Rob Alvarez Bucholska
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Balancing Play and Pedagogy with Dr. Mark Harvey Project | Episode 381

 

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What if games could be more than just fun—what if they could transform learning itself? Our guest Dr. Mark Harvey brings a wealth of experience in integrating games into educational settings to this ongoing conversation on gamification. This conversation delves into practical strategies for enhancing classroom engagement and sharing stories that reveal the transformative potential of playfulness in education.

Dr. Mark Harvey is an Associate Professor and Director of the MBA program at the University of Saint Mary. He is a co-editor of the volume Simulations in the Political Science Classroom: Games without Frontiers and the forthcoming book, Beating the Clock: The Power of Short Games and Active Learning. In addition to doing research on active learning and deploying games and simulations in his own classrooms, he has also assisted in simulations at the Command and General Staff College (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth. He is also the author of Celebrity Influence: Politics, Persuasion, and Issue-Based Advocacy.

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

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Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Rob:
Hey, this is Professor Game where we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking to help us multiply engagement and loyalty. I’m Rob Alvarez. I’m a consultant, I’m a coach and I’m the founder here at Professor Game and I’m also a professor of gamification and game inspired solutions at IE University, IE Business School, efmd, EBS University and other places around the world. And before we dive into the interview, if you’re struggling with engagement in your business and are looking to find out how to make your users stay with you, you will find our free community full of resources quite useful. You can find it for free in the links below in the Description Engagers. Welcome to another episode of the Professor Game podcast. We are today with Dr. Mark Mark, we need to know, are you prepared to engage?

Mark Harvey:
I am prepared.

Rob:
Let’s do this.

Mark Harvey:
Hey, honestly, like I. I’m involved in the scouting organization, so my motto is be prepared.

Rob:
There you go. There you go. Let’s do this. Because we today have Dr. Mark Harvey, who is an associate professor and director of the MBA program at University of St. Mary. He’s also a co editor of the volume of simulations in the political science classroom, Games Without Frontiers, and the forthcoming book Beating the Clock, the Power of Short Games and Active Learning. In addition to doing research on active learning and deploying games and simulations in his own classrooms, he has also assisted in simulations in the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. He’s also the author of Celebrity Influence, Politics, Persuasion and Issue Based Advocacy. Mark, is there anything we’re missing that we should say at this point?

Mark Harvey:
Oh, we could go on, but yeah, that’s great. I love it. Thanks. That’s a very nice intro. I appreciate it.

Rob:
So Mark, what does living around with you for a day, shadowing you for a day or a week, whatever you want to go for it look like? Typically, if there’s anything such thing, yeah.

