Learning through Game Modding

In this episode I unpack El-Nasr and Smith’s (2006) publication titled “Learning through game modding,” which describes two case studies on modifying video games to learn software development and design, as well as programming, artistic, and video game concepts.

Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is Jared O'Leary as
you may have noticed by now every single
week it's going to alternate between an
interview and unpacking scholarship and
this week I'm gonna start a little mini
series on modding today's episode is
going to be on some practical
implications of modding or remix in a
video game and then two weeks from now
we're going to have an episode that
dives deeper into what mod culture is
and two weeks after that we're going to
take a look at a study that looks at the
potential motivations and implications
of people who engage in modding now if
you don't know what modding is I will
talk about it in this episode and if you
want to learn more about it outside of
the three episodes that I'm a record on
this you can actually take a look at
chapter two in my dissertation which I
will link to in the show notes in that
chapter it has a summary of what mod
culture is and kind of points to some
more scholarship that I won't be
discussing today so today's article is
titled learning through game modding it
is by Maggie
Nesser and Brian Smith and as always
apologies if I ever mispronounce any
names and as a friendly reminder you can
find links to google scholar profiles in
the show notes so you can find out more
scholarship by these authors and you can
also take a look at the this actual
publication if you're interested in
reading it okay so here's the abstract
quote there has been a recent increase
in the number of game environments or
engines that allow users to customize
their gaming experiences by building and
expanding game behavior this article
describes the use of modifying or
modding existing games as a means to
learn computer science mathematics
physics and aesthetic principles we
described two exploratory case studies
of game modding in classroom settings to
illustrate skills learned by students as
a result of modding existing games we
also discuss the benefits of learning
computer science skills example 3d
graphics and mathematics event based
programming software engineering etc
through large design projects and how
game design motivates students to
acquire and apply these skills we
describe our use of multiple game
modding environments in our classes in
addition we describe how different
engines can be used to focus students on
the acquisition of particular skills and
concepts in quote however to summarize
this study in one sentence I
say this article describes two case
studies on modifying video games to
learn software development and design as
well as programming artistic and video
game concepts the authors begin by
talking about some of the benefits of
modding in particularly they talk about
him instead of creating a program or a
video game from scratch modding can
actually save a lot of time cost and
expertise in particular they talk about
how a video game is typically made by a
large number of individuals working
together on a project however when
you're modding you can actually build
off of their efforts is essentially
standing on the shoulders of giants to
just kind of customize a game to make it
work in the way that you want rather
than having to go through and be like
okay I need to record all the sounds and
I need to develop all the characters and
I need to program all the characters so
that they have fluid movement and
responsive player controls etc so
instead of having to do that kind of
tedious stuff you can actually augment
those things that other people have
already created in addition there's a
quote on page 2 that says quote since
modding begins with popular proven game
concepts the resulting variations are
more likely to resemble games that
players modders are accustomed to than
if they had to build entire game
infrastructures on their own unquote I
think that's a really important quote to
take into consideration to kind of
situate this in to a k-12 classroom
setting think of modding as remix in a
project in scratch so somebody else has
created something in scratch and you go
into it and you're going to vary it in
some way so you're going to change the
code you might change some of the
sprites or some of the sounds and things
like that and if you're not using
scratch think of it as just taking any
kind of a video game or program and you
are making it do something that it
wasn't originally intended to do so an
example that I brought up multiple times
is i modded the game minecraft to put
our dogs in it in to make quest for my
wife and some items that I know that she
would like and whatnot and rather than
having to recreate to the entire game
minecraft from scratch on my own all I
had to do was go into the actual game
files and kind of add in my own code
that augmented it in a way that I found
personally meaningful so on page 2 the
author's talk about how
by modifying existing videogames
students or kids can learn by design so
here's a quote on page to quote during
the design process skills such as
analysis synthesis evaluation and
revision must be used providing
opportunities for learning content and
metacognitive skills such as planning
and monitoring students can receive
ongoing feedback from peers and experts
when constructing working artifacts
feedback also comes during the process
of construction as students work to
understand how and why their designs
fail can be optimized and so on finally
real design problems have multiple
solutions allowing students to see and
evaluate alternatives in quote now I
think there are several really excellent
points in in that particular quote right
there now one of the things that I
really love about working with computers
in programming is if you have a platform
