This is the first part of three posts based on my JALTCALL 2022 keynote.

1. Introduction: “Potential → Practice”

I think “I did X” Is a lot better than “X can be done” and, spoiler, that’s the persistent refrain of digital game-based language learning — potential. I would like to counter that a bit. I’m so sick of the word “potential” and its connection to games and language learning.

For nearly 40 years, this has been the position of researchers and academics in games and language learning:

You might think I’m being too critical. That lab research is important. That lab research and academic papers somehow trickle out to society. OK, how about this: Change “DGBLL researchers” to “cancer researchers.” We’d dismiss or discredit (at the least!) cancer researchers who, after 40 years, never produced anything, or even TRIED to produce anything that got us any closer to helping citizens or society.

OK, how about this: Change “DGBLL researchers” to “cancer researchers.” We’d dismiss or discredit (at the least!) cancer researchers who, after 40 years, never produced anything, or even TRIED to produce anything that got us any closer to helping citizens or society.

I think that we should hold games and language researchers to a similar standard. They, and we, need to use our positions, power, knowledge, resources, connections, and yes, research, theory and practice, to make a real difference for students and society. If DGBLL can’t do that, then we should give up and do something else. Like tutor sick kids, or clean up a river or something. 

If we can’t make a difference in real classrooms, we’ve created yet another academic silo, an echo-chamber, an academic game for its own sake, not for the sake of students and other teachers.

deHaan, J. (2020). Game-based language teaching is vaporware (Part 2 of 2): It’s time to ship or shut down. Ludic Language Pedagogy, 2, 140-161. https://doi.org/10.55853/llp_v2Art3 

And it’s not just a game/language problem… The Games for Change, educational games, and the serious game movements have struggled to have impact. But… What does that mean? What is impact? Short-term learning outcomes? Changing the world?

Pedercini argued a radical powerful idea that to have an impact you need to work to make yourself obsolete. This post is going to be about me trying to make myself obsolete, Giving other people/you some power, to try to change the field. Me being obsolete means that: I really make a difference to students and society And that YOU really make a difference to students and society. 

Me being obsolete might mean that you design an amazing game with massive support and a great community (a “big G” game), Maybe you make a beautiful print and play game/roleplay instead of a digital app, do awesome research, do awesome teaching, teach others to make things, do research, teach better, in THEIR CONTEXTS, to make THEIR lives better. Those all would contribute to me becoming more obsolete.

If you don’t get anything else out of this, know that there is a community that is active and eager to help you: Ludic Language Pedagogy. LLP is a shortcut/cheat code/guild/strategy guide. You can publish all kinds of things there. You can talk to other people. You can level up. You can hack academia.

https://llpjournal.org/about.html

Let’s play.

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• Part 2: Mattering and the SHIPMENT 51
• Part 3: Avoiding pitfalls and mattering together