Do You Think Videogames are Toys?

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The way things are labelled inevitably affects how they are perceived.

If you think of videogames as “toys”, it paints a radically different picture than if you think of them as a medium for communication and expression. One way trivializes them, the other places them on the same page as film, television, books, etc. The second also opens up the possibility of viewing games as art.

When I teach my Digital Game Based Learning course, I always ask the question. Most of the students are working teachers, some with many years’ experience.

I ask, “How many of you think of videogames as toys?”

Most put up their hands.

Then I ask, “How many of you think of television as a toy?”

Most put their hands back down.

There’s the difference. Right there.

Until we get past this, games will be fighting an uphill battle.

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Where I’ve Been Online (to Sept. 22)

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  • Tools for Educators – free worksheet templates, printable game templates, 100% customizable worksheet makers with images!

    Free tools for teaching – printable worksheets, classroom printables and on-line worksheet templates with images from Tools for Educators. Use these free worksheets to print, game makers, and programs for teachers to make and print teaching resources with pictures or classroom materials for kids. They are simple, but beautiful, versatile and powerful. I hope your students (and you) enjoy the resources.

    tags: resources tools worksheets education printables

  • FTL: Faster Than Light

    What is FTL? FTL is a spaceship simulation roguelike-like. Its aim is to recreate the atmosphere of running a spaceship exploring the galaxy (like Firefly/Star Trek/BSG etc.) In any given episode of those classic shows, the captain is always yelling “Reroute power to shields!” or giving commands to the engineer now that their Warp Core is on fire. We wanted that experience, as opposed to the “dog fighting in space” that most videogames focus on. We wanted a game where we had to manage the crew, fix the engines, reroute power to shields, target the enemy life support, and then figure out how to repel the boarders that just transported over!

    tags: faster light game simulation space

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (3: 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 3

These are the readings for the week:

  • Ch. 6, Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: Mcgraw-Hill.
    • 6: Digital Game-Based Learning: Why and How it Works
  • Ch. 4, 5, Gee, J. P. (2007). Good video games + good learning: Collected essays on video games, learning and literacy. New York: Peter Lang
    • 4: Good Video Games, The Human Mind, and Good Learning
    • 5: Learning about Learning from a Videogame (Rise of Nations)

These are the Games:

My Questions

1. Is Learning Really Work, or is it Education that is Work?

Gee says, “When we think of games, we think of fun. When we think of learning we think of work”. (P. 43, 2007, Good Video Games + Good Learning)

Is that really true? Somewhere along the line kids begin to associate what they do in school with “work”, where “work” is seen to be unpleasant. I have yet to meet a single 6-year-old who feels that way, so what happened? Is it really learning that we dislike, or is it formal education? At some point many kids begin to associate negative feelings with schoolish subjects, yet most happily spend hours in a game and have no problem talking about what they learn there.

OK. So the leading question is probably somewhat rhetorical, but here’s one that isn’t:

What qualities does a low-budget educational game need to have in order to avoid being lumped in with all the other “education” they are required to do?

2. What are three key dimensions to look at when measuring the effectiveness of a serious game?

There’s an interesting discussion going on right now on the IGDA LEG SIG (International Game Developer’s Association, Learning and Education Special Interest Group) about what’s important in assessing the effectiveness of a serious game. Some are arguing for psychometric measures; some say all that matters is the user; others are arguing for pre- and post- tests; and yet others say we should be analysing the game itself even before we have users. What do you think is important?

3. How do we operationalize Gee’s “Principles”?

In this week’s readings, Gee talks about the things that “good” games do and how this relates to “good” learning. While I don’t disagree with much of what he says, I am still left wondering how to turn this into something I can use to make “good” serious games. It’s all well and good to say good games are good because they use good design, but suppose we are part of a design and development team that is tasked with creating an educational game to encourage kids to stay in school. How do we take advantage of Gee’s ideas?

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (3: 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 my classmates, 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 3

These were the readings from week 2:

1. If the label ‘serious’ games can have a negative connotation and ‘fun’ is essential to a successful game, why isn’t this category relabeled to edutainment games (since it is still in a formative stage)?