that allows you to modify something and
you can instantly see the results it
gives you instantaneous feedback so for
example if you change a variable and
scratch while the program is running
you'll immediately see maybe the
character get faster or slower or
something like that this makes it really
easy to modify a program and kind of
learn from experimentation and potential
failures and ways to optimize some
things however if you're working in some
kind of environment that requires you to
compile a program that can take a long
time so even just modifying like one
variable like changing the speed from
five to ten and then hitting that
compile button it might take several
minutes and then you'll test it out and
go oh well that failed and then you go
back and modify the variable again and
change it from like five to seven and
then you have to hit compile and it's
just kind of a waste of time so if you
have a platform that allows you to see
instantaneous results in whatever it is
that you're modifying I highly recommend
using that when re mixing or modifying a
program and a little bit further in the
introduction the authors mentioned that
game design in particular it can be very
motivating for students for example on
page three here's a quote students
enrolled in experimental computer
science classes that use game design
averaged higher grades than control
classrooms
additionally 88% of the game students
continued in the major compared to 47%
for the control groups combining
constructionist pedagogy with game
designs
seems to help some students dig deeper
into computer science fundamentals and
quote so this is with undergraduate
students enrolled in a computer science
program they found significant
difference between people who modified
video games or rather engaged in game
design and people who did not I'm a
little bit skeptical as those results
I'm kind of curious like how the design
of the study was but I just haven't read
it just seeing those differences it's
pretty drastic and makes me go well
maybe there's another reason for that
but that's no knock on the authors that
they're citing I'm sure it's a good
study and again the authors bring up
that while these studies are great and
it shows that students might be really
engaged in video game design however
there's a significant amount of time
cost and expertise that can be
significant barriers when trying to
engage in video game design so what they
recommend is an alternative which is
rather than creating a video game from
scratch not in scratch but from scratch
from nothing actually going in to an
existing one or a semi completed one and
modifying that to create something new
now one of the interesting things that
they point out is that modding practices
are engaged with by a lot of people in
the video game world usually for leisure
however what's interesting about mod
culture is that a lot of modders end up
getting hired by video game companies so
a modder might remix a game or change it
and add in some new content and it could
get the attention of that developer and
sometimes those the developers will
actually reach out to the modders and
offer them contracts to come work for
them there's actually been several
different studies on how mod culture and
modding practices are often viewed as
kind of like a pipeline into the video
game industry however again this is also
something that can just be done in
leisure for fun so the first case study
is actually on high school students who
are in Pennsylvania in a school and
there are 20 students who are rolled in
an IT class and they have three
consecutive days with three hours each
day to work on the game money and the
mods that they actually worked on most
for the video game Warcraft 3 now
Warcraft 3 is a real-time strategy game
where it's you versus enemies and you're
going to basically build up a base
recruit a bunch of soldiers and then
you're going to use those soldiers to
attack an enemy or enemies I honestly
forget if this was a multiplayer game or
not I played this at least a decade or
two ago however what's really
interesting is the students who modded
this game actually turned it into games
like a football game or a Tetris style
game or whatever so through modding
practices is they actually completely
change not only how the game looked but
the actual gameplay itself and what the
overall purpose of a particular game was
now an interesting point that is made on
page 7 is that students did not simply
go through a lesson that show them how
to do everything and then they just kind
of create their own variations upon that
they actually talked about how these
students learned how to do the mods by
yes consulting instructors but also
consulting web resources such as like
message boards and tutorials that
existed outside of the classroom itself
and I think this is a really important
thing to note that if you are going to
engage in any kind of modding practices
I highly recommend having a an abundance
of resources that kind of can guide
students in different directions and
these can be resources that you create
or curate so for example when I engaged
in modding practices in the k-8 classes
that I worked with I had a bunch of
tutorials that kind of showed you how to
do things for some platforms but then in
other platforms
I simply had in comments so like in
scratch I might have had a completed
project but I included comments in there
that showed what each chunk or function
of code would do and then I'd always end
those comments with questions that would
encourage further modifications so for
example if a comment was discussing how
player controls work at the end I would
say how would you make it so this player
moved faster or slower or how would you
make it so that this player move like
they were on the moon or swimming
underwater etc so getting kids to think
through different ways that can modify
things in order to augment the game in a
