Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (6: 3 Responses)

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Approximate Reading Time: 6 minutes

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 6

These are the readings form last week (Topics: Concepts in research papers; Theory driven game design):

  • Kato, P. M., Cole, S. W., Bradlyn, A. S., & Pollock, B. H. (2008). A video game improves behavioral outcomes in adolescents and young adults with cancer: A randomized trial. Pediatrics, 122(2), E305-E317.
  • Tate, R., Haritatos, J., & Cole, S. (2009). HopeLab’s Approach to Re-Mission. International Journal of Learning and Media; 1(1): 29-35.
  • Optional: Garza, M., Chamberlin, B., Gleason, J., Muise, A., & Gallagher, R. (2012). Year-End Review of Exergaming Research. (Annotated bibliography).  http://www.slideshare.net/nmsumediaproductions/year-in-exergames-research-review
  • GAME: Re-Mission www.re-mission.net

Response 1: Design in Serious Games- Appropriateness for Young Adults? [Week 6 KB dialog 1/3]

I can’t help but wonder if the avatar character with the bust line showing, and the sleek space suit, is great for young adults, or if they even notice any more. As someone working in this field, I have calmed down and let a lot go more, there is so much to argue about, without arguing about breast size and cleavage and so on. ( I have been in approval meetings, where a small bit of cleavage, near the armpit, caused a furor and a 3 week redesign)….

I have also sat with little kids, who are playing something that has some questionable artwork, and the kids don’t seem to register, yet I am silently freaking out in the background.

My question is; do serious and education games need to keep a higher standard of appropriate design and language for gaming, simply because they are serious and educational?

You raise an interesting question – and one that I think applies in a much broader context. I think the same rules apply here as apply in other forms of media. It’s really important to portray images and characteristics that do not fall into problematic stereotypes – unless of course, that is the point of the game. In most games, the villain should be villainous, unless the point of the game is to highlight grey issues. The hero should be heroic.

In the case of Re-Mission, I agree with you; it would have been nice to use a character that did not mimic the stereotypes.

Personally, I have no problem with a female character that is attractive – I’d far sooner play a good-looking character than a plain one – but I DO think we need to be sensitive to the stereotypes we are portraying, ESPECIALLY in serious games. I also think that it is very easy to go too far in trying to ‘de-sexualize’ characters, which can easily backfire.

Samus from Metroid prime is a good example of one that succeeds and manages to be cool, attractive, and imposing, without being overly sexualized. I thought it was interesting that their main character was female, and not preoccupied with romance. They say she’s 6’3 and 198 lb., so she’s not exactly typical.

I think there are many films and televisions shows from which we can take lessons, which I find especially refreshing. When I was a kid I had the “Bond Girls” – and though they were clearly portrayed as sex symbols, many of them also really kicked a$$. I also had “I Dream of Genie” and “Bewiched” – neither of which interested me. My favorite was Emma Peel (from the Avengers). These days we have Abby Sciuto (from NCIS) and Penelope Garcia (from Criminal Minds), among others. This is a good thing. There are far fewer strong juvenile characters – one that comes to mind is the little girl character (Enola) from Waterworld – she was one tough cookie.

I think it’s important to have sympathetic characters – if the message of the game is something that is not directly related to how the character looks, then the character should be one players will like. In addition to that I think we have an obligation to think carefully about every character we put into the game – they don’t all have to make a big statement, but they should never make the wrong statement.

Response 2: Serious Games and Accuracy? [Week 6 KB dialog 2/3]

The Kelly article, talked about the difficulty in ‘what to leave in, and what to leave out’.

My question is…as game designers, what responsibilities do we have to be accurate and true to the content, while at the same time trying to create a ‘good game’?

All games lie.

This is to say that all games (and simulations) do things that are not, strictly speaking, realistic. They have to. Making a truly realistic game or simulation is impossible because we will never be able to get all of the variables exactly right. There are simply too many variables in any situation for us to be able to model them with complete accuracy. Most games take liberties with various aspects of reality in order to make the game more playable. Most games play fast and loose with time, for example. One of the things I think is absolutely crucial in serious game design though is to make sure that those aspects of the game that are relevant to the message being delivered be correct and accurate.

