#13: Gaming

Ian Bowie
Hello and welcome to AI unfiltered with me Ian Bowie and our resident expert, Michael Stormbom, where we will be talking about everything to do with AI in our modern digital society and what the future holds for all of us.

Okay, so today we’re gonna be talking about gaming and gamification and particularly within an educational context and how gaming technologies can actually be used to bring subjects to life for students. You know, there’s gaming as in just playing… I don’t know these games, are they are only names to me. Fortnite Call of Duty. I personally, I’m not a gamer. So you know, I mean, I think my gaming experience stopped with Pac Man and, and started to be a little while. Yeah, you know, I mean, I mean, I, you know, I mean, I was a kid when, when that ping pong game came along, we had those two things moving up and down, oh it was called Pong was it. I don’t even know what it was called. I played it. It was fun. And Pac Man was a lot of fun and…

Michael Stormbom
No, but we were we were talking in a previous episode about to you know, education. And, and I mean, providing this sort of like immersive experience. There is this one game series that I like is it’s called Assassin’s Creed. So that takes place in different like historical eras of the world. And obviously, it’s complete fiction, but it’s sort of sort of fun to run around in…

Ian Bowie
And why does it always have to be about killing things? Assassin’s Creed, you know, I mean, that’s like, a ninja thing, or,…

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, there’s a little bit of bloodshed.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, I was gonna say, Yeah, I mean, I remember playing something called Mortal Kombat, and I must admit, it was great fun.

Michael Stormbom
There are still Mortal Kombat games.

Ian Bowie
Okay, it’s probably a lot more sophisticated than when I was playing it. But yeah. But no, I mean, you know, I’ve got this idea. With with sort of the gaming, the gamification of education, yes. And there, you know, that’s when I start to get interested again. You know, can you imagine being part of the Roman Empire or a Viking? Wow. Yeah, landing on a beach in southern England. And, you know, going off into the interior and you know, what you find and…

Michael Stormbom
I think that’s part of the latest Assassin’s Creed game. There’s a lot of violence there as well. But…

Ian Bowie
Yeah, again, you know, sort of that actually, apparently the Vikings are largely misunderstood folk

Michael Stormbom
That they are that they are, yes.

Ian Bowie
they weren’t quite as violent as everyone else. Yeah. But no, I mean, you know, that’s what I would want it obviously and I think if it’s going to be at for educational purposes, I would want it to be a little bit more historically accurate. Yeah, no, that’s from but no, I mean, fantastic. I mean, for example,

Michael Stormbom
I mean, the technology to get like, it’s not 100% photorealistic of course, but it’s very, very, very, it’s not…

Ian Bowie
100% photorealistic yet.

Michael Stormbom
Yet, but it’s starting to be quite close here.

Ian Bowie
Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, because I mean, if you think about the way the different ways in which people learn, if you can gamify education, think about how much more immersive and interesting and motivating you can make that, especially for children who are not interested in, you know, the traditional forms of education with books and blackboards and…

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, it was. I mean, if you remember the Pokemon Go craze for some years back something that got people out and walking around and moving, moving. Yeah, exercising without actually realizing that they’re exercising. Yeah. And I mean, it’s a big sort of health issue that people who don’t exercise. And so that’s a that’s a big help.

Ian Bowie
Well, of course, a lot of these gaming teams like this, what’s it called again now? Online sports, what are they called? Now?

Michael Stormbom
E-sports.

Ian Bowie
E-sports? Yeah. They now have nutritionists and personal trainers. I mean, they recognize that you know, these people also need to move and it actually improves their cognitive abilities, as well. For sure. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah know, I mean, you know, using gamification, to encourage people to look after themselves. But it can be used in so many ways can’t it, for nutrition. It can be used for exercise, it can be used to teach you about something.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. And I mean, we’ve been talking about Duolingo before,Not to get into how the efficacy of Duolingo as a language learning app, but they use it but they do use this gamification techniques to keep you to keep you using it.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I would like to take that to a much, much more advanced level. You know, a lot of these okay, you said let’s not get into the efficacy of such things. But so many of these language learning programs, they’re really for beginners. Yeah, you know, I would like to take it to a level where you’ve got intermediate and above, where you could actually be walking along a Paris Street and then stop and have a conversation with a French person. Now that to me, that would be very cool.

