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We have seen above that ZPD moves for development and changes dynamically through stages. I would like to propose that this can be seen in a game, here Legend of Darkness (http://lod.nexon.com). Before I show the development in the game first I’d like to introduce the game to the people who are not familiar with the Legend of Darkness (LOD).

The reason I choose this game to see if group ZPD exists or not, is because of the particular gaming system:
First, this is a 2D game not 3D which enables the monster or the users to move only horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally. This has made the users to build some type of formulated hunting positions which help them to catch (destroy) the monsters in the most safe, fastest way. Second, it is an online game where, everyone wants to play; this will push the students to give some type of motivation not like classrooms, where you are pushed to sit in the class. Third, this game has a strong party system.; a strong team-based system. No one can play alone!! It’s the beauty of the game! This is the most important part. The group needs to work as a team, no actually work as one. If they do not, everyone will die. LOD is a MMORPG (multiplayer online role-playing game) which is based 2D graphics and has 5 different professions to play the game. The professions are Warrior, Rogue, Priest, Wizard and Monk. All 5 professions start out in level 1 and it is our first goal to develop to level 99. The stat system is divided into 5 different parts:

- Strength is an important attribute determining the weight of items that can be carried and the amount of damage dealt to a monster.
- Intelligence determines the power of spells.
- Wisdom will help your character regenerate mana points faster, and determines the amount of mana obtained per insight.
- Constitution will help your character regenerate health points faster, and determines the amount of health obtained per insight. It also increases the power of some skills.
- Dexterity is useful in dodging enemy attacks, improves the hit of your character, and increases the power of some skills.

Sited: http://darkages.com

The initial stats are all shown as 3 when you start the game. For example, when you make a character it would be shown as 3 3 3 3 3, as you can see below.

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As you level up you get to punch in 2 points to the stat system. After you level up to 99, you cannot change your stats anymore. For every stat, depending on your profession, you can learn new skills and spells.

             You can choose 5 different professions when you start the game: Warrior, Rogue, Priest, Wizard and Monk. Each has different characters and different skills which were supposedly to balance the game. All 5 professions have different roles when battling in the field. Intentionally the game company, Nexon, wanted the Warrior to be the strongest and fastest killer of the field, and Rogue to help out the team by interpreting the attack or defense source of the Monster for more effective battling. Priest was to give cure and undo curses for users, and Wizard for cursing and casting strong spells to destroy the monsters. Monk was the art of the game where it uses only its bare hands and feet to fight the monsters that would be able to cure it while fighting.

However this is only what the company has set up as a curriculum of the game. The users have developed these characters into most efficient style of battling in the game. The users developed the game in their own way. For example, Warriors are specified at hitting and demolishing and holding the monsters. Rogue needs to tell the group the defense source of the monster. Wizards curse and sleep the monsters, priests will heal the team and monks will usually gather up the monsters. My point here is that: it can be seen that group level ZPD changing among the game users. This is not about language acquisition it is only about the ZPD movement of the group level.

First I would like to talk about the development emerged in the game. As I noted above, the users are started out with all 3’s in the stats. There are no rules of how to develop any character. However the game which started in the 1998 has developed and came to an end that every character has different reasons for development in 2007. For example:

Warrior: Strength 132 Constitution 64 (referred as STR warrior)

         Strength 118 Constitution 80 (referred as Con warrior)

Wizard: Wisdom 94 Intelligence 108 (referred as Wiz wizard)

        Wisdom 134 Intelligence 68 (referred as Int wizard)

As we can see users has developed the characters into some type of prototype of developing professions. The reason of this development is something interesting to find out. For example I will use wizard’s stats as example, because it holds the least variations of stats and are pretty clear why the stats are developed in this way. Other professions hold too many different stats to analyze. We should know what Wis and Int causes for the character. Wiz has effects on how much mana (each spell will cause certain amount of mana when you cast) you will get through development, also the higher it is, it causes the ‘tic’ (the amount of mana you will get grow back as time goes by) to go faster. However I was lucky enough to talk with one of the old users (who have been playing since 98) how 108 would be the best result for wis and why 94 was for int:

Teld (user name for the old user, referred as T)

Hanbi (My user name, referred as H)

H: So why is it 94 for int and 108 for 108?

T: as you know for wizard the final spell needs to be at least 104 to learn it. And also you know that through items you can push up 10 points on your int. However, we found out that we needed at least 108 for wis which will give you at least 5 tics for full mana (which will mean that for 5 tics you’ll get full mana). Since the wizard only do cursing and sleeping the monsters, there was no need for high int actually. So to increase the mana tic for wizards it was crucial to put as many as points possible to the wis.

H: but wasn’t’ there other types of wis?

T: sure from my memory there was gold wizard, int wizard.

H: and they were what kind?

T: int wizard was used to be to give big power for cast spells. However it was found that spells wasn’t too effective in actual battle, so a very few bread did this and found to be less fate full. And also you know how hard it is to buy mana out of experience; it takes to long for appropriate amount of mana to be bought. (mana is bought with your experience you gather from the experience. However the more mana you have the more experience it takes to buy it) In the end, people didn’t really put a lot of effort into the int wizard and stick with the wis wizard. For wizard, it was a type of wizard to have better equipment. Different from other professions, wizards don’t really need to put any points to the str. So, after becoming level 99, wizards didn’t have any strength to carry heavy equipments as the warriors do. The gold wizards wanted to have better equipments so they would put 10 points out of the wis and into the str so that it was possible for them to have gold equipments (gold would be the highest equipment you could do within the game, the sequence would be leather->iron->silver->gold).