While the term “Serious Games” is one some people don’t like, it is the one used by most people producing and researching such games. It is also recognized by many others, so I think it’s the one we have, like it or not. It includes educational games, but it also includes a much broader set of games (see Ben’s taxonomy in my week 2 reflection).

Understanding how to make good serious games is absolutely still a developing discipline, but the term is not.

As for the term edutainment, it has a history that makes it problematic.

The early 1980’s was when formal education first embraced the notion of using the computer as a personal learning technology – when PC’s hit the scene. Computer Aided Instruction became the technology of the day and there seemed to be nothing that computers could not do to enhance learning, and that included computer games. This is when the term ‘edutainment’ first stared to be used  (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Smith, & Tosca, 2008) and the prospects for games in education seemed bright indeed.

During the edutainment era, lots of educators as well as non-profit and for-profit companies began building educational computer games and it was thought that one could wrap any instruction inside a game and create instant learning success. We now know that this doesn’t work but at the time many designers and developers of these educational entertainments (hence the name ‘edutainment’) treid to cash in by producing these games without bothering to learn how. Instructional designers didn’t know enough about game design to make a good game, and game designers didn’t know enough about instructional design to create sound instruction. The result was that most of games designed by either group were absolutely awful.

Predictably, at least in hindsight, the vast majority of the educational games of the time failed to live up to expectations and the backlash that resulted still affects games to this day. ‘Edutainment’ became a loathsome word in the game industry (even worse than the terrible ‘L’-word, namely ‘Learning’).

References

  • Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., Smith, J. H., & Tosca, S. P. (2008). Understanding video games : the essential introduction. New York: Routledge.

2. How specific should we be when determining a certain target audience?

Do you take into account the certain groups that my never be interested in the game, or should you take more time and attempt to be more inclusive?

The answer to this question is vastly different for an educational or other serious game than it is for an entertainment game. Entertainment games are usually designed with the broadest possible audience in mind, given the genre. So the ideal target audience for a shooter would be the entire world. Designers know that is unrealistic though so they design for a specific kind of player – novice / expert, male / female, certain age, etc. I would even go so far as to say most AAA games are designed primarily for an American audience.

If we are talking about serious games, then the target audience depends completely on your message and trying to reach too broad an audience will almost inevitably mean that you end up compromising on parts of your design that work for your primary audience.  A game designed to help diabetics manage their condition shouldn’t have to consider people who have no interest in diabetes. Similarly, a game designed to help kids learn geometric shapes probably shouldn’t design for teenagers or adults. On the other hand, in the Games for Change arena (http://www.gamesforchange.org/ ) you are probably trying for as broad and inclusive an audience as you can get because you are often trying to change attitudes or opinions.

If you try to attract too broad an audience you risk making a game that can’t deliver the message it was designed to deliver. Trying to attract everyone may end up pleasing no-one.

 

3. Does Greater Complexity in a Game Equal More Fun?

Nope. Certainly not always; I would even go so far as to say that there is a point of diminishing return. At some point a game can become so complex that it becomes too much.

Looking at complexity with respect to ‘realism’, it is fairly well known in the design of simulators for training that novices have trouble attending to the task if the simulated environment is too complex. Too many distractions interfere with learning, so they start off with a fairly simple environment which becomes more complex as they become more experienced. If we look at it in terms of fun, people tend not to have fun when things are too hard.

In entertainment games, especially RPGs, complexity of environment can definitely make a game more fun – Skyrim is an excellent example. Visual complexity can also add to the fun – it is one of the things I like about both Machinarium and Tiny Bang Story, but I don’t think visual complexity can compensate for poor functionality or gameplay.

However, the opposite can also be true. Games can be fun precisely because of their simplicity. One of the games I like to play is Flow Free and part of the appeal is its simplicity of play as well as its visual simplicity.

If we are talking about educational games, I think we have to be very careful about adding anything that does not directly support our instructional goals. That’s not to say we should avoid it, but we should always ask how this adds to our objectives. Sometimes, making it more fun by adding extra options can be a good thing, but I think it all depends on how it is designed. Adding complexity per se does not, in and of itself, make anything more fun.