Mark Harvey:
There are elements of it that are typical from day to day and there’s some that are just, just sort of random. So I’ll give you kind of a rundown, right. So every morning I wake up at the crack of dawn, right? It is super dark when I get up because I have two daughters, a 12 year old and a 14 year old and I am responsible for getting them out of bed and off to school. So one of the things I got to do is get Madeline off to high school. So I’m out there driving early and then after that, first thing I may do is drop by the gym or I may go straight into the office. And this office that I’m sitting in, I’m not going to like give you a360 here, but it’s actually the nicest office I’ve ever been in. And I will tell you why is that. It’s actually part office, part classroom. So it’s a little more like a high school setup. And so like, you know, I’m looking around and there’s desks and all this stuff. So I have like the biggest office I’ve ever had. Room to spread out, students can just come in and visit me. Like, I’m not isolated or anything like that. And it’s just, it’s. It’s pretty cool. So I run the MBA program here at St. Mary. So I’ve got a lot of things that I do. You know, there’s obviously the sort of day to day running the program. It’s the biggest program on the campus. So there’s, you know, I’m supervising professors. Sometimes they drop by and I try to coach them on certain things. I’m an advisor to all my students. And so, you know, they may come by or I may have meetings with them and just trying to, you know, advise them through the program and in their careers and things like that. I tend to teach at least one course at a time. Right now I’m teaching an online course, but a lot of my teaching still is traditional, like live in the classroom. And that’s really where I think the games come alive. You know, I use games quite a bit in my teaching, as you mentioned. It may not be every class that I have a game, but every course has games that are involved. I mean, if I’m teaching global management, for example, you know, I have a cultural simulation that I put students through where I have them construct their own culture and then they have to do deals with each other and it’s. It’s madness, right? Or a trade simulation in an international political economy class or in my leadership class. All these madcap, team building, leadership sorts of activities where they’ve got to like solve a problem and then we learn about communication, leadership and stuff. So I really like that kind of stuff. So the classes that I teach usually are in the evening. So I’m here during the day, in the evening, maybe once a week I’m teaching a live class. On the days that I’m not, you know, I come home, have dinner, maybe make dinner, hang out with my wife and kids, drive Madeline to ballet, Danielle picking up from the theater, you know, the sort of dad thing that I typically do. And, you know, Tuesday nights we go to Scouts. The girls are involved in scouts, and so we may be camping once a month and that kind of thing. So there’s that. And I don’t know, weekends are. I try to do as little work as possible on the weekends. I’m trying to, like, you know, kind of the margin of my life, because otherwise my world is really busy. So Saturdays usually, like, chores around the house. But Sundays, if I’m not watching a Chiefs game, go Kansas City. Right. I’m. I’m still sad. I’m still a little broken about the other night. I can’t be too broken. We win a lot, but. Yeah, so, you know, watching a football game, but I try to actually just spend as much time playing games with my daughters and my wife, too, as I can. And those are just really special times that we have. So, I don’t know. I don’t catch you some Star Trek, Star wars, whatever. You know, watching. Watching videos.

Rob:
Star Trek and Star Wars. I think you’re the first person I hear talking about both in the same level of affection. Is that accurate?

Mark Harvey:
That is absolutely accurate, actually, I’ve got to say. Maybe Unicorn. Yeah, exactly. A little more on the Star wars side, I guess, what I grew up with. But, like, I. I will binge every episode of Star Trek, though. Fact, my wife and I, when we first met, one of our original arguments was like, who’s better, Picard or Kirk? And so, you know, it’s like it was a match made in heaven, Right?

Rob:
It just happens. It just happens. Right? Yeah, absolutely. So, Mark, you’ve done. You’re doing amazing work. You’re doing many things. You have books, all that stuff. And we also like to have, you know, get the best of our guests, but also understand where they come from and. And the audience sometimes, you know, I want to make sure that all of you are sort of real human beings as well to our audience. And that’s why we. That’s one of the reasons why we asked this question. And it has to do with failure or first attempts at learning. Right. You’ve done this plenty of times, it seems. But can you tell us about one of those times where it did not go well, where, you know, things did not go your way? You had to change pivot. You had one of those times of how, what am I doing here? Or whatever that looks like for you? We want to live that difficult moment to humanize you, but especially to take away some of those lessons you brought home. So take it away.

