, and some teachers will rest on their loins, if you like, and just teach from the textbook and be a bit boring, I would say. But yeah, if you have the opportunity to innovate, really grab the bull by the horns. There's a nice idiom for you. Grab the bull by the horns and go for it. So yeah, embrace the freedom. Be proactive as well. So if you wait for your university to tell you what to do, then you will become depressed quite quickly. So yeah, be proactive.
James York:
If you can't find like-minded individuals in your own context, then go online, start sharing your work because there's people like Dave here, myself, the whole of the game-based language ... not language, but game-based teaching, game-based learning community. Please get in touch and just reach out, make those connections. I don't do any research or anything with my ... well, the colleagues at university, but I have many projects that I do online with people from all around the world. So really just go out there and share your work. That's something that I've learnt from being based at this university.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Great. In an effort to grab the bulls by the horn, is there anything else that you're curious about that you'd like to learn more of?
James York:
Yes, actually. This, I guess, is still on topic, but I'd like to learn more about game programming. I play a lot of games but I don't know how to code games. So I'd like to learn more about that personally.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Just programming and developing the actual digital games?
James York:
Yes, that's right. I'm extremely interested in this piece of software called Pico-8, P-I-C-O-8. It's a super restricted, limited interface and game system. But my background as ... I don't know if you know this, but I think this comes on to your next question, but I make something called Chiptune, which is 8-bit music using old Gameboys and Nintendo entertainment systems. But I'm very interested in limitations on creativity. So for example, the Gameboy, you only have four channels and certain sounds that you can create. Now, this Pico-8 software really appeals to me because of these heavy limitations you have and being creative within those limitations. So yeah, game programming, particularly in this software, if anyone has heard of it or maybe not. Yeah, it's called Pico-8, check it out.
Dr. Dave Eng:
So with Chiptune, that means you're composing music but can only use a certain number of sounds? Is that how it's set up?
James York:
Essentially, what you're doing is you're using the hardware which is in that console, if you like. So if you're using a Gameboy, it has a sound chip which is able to output four sounds at the same time, a noise sound, a wave table loop sound, and then two pulse sounds. So within there, within that limitation, I love to see people be creative and just really push what the Gameboy can output. That's why I'm interested in Pico-8 because, again, it's a very, very small limited game development environment. I think I could be quite creative in that.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Great. Yeah, I know that one of the aspects that really motivates designers is working with limitations, and I think working with a limited essentially set of components, it's working within that same set that you can't really deviate from this. This is what you have to work with, and this is what you have to produce out of.
James York:
Totally agree. Totally agree.
Dr. Dave Eng:
James, is there anyone that you recommend that I interview next?
James York:
In terms of game-based learning, I think I mentioned Zack just now. Have you interviewed him yet?
Dr. Dave Eng:
No, I have not, but I know that we had both connected with Zack, I think, individually on ... I believe he might've been interviewed by Rob Alvarez on Professor Game, but I know that I'm familiar with the website Hey Listen Games.
James York:
Yep, I think he'd be someone interesting to get in touch with, because, again, a practitioner doing things in the classroom and also sharing his work online, that would be great. I think one of the titans at the moment in this field is a Paul Darvasi. Have you heard of Paul? Yeah, Paul Darvasi. He's doing some incredible things with, for example, alternative? Alternate? Yeah, alternate reality games in the classroom, and just huge projects that span semesters using very innovative games. Yeah, he'd be somebody that I would recommend as well.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Great. I'll have to look them both up. Then James, last question. If listeners are interested and they want to connect with you online, where is the best place for them to get in touch with you?
James York:
They can get in touch with me on Twitter. My username is Cheap Shot. Yep, just Cheap Shot, and the Ludic Language Pedagogy Slack is open now. If you just go to LLPjournal.org, you can find information about that there, and finally, Discord. I use that quite a lot. I can send you my Discord username to you, Dave, for them to be shared. Sorry.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Great, and I'll include all of that in the show notes with your biography.
James York:
Thanks so much.
Dr. Dave Eng:
All right. Today on the show we are joined by James York. I hope you found this episode useful. If you'd like to learn more, the great place to start is my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamification. You can also get a full transcript of this episode, including links to references in a description or show notes. Thanks for joining me. Again, I'm your host, Dave Eng from Games-Based Learning by University XP. On Experienced Points, we explore different ways we learn from games. If you liked this post, please consider commenting, sharing and subscribing.
Dr. Dave Eng:
Subscribing is absolutely free and ensures that you'll get the next episode of Experienced Points delivered directly to you. I'd also love it if you took some time to rate the show. I live to lift others with learning, so if you found this episode useful, consider sharing it with someone who could benefit. Also make sure to visit University XP online at universityxp.com. University XP is also on Twitter at University_XP, and on Facebook as University XP. Also, please feel free to email me anytime. My email address is dave@universityxp.com Game on.