Beyond the Controller
What The Witcher 3 Can Teach Us About Education.
One of my personal pet peeves around education is this false narrative that videogames are bad for you. I strongly disagree with this. Videogames, much like anything else, can be both good or bad, depending on your personal use for them. In fact, I would even argue that, when used properly, they might be a great learning tool, both in obvious and non-obvious ways.
Playing a game like Kerbal Space Program can teach a child about space more effectively than any book. In fact, research shows that playing games like League of Legends may help develop critical thinking skills, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.
However, one of my favorite ways to be inspired by games comes from learning about the creation process more than actually playing them.
Last year, in my Creative Entrepreneurship class at The Socratic Experience, a bunch of students and I read “Blood, Sweat and Pixels”, by Jason Schreier. The book focuses on the developmental process of a series of different games. My favorite chapter is about “The Witcher 3”, a game that I really enjoyed.
Now, I might be biased, but when I was going over the chapter, I just kept seeing connections between the way CD Projekt Red [the Polish company that developed The Witcher] approached the game and the way I think learning organizations (schools, companies, or bigger institutions) should approach their learning experiences.
I might be biased, but as I read through the chapter, I couldn’t help but notice a series of connection between the way CD Projekt Red (the Polish company behind The Witcher) approached the game and the way I believe learning organizations—whether schools, companies, or larger institutions—should approach their educational experiences.
You don’t have to play The Witcher 3 to learn from it (though I highly recommend it). The game’s entire plot is based on a book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. I won’t dive into how great the storyline is or all the life lessons you can gain from it, but here’s a quick summary of the story and the game trailer:
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an interactive story set in a dark, medieval-inspired world filled with war, political intrigue, and supernatural creatures. You play as Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster hunter, navigating a world on the brink of collapse. His main quest is deeply personal: to find his adopted daughter, Ciri, who is being pursued by a mysterious and otherworldly force called the Wild Hunt.
This is an open-world game, meaning your character can explore the entire game world without restrictions. You have the freedom to choose where to go and what activities to engage in, whether it’s following the main storyline or discovering side quests, hidden locations, and various other opportunities within the expansive world, which bring different consequences.
This is a very important part of the game because, most of the lessons that I’m focusing on derive from this approach. So, let’s see what can learning institutions improve based on the 2015 Game of the Year.
Creating a Connected Learning Environment
When you play open-world games, there’s a lingering question in the back of your mind: is this coherent?
Many games can lack a certain fluidity when it comes to exploration, almost as if the world is an amalgamation of different pieces rather than a continuous, seamless experience. While it’s technically an open world, it feels more like a series of compartmentalized boxes that you explore based on your choices.
The developers at CD Projekt Red aimed to create something completely different from this. They approached the design as building an ecosystem, where everything is interconnected in both obvious and subtle ways, all on a massive scale.
One major region in The Witcher 3 is larger than most entire open-world games, and the game features three such regions. To ensure the world didn’t feel compartmentalized, the developers used a tool called “Points of Interest” (POIs). These prompts, which range from minor activities to major ones, guide players to explore and experience the connections between different locations and elements in the world.
[Sławomir] Tost’s team didn’t just want The Witcher 3’s world to feel like a collection of disparate quests—they wanted it to support an entire ecosystem.
Jason Schreier - Blood, Sweat and Pixels
Instead of having a bunch of scattered activities and missions, something common in these types of games, they wanted these Points of Interest to work as alternative paths to explore the world.
“There would be a village that built bricks, connected to the city of Novigrad via elaborate trade routes. There would be manufacturing, agriculture, and all the other accouterments of a realistic medieval world. “If you look at the farming areas around Novigrad, all of these exist to support this huge city which believably could exist in this world,” said Tost. “All of these people living there, they get support from different kinds of infrastructure around the world. This was something we put a really big focus on creating. There’s even a village where they make carts.”
Jason Schreier - Blood, Sweat and Pixels
This focus on connecting different elements within the game, generating a whole ecosystem, is one of the best things schools and learning organizations can take from the development of the game. I’ve written about this before, a lot of schools lack a cohesive narrative that guides the overall experience of the student.
They’re having math, followed by Spanish, then Geography, and there’s no connective tissue amongst the different things being learned that facilitates the actual understanding of the topics.
Taking the time to build these bridges between major ideas is a fundamental aspect that learning organizations should focus on when designing their curriculum, making sure that instead of a series of random experiences, they have a sense of a whole ecosystem of knowledge and wisdom to explore.
Crafting a Path between Agency and Structure
Teaching is one of the hardest crafts in the world because, when done at a high level, entails a mixture of two seemingly opposing aspects:
The student, who must have the freedom to chart their own intellectual and personal course, as they are the ultimate authority on their own life, possessing a unique perspective that no one else fully grasps.
The teacher, who, through greater experience and wisdom, holds knowledge that can profoundly benefit the student, yet must somehow impart it without undermining the student’s autonomy.
The biggest challenge lies in reconciling these two things. You want to guide a student without presuming “you know best”. You want to impart wisdom while respecting their agency.
The same thing happens when you’re playing The Witcher 3. You have absolute freedom to explore and act in the world, but there might be negative consequences. These can be avoided if you have some kind of structure that allows you to understand why, even though you have the freedom to do something, you might want to refrain from doing it.
We wanted you to feel like you’re not lost, and basically you know more or less where to go, and what the structure is,” said Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz. “When you are free to go anywhere, we felt that after the prologue, it was too much at once—that you would be overwhelmed.
Jason Schreier - Blood, Sweat and Pixels
To address the challenge of balancing these two aspects, they implemented a series of design choices to promote harmony.
The first one was designing a semi-linear structure, meaning that even though, from the moment you start to play, you get to go anywhere you want to, there are a lot of different incentives that make you more inclined to go in a certain direction. Essentially, within an environment designed to respect your level, you have the freedom to do whatever you want.
They tried to implement this by attributing higher levels to challenges depending on the region you’re inhabiting. Certain villages that they might want you to ignore early on the game will have these “impossible” challenges, that you can only complete once you’ve developed a series of skills. This naturally guides the players towards areas where they can get a sense of progress.
The final incentive they used was the strategic placement of POIs. These not only enhance the sense of an ecosystem but also guide the player along a specific path. The missions and locations you’re exploring provide enough direction and context to follow a “recommended” path, while still allowing the freedom to make your own choices. These points of interest were designed to feel engaging, without ever overwhelming you.
It’s easy to see how this connects with learning institutions.
Instead of rigid “grade-based progressions”, schools should take the time to create a curriculum where students benefit from the freedom to explore different subjects, while being naturally guided towards advanced topics that educators feel are the most important ones for them.
You should have adaptive challenges to all students, practicing a “mastery-based learning”, where students get to progress once they’ve mastered enough of the material necessary, increasing the speed at which they deal with the information.
Finally, we must bring the concept of POIs to learning experiences. Schools should integrate different projects, real-world applications, interdisciplinary challenges, and student-led clubs as mediums for skill development, increasing the natural engagement, contributing to a sense of ecosystem (specially if you’re able to connect different topics) and allowing a dynamic journey portrayed by the student.
Part of the freedom in The Witcher 3 is, indeed, related with exploration. However, there are a series of plot-related choices that have longterm consequences, which brings me to my last suggestion: a focus on understanding the consequences of your actions in the short, medium, and long-term.
The Power of Perpetual Ambition
The Witcher 3 won Game of the Year and was a massive success by all measures in the video game industry, even leading to a Netflix series adaptation. It is still, for many people, the best open-world game ever. And yet, CD Projekt Red didn’t stop there.
The game was released in May 2015, with the team continuing to work on downloadable content (DLC) to complement the main game. In October of the same year, they released the first DLC, “Hearts of Stone,” followed by the second one, “Blood and Wine,” in May 2016. Both are widely regarded as some of the best DLCs ever made for a game.
The commitment to perpetual ambition can be found in a lot of different projects, across all industries, but it’s still inspiring to see an organization making sure that they keep pushing their own boundaries.
It’s too easy for any education program to become comfortable once it hits a certain degree of success. However, the moment you’re relying too much on what you know, without ever trying to understand, how can you improve what you’re doing, you’re basically headed for a decrease in the overall learning experience.
I truly believe that High Schoolers are the key to a Modern Golden Age. We need learning institutions that align with that. Those that are excited about learning for themselves, even if the lessons come from a video game.