The Gamification of Everything

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I really hate that term. My fear is that it will stick though.

Don’t get me wrong – there are some very useful things that are being called gamification. Many of them aren’t new though. There’s also a lot of crap that’s being labelled as gamification. I’m worried that most stuff will end up being part of the second group.

I’m staring to wonder just how much of the world is already gamified? Maybe it’s always been this way.

Example 1: Badges

There’s a local organization I’ve been trying to talk to since July. I keep sending mail to the President, and so far the best I’ve gotten is an apology for ‘losing my email’. Curiously, there are other people copied on the email – they don’t respond either. I of course can’t tell you if it is the case here but I suspect there are some people who seek various positions just so they can add to their ‘portfolio’. You know, like badges….. Member of …., President of…., yadda yadda.

Example 2: Leaderboards

For I while this summer, I made an effort to get an adjunct appointment. (For those of you from away – an Adjunct in Canada is a completely resource-neutral appointment.  See the end of this post for an explanation.) I tried three different universities – one of them was the institution where I’d actually HAD an adjunct appointment. For the most part, they don’t even acknowledge my emails. That’s used to be considered rude. I still consider it unprofessional at the very least. My credentials are pretty good, so the university really has nothing to lose by adding my annual accomplishments as part of any unit’s “output”, unless… My list of publications would end up pretty close to the top of the publication counter leaderboard, so maybe they’d rather not have me. I recall reading somewhere that people don’t like people who raise the bar. Now, again, I have no way of telling what the real story is – they won’t tell me (I kind of doubt they’d tell me the truth anyways).

I resent the fact that most of what I’ve published in the last few years is associated with a university that won’t even answer my emails.

Example 3: Points

One of the latest gamification deals has been rolled out by LinkedIn. I can’t say for sure when they started it, but in the last month or two they have added a new “feature”: their “Skills & Expertise” endorsement game.  Now, you can collect endorsements. Just you wait, it won’t be long before these endorsements start to look just like leaderboards, and you will be able to earn Endorsement badges, both for endorsing lots and lots of people, and for getting endorsed.

How many people have you endorsed? Did you REALLY know whether or not they had the expertise you said they did? Did you do it to make them feel good? Make them notice you? Maybe earn some cache in case you need a favour sometime in the future?

What about the people who don’t get endorsements? Does it actually mean they don’t have those skills?

Do people really believe this crap?

It’s a very small set of steps from “Networking” to “GroupThink” to “Mobbing”…..

 

Adjunct:

The title Adjunct Professor may be bestowed upon a person who is not a full-time member of the faculty. The granting of the title reflects some mutually beneficial scholarly association between the University and the candidate.

The title Adjunct Professor may be granted for any of the following purposes:
(1) To supervise or co-supervise graduate or undergraduate students
(2) To contribute to other scholarly pursuits of the department
(3) To facilitate the pursuit of independent research.

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (10: 3 Responses)

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These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University.

Each week, we are required to post three responses/reactions to queries posted by other members of the class in the previous week. These are mine.

I have paraphrased the queries to preserve my classmates’ privacy.

Please note: these posts are not intended as any kind of commentary on or assessment of the course I’m taking, or its instructor, OR of Michigan State University or the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, or the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. They are solely my thoughts and reactions that stem from the readings.

Feel free to comment, disagree, or what have you.

Week 10

These are the readings we had last week (Topics: Topics: Evaluation plan (feasibility, acceptability, usability, effectiveness; IRB and logistics):

  • Pinelle, D., Wong, N., & Stach, T. (2008). Heuristic evaluation for games: Usability principle for video game design. Paper presented at the The 26th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’06).
  • Baranowski, T., Baranowski, J., Thompson, D. I., Buday, R., Jago, R., Griffith, M. J., et al. (2011). Video game play, child diet, and physical activity behavior change: A randomized clinical trial. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 40, 33-38.
  • Baranowski, T., Baranowski, J., Thompson, D. I., & Buday, R. (2011). Behavioral science in video games for children’s diet and physical activity change: Key research needs. Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, 5, 229-233.
  • Optional: Isbister, K., Flanagan, M., & Hash, C. (2010). Designing games for learning: Insights from conversations with designers. Paper presented at the 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’10)

Response 1:? [Week 10 KB dialog 1/3] Is educational research on gaming hard to find or being ignored?