It was interesting to see that players developed there own need into the optimal solution for each characters. This didn’t come out of the blue; it was each player’s contribution to the game and actual practice after practice which finally came up with the optimal solution. If the role of the wizard was to attack the monsters straightly then the 94/108 stat wouldn’t have been the optimal solution. Since the int causes the power of the casting spells, the int style wizard could’ve emerged. However the role of the wizard turned out to be only casting curses and sleeping them which didn’t require the int of the wizard. Therefore the wizard development only stayed with the wiz concentration style. The only part where the stat has changed through the LOD history was when the game makers came up with new skills and spells to learn. Depending on the stat the optimal stat changed.

I would like to match the ZPD concept in this situation. To become level 99 is the goal or the task within the game, and the players are learners. The ideas and optimal suggestions for character development can be also considered as scaffolding for learners. Through scaffolding the learners will develop their characters and each time they are stuck within the task the adult(higher level users) can provide them with tips and others to give them more space to develop. The goal of the game before becoming level 99 is leveling up and how to give in points for each character. It is clear that the users developed their own way of optimal character development. The company of the game had no intention of the character development as the users did; it was the users who were developing themselves. In this case, there was rarely any other type of scaffolding among the users. Peer interaction helped the users to come up with the optimal solution. However I would also like to see the group level development when they start to battle together after they become level 99. The contrast table would be like this:

After becoming the level 99 there are some changes for the players (learners) in the game. Before the goal was becoming level 99, now it’s about buying health and mana in the game. Here the game is the environment, social context the users have and the users are again the learners. The group ZPD level would be noticed in the battling situation. As I noted before, this game cannot be played alone. All party members need to do its’ own role in the game for best solutions. If one player messes up his/her own role the battle in the field wouldn’t be not only inefficient but also dangerous for users. This is how the battle would be done:

The Korean letters on the top of the characters are users and the ones who don’t have the characters are the monsters. The far left character (한택봉) is a monk gathering up monsters for the users to kill.

The actual fighting scene; where all 5 characters are killing the monsters in a safe way. The monsters are coming into the formation and the users are killing them.

The map of the game where the blue and yellow blocks are the users and the red is the monsters. It can be seen that the monsters are coming in to the formation in some sort of order.

A scene where the game maker  gathered all the users for a memorial service, when the 2 Korean girls were killed by the American G.I who ran over them with  a tank. It is also a part where the game maker acts as a task giver in the game.

As we can see the all 5 learners are in some sort of position for battle. Why? It is because the best solution for the field. The beauty of this game is because it’s a two dimensional game. The monsters and learners are not allowed to move diagonally as other three dimensional games. There fore the monsters have to move in certain patterns, and the learners found the best solution for battling. The smaller goal here is to kill all the monsters in the fastest and safest way. The formation gives the learner to do the actual battle in a safest way. Therefore, if any learner wouldn’t perform well other learners will start to interact with you to follow some set of rules to battle. Wizard for example, should be surrounded by other learners to be protected because it holds the fewer defenses than others. The wizard will spell cast not to fight but make the monsters to only gain focus on the learner. Then, the other learners will start to battle any monster which comes in sight first. As team, as a group ZPD, all learners need to concentrate on each role. When other party members hold larger ZPD (advanced users) and while one user holds a smaller ZPD (beginner user) within the party, the experience and interaction from other learner will provide some sort of input to the smaller ZPD learner. The development will emerge immediately and also will be noticeable because it relates with the result of the battle.

From JungKwon Kim’s (2006) study we can see that ZPD is something that can move and peer interaction, peer role from each other can develop each other students ZPD to become larger, or closer of the center. The goal of the study was to provide the students with each suitable task. The Center students will receive C type task and M for M and A for A. The result was that A students who were notified as the lower developed students showed progress by C and M students’ interaction.

This shows that interaction holds important role in developing learners in classrooms. In the game the advanced users can be divided by C,M,A also. The C learners would be the advanced users who already had played the game for a certain amount of time and have lots of experience in the game. The M learners would be semi-advanced users who already had experience in battling and know what to do in the game. Finally A users would be the beginner users who don’t have enough experience in the game.  The target would be the A learners. While battling in the field, the C and M users will start to talk about more efficient way to kill the monsters while giving A input to how to form the formation and what to do while battling. The A user develops with other users to meet the needs of the party, killing monsters.

Motivation can be a factor in classrooms, but it is not a factor in a game. You will have students of various reasons not willing to come to classrooms, but you don’t have various reasons for playing games. When you play games, you just play games. You are not pushed to play the game but you want to. The difference between gaming and classroom environment stands strong here. Each students ZPD in classroom can vary and what they perceive from class differentiate from each other. However in gaming environments you meet with one goal and one goal meets with other players: developing your character. When it’s clear that each user has same goal orientated task and same motivation to solve the task, it is clear that we can see interaction and development at the same time. The knowledge within the game grows as you play and it is seen as you play too. Your control, your concepts of good or bad equipments grows larger as you play the game. Maybe it was hard to see the group level ZPD in classrooms because goal and motivation are clearly different among students. However in games it’s same so we can see how it develops. My reason for this paper is to see the development of game users, not language development. However I want to know how it would be different to integrate language development task in the game while sharing the same goal and motivation at the same time. The language would be served as minor factor to students rather than major role of the game. How I will make this happen is still up in the air and something needs to be thought and researched about.

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