new way that wasn't originally intended
now the second case study that is in
this particular publication is on 35
undergraduate students from Pennsylvania
State University who are in the
department of computer science and
engineering and School of Information
sciences and technology that is
the longest school title I've ever heard
I think they should win an award now in
this particular class students worked in
groups of five to develop a game of
their choice using any of the engines
that they learned in the first half of a
semester now one of the interesting best
things that they point out in this
particular case study is they talk about
how students didn't have a great
knowledge of basic geometry in vectors
so when they were trying to do something
in the game and we're kind of stuck
because of their lack of understanding
on it the instructors actually gave some
lectures to kind of help understand
those concepts and then afterwards
students reported that they understood
the content better and could apply it in
their games now the reason why I point
this out is because it's interesting
that using a constructionist process
where you're supposed to kind of like
learn by creating something but they're
also combining it with direct
instruction now I actually mentioned in
a podcast that's going to release in a
couple of weeks in an interview with
John Stapleton that I don't think direct
instruction should be avoided at all
cost in favor of more progressive
approaches that are in alignment with
constructivism or constructionism
however I do think that it needs to be
limited so it's not like okay we're
gonna lecture for 90% of the class and
then the last 10% you're actually gonna
create something so there needs to be
some kind of a balance between active
creation and then kind of like the
passive receiving of information now
that being said I also want to point out
that if you are engaging in
constructionist practices and you're
saying hey here's a resource that can
help you out just because you're not the
one who's giving the lecture they're
still technically getting direct
instruction from the resource that you
were providing to them so that's kind of
to provide a little counter-argument to
myself on that note one of the really
interesting things that they mentioned
on page 14 is quote we deduced that
students didn't understand the
implication of these concepts until they
applied them in a complex and relatively
large scale project in quote in other
words this is going back to what I
mentioned before in a previous podcast
about situated learning you need to
learn some kind of a concept or practice
or understanding within a moment where
you actually apply that understanding
otherwise it's decontextualized with
what you're going to need it for so one
of the famous examples that a lot of
people bring up is
math classes and I'm sure many people
listening can reminisce and think about
how they might have had a similar
experience where it's like okay I'm
learning how to solve all these
equations but I don't know when I'm
actually ever going to use these and
from what I have heard from math
educators is that that they kind of get
a bad rap and things have changed in
math education so it's more situated
within something useful however
unfortunately it still has the
reputation of being decontextualized
from useful applications so that being
said this kind of also reinforces the
idea that you don't need to sit there
and lecture on something out of context
but if instead you give an environment
where kids are trying to apply their
understandings in a situation where it's
needed then that can actually lead to a
better understanding of that concept or
practice now an interesting finding out
of this second case study is they
actually compared how interested
students were in an assignment where
they were kind of had to design a video
game environment and move a character
around versus a second type of
assignment where students had to modify
an existing video game the Unreal
Tournament video game and what they
found is 46.2% of people who engaged in
the first example where they are
developing a an environment and moving
the character enjoyed that process or
were interested in it however eighty
eight point four percent of people were
engaged or interested in the Unreal
Tournament example where they were
modifying an existing video game so this
demonstrates that this could be a highly
motivating experience for some kids so
the discussion for this particular study
leads to four different categories the
categories are software development and
design programming concepts artistic
concepts and game concepts so those are
the four categories of skills and
concepts as students engage in so let me
unpack them so this is on page 17 when
engaging in game design or modification
students will engage in software
development and design that is comprised
of teamwork building critiques and
reflections on other's works project
scheduling project management iterations
and refinement and prototyping so all
those things that can be really helpful
for any kind of content area just not
just computer science in general however
for the computer programming concepts
that are learned
they mentioned that students learn
threading and event based programming
object-oriented programming component
based development and software patterns
and then under the artistic concepts
they mentioned that when engaging in
game modding that students learn
lighting effects architecture design and
character design and then under the game
concepts they mentioned that students
learn game design game mechanics and
balancing game aesthetics and gameplay
so in other words to kind of summarize
the main gist of this when you're
engaging in video game modification
practices one students might be very
motivated with by this if they are
interested in video games too they can
learn a lot of things that are relevant