I could not help but wonder as I was reading the study by Pinelle and colleagues this week that there are several resources available that game designers appear to have ignored.  I conjure up memories of playing Darfur is Dying and I wonder how the gamers couldn’t have done a quick Google search to come up with some better tips to improve usability.  I understand that no research is perfect, but even studying the number of works we have thus far in the class, we can detect a number of patterns and, at the very least, create a checklist of things to consider in our designs.

Is educational research on serious games that hard to find or are industry innovators in this space more prone to winging it?  Or is the educational research not convincing enough that it is being ignored?

I think the problem goes both ways. They tend to ignore each other. Industry has a general mistrust of academia as not having anything practical to contribute, and academia tends to dismiss industry as not having the formal research to back up what it’s doing. There is a grain of truth to both of course, though neither is completely right.

This kind of parochialism also happens within academia where each discipline has a tendency to insulate itself from the others (think ‘silos’). Each discipline considers its own sources superior to those of other disciplines, but there are a few fields where this seems to be pathological: Education, and Information Technology. Both seem quite confident that no-one else has anything useful to contribute to their body of knowledge, so they don’t even look. I’ve always found this odd because I think they are among the MOST applied disciplines there are: the whole point of education is to teach something, and tech is really only interesting for what you can do with it.

The disrespect that ‘outside’ faculty have for Education is well known within Education, but those same people who complain about how their own discipline doesn’t get the respect it deserves do exactly the same thing to Informatics by depreciating the body of knowledge that underlies the technology they use. I’m sure this is a factor in why industry tends to ignore them.

Response 2:? [Week 10 KB dialog 2/3] Who do we need to know in the gaming industry?

In a follow-up post to last week’s inquiry on serious game conferences, I thought it would also be useful to come up with a Who’s Who in the gaming industry list.  Please submit your votes on who should be added to the list of gaming superstars we should know about.

Perhaps we can have also this list in a central place and make it available to future students.

I came across this this morning:

http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/11/the-18-greatest-gaming-scholars-all-time/

I would agree that all of these people belong on a list of influential game scholars. Not sure I agree with the order necessarily, and it is rather US-centric. All but three are in the U.S.: Sara (UK), Pamela (Currently Netherlands, but US educated), and Espen (Denmark). Also, all but Marc are academics. That having been said, most of the ones below are also currently in the US. At the end I’ve listed some additional names of people that were influential to me when I first started looking at games)

Here are a few additional ones that have been influential for me:

  • Clark Aldrich (http://www.clarkaldrichdesigns.com/)Lead the international team that created SimuLearn’s Virtual Leader; Aldrich speaks, writes, and does consulting work on e-learning issues. Published numerous books on simulations and games.
  • Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen (http://egenfeldt.eu/blog/ ) Has written articles on computer games, children, education, and learning since 1997. He is the author of two Danish books on computer games, and an English one (in its second edition) and regularly gives talk on the subject both nationally and internationally. Board member of Digital Game Research Association, co-founder of Game-Research.com, editor of Ivory tower column, and a founding member of Center for Computer Games Research Copenhagen. Co-creator of Global Conflicts
  • David Gibson, oversees all phases and aspects of the simSchool project: professional development, planning and implementation, educational research and evaluation, application development and deployment, budgeting, staff-performance and project-performance monitoring, communications, dissemination, and sustainability. At the Vermont Institutes, Gibson is director of research and development, concentrating on partnership development and new programs, systems analysis, evaluation, higher-education reform, and statewide professional-development planning
  • Carrie Heeter (http://gel.msu.edu/carrie/)Founding Director of the Communication Technology Laboratory and Creative Director for Michigan State University’s Virtual University Design and Technology group. Professor of Digital Media Arts in the Department of Telecommunication where she teaches online design and design research courses. Lives in San Francisco, using communication technologies to “telerelate” with colleagues, students, and friends in Michigan and elsewhere.
  • Ben Sawyer (http://www.dmill.com/) Serious Games Initiative The Serious Games Initiative is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy.
  • Ernest W. Adams Author, Consultant, Games Designer http://www.designersnotebook.com/

Also: Amy Bruckman, David Buckingham, Gonzalo Frasca, Yasmin Kafai, John Kirriemuir, Angela McFarlane, Seymour Papert, Andy Phelps, Clark Quinn, Mitch Resnick, Lloyd P. Rieber, Suzanne Seggerman, Richard N. Van Eck, Chris Crawford, Frans Ilkka Mäyrä, Peter Molyneux, Miguel Sicart, T.LTaylor, Will Wright

Response 3:? [Week 10 KB dialog 3/3]  Where is the line between good instructions and hand-holding?