We developed a game this winter to teach machine learning concepts to middle school kids (G5-8) and got considerable flak from the producer for some of the words we used. The game asked the player to create a pathfinding program for a robot that was going on a mission to Europa. They had serious problems with us using the word ‘abort’, as in ‘Abort the Mission’. In this case, this was the correct term for this situation, but they were uncomfortable with the word (it was a very conservative organization), and we ended up having to change it to “Go Back”. They also objected to our use of the word “error” – they thought it might discourage players by making them feel bad. The fact that it is the correct and accepted term means that changing it also means that the game is no longer true to the science it is supposed to portray.

I feel very strongly that ed games need to keep to a higher standard, and that applies to the factual information perhaps even more than the political correctness. A game about science better be correct in all the relevant scientific facts.

Response 3: Research conflict of interest? [Week 6 KB dialog 3/3]

How seriously should we take conflicts of interest in serious game research?  I noticed that the Kato research was funded by HopeLab and the Tate paper was written by HopeLab people (HopeLab being the developer of Re-Mission).  If this were a commercial product or a presidential campaign, we would be concerned by the conflict of interest from the designers of a product being the ones researching and publishing the effectiveness of the product.  Or is such self-promotion acceptable?  Thoughts?

This is something of which we should always be cognizant, whether we are studying a game or anything else. One of the considerations one should always include when looking at research findings is the source of funding. Were they really at arms’ length? Do they stand to gain by findings that lean one way or another? Just because a finding works in favor of the funder does not necessarily mean that the research is tainted, but it does deserve careful scrutiny.

The fact that the research was funded by HopeLab does (and should not) not, in and of itself, imply that the research was unsound or biased in any way, but it does give one pause. On the other hand, research is being funded more and more by private interests, and that adds a layer of complexity that shouldn’t easily be dismissed.

I think the results should still be published, but it is vitally important that they be published with full disclosure. In other words, the source of the funding as well as their connection to the research should be disclosed. This is not always the case, so I think Re-Mission does a pretty good job and is being pretty transparent. That lends some credence to the findings. It would be great though to have more studies and additional results. A single study should never be the final word.

While finding favorable results may raise some red flags if the funder is not at arm’s length, all studies should be carefully scrutinized. If someone finds results that do NOT help them it seems weightier than if it does – a study funded by a tobacco company that finds serious problems with their own product.

There was an interesting story published in the Chronicle of Higher Ed this week about a researcher who has been caught publishing bogus results. The shocking part is that this person has been doing it for about 10 years and no-one has caught up with him before now. He published nearly 200 papers! (The Chronicle requires subscription, but I found this link: http://211.144.68.84:9998/91keshi/Public/File/38/344-7851/pdf/bmj.e2490.full.pdf).

I guess the moral of that story is that we shouldn’t always believe what we read, even if it is published in a journal.

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (6: 3 Queries)

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Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

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 6

These are the readings for the week (Topics: Theories of Behavior Part 1: Health Belief, Model, Stage of Change, Theory of Planned, Behavior, Social Cognitive Theory):

  • Kelly, H., Howell, K., Glinert, E., Holding, L., Swain, C., Burrowbridge, A., & Roper, M. (2007). How to build serious games. Communications of the ACM, 50(7), 44-49.
  • NIH Theory at a glance (pg. 9-21 – USE PAGE NUMBERS IN DOCUMENT, NOT THE ONES IN ACROBAT) National Institutes of Health (2005). Theory at a glance: A guide for health promotion practice. Retrieved August 15, 2010 from http://www.cancer.gov/PDF/481f5d53-63df-41bc-bfaf-5aa48ee1da4d/TAAG3.pdf
  • Lieberman, D. (2012). Designing digital games, social media, and mobile technologies to motivate and support health behavior change. In R. E. Rice & C. K. Atkin (Eds.), Public Communication Campaigns (pp. 273-287). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • GAME: Immune Attack www.fas.org/immuneattack

 

 

Question1: How important is it to provide realistic or balanced options for avatar customization in a serious game? [Week 6 KB Q 1/3]

Let’s assume we have decided to provide customizable avatars for our health  game. How far should we go? Do we allow more or less accurate depictions or should we keep all options within a reasonably flattering range?

