Decision making under uncertainty in educational gaming

A challenge in education games is the impact of heuristics, the mental shortcuts that can facilitate problem-solving and probability judgments. In simple terms the things that impact our immediate decision making. They are challenge in education as the game design and hosting often drive player decisions and game outcomes that are not desirable and detract from effective learning, as they do not take heuristics into account.

As a game designer, as a very competitive gamer, Keith comes across these challenges regularly. Most of all though is his experience as an analyst in the gambling industry where player manipulation via heuristics is the key to success. Keith’s observations of educational gaming are that the negative behaviour we see in gambling is all too prevalent in our educational gaming.

This presentation will hope to help game designers and game hosts recognise these challenges and help minimise their impact in their games.

Bio

Keith Martin-Smith is Games Master at HexWar Games Ltd., formed in 2002 it is now part of the Code Wizards Group developing primarily for PME. A lifelong wargamer Keith published his first commercial digital wargame in 1981. As well as having design credits on over 40 commercial wargames, and a number of PME games, he has had a varied career, as an IT Manager for a group of hospitals, a variety of roles at Dell Computer Corporation, including head of marketing research and European Business Operations Manager. Then as a Director with a major retailer, and as a Director and head of games design at a gambling company. He remains a very keen competitive gamer. Over the years he has won dozens of wargame and boardgame tournaments across Europ