not only into computer science but to
other areas areas as well and as you'll
hear in follow-up episodes were a kind
of unpack mod culture some more it's not
just in visual art concepts but there's
also like sound PAC mods where people
modify sounds and there's all sorts of
other domains that this can potentially
connect with this also allows students
to have a very quick onboarding into
creating something that can be
interesting to them so rather than
having to go from a blank page in an IDE
create something over many months to
just make it so that a character can
like walk forward and backwards you can
start with an already existing game that
is already functioning or maybe even
partially functioning and then adding in
new things that make it do something
different and this can be done as early
as like kindergarten if you were to
let's say you scratch jr. you could if
using like an iPad or some kind of
device where you can share your projects
you could share an existing project with
kids and just ask them to change it or
even if you don't have that ability you
can simply say okay kids for the first
half of the class you're going to work
on this project and you're then going to
pass it to a neighbor on the second half
of the class and they're going to add to
it or modify it in some way and then at
the very end we're going to talk about
what you did and what you were able to
do with another person's project so
that's kind of an example of how you can
use this in kindergarten and above now
in the curriculum that I created for the
kids that I work with I had a lot of
examples of completed or Simic
completed projects and again one of the
important things that I want to
emphasize is that I included a bunch of
comments and questions that really kind
of guided kids to understand what they
could potentially do by experimenting
with changing the variables or adding in
new sets of code inside of the various
algorithms they were modifying so if you
haven't tried game modding yet or just
modding or remix inning in general I
highly recommend experimenting with it
in some of your projects so whether it's
giving them a completed project and
having them read the comments and
questions and figure out what they can
do or maybe even giving them a completed
project and asking them to create the
comments that explain how this project
works or maybe giving them a semi
completed project that's like well the
character moves but the second player
doesn't move so how can you modify this
game to make it so the second player
moves and then turn it into some kind of
a game of your choice
so those are some different options for
you now I do have some lingering
questions or thoughts for this
particular study so one of my lingering
questions when going through this
article is I wonder why do some coding
platforms encourage modding or remix
practices kind of like scratch which is
community base and it's super easy to
just click a button and then you've
remixed somebody else's project while
other platforms do not afford such
possibilities I'm wondering if there's a
specific reason why people are choosing
to not encourage or enable such
practices because there is a lot of
scholarship out there on how modding can
be very motivating or can be a really
great opportunity to learn computer
science and other disciplinary concepts
and practices as demonstrated in this
particular study so a second lingering
question that I have is if modding
practices are so great why not do them
all the time in other words at what
point should we encourage developing
something from a blank slate instead of
modding as existing code
well I personally know as somebody who's
engaged in modding practices and there's
somebody who's facilitated modding
practices with elementary and middle
school kids I know that this can be a
very beneficial thing but I also know
that it can be really beneficial to
start from a blank page and learn
through those processes of thinking
through ok if I want to make a character
do X Y & Z I need
creates functions that do XY and Z so
how do I start creating those functions
and how are they going to all kind of
work into interdependently and
interconnected lis however I know that
can also be very frustrating for kids so
if if there's any recommendation that I
can give is rather than picking one end
of the spectrum or the other in terms of
two mod or not two mod I would say give
both options and everything in between
so you can be like hey kids if you're
interested in modding you can do that as
long as you're not just sitting there
and changing colors of things but
actually changing the code cool awesome
but if you'd rather create something
from a blank page and go from there
awesome you can do that too now to kind
of argue with that approach I have heard
from several software engineers or
computer programmers who say you almost
never start anything from a blank page
you're almost always starting from what
other people have already done so
modding practices are very common even
outside of the game world so I hope that
introduction to modding practices
through this particular study was useful
for to you the next two unpacking
scholarship episodes will kind of unpack
mod culture a little bit more however
next week is going to be an interview
just as a friendly reminder if you want
to actually read the entire paper you
can find that in the show notes and
that's available at jared O'Leary comm
and just click on the CSKA podcast you
should also be able to find it in your
podcast app by clicking the link below
and it'll take you directly to these
show notes if you haven't done so
already I would love it if you could
share this with somebody else into the
broader community that would mean a lot
to me because I'm just trying to create
a bunch of free resources that help out
other educators and with that I want to
thank you so much for listening to this
episode and I hope you look forward to
next week's interview