Question2: What kind of game taxonomy would be most advantageous to the design of a serious game? [Week 6 KB Q 2/3]

Assuming that different kinds/genres/styles of games will facilitate some kinds of learning and not others, is it even important to go through the exercise of trying to classify games? For my part, I would say yes, but coming up with taxonomy that works for serious games is not easy.

Question3: Can Modest Contexts Have Big Effects? [Week 6 KB Q 3/3]

This question comes from the game review for this week. In the Quest for the Code game (http://asthma.starlight.org/homepage.htm), we are told that the fate of the entire world might rest on our actions in the game. Now, we know that this is just a game, but I sometimes find the exaggerations used in games like this somewhat tiresome (the entire world depends on YOU). I’m wondering if that’s just me, or if other people are similarly affected. Perhaps more importantly, I wonder if more moderate goals, such as, “Let’s help everyone in the house.” Would work as well, the same, or better.

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (6: Putting Ourselves in the Game)

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Approximate Reading Time: 4 minutes

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.

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 6

These are the readings for the week (Topics: Theories of Behavior Part 1: Health Belief, Model, Stage of Change, Theory of Planned, Behavior, Social Cognitive Theory):

  • Kelly, H., Howell, K., Glinert, E., Holding, L., Swain, C., Burrowbridge, A., & Roper, M. (2007). How to build serious games. Communications of the ACM, 50(7), 44-49.
  • NIH Theory at a glance (pg. 9-21 – USE PAGE NUMBERS IN DOCUMENT, NOT THE ONES IN ACROBAT) National Institutes of Health (2005). Theory at a glance: A guide for health promotion practice. Retrieved August 15, 2010 from http://www.cancer.gov/PDF/481f5d53-63df-41bc-bfaf-5aa48ee1da4d/TAAG3.pdf
  • Lieberman, D. (2012). Designing digital games, social media, and mobile technologies to motivate and support health behavior change. In R. E. Rice & C. K. Atkin (Eds.), Public Communication Campaigns (pp. 273-287). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • GAME: Immune Attack www.fas.org/immuneattack

This week I was particularly taken by the discussion in Lieberman about the “Proteus Effect”. People identify with their avatars, and they do so more strongly when they have control over how the avatar looks, but it still resembles them to an extent. It doesn’t surprise me that this would be so, and it makes perfect sense to me that an avatar that presents an idealized or inspirational version of the self would have a strong effect in connecting us to the game. It also makes sense that being able to actually see your avatar (i.e. 3rd person perspective) would have a greater effect than if you play the gave “looking out through the avatar” but never seeing her.

Many games and websites allow players to choose an avatar to represent themselves, and it seems to me that too many of them have either not read the research on this phenomenon, or have chosen to ignore its impact. Doing this badly can negatively affect the whole experience.

When we first got our Wii, my kids spent hours and hours making up Miis. It was great fun. They made quite a few known characters: science heroes, cartoon, anime, film, and TV characters, etc., but they also created some completely made-up characters as well as numerous variations of themselves. Each one had a specific personality and when they were messing around with them it was clear that some invited more silliness than others. I will admit that I am not up on the full body of research into the Proteus effect, but I can easily see how the appearance of our avatar will affect the way we identify with it, and that in turn will of course affect our connection to the game itself.

It seems intuitive that we would tend to do things differently depending on the appearance of our avatar – good, evil, sympathetic vs unsympathetic. I normally behave online in much the same way I would in real life (IRL), so for example, I have never walked away from an NPC that wanted to talk to me in Animal Crossing. When they ask a question I usually respond in a way that I think will “please” them – and they’re only bots! I suspect I might be more willing to act differently if my avatar did not appear to represent me.

I came across a very recent study that suggests that the virtual embodiment of the self may have real effects for personal identity and offline behaviors, which has important implications for health games especially. That same study also suggests that the effect was stronger in the positive direction than in the negative. “Overall, self-presence emerged as the dominant antecedent of the influence of the virtual on offline health and appearance behavior change. Though spatial and social presence initially appeared to be predictors the influence of these dimensions of presence were rendered statistically non-significant once self-presence was accounted for in the model. Thus, self-presence has unique effects on offline behaviors and should be considered and measured as a construct independently from social and spatial presence” (Behm-Morawitz, 2012).

