Why must we learn when we play?

A small introduction into the inevitability of learning through games.

I gave a presentation at a board game festival, so I decided to turn it into a blog post. The goal of the talk was a mental experiment aimed to augment the curriculum of a psychology major with board games. Our idea was that there are games that teach certain aspects of psychology implicitly and that they might be used as an addition to the traditional way of learning the information.

Learning is, of course, crucial to our ability to survive in our environment. A psychological definition might be: "a relatively permanent change in behavior or mental processes as a result of personal experience." Whatever designed the process of evolution, it could not predict the exact environment in which we would grow up. Hence we were equipped with a flexible system that makes us adapt to most environments we find ourselves in, courtesy of learning. We could have been born anywhere and learned any language spoken there. And since adaptation to our environment is key, we were decked out ways to learn, down to cell-level processes. If something is present this redundantly, you know it's important. Here are some types of learning:

- Classical conditioning: pairing up events

- Operant conditioning: pairing up our behavior with an outcome

- Observational learning: seeing what works for others and copying that

- Insight learning: "aha" moment

- Cognitive learning: using all your cognitive processes to gain understanding

How, then, does this apply to games? Though all these types of learning are present to some degree in every session, let us focus on observational learning and operant conditioning, as these take place in any game with more than 1 player. For social games, you might view them as the "social" and "game" aspects, respectively.

Operant conditioning was discovered by Burrhus Frederick Skinner, a psychologist who believed that we only learn from our behavior and that this is the only way to understand human nature. He said that whatever goes on in our brain is irrelevant. "Your eyes are the windows to something I don't care about," he may or may not have said to his valentine. Operant conditioning works by connecting your behavior to rewards and punishments. When we are rewarded, we are more likely to repeat a behavior. When we are punished, we are less likely to repeat that behavior. It was quite the discovery at the time. He also developed something called a operant conditioning chamber, or a Skinner box. It's an environment designed by a researcher with the goal of teaching specific behaviors. For example, there might be a button that, when pressed, gives an animal food. When the animal presses the button, it will be rewarded with food and be more likely to press the button again. But the box can be more complicated, too. For example, we might design it so the button needs to be pressed exactly three times to produce food, or we add a series of buttons that need to be pressed in a certain order. The smarter the animal the more complex the box can be.

Now imagine a *Monopoly* box. It's basically a Skinner box. A very, very complex Skinner box. Of course, we aren't trapped in that package like a mouse might be, we are only trapped in the IRL manifestation. Be that as it may, in a sense games create a certain environment with their rules. Instead of food being the ultimate goal, we see victory as the goal. Therefore, we will learn that certain behaviors are rewarded by the rules and bring us closer to the goal, while others are punished and remove us from the goal. In *Monopoly*, victory is achieved by amassing the most wealth and bankrupting other players. When we buy cards, we are rewarded by getting money as soon as someone steps on that field, and with more money we can buy more cards. But if we spend all our money on every field we step on, we will be punished by not being able to consolidate individual colors, consequently losing out on even more money than we have gained.

So we are learning while playing, but what are we learning? It's not really explicit knowledge in the way we learn in school. In this specific case, we are learning intuitions. First, we get an intuition as to how capitalism works. The rich get richer. The Pareto principle, perhaps. Second, we are also wrongly learning that jail is good! Not wrongly in the moral sense, but factually. Getting there late-game is peak. You rake in the dollar leaves while escaping the crushing mill of capitalism. In real life, it's not really how it works. The original game, *The Landlord's Game,* stolen from--inspired by--Lizzie Maggie, had as its aim to teach Georgism, actually showing that monopolies are bad for you. So, third, we are learning that stealing ideas is good! Which is factually true if you don't get caught.

The "jail is good" lesson is a great example of a nuance you can teach through your game. I am not sure whether it was ever a rule that you didn't earn anything while counting the turns in jail. Without going into what would have been a better "lesson," the game certainly could have gone for a different one if it wanted to. I don't know if it would have been a better mechanic, though. Ultimately, I don't think it matters because there's no way to really decide if you're going to jail or not, as it's just a bad dice-roll that decides. Also, you are busted out after three turns whether you like it or not. It's not something that's crucial to the game, and you might use this as an opportunity to hammer home a point you wish to make, even neglecting the mechanics if need be.

I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on this, so please leave a comment!