Problem category 9 in the Pinelle reading touched on a particularly important and controversial area (although, I may be biased, having worked as a technical writer). It’s clear that some form of user assistance is necessary for a good gaming experience, whether it be instructions, in-game tutorials, or a help system. The current trend seems to be to integrate help and tutorial information into gameplay as much as possible. I’m wondering if there is a way to tell how much tutorial is too much; at what point does a design start to keep a player from feeling autonomous because it’s too helpful?

I think the answer to this is going to be different for entertainment games than for serious games, and there is probably variation even within serious games. Games that try to change your attitude, for example, will likely need to be much more cautious about forcing people to spend time in a tutorial than a game trying to teach math. It also depends a great deal on the complexity of the game as well as the complexity of the subject matter.

Personally, I think people should have access to tutorials and other help but there is very little they should be forced to do.

A game like Machinarium has a very short intro tutorial that gets you started. I think it is very well designed. Its “help” pages are incredibly cryptic, on purpose, in keeping with the whole spirit of the game. You even have to do a mini-challenge before you can even look at the help pages.

Earlier this year, we were asked to design a game to teach concepts in machine learning to middle schoolers. This one presented a huge challenge – there is nothing insightful about watching a machine while it’s learning – without an idea of how it’s doing what it’s doing, you really can’t get any idea of what this is all about – all you see is that the machine (or program) just gets better at what it does. Also, machine learning is not part of any normal middle school curriculum. It’s a fairly advanced topic and assumes a fair bit of background in probability, statistics, and CS. We ended up making a game where the player is the one who is asked to learn the way a machine does. The player is to create a program for a probe to be launched to Europa. It was not designed to be easy, but the intent was to give kids a feel for how machine learning works, without all the math and CS. The publisher kept asking us to make it easier. They wanted us to add all kinds of hints and pop-ups telling players what to do next. We got into a lot of trouble for resisting. In the end we created a fairly substantial ‘manual’ that players could access whenever they wanted. We had offered to do far more (video tutorials, lesson plans, etc.) but the publisher didn’t want to pay for them.

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (10: 3 Queries)

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These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University.

Each week, we are also required to post three questions for the rest of the class. These are mine.

Please note: these posts are not intended as any kind of commentary on or assessment of the course I’m taking, or its instructor, OR of Michigan State University or the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, or the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. They are solely my thoughts and reactions that stem from the readings.

Feel free to comment, disagree, or what have you.

Week 10

These are the readings for the week (Topics: Games for social change; Theories of persuasion; Culture):

  • Oinas-Kukkonen, H., & Harjumaa, M. (2008). A systematic framework for designing and evaluating persuasive systems. Paper presented at the The 3rd International Conference on Persuasive Technology (Persuasive ’08), Oulu, Finland.
  • Atkin, C.K. (1994). Designing persuasive health messages. In L. Sechrest, T.E. Backer, E.M. Rodgers, T.F. Campbell, & M.L. Grady (Eds.), Effective Dissemination of Clinical and Health Information. Rockville, MD: U. S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. (AHCPR Pub. No. 95-0015).
  • Abraham, C., & Michie, S. (2008). A taxonomy of behavior change techniques used in interventions. Health Psychology, 27, 379-387.
  • Bogost, I. (2011). Persuasive Games: Exploitationware. Gamasutra, May 3. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134735/persuasive_games_exploitationware.php
  • Optional: Khaled, R., Barr, R., Biddle, R., Fischer, R., & Noble, J. (2009). Game design strategies for collectivist persuasion. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games (Sandbox ’09), New Orleans, LA.
  • Game: Dr. Transplant www.doctortransplant.org
  • Game: Sweatshop www.playsweatshop.com
  • Game: Harpooned harpooned.org

Question1: [Week 10 KB Q 1/3] What kind of design framework are you looking for?

I wrote my first computer program in 1978 (in FORTRAN on punch cards, no less). I’ve been designing courses since 1982 (my supervisor had me design and teach a course as part of my CS Master’s). I haven’t been designing games for very long (less than a decade). Although I rarely look at design templates for programs anymore, and I tend to use previous course designs as templates for new ones, I STILL like to have some sort of design framework in mind any time I start a major project.

