Johanna Pirker, Researcher & Lecturer at Graz University of Technology

88 Names: For those people who are not familiar with you and what you do, do you mind telling us who you are and what you do and how your work intersects with virtual reality technology?

Johanna: My name is Johanna Pirker, and I am a professor and researcher for games and virtual reality experiences at the Graz University of Technology in Austria and director of the Game Lab Graz. My background is computer science, but I am also a passionate game developer (and gamer) and work closely with the games industry and organize the largest annual game developer conference in Austria. However, I am probably best known for my work in VR and games for learning experiences, which also got me on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

88 Names: What makes a good educational game?

Johanna: Game development is an extremely interdisciplinary field, where the expertise of technicians, artists, musicians, business experts, etc. come together. And especially for educational games, it brings together (pedagogical) experts of the subject to be learned, but also game design expertise. If I, as a game designer, were to develop a physics game, it would be pure fun, but probably wouldn’t teach anyone anything about physics. Conversely, if a physicist were to develop a physics game, it would probably be very educational, but might not be any fun at all. I also think it’s important that games are only used when they add value compared to other learning media like books, videos, or classical instructions. An educational game shouldn’t be developed for the sake of developing a game, but because it might convey a topic easier, faster, more motivating, or just explain it differently. For instance, to allow experimenting with chemistry simulations which are otherwise too expensive, complex, or not visible. Or support travels in time or space, which are just not possible.

88 Names: Are there subjects that are particularly well-suited to being taught or explored through gaming? Conversely, are there subjects that video games can’t teach well?

Johanna: One topic that fascinates me a lot in my work is the potential of games or VR experiences to teach empathy. I think there is hardly a medium that is as well suited for this as interactive video games. In a book or a movie I will be always this third person looking at the experiences of others. In a game, however, I am immersed, I can actually be there, see the world through other people’s eyes and make decisions.

To give you an example: In the video game This War of Mine (11 Bit Studios) I experience the war. But not as a war hero, but as a civilian, just trying to survive, and trying to save the lives of my family or friends sitting in a bunker with me. We just want to have enough water and food and stay healthy. When I was playing the game, my friend got very sick in that bunker and I knew I had to get out of the bunker and find medicine for her, or she would die. So I went out of the bunker and tried to find medicine. I found this old couple who had medicine but needed it themselves to survive. The game now forced me to make a difficult decision: either I take the medicine away from the old couple to save my friend, which would probably cost their lives; or I go back to my bunker and watch my friend die.

Another example is Path Out (Causa Creations), a game that tells the story of a refugee from Syria to Austria and reminds us that for many people this difficult, dangerous, and painful experience of escaping their own home is not a game, but reality.

I think here you can see very well that games can be true empathy machines. Something we desperately need in our society, especially nowadays.

At our Game Lab we also develop many game-like simulation environments to make experiences accessible that are otherwise often too expensive, too complicated, or too dangerous. This would be, for example, complex physics experiments in laboratories, for which many schools and learners would not have the resources.

88 Names: A common source of controversy with video games is that they allow you to engage in (simulated) anti-social and immoral acts. I have games on my PC that cast me in the role of a gangster, a dictator, or an abusive prison warden. Even games that don’t require you to do bad things often give you that option. How does this aspect of play fit into the idea of games as an educational tool?

Johanna: We have always been attracted to action entertainment. Action games, as well as action movies, give us a sense of excitement. They allow us to escape the real world and its consequences for a short time, to learn about new worlds and to slip into other roles that would otherwise be unthinkable for us. We can make decisions – knowing there are no consequences – that we otherwise could or would not make. Many games allow us to make good choices or morally bad choices. But it is not the choice that is important. It is this decision-making process and also being confronted with the consequences that is an important learning process. There are also several studies that show that there is no correlation between playing action games and violent behavior. Nevertheless, I think it is important that certain taboos are not broken (e.g. most games do not allow killing children) and we also need to understand that media glorifying violence can have an influence on people who already have a tendency towards violence. Here, however, the problem does not lie with the media, but must be addressed to the individual.

Also, I think when we talk about games it’s also important to emphasize the diversity of games. There are so many kinds of games – just like in the world of books and movies. There are not only action movies or porn, nor are there only science books. I personally enjoy gaming experiences that immerse me in an interesting, impactful story for 2-3 hours.