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Theories of Games and Interaction for Design (3: How can we tell a “Good” game?)

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This is a re-posting of my reflection 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 3

These are the readings for the week:

  • Ch. 6, Prensky, M. (2001). Digital game-based learning. New York: Mcgraw-Hill.
    • 6: Digital Game-Based Learning: Why and How it Works
  • Ch. 4, 5, Gee, J. P. (2007). Good video games + good learning: Collected essays on video games, learning and literacy. New York: Peter Lang
    • 4: Good Video Games, The Human Mind, and Good Learning
    • 5: Learning about Learning from a Videogame (Rise of Nations)

These are the Games:

My Response

My dissertation (available here in case anyone wants to look) sought to answer the question: How does a commercially and critically successful modern video game support the learning that players must accomplish in order to succeed in the game (i.e. get to the end or win)?

My question went through many changes to get to that state, as most do. One of the parts I struggled with a lot was describing the kind of game I wanted to study. At first I just called them “good games”. This is what Jim Gee called them, and so I called them that too. I got grief and resistance from my supervisor and committee every time I used the word “good”, and they were right.

Reading through Gee’s collected essays, I am reminded of the work I had to do in order to justify the appropriateness of the games I ultimately chose to study, and struck by the contrast between my approach and Gee’s.

Gee appears to use the fallacy of circular reasoning to define what he means by “good” games: Good games are good because they do what games are supposed to do in order to be good. He then names many different games as examples of ‘good’ without further justification. While I do not dispute many of his claims about various desirable qualities of games that may support learning, I am struck by the lack of evidence in the form of references to prior work to support his claim.

As a popular article, his essays are enjoyable to read and even quite inspiring. However, as scholarly articles, they come up lacking in both research background and theoretical underpinnings. Research is advanced through building on the work of those that have come before and it is our duty to give credit to those who have paved the path for our progress. Gee’s list of references is striking in its omission of the contributions made by many of the theorists mentioned in this week’s lecture. Even though he writes about “principles” such as co-design, learning styles, identity, well-ordered problems, “pleasant frustration”, just-in-time learning, and many others, he fails to acknowledge the ancestry of these ideas, most of which have well-formed and thoroughly researched foundations. If I hadn’t already been studying learning and instructional theories and models before reading this, I might have concluded that these were original concepts. He does refer readers to some of his prior work, but unfortunately, Gee’s prior work does not give credit to the originators of many of these ideas either.

This week’s chapters do an excellent job of describing many of the aspects of various game designs that offer promise for education, but it lacks sufficient background to support the scholarly work that remains to be done to advance this work. It’s a great place to go for ideas, but if you want to advance the body of knowledge, you’ll have to look elsewhere for a sound literature review.

Postscript: If anyone is interested in how I addressed the challenge of justifying the games I chose to study, I have written about it in my thesis (Chapter 5) and also here:

Katrin Becker (2011) Studying Commercial Games: Justifying Choices, Journal of Game Design and Development Education, Vol.1 No. 1 p.51-62

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Coursera Gamification: Curiouser and Curiouser – Cheating in a course with no credentials.

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It seems that people out here at the Interwebs are searching around using the problem statement in the (my) coursera gamification course.

Hmmmm, I say.

I decided to make my learning experience public because I thought it might be interesting to try “learning out in the open”. If we can have MOOCs where thousands of people are learning at the same time, why not let people watch me as I go through it. (By the way feel free to comment on any of the stuff I’m doing).

It should have been obvious, but it never occurred to me that people might want to take my solutions to the assignments and use them as their own. Why would anyone want to do that? Apparently, they do. How lame do you have to be to cheat at something where winning makes no difference? Pretty lame I guess.

Anyhow, it occurred to me that this might provide a lovely opportunity for anyone interested in studying cheating in coursera. So, without further ado, I hereby invite anyone who’s interested to use my solutions as bait. Let me know what you catch.

I posted a comment in one of the course forums. I’m curious to see what happens next. This is the message I posted:

For various reasons I decided to post my work in this course (and another I’m taking) publicly on my blog.

Part of the reason is that I think free and open education should go both ways. A colleague posted some comments about my 2nd assignment on his blog and then noted a large spike in hits on his post. These searchers were searching on the problem statement so it is likely they were looking for answers they could plagiarize.