Michael Stormbom
And it’d be sort of… because I mean, it’s a lot about this passive knowledge that you’re building. Not so much, you know, not so much about actively producing..

Ian Bowie
Of course, it’s it’s a lot of input. Yeah, yeah. Which you need.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. But you can’t really, you can’t really have a conversation. Because you’re not really teaching sort of… or learning

Ian Bowie
You’re getting the input, which is fine. That’s absolutely fair. That’s what you need when you are a beginner in a language, but there’s nothing to take you to the next level, yeah know, which is when you start to activate what you’ve learned,

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. You need to use languages.

Ian Bowie
And, you know, that’s what I’m really interested in is, is activating this knowledge. Not just in language, but in anything, you know, it’s like well, I don’t know history. I mean, that’s something else I’m very interested in, you know, wouldn’t it be fantastic to be able to go back in time, to whatever century and whatever decade within that century that you choose, and interact with somebody of that time? Yeah, I mean, I don’t know how far away we are from creating such things. Okay, of course. There’s one big issue. There’s funding, you know, this kind of thing. It takes ching ching money money.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, I mean, those like high high end like games, they cost millions to produce, they are extremely expensive.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, you know, there are two kinds of gamification here out there. There are game games like Fortnite and Call of Duty and Mortal Kombat, and then there are educational games, but how do you monify the educational sector? You know, is it possible, you know, a book is a book is a book, you can sell the books and they also don’t take that much to actually create, you know, they don’t take millions, they might take some tens of thousands. But the minute they’re published, they’re out of date. They’ve been out of date, probably for months and months before they’re even published. Whereas at least you know, with with some kind of AI enabled game, it can be kept up to date in real time. But the people who are doing that where do they make the money?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, indeed. I mean, if you want to really go into like very immersive educational experience, I think I don’t think that business model quite exists yet. So we have to see how that how that develops? Yeah, because I mean, just developing this very high-end… it definitely requires a huge upfront investment.

Ian Bowie
Or is there a possibility to create a hybrid? You know, you were talking about this, this thing? Where you actually can do that Viking thing and land on the beach in southern England and off you go. So is it possible to actually create a game that people will pay to play, but can also be used within an educational context?

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly why I brought up the Assassin’s Creed series because I mean, okay, yes, there’s heavy fictional elements. And I think in particular that latest Viking game has gotten criticized for taking great liberties with the thing, but I mean, in principle, you can throw you can sneak in historical knowledge.

Ian Bowie
Sneak it in, but right okay. But the trouble is that often, for example, the kids they don’t know how to differentiate between what is historical fiction, what is historical facts.

Michael Stormbom
No, that’s true.

Ian Bowie
So so the the bigger question here or the bigger issue is, would it be possible to gamify history in a way that makes it interesting, that stays true to historical facts.

Michael Stormbom
I think that’s an interesting question. I guess if you’re if you make it very colorful and add explosions, then I think you can…

Ian Bowie
So the only… I was gonna say there are lots of explosions in history. So so the the only way to do it, you’ve always got to have an element of violence.

Michael Stormbom
Not necessarily a element of violence, but it’s the sort of thing that grabs your attention. I think that’s the I mean, so

Ian Bowie
it’d be very easy to teach people about the Spanish Inquisition for example, and the Salem witch trials. And anything that involves killing or torturing people would be an easy one, wouldn’t it?

Michael Stormbom
I think that would be the least challenging.

Ian Bowie
You know, basically, I mean, European history is pretty bloody.

Michael Stormbom
Oh yes. And as we can see, the present is pretty bloody.

