Clayton Christensen |

I spent last week in Japan as the guest of Sumitomo Corporation to learn about and research the potential for online learning to help the Japanese learn English. One night at dinner, one of my hosts, Chris Campbell, said: If you were to write a second edition of Disrupting Class, I would include a chapter about why video games are so motivating and what we can learn from them.

He continued: It’s useful to think about why video games are so motivating; in many cases it’s not obvious that they would be. Their topics are not always inherently interesting; they can be quite challenging to access. To bring the point home, think about it this way: what if video games were like schools?

I had never thought about it that way. I’m sure people have written about this, but it had not hit me so clearly. Despite reading Prensky and Gee and others about the potential for video games in learning, I had not seen it from the reverse perspective.

The answer is that if video games were like schools, they would be incredibly de-motivating for most no matter how interesting their topic. Just imagine. You have cleared a maze of enemies perhaps. Sorry, you can’t advance because it’s not the predetermined time when you are allowed to yet. Or sorry, you cannot level up or advance to another challenge until everyone in your randomly assigned cohort has done so as well. You say you’ve been through the challenge 5 times already and mastered it? That’s nice but sorry.

Or perhaps think about the reverse. You’re struggling with a certain challenge and have not yet mastered it, but some arbitrary time limit doesn’t just say time is up, you lose, try again. Instead it says: Time is up, on to the more advanced challenge. You need tools from the previous challenge to conquer the further problems? Sorry, that’s just too bad. We have to keep moving.

It’s not hard to extend the analogy further into team “project-like” settings and others. I’d love for people to do so here. But can you imagine the frustration? Or boredom? Or downright bewilderment? Could you blame someone for tuning out?