A group of researchers at Saskatoon did a major literature review a while back to look at what instructional designers actually do and discovered that while they do use ID models, they tend not to follow any one model closely (Kenny, Zhang, Schwier, & Campbell, 2005). For my part, I tend to look to design frameworks much less as I gain more experience, but I am still in search of viable design frameworks for games – especially serious ones, and I think there is plenty of room for new ones.

So the question to you is, what kinds of design frameworks do you use, if any, in the design work that you do now? What kinds of frameworks do you prefer? Visual process models that look like flowcharts? Waterfall models? Lists of principles like those offered by people like Jim Gee or Harri Oinas-Kukkonen and Marja Harjumaa? Concept maps?

Question2: [Week 10 KB Q 2/3] What’s in a name?

The term ‘gamification’ was apparently first used in the digital media industry in 2008 and it has become popular in the last couple of years (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011). However, people tend to have pretty strong feelings about it (Bogost, August 8, 2011). I think that a lot of the real potential in ‘gamification’ actually isn’t new, but I find the term to be a handy way to organize all these ideas together. I suspect that the term will stick because the marketing types seem to be flocking to it like the proverbial flies to S#%$. Lee Sheldon says he hates the term and prefers to use Massively Multiplayer Classroom in his book of the same name (Sheldon, 2012).

What do you think are some of the aspects now associated with ‘gamification’ that have the most potential to enhance serious causes?

Question3: [Week 10 KB Q 3/3] Is it possible to invent an ideal design template?

Some years ago I was at a software engineering (SENG) conference, sitting at a table with several other attendees. (I have very strong opinions about SENG) I told my tablemates that I thought there were actually 5 key elements required in SENG:

  1. Engineering Principles
  2. Scientific Principles
  3. Knowledge of Programming
  4. Craft / Creativity
  5. Talent

I told them I thought we would never be able to get a solid grip on the last two – these last two cannot be written into any kind of template or recipe. Their response was: “If that’s true, then we’re DONE.” I suspect they were trying to imply that I was wrong, and that given enough time, they will indeed be able to find a pattern, or process, or recipe that will take the ‘human’ aspect out of the creation of software. I would really love for that to be true, but I have seen time and time again that you can’t actually teach the last two. You can go so far, but if the people involved don’t have that spark to begin with, they will never be able to build really good software.

I am convinced that the same holds true for game design. Do you agree? Why?

  • Bogost, I. (August 8, 2011). Gamification is Bullshit. http://www.bogost.com/blog/gamification_is_bullshit.shtml
  • Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: defining “gamification”. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments.
  • Kenny, R. F., Zhang, Z., Schwier, R. A., & Campbell, K. (2005). A review of what instructional designers do: Questions answered and questions not asked. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 31(1), 9-26.
  • Sheldon, L. (2012). The multiplayer classroom : designing coursework as a game. Austrailia ; Boston, Mass.: Course Technology/Cengage Learning.
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Where I’ve Been (to Nov. 10 2012)

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  • Michael Geist – Canadian Copyright Reform In Force: Expanded User Rights Now the Law

    This morning, the majority of Bill C-11, the copyright reform bill, took effect, marking the most significant changes to Canadian copyright law in decades. While there are still some further changes to come (the Internet provider notice-and-notice rules await a consultation and their own regulations, various provisions related to the WIPO Internet treaties await formal ratification of those treaties), all the consumer oriented provisions are now active.

    tags: copyright law rights canadian

  • Games on Games project « G|A|M|E

    The Games on Games project originates from the hypothesis that it is possible and fruitful to critique videogames and their related themes by adopting their own forms, mechanics and languages. The meta-referential intention to transpose scientific research from written word to the playing field opens up a range of different challenges, such as:

    Is it always necessary to employ verbal languages to produce texts on games and their related practices and cultures? Or is it possible to create meta-pieces, “Games on Games,” reflecting on some aspects of play using ludic mechanics and conventions?

    What are the distinctive characteristics of Games on Games? What are their limits and their argumentative, rhetoric and persuasive potentialities? Are Games on Games able to highlight some elements of play practices more effectively than traditional texts? Can they make visible some characteristics of ludic practices that could otherwise remain undervalued or even invisible?

    tags: games project game_studies analysis

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Melancholy Anniversaries

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Two years ago this weekend my life, and that of my family, changed.

Two years ago this weekend, I got a call from my mom telling me my brother was dying. He was about to turn 56, and about to begin writing songs in earnest again, after a long career as a sound designer.