Mark Harvey:
All Right, Cool. Well, before I answer, let me just contextualize that a little bit because, like, failure to me is a really important thing. And I know I’ve mentioned Scouts a few times, but it’s like, I would. I’m an Eagle Scout. I grew up in Scouts, too, and my girls are involved in that stuff. And what I love about that organization is that the kids are in charge, the kids are leading things, and it’s a place that’s safe to fail. And failure is a really, really important part of life. And it’s important part of games. It’s part, you know, it’s. It’s how we learn. And now, having said that, because I believe that, I don’t really believe that there’s very many real failures in life. Right. Like, I’m always the, you know, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat guy. So if something’s not going well, it’s not a failure. It’s like, I’m adjusting. We’re fixing. We’re going to make it go next. So. So that’s. That’s sort of my general attitude toward that. So thus my first answer is, I’ve had no major fails. I mean, honestly, like, every time I’ve done a game with a class or done something like that, there’s been nothing about it where it’s been like, oh, my gosh, it’s absolutely abject failure. I will never do that again, or I will totally do it differently this time. But I will say there’s times where things don’t go as expected and you do have to pivot, and sometimes you think it’s like, oh, geez, what just happened? But it ends up being a cool thing. So that’s, again, sort of my attitude. So I’ll give you a couple of examples. Right. So a number of years ago, I taught with Duke University’s Talent Identification Program, which is basically summertime smart kid camp. I’d have the kids for three weeks, you know, teaching them eight, nine hours a day, a single subject. And I was teaching, in this case, international relations. So there’s, you know, some instructional time in the morning and some free time in the afternoon. So I’m like, saying, hey, free time. We could break out some games. We can do some things that. Where we teach them. So one of the games that, that. Well, there’s different games. Like, one of them is a game that’s sort of obscure now. It’s called Supremacy. It’s. It’s a little bit like Risk, but it involves, like, nuclear weapons and the stock market, too. And One thing. And I also have played Risk with them. So the point is that, like, these are long games, and when you have only maybe two or three hours or something really to make that happen, then interesting things start to happen, right? So you get to the end and you’re playing Supremacy, and the kids just start nuking each other because, like, we want to nuke each other, right? And you’re thinking, oh, geez, okay, so that wasn’t maybe quite the intention that I had, right? Or you’re playing Risk and people are going berserk. It’s like, oh, I must conquer as much stuff as possible. So one of the things I think was interesting is that in, in those early times where I started trying to play games with them, I, I was able to use that as a teaching opportunity where I’m like, people make decisions differently when they’re under crisis, when they’re, when they just only have so much time to act. And there’s a lot of research behind that. And I’m like, do you think those are good decisions? Are they smart decisions? And so, you know, you teach that, you turn that into a learning opportunity. But the other thing really, like, again, sort of early on, working with these kids, they’re sort of age 11 to 17, and we’re playing Risk with the kids, and there’s this one kid, probably like 11 or 12 years old, and he’s getting ready to get wiped off the board, and he looks like he’s gonna cry now. Keep in mind, five minutes before, he was like, I’m gonna kill all you guys. You know, he’s like, really being aggressive, and all the kids are picking on him now because he’s been so aggressive. So he kind of had it coming. But what I did is I, I, I’m like, okay, there’s gotta be a way to sort of like. Because this kid’s gonna drop out early, and what’s he gonna do if he, you know, he’s just going to sit in the corner or he’s going to get crazy or whatever, you know, So I got to keep him in the game somehow. So I’m like, you know what? I’m going to go after every single one of you who tries to wipe him out. He’s my ally now, and this is what I’m doing. And so, and it was a moment of inspiration where I thought, you know what Risk is traditionally, if you’re familiar with it, you know, it’s, it’s a game of conquest. The object of the game is to take over the entire world. Right. And I stopped and thought, that’s not really how the real world works nowadays. Right. There are powerful countries that kind of like, you know, the United States, for example, this hegemonic power that tries to prevent other countries. We try to keep the status quo going, right? It’s like, we like the status quo. We don’t want to have other major powers go about. So I’m like, you know what? I’ll be the United States. If anybody tries to wipe out any other country, I will be their ally. We’ll support them. Right. Of course, assuming they’re my allies, we can get into the political question another day. But it became a huge lesson about how not only great powers sometimes adjust the rules of the system. Right. So I’m playing by a different set of the rules than the kids are. The kids are trying to take over the world from that point on. Whenever I played Risk, I’m like, my object is to prevent everyone or prevent everyone from winning. Just keep everybody in the game as long as possible. And then it becomes a discussion not about conquest, but a discussion about, like, hegemonic powers and how a dominant power in the international system can. Can manage things. And especially, like, if I want a liberal world order and I’m powerful enough, I can make that happen. Plus, I’m the teacher. That’s the other thing. That’s weird, right. When you’re playing with a teacher, you’re playing with somebody who is subliminally powerful. So we talk about the psychology behind it. It’s like, if any other student would have done it, would you have taken them seriously? I don’t know. So we get to talk about the psychology, psychological elements of international relations as well. And so this thing where it’s like, oh, geez, this is like, going to be a disaster, ends up being really a pretty good thing. Cool.

Rob:
Love that. Turning around things is always a good thing, too. But you do have that moment of, oh, my God, kids.

Mark Harvey:
Yeah, I know, exactly.

Rob:
It’s going to break down. And that’s definitely not something that you were wanting or expecting or anything of the sort.

Mark Harvey:
Yeah.

Rob:
So, Mark, how about we talk about a successful one? One where you, you know, things just went your way. You were expecting it to go well. It did go well. Or maybe even better than you were expecting. We want to be there with you, and especially we would like to hear if you have any sort of what went right for this to get here. You know, what were the success factors? If so, if anything.

Mark Harvey:
Yeah, I think. I think you can tell already. That I’m a little more on the snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. And that wasn’t like an abject failure story as much as it was sort of a response to a challenge. And it went. Okay, so I will tell you, okay, I’ll tell you two things, right? First of all, now that I’m thinking about it, there actually was a situation that didn’t go as I planned recently. Right. And there wasn’t a good way to recover from it except just to talk about it. Right. And that is that I also sometimes teach in prisons. Okay. It’s part of the University of St. Mary program. And I was at Fort Leavenworth teaching in their military barracks. And these guys, they’re awesome. They’re great students, totally serious. And I brought risk to them and I expected I was going to play the same way with them, but they didn’t take to it. Like, they were still like, cut through, like, trying to, you know, conquer each other. Super competitive. And they were nice, don’t get me wrong. I mean, but it was, it was funny. And, and that’s another thing that, like, I. So I kind of thought that I was going to be able to trick them. Like, I tricked like a bunch of other students into sort of like, I’m the powerful guy and all this sort of stuff, but in a room full of prison guys, it’s like, it’s just not going to work that way. The other thing is, I’ve also discovered it also is different if I have a room full of men. So, like, on another occasion, same thing happened, but it was an all male class. And so, like, there’s just something sometimes inherently aggressive about that. So. And you get to the end and you’re like, okay, it didn’t go like I wanted, but we’ll talk through it. So I don’t know. I mean, like, that’s, that’s, I guess, a failure, so to speak. But I don’t know, there’s. Generally speaking. Oh, I’ll tell you something. Like, there are times where students try to sabotage games. Okay. I don’t know if teachers have ever experienced that before, but sometimes you get somebody who thinks they’re too cool for it and they’re going to do things that they think I’m not going to expect. And, and you just have to learn. You have to pivot, you have to adjust and stuff like that. And like, I was playing a trade game one time, and there was a. The idea is, is that students, it’s an, it’s an illustration of free trade Right. So you get a certain number of tickets and you’re allowed to trade with them and there’s rules. And eventually it becomes starts from a very restrictive system to one where people can trade anything you want to. And eventually the more people trade, the more money they make, the more money the whole system makes. Right on the last round it comes around to like, okay, anybody can sell anything. Just auction to highest bidder, see how much money we can make, right? And the, the idea behind the game, and this is a bit of a flaw, but it’s also something kind of interesting is that you know, you tell the students, okay, you really only have your own money to buy these tickets, right? So you have to imagine whatever it’s honor system, whatever money’s in your bank account, what can you really do, what can you get? And so it limits them psychologically. Like they can’t just buy everything. They can buy what they believe they can afford. Well, there’s this one guy one time who’s like, it’s the last thing and he just buys everything up. It doesn’t matter how much it is. Thousands of dollars. And he’s just like, yeah, okay, I’ll buy that, I’ll buy that soon. Sooner or later everything’s in his hands. And so, and he just thought he was going to be like, you know, pulling fast one on me and stuff. And keep in mind that in this situation, the, these, these people are representing countries, right? And I’m like, so what happens if like a country just like buys up everything in the system? And how do you really have that money in your account? Well, no, I mean, well, how will you pay for it? Oh, I don’t know. I got a credit card. Like, okay, so, so you’re going into debt. I mean, how much debt? Right? And so then it becomes a question of like, you know, what happens if you’re the United States and does this, right? What happens if you’re Greece and this happens, right? And, and how different countries are, are it comes across. So the point is, is that like, you know, I think challenge wise, you know, you, you just some sometimes random things happen and I think, you know, you roll with the punches and you just try to teach every. Treat everything like a learning experience and hopefully something that’s going to make it more fun and you know, make students laugh and just make it a great experience, you know.

Rob:
Cool. Love that. And Mark, with all this experience, these ups and downs, as you were saying, not full failure, not full anything. If you were to teach a new class now and you were to integrate games or a gamified strategy, anything of the sort, how would you do it? Like, what are the steps? What are the games you look at for inspiration or the actual games? How do you choose them? What would be, what would that look like in a broader sense? Maybe you’re teaching or helping somebody else implement this.

Mark Harvey:
Okay, great, Great question. It’s funny because I just listened to one of your podcasts recently of my friend James Pigeon Fielder, who was on the show, like, a number of months ago, and I listened to what he had to say, and his answer is a great answer. And it’s the answer that most people will tell you, and that is that you need to start with your course objectives and then work backwards and then try to figure out what do you need in order to teach your course objectives. And to that I will say I do kind of the opposite. I don’t know if this is like bad pedagogy or something like that, bad teaching, but I’m just like, this is a cool idea. Let’s just do it, right? Not because it, I don’t think about course objectives at first. I think about, like, this is a fun thing. Can I stick it in a class somewhere? And that’s, that’s more my style. Now, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, right? Because, I mean, I do have to keep course objectives in mind. I can’t just plug in anything that I want. But the way that I, I think about things is like, more like, how do I entertain the students as opposed to how do I achieve course objectives, right? So for me, I mean, like, I, I, I think I’m a pretty good guest or a pretty good lecturer, right? If I get in front of a group of students, I can entertain them. We could be funny. It’s going to be a discussion. Lots of students are going to laugh. I’m going to take them through, you know, it’s an experience. I want to give them an experience, right? So games are not my, it’s sort of a fallback position. It’s not necessarily the first thing that I go to, but if I’m doing something and I’m looking around the room and everybody’s falling asleep and it sucks. And like, you know, I mean, like, I’m not being myself, I’m not doing a good job at this, then I need something else, right? And, and so that’s an excellent opportunity for me to say, okay, so how can I take it out of my me talking at you and turn it into something of you doing Something. And so it’s a process question, I think, more than anything. So. Yeah, and that’s another thing. I’ve got a friend who like, you know, will play games sometimes and, or he knows about games. He’s a game freak and he will introduce stuff. He’s like, you should use this in your class and you should use this in your class. And I’m like, you’re right, I should. But then that’s the other challenge. Right. And also sort of the subject of our upcoming book about, you know, beating the clock short games in the classroom is that all teachers are pressed for time. Like, I want to play games all the time. I want to play all the games with the students. You know, it’s like, that’s what I would love to do, but you actually do have to sort of think about course objectives and you do have to think about what they. The journey that they’re on and how do you get there. And I don’t have time for everything. And so the idea of this book is like, okay, are there games that you can play in one class period or less, in order to teach a lesson and make things work? And, and because time is, is absolutely precious when it comes to being in a classroom.

Rob:
Yeah, always. Always is. So, you know, your process is, is unconventional in that sense. As, as you might say. Is there, is there something that you would say, well, you know, think about things this way. A best practice in, you know, managerial terms as you’re in that mba, Right. Is there something that you could name and say, well, this is a good practice. Not a silver bullet. Right. But a good practice.

Mark Harvey:
Okay. I will argue that games must be fun. Okay, I know this may sound obvious, but like, when you’re in a classroom or when you try to teach something, not all games are fun and not all simulations are, you know, laid back or whatever. Right. It’s like if I’m teaching somebody how to fly a plane and then they’re a flight simulator, right? That’s a bit of a game, but it’s not fun. You’re like, oh, geez, like, what do I do? You know, like, you know, stressful. And a little stress is cool too. I mean, especially like if there’s some competition, it’s. But the point is, is that people like to be competitive. They like to get involved in that. And so I’d say fun silliness, right? It’s like there a lot of times you play these games and people take things way too seriously, in my opinion. Okay, so like one of my favorite games is Dungeons and Dragons. I DM a lot. I play with my daughters. And, you know, I. I love the role playing aspect of it, and I love the storytelling aspect of it. And I believe in the rules. Right. I think the rules are important. Like, you know, there’s certain procedure. You got to roll the dice, you got to follow those things. But, like, there’s a certain point where you just, you know, if things get too serious, you just, you know, you have to have a ridiculous character or if, if somebody’s playing a little bit, like, against the character that they normally would or they do something that makes people laugh, I’m totally okay with that. Right. Or especially if people take things in a direction that is really surprising, you know, what will I allow? Right? Will I, you know, where are we going to go with this? And so I think it’s important. Like I said, I’m looking at games more as edutainment and less as, you know, we’re gonna do this thing just because it’s sort of like a lesson. Right. You know, it has to me, it has to be fun.

Rob:
Gotcha. Good stuff.

Mark Harvey:
I can bore people other ways, right?

Rob:
There’s better ways to bore people. Absolutely.

Mark Harvey:
Exactly.

Rob:
And, you know, you mentioned your friend Pigeon Fielder. You heard a podcast or two in the past. You’ve heard your. The questions here. You’ve seen a bit of a vibe of the podcast. Is there anybody that you would like to listen to, interviewed in the future guest in the Professor Game podcast? Somebody that would make you particularly curious to hear?

Mark Harvey:
Yeah. So can I break your rules and list like, maybe four instead of one, because, like, I got a list of people for you. All right. All right, so I’ll start off with a couple of collaborators. Like, Pigeon and I are working with two other guys on these books, and they’re. They’re great. Ryan Gibb is a professor at Baker University. He does extended diplomacy simulations and games with his students and really has a lot of good experience with it. Another guy, Derek Glasgow, is also working with us on this stuff. You know, he’s at West Westminster College and does, you know, he’s actually published stuff. Well, we’ve all published stuff in this, but, you know, he does stuff a little more in the political theory end, like, stuff. He’s got this interesting game about John Locke, and he does this, like, environmental simulation. Anyway, it’s really cool stuff. I think it’d be really great to. To get those guys on. I also mentioned the guy who tells me about games all the time. His name’s John Leahy. He actually is a business consultant, has done advising for people all over the world and has gamified aspects of his professional business training for people. So I think that would be completely different angle. And the last guy I will say somebody I actually don’t know but he developed in the 1980s one of my favorite games ever. I exchanged emails with him several years ago. I hope he’s still out there and kicking and like doing fighting the good fight. But his name’s Jim Gasparini and he, he designed a game called Hidden Agenda and you know, we might talk about that in a little bit. But that’s, you know, it’s, it’s a really great game. And what is. Well actually I’ll just say it right now, like what’s great about this game is that I use it in some of my classes is that he gathered all this data about like Central American revolutions, fed it into a computer and turned it into a simulation where like you can play the role of a president and you have all these advisors and you have to try to enact policies and there’s different political parties and you have to balance the interests of all these people or else they’ll just overthrow you in a coup. And so your goal is to try to make a three years without being killed. And so it’s a really interesting thing. It’s a DOS based game. It’s like all black and white. You could still find it like on Internet Archive and you need an emulator to play it. But it is the best simulation that I’ve probably seen politically and at the time when it came out, apparently came to the attention of the CIA and they invited him or maybe it’s the FBI, I don’t know. But one of these institutions invited him out to use it as a simulation for the US government. But it’s fun, it’s just, it’s really great. And so I think, you know, he’d just be an interesting cat to talk to. It’s just like, okay, so you designed this game and you know, so what happened man? Like, and where did it go? And so it’s just, I just think he would have a really great story to tell.

Rob:
Sounds like it for sure. And keeping up. You already mentioned four people you would like to have in the podcast, which is fantastic. How about a book? Of course, lying right next to your books. Which one would that book be and why?

Mark Harvey:
Okay, yeah, like I said, my book, you know, is a conventional answer and I’m just going to say something about it real quick. I’ll Give you a different book. And the reason why is because in my discipline in political science, I’m in political science and business, by the way. But on the political science side, there has been sort of a. A taboo for many years about playing games in the classroom. Like a lot of professors, you know, up until recent years, most professors are like, you know, that’s not real teaching. And why are you doing that? And what inspired us actually to write this book is that I ran into this guy at a conference one time, and he used diplomacy in his classroom for teaching, and he was afraid he wasn’t going to get tenure because these older professors were like, well, you’re just playing games with the students and you’re not doing anything serious. And like, I mean, he really thought that maybe he wasn’t going to have a job there in the future.

Rob:
But this is not just in political science, man. This happens in many, and I might even dare say most fields still to this day.

Mark Harvey:
Yeah. So this book, in part, it does a lot of things. It shows how to build games, how, you know, whole thing, there’s all sorts of great stuff about it. But it’s also that justification. It’s like, this is the reason why it’s important. This is the. The reason why it’s good in terms of pedagogy, like, all the theories behind it, plus the introduction and, you know, makes a connection between Peter Gabriel and Charles de Gaulle and how games might actually bring about world peace. So, hey, there’s that. But. But my answer to your real book question, that’s not my own book, is I’m going to bring it up. You mentioned it earlier, the wizard of Oz, and it’s. Again, it is not a book about games, it’s not a book about gaming. But the reason why I bring it up is because it’s a weird book and it makes a point, I think, about gaming. So most of you all, when you hear wizard of Oz, you’re thinking about the movie, right? And the way they constructed the movie is very much along the lines of like a conventional plot, Right. You know, you’ve got the rising action, you’ve got a climax, you’ve got a denouement and all this stuff. The book is nothing like that, Right? Sure. You know, she kills the wicked witch, but we’re about maybe two thirds of the way through the book when she’s killing the wicked witch. That is not the climax of the book. It’s an episodic adventure where Dorothy stumbles into one adventure after another. And it’s a Little bit weird. And, you know, it’s. It’s. It’s a little bit all over the place. I might plug the second book, Marvelous Land of Oz, where, you know, it’s. It’s kind of a feminist trope. Believe it or not, Baum, the author of the book, was like a male suffragist, right? He was in favor of women getting the vote. He wrote this book in 1900. But, you know, like, there’s all sorts of interesting surprises. And what I like about that is a reminder that this, you know, you don’t have to do games like a video game. Right. Most video games we play, it’s like you get to a certain point, then you got to fight the big baddie at the end, and there’s a climax. It’s like a movie, right? Well, you know, that’s not the way that I think about games. I think about them as sort of like unpredictable series of events. And if you’re thinking about it, like, particularly the unpredictable side, it’s like, you know, if I’m playing Dungeons and Dragons with my girls, and one of them says, okay, we’re stuck here. Can I walk? And all these people around me are frozen. Can I, like, walk on their heads? You know, like. Or I think that they’re going to kill a dragon, and instead they’re like, can we negotiate? You know, it’s like there’s. There’s weird things that, like, sometimes we’ll just see how this thing goes. We’ll see what it allows. And that particular book is such a tangential journey with weird little encounters that I just. I think it’s really. It’s a refreshing way to think about game playing, is that sometimes games are not linear, and sometimes they’re not predictable, and sometimes there’s not a climax and the experience is the journey.

Rob:
Cool. Love that Mark. Difficult question. Now, what would you say is your favorite game?

Mark Harvey:
My favorite game? Okay, again, I might have to break your rules and bring up more than one. I’ve mentioned a few. Right. So I mentioned Hidden Agenda. I really love that game. I’ve mentioned Dungeons and Dragons. I’m going to mention one more. Red Empire. It’s a hard one to find, probably. I don’t. You know, you might have to, like, ebay it or something like that. But that one is a card game that simulates the fall of the Soviet empire. So it’s. It’s interesting in that it is both a cooperative game and a competitive game. So you are presented with a series of crises and you’re. If you don’t deal with all the crisis as they come up. Then everybody loses. But at the same time, you want to. You gain points by being the dominant faction, and so you’re trying to perch people from other factions. And. And so it’s kind of this weird combination between competition and cooperation, and it’s. It’s lots of fun. And the best part about it is, is that whenever I play with people, it’s like, you must use your really bad Soviet accents because, you know, it’s. It’s just more fun this way. I don’t claim to be good at it, but I claim to be fun at it.

Rob:
Sounds fantastic, Mark. We’ve had an interesting journey, for sure. Very insightful from all your experience, your knowledge. We are arriving to the end of the podcast, but we need to know where we can find out more about you, your books, your work, and anything else that you want to lead us into, or any, you know, final piece of advice. Anything you want to go to.

Mark Harvey:
Absolutely. Okay. So you can connect me with me on social media at most of the social medias, I guess. Dr. Maharvey, that’s D R M A Harvey. And so that’s my handle that’ll get you to me on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it. I’m working on getting Blue sky up, but, you know, that’s not a hundred percent up yet, so just about all of them. You can probably find me there. Oh, and YouTube as well. I have a YouTube channel where you can, you know, get me through that handle. But it’s called Beyond Profit A Global Perspective. And it’s an opportunity for me to mostly share, like, teaching videos with my students. Like, as I said, I have online students, and so I’ll film myself in a classroom. I’ll edit these down to relatively shorter videos topically and let some of my online students watch it. But they’re open to anybody. Like, if you want to learn about stuff about, you know, politics, international relations, business, stuff like that, it’s all there, as well as some of the stuff that. Some of the research that I do on celebrities. Okay, so that’s another weird thing, I guess I. Another area of expertise of mine is that I study the effect of celebrities on politics. And so, yeah, there’s the book up there, right? Celebrity Influence. But yeah, that’s. It’s basically kind of a question of, you know, to what extent do celebrities influence politics? And that’s a whole other question that’s beyond games, but it’s entertainment. And I get called a lot by, you know, news places to sort of say stuff. Right. Like during the last election, it was hilarious. It’s like, oh, do you think Taylor Swift is going to make a big difference? Do you think she’s going to swing this election? I’d be like, probably not, you know, but anyway, they do matter, don’t get me wrong. But are they going to swing elections? Probably not so much, you know, that’s, that’s another question. So anyway, but yeah, I say stuff. I talk a little bit about stuff like that on that channel as well. Yeah. And I have a website again, Beyond Profit A Global Perspective. You can look me up there.

Rob:
Awesome. Thanks again, Dr. Mark Harvey, for coming here, for being on the podcast, sharing your insights, your knowledge, your understanding, your experience. However, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over. Hey engagers, and thank you for listening to the Professor Game podcast. And since you’re interested in this world of creating motivation, engagement, learning, loyalty using game inspired solutions, how about you join us on our free online community at Professor Game On School. You can find the link right below in the description, but the main thing is to click there. Join us. It’s a platform called School. It’s for free and you’ll find plenty of resources. There will be up to date with everything that we’re doing, any opportunities that we might have for you, and of course, before you go on to your next mission, be before you click continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game. See you there.

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