Ian Bowie
And still is. Yeah. So, of course, it would be nice to get these kinds of things out there and into the hands of educators. But whoever develops it, they have to make money. It’s it’s, you know, it’s pure and simple. Yeah. Yeah. You know, unless you can get yourself a billionaire backer, who is, you know, enough of an altruist to say, it doesn’t need to make money, just do it.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. Or of course, one could have a chat with the gaming industry, which is a multi billion dollar industry. Or maybe could some of that money be spent?

Ian Bowie
I don’t. I mean, I have actually thought about that. Contacting some of these game companies and saying, Look, you know, you can afford to do this.

Michael Stormbom
I mean, we’ve been talking I mean in the future, if automation automates away more jobs than it creates there, there has been this talk about a robot tax. Yes. So I mean, and…

Ian Bowie
That money could then be used to do more useful things.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, for the betterment of society. Yeah, that sort of thing. Why not?

Ian Bowie
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all right. It didn’t use AI. But there was a program that I worked on. I think you’re familiar with it. It was an English language program called Lazenby, an English village. And part of the idea behind that is you know, you can walk around the village and there were locals and locals were interviewed and you know, there’s different questions that were asked and etc, etc, etc. And to take that to some kind of gamification level you know, make it much more immersive, much more interactive.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, I mean, I think would definitely be the thing.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, I think actually, you could also accelerate kids learning as well, are they…

Michael Stormbom
I think so.

Ian Bowie
Think about how you know how sticky games like Fortnite are for kids. You know, if you left them alone to their own devices, that’s all they do. Play it all the time.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. I don’t know if it is true or not, but I mean, supposedly, for example, kids. knowledge of English has improved, because…

Ian Bowie
Oh it’s true. Yes. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. beyond a doubt.

Michael Stormbom
Because they’re playing this game and they’re talking in…

Ian Bowie
Because they’re networked and they’re talking to people all over the world. Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, that’s an absolute given. It absolutely has improved kids’ English. And of course, that also brings us you know, we’re talking about gamification, within education. What should we be gamifying?

Michael Stormbom
No, indeed. So I mean, that’s an interesting one, as well as, what to what to gamify. And really, what is the future that we should prepare our kids for?

Ian Bowie
Yeah, well, I think this is the one that a lot of educators are struggling with at the moment and a lot of governments are ignoring because they haven’t got a clue. But you know, going back to education. No, I mean, if there’s anybody out there with bags full of money listening to this, live, I do some I was gonna say we’d like to do some good for the future generations of the world. Get in touch with us, because we have lots of ideas.

Michael Stormbom
Shoot us an email and we’ll…

Ian Bowie
absolutely we’ll be delighted to talk to you. Yeah. Or with you. Yeah. But no, I mean, you know, just just, I think it’d be fantastic. Yeah, to bring subjects alive. Actually.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah. And I mean, I mean, definitely disorder immersive experience. I think there’s plenty that could be done with…

Ian Bowie
Imagine if you could talk if you could discuss mathematics with Alan Turing, or Einstein.

Michael Stormbom
That would be quite interesting. Physics, but yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, even on the sort of, like the shally we say non-educational gaming, there’s actually plenty of like health benefits to that in terms of like a cognitive and there’s the hand eye coordination, mental well being. So there are any number of sort of benefits that arise from also sort of gaming for the sake of gaming, I suppose.

Ian Bowie
I think it’s a bit of a double edged sword because I mean,

Michael Stormbom
There’s a balance obviously. Yeah, of course.

Ian Bowie
Because I mean, a lot of the people that I know that have been big into gaming, we’re also big into things like energy drinks and kebabs and pizza and…

Michael Stormbom
No indeed and as we just discussed a lack of exercise, it’s gonna be a big, big problem going forward. So no, definitely I think there has to be, there has to be a balance. I mean, it certainly there can be great benefits of gaming, but on the other hand, of course, gaming addiction and so forth.

Ian Bowie
Of course, what about games where you can’t progress to the next level until you’ve run five times around the block?

Michael Stormbom
That should be a feature.