The next 2 months are hard to describe, so I’ll just say they were among the hardest of my life, not the least because my brother and his family didn’t really want anyone else around. (Trying to be diplomatic here…) Keeping everyone away made things harder for everyone, and I am still dealing with that part.

You see, my brother was a performer. I think he became a performer the first time he stepped on the stage when he was 12. He spent most of the rest of his life behind a facade – he was funny, talented, and bright, but he was also arrogant, quick to judge, and profoundly insecure.

He was friends with everyone but close to no-one. Not even, as it turns out, his own family.

Once he accepted the fact that he was dying, he set about planning his final performances. He planned his own “Wrap Party” – to be held a few weeks after he died. He was a performer to his very last day, and beyond.

So long as he was able to control the situation, he allowed a few people to visit him. My mom, who was dealing with cancer herself, got to see him more than most of us – she only lived a few blocks away. I saw him three times. I watched a performance of the last play he’d ever work on (they’re still using his music). It was totally surreal.

Our father was a performer too. He died on October 18 at the age of 48 by his own hand. I was 12, and my brother was 16. I adored my father, just as I adored my brother.

Although my brother harboured a deep and lasting resentment for all the things my father was and wasn’t, he surrounded himself with reminders of my father – he even wore the same cologne. It’s as though he needed to try and keep his father close, while publicly acting as though he didn’t. My brother’s family didn’t know how much of what my brother did and had was connected to my dad. I did.

There is a song I have associated with my dad ever since I first played it on our record player. I couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6. It is from the movie “The Five Pennies”:

It was my dad’s and my Special Song.

My dad had actually met some of these guys (the actors in the film) in Berlin. My dad was a well-known German actor and performer at the time.

It is also the song that my brother performed for his daughter at her wedding. He gave a lovely speech dedicating this song to her. I almost fell off my chair when I realized what song it was. It was all I could do to hold it together – and NO-ONE except my brother, my mom, and me knew how that song was connected to our family.

I never got the chance to ask my brother why he chose THAT particular song to sing to his daughter, but I can guess.

I still can’t listen to that song without crying, though now I cry for BOTH my dad, and my brother.

They were SO much alike. I suspect that on some level, they both knew it.

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University Calendar Important Dates – How to do it Right

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Why is it that the things that people tend to check more often than anything, including the list of important dates, are so devilishly hard to find on most university websites.


University Websites: Things On The Front Page vs. Things People (Actually) Look For, Andy Camper

 

I mean, REALLY. This is the modern world – how hard is it to add an obvious link somewhere?

I have lost track of how often I have gone to a university site trying to find the list of important dates and ended up spending 5-15 minutes just clicking around, getting more and more frustrated.

Next term, I will be associated with 4 (count ’em: FOUR) different universities spread over two provinces and two countries. I need to know when classes start and end, when the holidays, are, etc.

Only ONE ( MSU ) has an obvious link to this information on the front page: Academics->Academic Calendar

One (USask) also has a link from the main pages, but it’s called events: Activities-> Events Calendar

Neither the U of Calgary nor Mount Royal University make it easy, and even a search results in you having to try several pages before you are likely to stumble on the right one.

ONE (USask) actually gets it right. Not only do they give you an honest to god calendar that you can navigate, they ALSO offer you a downloadable iCal file that you can add to your OWN calendar.

Now, if only they would let me leave out the schools that don’t relate to me (like dentistry, medicine, vet med, …). Oh well, it’s still a great idea.

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Where I’ve Been (to Nov. 3 2012)

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  • WebQuest Design Patterns

    This is a list of patterns derived from existing WebQuests that are instructionally solid. To qualify as a design pattern, the lesson should be easily modified to cover different content while using the same basic structure. Each pattern is distinct from the others in terms of the kinds of content it can be used for, and the organization of the Introduction, Task, Process and Evaluation sections. With templates that are specific to each design pattern, it should be easier to hit the ground running when starting to create a new WebQuest.

    These design patterns can be organized in terms of the dominant thinking verb that underlies them. These five verbs: design, decide, create, analyze and predict, represent the highest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. Starting with those verbs guarantees that your WebQuest will be wrapped around a higher level thinking task.

    tags: webquest templates design education tools lessonplans

  • edX

    eLearning courses free

    tags: learning courses

  • Instructional Design Books Recommendations

    Instructional Design Books Recommendations

    An ongoing list.

    tags: instructional instructional design design books

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Best Donkey Kong Image ever!

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Posted with permission.
(c) L.J. Anderson

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