While I really can’t see what anyone has to gain by plagiarizing work submitted to a course that carries no real credential, I thought I would alert the powers that be to the fact that I am posting my answers publicly.

If you are reading this and are enrolled in the course – DON’T ASK ME FOR THE LINK.

If you are an administrator of this course – feel free to email me privately and I’ll give you the link to my blog. Feel free to test submissions against my solution to see if they copied me. If nothing else it will provide you with a good indication of just how much cheating is going on. I’m also happy to forward the emails of anyone who asks me for a link to my answers.

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Where I’ve Been Online (to Sept. 15)

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  • Can We Please Move Past Apple’s Silly, Faux-Real UIs? | Co.Design: business + innovation + design

    To do this, we need to design UIs that are stripped down as much as they can be. This means avoiding superfluous and gratuitous ornamentation, both visually and through how they move. But this doesn’t just mean focusing on “raw” elements that just support function. It is not simply a case of stripping everything back to the point of a handful of elements for the sake of being minimal; that would be simplistic. As with film, there’s an opportunity to delight by incorporating elements that are there purely to serve emotive purposes. This is why the philosophy “just enough is more” is rather more important than just simply “less is more.” It is about scrutinizing everything, so there is a clear, purposeful rationale for every element. This means that all the elements and their layout support the primary objectives of the device and/or application. To do this effectively, it is not possible to achieve success without thoughtfully considering the ways we interact and use products in the physical, analog world. Otherwise designs are just far too cognitively taxing. However, this doesn’t mean just digitally re-creating or simulating analog models for the sake of familiarity–we all need to be constantly checking our metaphors to make sure they’re making sense. We need to be cognizant of how much of the pre-internet world is now completely obsolete and unrecognizable to any one under 20. (Ever watch a perplexed three-year-old try to identity the icon of a rotary phone ?)

    tags: design apple skeuomorphism UI metaphor

  • XEODesign

    Paint Your UI with Attention Everything from Facebook’s poke to the iPhone’s stroke, knowing how emotions map to different actions designers can paint a UI with attention and color it with any emotion they choose. Best selling brands such as the iPhone coordinate every gesture people make to create the emotions that enhance the iPhone’s brand. And to boot, based on our research petting the iPhone makes people happy. In fact what we mean by brand are the emotions created by the product before, during, and after the sale.

    tags: ux games designresearch

  • The collected game design rants of Marc LeBlanc

    Because you asked, here is a brief list of the “Eight Kinds of Fun.” Sensation Game as sense-pleasure Fantasy Game as make-believe Narrative Game as unfolding story Challenge Game as obstacle course Fellowship Game as social framework Discovery Game as uncharted territory Expression Game as soap box Submission Game as mindless pastime

    tags: gamification game design game gamedev

  • Somewhere in UK, a dialog box pops up on the screen of a Mac computer. The user contacts me asking for an explanation I can’t quite provide. The same file (a downloadable version of Phone Story) works perfectly on my machine, also a Mac. It turns out the “file damaged” message is produced by Gatekeeper, an anti-malware feature of the new OSX Mountain Lion, which I haven’t bothered to install yet. Gatekeeper, by default, blocks every application that is not coming from the official Mac App store or from certified Apple developers.

    tags: apple consumer totalitarian-computing

  • Why kids need to fail to succeed in school – The Globe and Mail

    How much influence do parents really have on their children’s success in life? My own view has always been: far less than they think, and far less than the experts tell them. I’ve always thought that how your kids turn out depends a lot more on their genes and their IQ than whether you played them Baby Beethoven or sent them to all-day kindergarten.

    tags: kids school productive-failure

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Coursera Gamification Course, Assignment 2.

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I’m still playing along with the coursera course on Gamification. (See my initial reaction here, and my first assignment here).

This week we get our second assignment (out of three). This course only runs 6 weeks (August 27 – Oct. 8) so we are now into week three.

Our work consists of quizzes and short written assignments. I haven’t seen the final yet but I would imagine it is the same format as the quizzes, only longer.

Here’s the scenario this week:

Project Part II: Motivation

You are approached by Ryan Morrison, the mayor of a medium-sized city in the Midwest of the United States.  He has heard that you know a lot about gamification and believes that gamification techniques can transform city government.

He would like to start with the health of city employees.  The city has 50,000 employees and they happen to have exactly the same rates of obesity as the U.S. average: 34.4% overweight (but not obese) and 33.9% of them are obese.  53.1% of the city’s employees do not meet the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines for aerobic physical activity and 76% of them fail to meet the Guidelines for muscle-strengthening activity.  The city pays for health benefits for its employees and this cost is a huge part of the city budget.  Economists in Mayor Morrison’s office have estimated that a 3% improvement in the average physical fitness of city employees would amount to a US$94 million reduction in annual city health costs; a 5% improvement would save US$188 million. 

Describe in general terms a gamified system that could effectively motivate behavior change to address the challenge presented above. Specifically, explain how the system would effectively incorporate intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, or both.Your answer should address the fact that this is an internal gamification project, targeted at the institutional goals of the city government.  The system can use any technology (or no technology!), so long as the resources required seem justified by the scope of the opportunity.

Here’s my Response

Goal: Improve Physical Fitness of City Employees

Context:

  • 50,000 employees
  • ~ 1/3 are overweight and another 1/3 are obese (which means only 1/3 are a healthy weight).
  • About 1/2 do not meet the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines for aerobic physical activity 3/4 fail to meet the Guidelines for muscle-strengthening activity
  • A 3% improvement would save $94M; 5% would save $188M

Resources:

U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines: http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/everyone/guidelines/adults.html

It is important to set reasonable goals, or they will not be attainable. The city has a very large number of employees which would include everything from office workers to outside grounds keepers and summer camp councilors so the level of physical fitness is likely to vary widely.

There are many approaches that can be taken, each one requiring different tactics. Two of these are:

  1. Target the 1/3 who are overweight but not obese.
  2. Target these who are obese.

Two obvious approaches would be to try to:

  1. Encourage healthier diets
  2. Increase the level of activity

It is assumed that there is already some sort of employee database system used to track and process payroll, benefits, and other things, and that all employees have some sort of ID that can be modified or augmented to include access to the fitness system.  I would suggest tapping in to this using a magnetic strip or chip technology which could be used to access the system from various locations that connect to the main database. It would involve creating an application similar to FitDay, shown in the attached screenshot (http://www.fitday.com/). It includes tools for tracking food intake, exercise and other activities, goal setting and tracking, and various other things. WiiFit also has similar tools, but is less comprehensive. Acceptance and use of such a system will be greater if it is easy to use and fun, so incorporating gamification elements could be beneficial.

The intrinsic motivation comes from both the fun that can be introduced through Gamification and from people’s desire to be healthier (it is reasonable to assume that no one actually wants to be unfit). The intrinsic motivation to become healthier is extremely important here, but many are easily discouraged – especially those who are very obese, so it is essential that small improvements be both encouraged and rewarded at the beginning. Competition must be handled carefully – many who are reasonable fit may find competition motivating, but those who are obese may see it is stressful so cooperative approaches must also be offered.

Other extrinsic rewards, such as badges, points, leveling up, etc. must be carefully matched to the individual player’s starting point (fitness-wise). They must be allowed and encouraged to set realistic goals. One way of handling this is to provide a ‘league’ system that places people in groups where all have similar levels of fitness.

A key aspect is ensure that “good behaviour” is sufficiently rewarded, but that “bad behaviour” is not punished.

This system would include ways to track diet and exercise, and would require support from all city departments:

  • Cafeterias must offer healthy food choices (and players can be rewarded for choosing them).
  • “Check-In Stations” can be created that allow employees to record physical activity easily, like when they take the stairs instead of the elevator or if they walk for 10 minutes during a break, and so on.

In order for this to succeed, the system must be easy to use so it should start out simple and can then become more complex as people become familiar with it. FitDay for example is too complicated initially – it has the functionality that would be required, but very little in the way of gamification. WiiFit is more gamified but has fewer features.

This is just the start, but there’s a 500-word limit on our answers.

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