Ian Bogost - Water Cooler Games - The 'Games for Learning Seal': L is for LeapFrog?

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Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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The 'Games for Learning Seal': L is for LeapFrog?

by Ian Bogost May 19, 2004

categories: Educational Games

One of the controversies uncovered at the E3 Education Arcade (summarized here and here) was the so-called "Games for Learning Seal." it's a big "L" that looks a lot like an ESRB Rating, intended to be applied to the packaging of educational games. Henry Jenkins's Comparative Media Program at MIT had been working on the idea of this seal, along with one of their corporate sponsors, LeapFrog. News of the seal hit the press hard, including coverage in CNN, USA Today, CBS News, MSNBC, and others. The purported goal of the seal is to "help consumers identify titles that teach more than hand-eye coordination."

Henry acknowledged some of the challenges associated with the seal on the MIT Technology Review Blog:

Some argue that all games are educational and that it is therefore impossible to seperate out educational games from the rest of what gets produced. Others in the industry fear that the “L word“ may hurt rather than enhance sales. So far, the concept has proven effective at stimulating discussion on games and education.

I tried to ask some hard questions at the Education Arcade, first of LeapFrog's Alex Chisholm (who came from Henry's MIT program) then of LeapFrog CEO Tom Kalinske (I also talked with both Alex and Tom afterward, as well as many other cool LF employees... they're doing some good work too, despite the L is for Learning debacle. I'll explain more in a later post). I also spoke with Henry Jenkins, Kurt Squire, and others at the conference about the seal. Will Wright made a strong implication of suspicion in his discussion with Jenkins at the end of the two-day event.

Clearly, nobody was ready to make this announcement. From what I understand, it got out early, before anyone was ready for it. It should have remained a research project, a hypothetical idea that MIT and their partners would vet, and vet a lot more. These things happen.

Still, I remain deeply suspicious of the Learning Seal, but not because all games are educational, and not because it will hurt my sales (what sales ;). Rather, I think the problem is in the kind of educational activity that "counts." LeapFrog has been aggressive about dovetailing off of, yet out of, the educational software market. Their products are designed toward and track against "generally accepted" educational standards and assessments. But as so many speakers at the Education Arcade and Serious Games Summit argued, the real power of games seems to come from the ways in which they teach differently than other media. Personally, I'm not much interested in a box label that affirms that its contents step-to with the latest method of educational gerrymandering. We don't want a kind of exclusionary "No Software Left Behind," as it were.

Henry knows this well, and I know he and his team is working on it already, but I'll say it again for our readers here: Unless the Education Arcade consortium and LeapFrog get other game publishers involved in discussing, defining, and evangelizing the idea of games as learning tools, then this seal is nothing more than a marketing and PR stunt... L is for LeapFrog, not for Learning.

Comments (5)

Thanks, Ian. All excellent points. We had hoped to get more publishers on board, but, without a clear "on board" to be on board on (!?!), it didn't make much sense. you're right in sensing that it's alex's personal connection that enabled us to even think of moving forward at Leapfrog. you're right also in guessing that we are still in the research phases. if a process like this could be used to help developers get feedback early in the process (and jim, henry, eric, philip, and i get a lot of consulting offers that we just don't have the time for because we are just about tapped out in time), then that's good.

thanks for your honest, critical thoughts. we were hoping that the conference would pull that out. holler if you have other thoughts about these issues, or whatever.

kurt squire on May 21, 2004 11:27 PM

Thanks for adding this comment, Kurt. As I said, my concern is really just that, and I'll look forward to seeing where this inititive goes.

I think you make a good point about the "on board" to be on board; sometimes it's better to get things started knowing they need revision, so long as everyone understands what's provisionary and what's not.

Ian Bogost on May 22, 2004 6:13 PM

Something else i should mention -- in no way, do i think that leapfrog would actually trying to be capitalizing on something like this. think about it -- they already own their market and their branding is pretty established, so why they would want to create a market category where they pretty much own the space already is questionable.

Also, to reiterate, the announcement was that "there is a proposal on the table to get feedback on." I don't think that at any point anyone said that this was happening, or that even 10% of the details were hammered out.

Finally, I see something like the seal helping -- just to do things like help distinguish between "phonemic awareness" and reading. I'd like to get a mechanism to get companies like leapfrog to make more open-ended games that embody more of the learning principles in contemporary computer / video games.

kurt squire on May 23, 2004 1:01 AM

Point taken, my criticism is less about Leapfrog actually capitalizing from this seal than the sort of improprietous implication that the purpose of the research initiative was principally to give Leapfrog a marketing tool. I know that's not what's really happening, but I do think that it is an obvious conclusion to come to. LeapFrog and MIT aside, one of our biggest challenges as academic game researchers will be how we keep research projects separate from, yet participating with, commercial interests. And that's a responsibility we have to bear.

As for the announcement, you are right about the letter of MIT's announcement, but if you read the press, you'll see how it was spun. Here's an excerpt from CNN's story:

A group of educators, developers and game publishers believe they might. The consortium, calling itself The Education Arcade, is launching a "games for learning" seal of approval to help consumers identify titles that teach more than hand-eye coordination.

Later it says "... The Education Arcade is tweaking the labeling guidelines ..." "Tweaking and "launching" certainly don't telegraph that only 10% of the details were hammered out. Again, I know the press tells the story they want, and maybe this is one of those cases where they wrote the interesting story rather than the accurate one, but I think that kind of an outcome was almost inevitable.

Finally, I'm hopeful about the idea of a seal, really I am. It may be a good idea. I'm not dismissing the idea on principle, just the way the current iteration of it was presented.

Thanks for keeping this dialog going. That's really the best way to work on these challenges.

Ian Bogost on May 23, 2004 1:45 AM

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