INSIGHTS
Narrative techniques in game-based learning – telling good stories
“Confucius, Socrates, Aesop – what do they have in common? They are great teachers who have never seen a PowerPoint slide in their life. Instead - they use stories to teach.”
That was quite an introduction to the Learning Geeks podcast featuring Attensi Creative Director Justin Blanchard.
And it is a great introduction to our guide about great storytelling in game-based training – also featuring our creative director, Justin Blanchard.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.
We remember stories
Storytelling is a human trait that has endured from caveman to the modern-day social media influencer. The best stories stand the test of time because we remember them and we share them.
Fairy tales, nursery rhymes, the classics - in order to achieve this longevity, they have to have a quality that inspires us to remember and share.
Memory
We remember them because they ignite some sort of reaction, learning, or emotion in us.
Share
We tell these stories because we want others to benefit.
Gratification
It makes us feel or look good to share because we have entertained, informed, or educated someone else.
Great narratives engage and entertain us enough to retain the information and reshare them throughout the generations.
Storytelling in learning
This intrinsic desire to consume and tell stories makes the narrative a really important element in pedagogy and in learning and development.
In peer-to-peer learning, we often recount stories from our own experiences to help our colleagues have some sort of context to their learning, but also to engage and entertain them in ways that make the theoretical learning come to life.
Storytelling in Game-based learning
There are many layers that make game-based training impactful. Storytelling or the narrative is a fundamentally important layer.
As with all great stories – you want to get the player to feel something and to do something and you want to have a lasting impact on the learner.
As story writers, we are also lucky in L&D that there is a defined goal or goals that you want to achieve with your narrative. Tricky customers might be the villains of the narrative. The player is the learner, and they might need to save the day by accomplishing the goal set by the training. They may meet heroes along the way who help them to overcome obstacles and achieve their end goals. There are twists and turns to engage the player and keep them interested in repeating chapters of learning to achieve their goals.
In game-based learning – we don’t just want our players to remember the story, we want them to become part of the story and remember the lessons that they have learned. We also want them to be able to apply those lessons to their real-life roles.