This means there is yet one more thing we need to consider carefully when we are designing a serious game. First, should we allow the player some sort of avatar, either in game or as part of the community surrounding the game? It seems that this choice is likely to have an effect on how people engage with the game, and therefore it will also have an effect on the manner in which the game’s message is taken up.

Then, if we have decided to include an avatar, we now need to consider how we are going to do it:

  • Should it be customizable or should they choose from a list of pre-defined characters?
  • If customizable, is there a way for them to create themselves, or merely create variations on some characters they are given?

While all of these things have implications for entertainment games and can positively or negatively affect the success of a game, I think it has even more critical implications for serious games because serious games have a message to impart.

Behm-Morawitz, E. (2012). Mirrored selves: The influence of self-presence in a virtual world on health, appearance, and well-being. Computers in Human Behavior, in press(0). doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2012.07.023

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Game Taxonomies Are a Mess, and Other Classification Exercises

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One of our assigned readings in my Theories of Games and Interaction for Design course this week has got me thinking again about game taxonomies.

  • Lieberman, D. (2012). Designing digital games, social media, and mobile technologies to motivate and support health behavior change. In R. E. Rice & C. K. Atkin (Eds.), Public Communication Campaigns (pp. 273-287). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

I love organizing things, and I love making lists. For me, it is a way of sorting ideas. As a result, I really like things like the notion of patterns as well as taxonomies like Bloom’s, while at the same time recognizing the limitations.

Every time I come across another organizational list, I view it with renewed optimism, and coming across one in this week’s readings is no different.

Sadly, like almost all the other lists I’ve come across, closer inspection leads me to disappointment. In this case, the first thing that strikes me is that the classification criteria are not consistent, which means that the list is not coherent.

Here’s a brief summary:

Digital Game Formats:

  • Puzzle games: Games that invite players to solve puzzles using visual, mathematical, word, memory, or logical skills, etc.
  • Eye-hand coordination games: involve, for example, hitting targets, catching objects, rolling or maneuvering an object while staying within bounds, or racing while picking up certain items for more points or to gain increased speed and then avoiding other items that reduce points or decrease speed.
  • Action and adventure games: enable the player to take the role of a character and move through a complex and varied game world.
  • Scenario-based games: put the player into a realistic situation within a digital game world and involve decision making that results in positive or negative health consequences.
  • Simulations: is a model of a system or environment—with interrelated, interdependent elements—that responds system-wide to any change the user makes within it.(Note: I don’t entirely agree with this definition – the ‘system-wide’ part gives me pause – but I’ll let it go for now)
  • Virtual world: is an online environment in which participants can create characters, places, and events.
  • Mobile games: are playable on mobile phones and tablet computers.
  • Active games: are designed to get the player moving.
  • Context-aware games: take place in the physical world, and they use data and information from the environment as inputs into the game.
  • Alternate reality games: take place in the physical world with technology delivering information and facilitating communication.
  • Community collaboration games: bring people together online to address important issues, participate in new scientific discoveries, and solve problems.

For the most part, I am willing to go along with the definitions of each of these categories. The problem is that they are listed as a linear list, when in fact they describe categories of games that not only overlap, but aren’t even in the same ballpark. This makes it very confusing.

“Puzzle games” describe a style of game design and gameplay, while “mobile” describes hardware. I realize that the classification of games is quite messy, but at least admit that.

Perhaps classification based on specific attributes, such as the hardware, game genre, subject matter, and so on would help clear up some of the mess. None of these are going to generate nice, clean cut categories, but I suspect that it will lend it some form that would turn out to be useful. We already know for example, that designing for mobile devices requires a different approach than designing for consoles. There is a certain convergence happening such as games designed for consoles going mobile, but I still think there are things we can learn from classification exercises.

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NYU using Codeacademy to Teach CS: Who got fired? « Computing Education Blog

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NYU using Codeacademy to Teach CS: Who got fired? « Computing Education Blog.

I agree with the concerns raised by Mark here.

I would add a few additional concerns to this as well. See, I’m not as thrilled by the MOOC idea as some others are.

Forgive my cynicism, but, why bother to teach a course at all? Why not just charge people money to take a test?
I can see us coming to this.

I always thought the value-added at a university was supposed to be the personal part. In other words, the one-on-one. I know this is hard to do in large classes, but jeez, don’t the students deserve your best efforts?

I also know that a great many of the so-called “good” schools have courses “taught” (i.e. leactured) by famous people who never interact with their students. If all you ever get to do is watch, then what’s the point of doing it in person?

Fifty undergraduates will participate in the pilot program, which includes a weekly class and monthly lectures from technology-industry leaders. If all goes well, the course may be incorporated into the department’s curriculum.

So, basically, the students are being asked to teach themselves with what they find online, and then come to a few talks. For this I bet they pay full price.

If all that’s left of the “value” of paying tuition and taking courses from a recognized university is the test at the end and the name on the parchment, why not cut to the chase and just start charging for tests? Clearly, if someone can pass your test, they know all they need to, right?

RIGHT?

Maybe, just maybe, rather than succumbing to greed and the unending pursuit of more, and bigger, and faster, we might consider getting smaller, more personal.

Learning a discipline is only partly about learning the content.

A big part of becoming a professional has to do with learning to BE. MOOCs aren’t going to be able to help with that.

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Shelly Wright: Why I Gave Up Flipped Instruction

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Why I Gave Up Flipped Instruction.

This pretty much echoes my feelings on the “Flipped Classroom” fad. Well worth the read.

While I may not have intentionally removed the flip from my classroom, I would never resurrect it. Here’s why:

1) I dislike the idea of giving my students homework. Really? Yes. Students spend over five hours a day engaged in academic pursuits. I think that is enough. Recently I’ve been reading Alfie Kohn’s book The Homework Myth. He has mined the research on homework thoroughly, and — overwhelmingly — it shows that homework has no long-term impact on academic achievement. That’s likely shocking to some teachers.

But beyond this, I think there’s more to life than being engaged in academics. Students need to participate in a variety of pursuits — sports, music, drama, meaningful jobs — to fully develop all of their talents and discover areas of interest. Furthermore, students need to spend time with their families. What right do I have impinge on this?

2) A lecture by video is still a lecture. This summer I had the opportunity to speak with a superintendent from a division outside of my own. He was curious about the flipped classroom. We were with a group of educators and he asked if anyone present had used it. Since I was the teacher with the most experience with it, I spoke about what it looked like in our classroom. Mostly I talked about inquiry learning and student choice.

At the end, he looked at me and said, “So the videos — did you make your own, or use ones that someone else had made?” My immediate thought was, “you don’t get it.” I was candid: “If you think it’s only about the videos, then you have a really shallow definition of what this could be. The real power is when students take responsibility for their own learning.”

Of course, the reality is that many if not most teachers who opt for the flipped classroom strategy are not pursuing a student-centred approach to teaching and learning. The traditional model of learning is simply being reversed, instead of being reinvented. The lecture (live or on video) is still front and center.

Learning isn’t simply a matter of passively absorbing new information while watching a lecture on video; new knowledge should be actively constructed. When we shifted to a student-centred classroom, my students took control of their learning, and I quit lecturing. I haven’t lectured in almost two years.

3) I want my students to own their learning.  It’s been stated that “At its most basic level, the flipped classroom gives students more control over their educations, allowing them to start and stop or rewind important lectures to focus on key points.”  To me, this isn’t giving students control over their education, although it may be creating new markets for content-oriented videos and related materials.

In our classroom, we sit down with the curriculum, and students actually see what the outcomes and objectives are. We then have a dialogue about what my students’ learning might look like. They have a choice over what order they are going to work on outcomes, how they are going to learn and reach those outcomes, and how they are going to show me what they have learned.

As my students worked with me to invent our own version of student-centred learning, we realized that the three questions every student in our classroom had to answer were: What are you going to learn? How are you going to learn it? How are you going to show me your learning? This became our mantra — our framework for learning.  This is what it means to give students “control over their education.”

4) My students need to be able to find and critically evaluate their own resources.  Consequently, if I’m continuously handing them resources, they are not going to learn this skill. It’s more important for my students to learn to learn than to absorb the content in any video I might make and hand to them, with most of the thinking already done for them.

 

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (5: 3 Responses)

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Approximate Reading Time: 5 minutes

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 5

These are the readings we had last week:

  • Van Eck, R. (2008). Building Artificially Intelligent Learning Games Intelligent Information Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 793-825): IGI Global.
  • Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77, 81-112.
  • Bogost, I. (2008). The rhetoric of video games. In K. Salen (Eds.), The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp. 117-140). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

These are the Games:

Response 1: How important are common entertainment game design elements to serious game design? [Week 5 KB dialog 1/3]

In his chapter on Building Artificially Intelligent Learning Games, on page 22, Van Eck describes playing the game Mysterious Island, and knowing that his inventory items would be useful at some point in the game. And it’s true; games rarely, if ever, provide extra or useless items to players as distractions since such items would be a waste of program and inventory space. When designing games, how important is it to be aware of common design elements and problem-solving skills that player-learners may have already developed in their problem-solving domain for games? Would it ever be useful to go against the grain or reverse common design elements?

I think the common design elements speak to games literacy, and there’s a very big chance that going against the grain here would backfire.

When I was still in computer science, it used to amuse me when the HCI (human computer interface) guys kept doing studies and publishing papers on “new and improved” game interfaces. In the industry, it was accepted that most of the time, designers have very little flexibility when it comes to the design of the game controls. The HCI guys kept publishing papers about new game controls (and controllers) and the industry just ignored them. At some point in the development of any device or interface things start to become standardized, and changing it becomes very risky. Imagine what would happen if someone decided that the break and accelerator in a car should be in different places? Or if every car manufacturer designed their own seatbelt latch.

Players expect the controls in certain kinds of games to be a certain way. It’s still possible to do things differently (witness, Portal) but if too many of the elements you could add to your inventory were useless, people would get frustrated, unless perhaps you had an unlimited inventory space, AND an easy way to search through it. In a way, Scribblenauts does that. There you have a huge inventory of items you can ask for and only some of them are going to be useful in any given situation. To their credit, the designers made it so you could use the oddest things and they might still work. In that way they actually encourage and reward you for trying out whacky items. Need to get across the river? Well, you COULD use a boat, OR, you might be able to stuff a dinosaur in the river and walk across its back.

If it’s well designed, you can get away with quite a lot if it’s funny. Grim Fandango had a lot of dialog choices that were no good for anything expect making you laugh, and a lot of people played through every single option just to make sure they didn’t miss any of them. Humor is tricky though, and my experience is that educational games don’t usually do a good job of that.

I suspect it might be best to stick with the “standard” design elements and try to make the game distinctive in other ways.

Response 2: Can serious games encourage persistent behaviors? [Week 5 KB dialog 2/3]

In this week’s lecture, it was mentioned that studies on the use of reinforcement have shown that unpredictable reinforcement schedules lead to behavior changes that persist the longest.  Since games are driven by cycles of player actions and corresponding feedback, is it possible to provide unpredictable reinforcement in a serious game? Are there other ways a serious game might encourage lasting behavioral change?

The first part of the answer to this is, it depends. I think unpredictability in the game’s behavior can be good, but I would think unpredictable reinforcement is something you would have to design very carefully. I suspect Tetris would not be as much fun if the levels of blocks disappeared for no reason or failed to disappear when they were completed. I also think I’d be quite annoyed with a game that only gave me the points I had earned sometimes.

Unpredictability is different. Some games make use of unpredictability as part of what makes them fun.

One of the ways that “unpredictability” is implemented is through random actions – most card games start off by shuffling the deck, for instance. It is part of why gambling is so attractive to many people. In classic behavioral training, intermittent reinforcement elicits a far stronger reaction than if that reinforcement is guaranteed. Some degree of randomness can have a very strong positive effect. Too much and the player feels they have no control at all; too little and it can become too predictable and that can lead to boredom. Like so many other things in game design (and educational design too for that matter), it’s the Goldilocks Problem.