Article

El-Nasr, M. S., & Smith, B. K. (2006). Learning Through Game Modding. ACM Computers in Entertainment, 4(1), 1–20.

Abstract

“There has been a recent increase in the number of game environments or engines that allow users to customize their gaming experiences by building and expanding game behavior. This article describes the use of modifying, or modding, existing games as a means to learn computer science, mathematics, physics, and aesthetic principles. We describe two exploratory case studies of game modding in classroom settings to illustrate skills learned by students as a result of modding existing games. We also discuss the benefits of learning computer sciences skills (e.g., 3D graphics/mathematics, event-based programming, software engineering, etc.) through large design projects and how game design motivates students to acquire and apply these skills. We describe our use of multiple game modding environments in our classes. In addition, we describe how different engines can be used to focus students on the acquisition of particular skills and concepts.”

Author Keywords

Experimentation, design, games and education, game engines and classrooms, learning and design.

My One Sentence Summary

This article describes two case studies on modifying video games to learn software development and design, as well as programming, artistic, and video game concepts.

Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

Why do some coding platforms encourage modding or remix practices while others do not afford such possibilities?
If modding practices are so great, why not do them all the time? In other words, at what point should we encourage developing something from a blank screen instead of modifying existing code?

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
- Computer Game Mods, Modders, Modding, and the Mod Scene
  - In this episode I unpack Scacchi’s (2010) publication titled “Computer game mods, modders, modding, and the mod scene,” which examines modding practices within the mod scene, and discusses the social and corporate pressures that influence this culture.
- How to Get Started with Computer Science Education
  - In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.
- Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry
  - In this episode I unpack Kücklich’s (2005) publication titled “Precarious playbour: Modders and the digital game industry,” which problematizes modding as a form of free labor.
- Understanding Women Modders Using the Serious Leisure Perspective
  - In this episode I unpack Trancred et al.’s (2020) publication titled “Understanding women modders using the serious leisure perspective,” which discusses a survey that investigated motivations for participating in modding practices among women.
- When the Game is Not Enough: Motivations and Practices Among Computer Game Modding Culture
  - In this episode I unpack Sotamaa's (2010) publication titled “When the game is not enough: Motivations and practices among computer game modding culture,” which is a case study that explores the attitudes, motivations, and practices of 29 people who create mods for the game Operation Flashpoint.
- More episodes related to modding || remixing
- More episodes related to video games
- All other episodes
Chapter Two of my dissertation briefly summarizes mod culture or the mod scene
- Direct link to the page
How I proposed through a mod I made for Minecraft
Example Scratch projects I’ve created with comments that encourage modding/remixing
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter