The video above is a collaborative work between James Portnow and Daniel Floyd discussing the concept of Tangential Learning. It is based off an article by James Portnow, the full text of which can be found below.

Winston Churchill once said: "I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught."

We have known for some time that games are the answer to this problem. The problem is that most of the games we create to solve this dilemma attempt to teach rather than allow the player to learn.

This article will discuss 'tangential learning', the concept of exposing players to knowledge rather than actively trying to teach them.

Simply by presenting the player with opportunities to discover interesting ideas that they may not have otherwise come across you are setting the groundwork for learning. This investigation will focus on how to build on that groundwork and lower the barrier to autodidactic learning...without substantially raising development costs or taking away ‘fun’.

The Problem

When someone flips off the switch or puts down the controller they should walk away refreshed, having enjoyed their leisure, but should that be the limit of what they experience? Does it have to be? Clearly not.
When someone walks away from a play experience they should have the opportunity to bring something from their recreation into their life. Because we are an interactive media we have the greatest opportunity to facilitate learning and bring real benefit to the interactor, yet so often do we deny our users that opportunity.

Why? Because there is a divide between games which are meant to do good and those meant to entertain. This divide is unlike that in any other media. We seemed paralyzed by a past paradigm where games that were intended to do good for the user were made by a totally separate group than those meant simply to be enjoyed. This separation was reinforced and encouraged until those two groups finally became two separate industries, the ‘videogame industry’ and the ‘edutainment’ or ‘simulation’ industry. The problem is that, in digging this trench, both sides discarded something very valuable. Though this is not universally true, it is my opinion that the edutainment and simulations industry gave up “fun”, while we gave up “good”.