Ian Bowie
Yeah, you know, I don’t know how on earth you would you would sort of, you know, or the game would know that you’ve done the exercise. But…

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, well, there are those exercise games as well, where you have…

Ian Bowie
But they are boring is if people don’t want to do that, but if you’ve got a game that people are hooked on, and they’ve got to get to the next level. Yeah, and you can only do it if you do 50 pushups, and we’re watching you then people are going to do a bit of fun. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Or 10 pull ups on the bar, or whatever.

Michael Stormbom
Well, it’s sort of like puzzle games and like where you actually exercise your brain. Not just like shooting and wanton construction, but actually thinking…

Ian Bowie
Vocabulary games. Like for example, I mean, and also crossword puzzles. I mean, I’ve never been very good. I mean, I consider myself to have a reasonably good active vocabulary. But I’ve never been particularly good at crossword puzzles. I think I think crossword puzzles rely on a slightly different part of the sort of cerebral cortex to work them out. Yeah, but word you know, scrabble for example. Great. Love it. And anything trivia based fantastic. So yeah, why not? Absolutely. Does it… again, you see, I don’t know. You know, that they’re saying, Oh, you’ve got to keep your mind active and everything else. But I know an awful lot of old academics who are all suffering from dementia. So, you know, highly intelligent people who’ve got their doctorates and they’ve worked in academia all their lives. What you know, why couldn’t you wear your brain out? You know, if you think about it, if you if you overuse anything, it wears out…

Michael Stormbom
Well I mean, just talking about two burnouts I mean, of course, yesterday like a mental mental exhaustion. I mean, certainly. Certainly your mind is not going on perform as well relative to…

Ian Bowie
Well, you wouldn’t have thought so would you know, so I don’t see why. It’s not possible to wear your brain out simply from overuse. I mean, I know myself, you know, I write children’s stories. I can’t come up with a new children’s story every single day. Or if I did I be bloody tired at the end of it. You know, give me…

Michael Stormbom
You could do that for like a month and you can just gradually release them…

Ian Bowie
I’d be exhausted and I can guarantee that the game on the last sorry, the game the the book on the last day of the month, and the story isn’t going to be of the quality of maybe the first week’s worth of stories.

Michael Stormbom
Yeah, no, I can. I can imagine that. Yeah, I have this vague idea that Terry Pratchett you know, that he, like he wrote 400 words every day, just to just to stay in the habit of writing. So,

Ian Bowie
Right. Yeah, I actually are of course I’ve read a lot of children’s books when I was a child and also to my own children, but I try not to read other authors’ works because I don’t want to think that I’m taking ideas from them or you know, I want my books and my stories to be completely me and original. Whatever original really means. Yeah.

Michael Stormbom
Well, aren’t there only the seven archetypical stories.

Ian Bowie
that’s right. Of course there are what what I admitted one of the stories that I wrote a while back is basically based around the story of the troll that lived under the bridge, you know, that stopped people from crossing with a little bit of a twist in it. So ya know, I mean, everything leads back to Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm. If no, and even their ideas probably came from ancient folk tales.

Michael Stormbom
Of course. Yeah. Well, if no one has written that book yet and I think the story of the internet troll who lives under the bridge should someone who definitely write that one.

Ian Bowie
Why not? Yeah, who uses AI to stop people doing things. Yeah, there’s plenty of those around aren’t there, internet trolls.

Michael Stormbom
Just sitting there with their laptop under the bridge. Just bashing people.

Ian Bowie
But I’m a big believer in constantly trying to add to your knowledge and especially I mean, you know, of course because

Michael Stormbom
Lifelong learning that’s a thing.

Ian Bowie
Oh, yeah. And, of course, I’m a big believer in words. I love words fascinated by words. So, you know, word games. Absolutely. I mean, I think I think we’re pretty much running down on the 20 minutes that we decided to allocate to each individual subject. But hopefully, we’ve given people who are listening something to think about, you know, the future of our children depend on us getting their education right. And hopefully, AI in one way or another is going to have quite a big role to play.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai