From Duke to Sutton Gaming As The Language Of The Future

Michael Sutton, PhD, Chief Game-Based Learning Officer of Funification, is intensely devoted to immersive learning and passionate about Serious Games.

He has been teaching at the executive education, community college, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels in higher education for many decades, and instills his learners with the passion that he has acquired through challenging life experiences.

Michael is a fervent evangelist for Serious Games deployment because he knows they work: he has seen the results of the learning outcomes through the career advancement of former students.

Earlier this year, Michael Sutton delivered a superb presentation at the Learning Technologies Conference in London titled Game-based Learning – Language of the Future for Overcoming Complexity, where he provided a powerful testimonial on how gaming was a critical element in his personal and professional development.

During the presentation, Michael took a stand on Richard Duke’s premise that the proper use of gaming offers strong promise for establishing the comprehension of a totality [a gestalt], necessary for intelligent management of complex systems:

“As long as we are  dependent on  communication  forms that are  sequential, time  constrained, dry and  cumbersome, it will  be difficult to  comprehend the complexity of  macro‐problems; we will  continue to  apply piecemeal  solutions to  problems that  should be  solved  holistically,” said Sutton. “To Richard Duke, gaming is the language of the future,” he added.

Sutton proceeded by stating that accelerated change and societal transformation necessitate a new language to convey experience and complexity. Problems of today are infinitely more complex, involving systems and interacting subsystems that do not yield to conventional jargon or traditional forms of communication.

Sutton declared the emergence of a new Learning Communication Language founded upon game-based learning.

Michael is currently co-authoring a book on Game-Based Learning that is slated to be published in September of 2018. 

Gaming: The Future's Language - by Richard D. Duke

In his book published in the mid-seventies, Duke recaps the evolution of games from a form of play to a serious undertaking.

Duke demonstrates how dramatic the increase in the use of gaming had been over the previous decade, as a result from “both the increased recognition of the technique’s potential as well as from its diffusion through the social sciences for both academic and applied purposes.”

And he also declares:

“As the true character of gaming as a unique communication form becomes clear, its use as a Future’s Language will become pervasive.”