Henry Jenkins said “Games, like other media, are most powerful when they reinforce our existing beliefs, least effective when they challenge our values.” (Henry Jenkins, 2006) What that tells me is that we are fighting an uphill battle. That’s not to say we shouldn’t try, but I think it would be overly optimistic to think we can move mountains with a single game.

Henry Jenkins, I. (2006). The war between effects and meaning: Rethinking the video game violence debate. . In D. Buckingham & R. Willett (Eds.), Digital generations : children, young people, and new media (pp. 19-31). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Response 3: Is there a responsibility or absolute requirement for the design team to make sure that the educational curriculum is still there? What if it just has no place for it any more, is it okay to modify the instructional curriculum? [Week 5 KB dialog 3/3]

When in the software development cycle, do you think that the design team should pinpoint the learning objectives and the methodology to get them? Does it differ depending on the type of game?

Is there a responsibility or absolute requirement for the design team to make sure that the educational curriculum is still there? What if it just has no place for it any more, is it okay to modify the instructional curriculum?

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that there is an absolute requirement, but the whole point of making a serious game is to deliver some kind of message. If you lose sight of that, then it’s no longer serious; it’s just a game.

 

In an educational game, the instructional goals are the reason for the game. I can’t think of any situation where it would be OK to ignore the reason the game is being built.

Last year, I developed a model for designing and building serious games that combines three different design models, all of which I think are important in this context: game design, instructional design, and simulation design. The last one is one that most people leave out, but it is especially important (and useful) in serious games.

This is it:

The parts in yellow are the places where the educational pieces need to be – this is where the instructional designers need to be part of the conversation.

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (5: Important Results)

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Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

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.

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 5

These are the readings for the week (Topics: Concepts in research papers; Theory driven game design):

  • Kato, P. M., Cole, S. W., Bradlyn, A. S., & Pollock, B. H. (2008). A video game improves behavioral outcomes in adolescents and young adults with cancer: A randomized trial. Pediatrics, 122(2), E305-E317.
  • Tate, R., Haritatos, J., & Cole, S. (2009). HopeLab’s Approach to Re-Mission. International Journal of Learning and Media; 1(1): 29-35.
  • Optional: Garza, M., Chamberlin, B., Gleason, J., Muise, A., & Gallagher, R. (2012). Year-End Review of Exergaming Research. (Annotated bibliography).  http://www.slideshare.net/nmsumediaproductions/year-in-exergames-research-review
  • GAME: Re-Mission www.re-mission.net

 

When Clark Aldrich released his serious game called Virtual Leader some years ago (*), he was often asked to show evidence that his game was effective. He did conduct numerous studies that showed performance improvements in those who played his game, but the demands for “proof” didn’t stop. When it comes to educational technology, people seem to demand more proof of effectiveness with games than they do with any of the more traditional technologies like lectures and textbooks. When asked for proof that some proposed game will be more effective than, say a lecture, where is the evidence that the lectures are any better than, say reading on one’s own?

I think it is important to do the studies that verify the efficacy of various interventions, but it would be nice to have the same standard applied to all technologies, not just games.

There’s a wonderful quote in Janet Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck about how we seem to assume that modern media is inherently less valuable than more traditional media that I think fits in very nicely – when I get home on Tuesday I’ll post it.

I think studies like the Kato one are extremely important in a field that is subject to so much negative press. It shows real, measurable improvement in the participant’s behaviour using the gold standard methodology. Unfortunately, studies like this one, along with the approach that was taken to the design of the game are extremely expensive, putting this out of the reach of most of us. The core design principles outlined by Tate, et al are very good ones, as are the values they used to guide their design process. I wonder what advice they would have for those who do not have access to the same budgets?

The optional reading for this week is also very important. I have conducted and published literature reviews before, and while they are usually NO fun to do, they are key resources for others in the field. One that gathers and summarizes so many serious game studies is invaluable.

*Please excuse the lack of references and links – I am not at home right now and don’t have access to my usual tools.

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