Learning with Chutes and Ladders
Games have the great potential to be learning systems. The question often becomes what is the player learning? To understand this question, I chose to play a game geared toward children to see if learning was some how embedded into the game. The game I played, was Sesame Street version of Chutes and Ladders. I played with my friend and my four-year-old. I was particularly interested in playing this game, because while a very popular youth game, it was one board game I never played myself as a child.
About the Game
The goal of the game Chutes and Ladders is about reaching the spot 100 first. Everyone starts at 1. Each player gets a turn at the spinner, which decides how many spaces you can move. If a player lands on a spot with a ladder they have the option to climb the ladder which can progress them significantly up the board, however if a player lands on a spot with a Chute, they must “slide” down, which will often set them back. Other than that the game was self-explanatory. The only confusion in the rules of the game states if you land on a spot with a picture you get to go again. However the only spots with pictures were the ones with chutes or ladders. Also confusing were the arrows pointing up at the end of each row, the game rules did not explain if you landed on these spots, if you were allowed to jump a row, or if that was just the design.
Since this was a Sesame Street version the social context of the game was designed for young children, apparently any age that could understand how many spaces to move, how to move their piece, and what a chute or ladder meant (i.e the rules).
Surprising since this was Sesame Street version, one would expect more of a learning context. The only “learning” component was the fact that the game was numbered from 1 to 100. While my son does knows how to count to 100, this game didn’t encourage that, or any recognition of the numbers, since any child, who didn’t know how to count to 100, could play, since they only need to be able to count to 6, the maximum number of spaces to move based on the spinner.
My experience was in the context of a family-game night; we sat at the table and got ready to experience the game. It was more of an exciting experience since my son loves board games and was eager to play a new board game. He picked out his character, Cookie Monster, but didn’t seem to relate to the character, I believe because he didn’t have an affinity with Sesame Street characters any more. He told me whom I would play with, and left my friend to decide which character he wanted to choose.
Overall the experience showed me that a game is more exciting with an element of strategy. The game had elements of probability, shown through the chance of climbing up or sliding down. The only strategy possible was hoping that you landed on correct number of spaces in order to land on a spot that had a ladder.
What I found interesting is that even without the need to have the highest spin to win, we each wanted or hoped to land on 6. Even in one instance my friend thought the 6 I did land on would have benefited me, but in that instance if I landed on a 1 I would have progressed further. It shows me that we as humans have it often ingrained in our head that bigger is more.
Critique the Game
The game, especially for an older audience, needs to have the chance to use strategy or other learning principles. I think a great way to add learning principles would be to ask players to calculate how many spaces ahead or behind their opponent they are. Asking such questions, perhaps in order to progress, would cause the player to use mathematics to answer the question.
I also think the rules should be defined to explain what the arrows at the end of each row meant. I think it would have made it interesting to allow the player to jump a row if they landed on these spaces. In our game play, we did not make this assumption, so it was very evident if a player was even able to climb a ladder and thus progress, or not.
Perhaps Chutes and Ladders best learning principle is based on what Baveliver et al. (2012) describes as the ability of games to provide “learning to learn”. The player, especially a young player, learns several motor-related learning principles, such as how to follow rules, how to follow numerical order forward and backwards, how to move pieces, how to take turns, and how to reach a goal. These basic principles are especially important in order to play more advanced games, such as Monopoly or Life, or any rule-based game or life in general.
