onsdag den 2. maj 2012

What games feel like

So, while looking into this whole gamification area, I'm coming across a lot of excitement but also a lot of critique. A lot of the gamification effort out there have been focused on making things gamelike, or make them somehow look like a game. Adding game structure like levels, points and badges as rewards to marketing or education does not necessarily produce the desired effect of blissful productivity and engagement that Jane Mcgonical mentiones as a key factor in gaming.

Pondering these things I ran into this paper by M.P. Jacob Habgood and Shaaron E. Ainsworth called Motivating children to learn effectively: exploring the value of intrinsic integration in educational games. The main point in this paper is the distinction between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation in games. Basically, if rewards gained through game achievements have no relevance in the game itself, they are extrinsic. This might for example be badges that you earn for completing an educational game. Its nice to get them, but they don't effect the gameplay itself. Now intrinsic motivation or in the game context intrinsic integration, the rewards are relevant in the game, enables you to go further or be more within the game context. The game experiment discussed in this paper was zombie math game for kids. In one version of the game, the learning content, the math, was integrated in the actual gameplay. Slay the zombie with MATH! In the extrinsic version the math content was interjected in little pop quizzes with no direct integration with the game. In the intrinsic version, the learning content was made part of the most exciting parts of the game without breaking the flow of the game. The results of the test showed much better learning results from the intrinsic game version.

So we're really looking at the difference between making learning an integrated part of the game and just wrapping the learning content in a game like structure. I think this is an important point when trying to create really effective and fun gamification!

On this note, lets look at the very important destinction between making something look like a game and making it FEEL like a game. This is a great point made by Jane Mcgonical, who terms it the difference between something being gamelike og gameful. In her talk at the 2011 Gamification Summit she explores what makes something actually feel like a game. One of the points I noticed especially is the voluntary tackling of unnecessary obstacles. In golf, we could just pick up the little white ball and go dump it in the hole. But its all the difficulty and the obstacles that make it a fun game. To create positive stress, the feeling that make us enjoy the challenges, the game needs to be difficult, not easy.

So what do these things suggest if we, lets say, want to gamify learning. The learning content should be completely integrated into the most exciting game actions and it shouldn't make it easier. It should make it harder in a silly way, and give us the feeling; "Wow, I cant believe I actually managed to do that! Awesome!"

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