88 Names: Working off the above question, can catharsis via actions/behaviors done in a game be utilized in educational contexts?

Johanna: There are, for instance, research studies that show that playing action games improves visuomotor control and the responsiveness of the sensorimotor system.

I think war games are also often important tools for education. War, unfortunately, is reality and not fiction. In Arma 3: Laws of War, for example, different perspectives of war are presented and the player becomes a member of a fictional humanitarian NGO and is tasked to clear mines. An important and realistic side of war people should also see and understand.

These games also help us to learn about the consequences of decisions. To link this with traditional educational games: when I design a physics game, I allow players to perform experiments that might be too dangerous in real life. It’s precisely through failure that players learn; fortunately, in a safe environment and without consequences.

88 Names: Even societies with very permissive attitudes towards play have cultural taboos. Here in America, I can play at being a serial killer or a Wehrmacht general, but a management game about running a slave plantation would probably be considered too offensive to publish. In your own role as a game designer, has there ever been a subject you wanted to explore in a video game format that was just too controversial?

Johanna: In my current developments, I’m often interested in players’ confrontations with issues that are uncomfortable. Games are a great medium for conveying empathy. And there are quite a few issues in our society that still need to be worked through.

88 Names: What are the potential pitfalls of using emerging VR/AR and gaming technology to educate? Are there areas of education that technology still hasn’t quite progressed to the point of providing an answer or means?

Johanna: The technologies are already very mature. We now have to pay more attention to the development of qualitative content and, above all, involve the human factor more. For digital educational experiences such as VR/AR applications, it is essential that the needs of learners and teachers are considered equally. Unfortunately, many applications focus mainly on the learner and do not involve the needs of the teacher. This, of course, increases the resistance of teachers to use such technologies in the classroom. The appropriate pedagogical concepts must also be considered for individual subjects and, if necessary, new pedagogical concepts for the new technology must be developed.

VR/AR setups should also be easy, fast and practical for teachers to use and give the teacher (and learner) feedback, such as information about the students’ learning progress. Unfortunately, the setup of room-scale VR experiences is often still associated with time, space, and effort. I would like to see schools in the future having VR labs in addition to chemistry labs or physics labs, where various VR learning experiences (visits to Maya sites, moon excursions, virtual chemistry experiments) can be carried out at any time and without further setup effort.

88 Names: How do teachers respond to your ideas about using video games in education? Does their response vary by age?

Johanna: We try to involve teachers already during the development phase. The response is very good and many are happy that elements of teaching are being innovated. And these are not only young teachers. But as already mentioned above, usability must be ensured for everyone and the barrier to use the technology must be kept as low as possible.

88 Names: If you were going to pick three games to show someone the educational potential of the medium, what would they be?

Johanna: Of course, we have to put Minecraft on this list. Outside traditional learning games, I find the following games in particular can teach the potential of games through interactive narratives, immersive and up-close experiences and through difficult decisions in a very different way: This War Of Mine (see above), That Dragon, Cancer (narratives about a child’s fight against cancer) and Path Out (the player accompanies a Syrian refugee).

88 Names: What is your favorite game in general (educational or not)? Why do you like it, and how does it engage you on a personal level?

Johanna: That’s a very difficult question for me. For years, I’ve always played games of similar genres. That would include games like currently Cyberpunk, The Witcher, Fable, Mafia, or GTA. However, a few years ago I made a conscious decision to play a wider variety of games outside my comfort zone: other genres and especially more indie titles. I connected this with a personal hobby project called “A Year of Playing the World”, in which I tried to find and play games from all different countries around the world. This was a huge enrichment for my game design skills, but most of all a personal enrichment.

88 Names: Finally, do you have any upcoming games or other projects that you’d like people to know about?

Johanna: We have just recently received an Epic MegaGrant. This is a grant from Epic Games (the developers of Fortnite and the game engine Unreal Engine). With this we want to develop an extensible and modular VR educational game for various fields of STEM Education. Details will be posted regularly on our gamelabgraz.com page. Personally, I’m now also trying to use Twitch and YouTube more for game development teaching, science communication, and of course playing and talking about games.