What can instructional design learn from game design? A look at how Diablo II structures learning

What does re-playing Diablo II and learning have to do with each other?!

I recently treated myself to some nostalgia and re-played #Diablo II and was amazed to see game design + learning principles meet in action. Here’s a look at how Diablo II structures learning and what instructional design can learn from the field of game design.

Stay a while and listen.

Diablo’s game designers implemented three key principles of learning:

1. Chunking
2. Interleaving
3. Difficulty levels

Together they make starting, learning and advancing in Diablo fun and easy despite it being a complex game.

Chunking

One of the most important and least well appreciated principle of memory and understanding. Chunking is a process by which individual pieces of an information set are bound together into a meaningful whole.

Remember phone numbers? Chunking. Understand physics? Chunking.

How many things do you think you can focus on at once?

Probably not as many as you think.

In fact research shows that most can only focus on 4-7 'chunks' of information at once.

Forgetting this concept leads to a lot of bad lessons, but there's an easy fix.

Let's see how.

— Alpe (@AlpeAudio) December 21, 2021

The more chunks you remember and internalize, the more information you can stack on top and *comprehend*. It’s why remembering useless facts matters and why you shouldn’t only rely on Google. So Diablo, like many games, structures the learning curves in chunks. Abilities are gained every 6 levels, giving a player enough time to internalize previous ones and turn them into a ‘chunk’. When you learn a new one, you’re not overwhelmed by new info, you’re ready.

Different monster types and abilities also occur incrementally, so that you can learn and absorb different abilities each time, adjust your strategy accordingly and not feel overwhelmed by information.

Interleaving

A challenging learning principle to implement, it’s probably the most impactful thing we can change about how we learn. Interleaving is ‘mixing it up’ to improve overall performance. Why don’t we do it more?

Interleaving is hard. It challenges us in the moment and has a slower payoff. But pays off big time. Example: Batting cage 🏏: practicing vs one kind of pitch like a fast ball is what most do. It’s easier and feels like we improve because we improve during practice.

But science shows we only improve vs that kind of pitch, which in a real game doesn’t happen. Interleaving is mixing up different kinds of pitches: curve balls, sliders, fast balls. During practice, this is frustrating. We hit less and feel like we’ve improved less.

But post two weeks research clearly shows that those who used interleaving have a much better hitting average. Same with other topics. Applying knowledge from one domain to another is harder but when managed shows greater understanding, memory and integration.

Diablo does a brilliant job interleaving different kinds of monster challenges. Learn how to deal with Fallen? Here are some Shamans. Or Brutes, demons, council members, sand crawlers. Or bosses – Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto & Diablo.

Each kind of monster challenges the player in a different way – just like those curve and fast balls. It ups your skill level mid game and improves your game play for harder levels later.

Difficulty levels

No one likes being dropped into an advanced placement class when they’re not ready for it. When you feel outclassed, overwhelmed and underwater, you’re not going to get excited about learning. But make it too easy and you’re bored.

Game designers have long had to deal with the issue of finding ‘flow’ – that sweet spot where our minds are engaged just the right amount. Educators need to do this as well. Material too easy? Students drop off. Too hard? drop off. Just right is the key.

Chunking is part of achieving the right challenge rating. So is Interleaving. Get those right and you can increase the difficulty level. Mess them up, and it will be too hard. Diablo gets it juuuust right.

The mix of rising difficulty level, new abilities and new bosses makes the challenge of the game interesting enough to be fun and avoid boredom.

So what can instructional design learn from game design?

Diablo‘s game designers implemented three key principles of learning that as educators we need to learn from:
1. Chunking
2. Interleaving
3. Difficulty levels

Each of these increases the learning arc that players go through while they play but in a way that doesn’t overwhelm players and in fact makes learning interesting and fun!