Game- Over Theory ; Learn better with games | Jatin Solanki | TEDxNMIMSBangalore

Hello everyone, so I'm Jatin Solanki. I'm a— so I've changed 11 schools across India, and right when it stopped, when I was in my— I mean, when I joined my college, and I was at one place for 4 years at IIT Bombay. And so yeah, so So, when I was in my 7th grade, so this is back in 2002, and I had a surprise class test. It was a maths class test. And I got a 3 out of 10 in that surprise class test. I used to hide that paper from my friends, family, teacher, society, a lot of these people. Can you guess why did a 7th grade child do that? Yeah, because of, because of, so, so there are multiple reasons. Because, so I was afraid of, I was afraid of getting made fun of, okay, because someone would beat me or someone would shout at me. And it's a permutation and combination of these things which my parent, teacher, or friends or society would do. And, and that I did in my 7th grade. I used to hide that paper. Now when I look back, I should not have done that. I mean, failure is part and parcel of any learning process. So anything we learn, anything we do new, failure is part of that learning process. So I would like to ask you, how did we learn cycling? Yeah, failure was part of that process as well. Yeah, so we did fall. Multiple times. And similarly, I mean, it also holds true for my first cooking attempt. So, yeah. So you can see that that was my first attempt at cooking. And the same was true with a lot of my experiences, new experiences which I tried. And that's when I— I mean, that's what we loved about games. Like, in games, So you see a lot of adults play games, a lot of kids play games. They play games, they lose at some or the other level. So you can see a child losing a Candy Crush game at 15th level, and you can see an adult losing a Candy Crush game at, say, 10th level. But you don't see them feeling bad about losing a game. You never see a child going to a parent and crying that, Dad, I failed in Candy Crush. "Mom, I failed in 15th level of Angry Birds," or, "Mom, I failed in 10th level of Candy Crush or Subway Surfers." And that's when we started analyzing what is it about games that makes it so compelling. On the contrary, you never see them going and crying before parents, but on the contrary, you actually see them feeling more passionate. Like, even if they lose a game, they are more passionate and they want to kind of compete and they want to kind of defeat the enemies or monsters in the game. So I see, so I have my cousin on the weekend when he has my phone, and when he loses, he or she loses a game, and then there is a character laughing before them, and they are like, okay, now I am going to teach this character a lesson. And he plays the entire day, he plays the entire night, he wins that game, and he comes back to me and he says, can you do it? So that's the attitude a child has towards games. And that's when we started thinking, what is it about games which makes it so compelling? Okay, so games usually have a larger mission, like saving a princess, or like, so you have stolen a shrine from a temple and you are basically running away from a monster, and you basically break that larger goal into smaller steps or smaller levels. And you basically, I mean, the entire experience involves instant gratification. Like, you feel really good about winning those smaller levels. And there are missions, and then there are power-ups. There is a lot of gratification in it. And that's when I discovered the Game Over Theory. Okay, so now I'm going to tell you something about the Game Over Theory. The Game Over theory is basically the game is not over unless the user accepts defeat and doesn't opt for the hidden retry option in the game, which is always present. So there's a hidden retry button which is always present in all of our Game Over cases. And I mean, the game is actually not over unless you accept the defeat. So these are a few game screens, and you can see there's a retry button in the bottom. Unless the child chooses that I'm leaving at this point, he or she can opt for the retry button. And that's when I saw that the same cousin who is so excited about games was not so much excited about learning. And we thought, I mean, because 35% of our Throughout our life, we kind of are drowned into learning. I mean, it is a major experience of our life. And we thought, why not gamify the entire experience of learning? And maybe add the same compassion, the same view towards what he has towards games in learning. And that's when we kind of gamified learning. So earlier, my cousin had to learn books of physics. And we thought, why not gamify the entire process? So we broke the same force and pressure chapter into smaller islands, smaller missions which he could accomplish. So me and my team, for the last 6 years now. And so basically we made— so there are these smaller missions they need to accomplish. There is instant gratification. And when he or she faces a game over moment, you give them a chance to redeem themselves. So you give them a chance to replay. You give them a chance to— so you can see the third screen. So there's a hidden replay button. So now— so you want the session more, right? Yeah. Every day 40 hours we cannot have, but maybe 40 minutes or maybe half an hour, okay? And you can also— We want this whole session. But we don't know how many minutes, but we want it every day. You want it every day. So this was what happened in a classroom where we tried making them— I mean, the same classroom which was not so much fond of maths, and we kind of did a workshop on maths games with them and applied the Game Over Theory with them. And that's when, I mean, that's how we realized, I mean, gamification of things could kind of add a lot of value. And the same game over theory can be applied at different phases of our life. So if there is a bigger goal you have, you can kind of break it into smaller missions, smaller levels. And it can be any goal. It can be saving the princess, or it can be actually losing 8 kgs in 8 weeks. And you would want to do it by gamifying it. You would want to have, say, 10 points for running 7 kilometers every day. You would want to have 60 levels, like for the next 60 days you will have 60 levels and you would want to clear each level every day. You would want to do it with your friends. You would want to have a leaderboard. You would want to actually see are they doing it, what are they scoring, where are they faring. And that's how— and you would want to kind of have points, real rewards, and actually redeem back from failure. So that's how— any bigger goal in life could kind of be broken into these smaller levels, and kind of you can retry, replay, and you can come back from a failure. And, yeah, so what if my 3 out of 10 paper had a retry button? I would have tried it again. I would have scored better. I would have got, say, 5 out of 10. And I would have tried it again, and I would have this time got 8 out of 10. And I would have done it over and over again to kind of perform better than how I performed the last time. So in life, there are so many game over situations you come across every time. So you can remember the game over theory and look for the hidden retry button in all those situations. Thank you.