Learning, Games, and Gamification - with NOTES (Horizon Report Webinar)

LEARNING

GAMES

GAMIFICATION

Ryan Martinez John Martin
UW-Madison Games + Learning + Society UW-Madison Academic Technology
Friday, March 29, 13 1

A webinar presentation on Games and Gamification for the 2013 Horizon Report for Higher Education
(read more here: http://www.nmc.org/publications/2013-horizon-report-higher-ed).

For more information, contact: Ryan Martinez <rmmartinez@gmail.com> or John Martin
<regardingjohn@gmail.com>

Hi, I’m John
(and I’m Ryan)
Just to give you an overview of our talk:

Ryan will start on the macro level with Gamification with the goal of a general overview of
gamification, some examples, and directions of focus for educators
(Then John will jump in and specifically focus on smaller examples and simpler strategies on how to get
started with integrating games into curriculum.)

GAMIFICATION


Today we’re going to be talking about the impact of games and the concept of gamification from both
the Horizon Report and our own personal interactions with using both in education.

Before we begin I would like that throughout the presentation that those who have great examples of
gamified environments that they either feel are great, or not so great, examples, to please post the URLs
into the chatbox. Hopefully we will be able to archive and provide a crowdsourced list at the end of this
webinar.
If you attended the most recent EDUCAUSE meeting in Denver, you’re probably familiar with the idea
of using badges, hence this slide. We’ll talk more about the idea of badges in a bit, but before that we
should probably hit on a definition of gamification.

THE BASICS
Friday, March 29, 13
(Deterding, et al. 2011)
3

So the relative basics of gamification, and what I believe would be one of the few things that both sides
— the PRO camp with theorists such as Jane McGonigal, and the CON camp lead by Ian Bogost — can
agree on, and as proposed by Sebastian Deterding is that gamification is the use of game design
elements in non-game contexts. So choices that already have consequences get additional elements
worked in to either motivate or demotivate you —

Friday, March 29, 13
THE BASICS 4

— eventually changing the way you look at situations and inevitably how you perceive your reality. Or
at least modifying things that you already do and adding more incentive.


As I stated earlier, there is no shortage of both academics and school administrators looking discussing
the proper implementation of a gamified experience. These competitions and conferences are just a
handful, and the number increases every single year.

Unfortunately, with the massive interest and implementation of gamified environments in learning
environments, there are a lot of really bad examples. But I would like to show you an example of what I
feel is a great direction for gamification on a wide scale.


This is the home page to a USC developed gamified environment called Reality Ends Here. Jeff Watson,
Simon Wiscombe, Tracy Fullerton helped create this experiment in 2011. The concept was quite simple.

reality.usc.edu/about

Students from the USC film school could go to the game office to pick up a pack of cards.

Each deck was different, and had cards with different properties. Students were encouraged to
collaborate with others in their program to produce an artifact based on a combination of cards, and then
submit their project to the main office to get points for completion.


Here is an example of what the students received. The card on the left is an illustration; the card on the
right gets into the game mechanics. The colors on the edges of the cards indicate which others cards you
can pair with. Blue has to go with blue, and so on. The numbers on the right corner are points you can
earn depending on how you pair them.


This card configuration was made by a large group. All of these cards and their properties ended up
being this extreme example.


There are many examples of products from Reality Ends Here; this photoshopped poster was the
product of all those cards that you saw previously. Which brings me to another issue and what I feel is a
primary concern we educators face with gamification: what motivates players (students) to participate
in gamified environments. Motivation or more specfically...

INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION


two types of motivation: Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivation

INTRINSIC


To elaborate a bit more on how to differentiate these two types of motivation. Think of it this way. You,
on the left, just took a picture of a child family member. The motivation for you to do that ...

INTRINSIC


... is happiness you feel inside. There may be no other real reward besides that it made you feel good
making the other person happy.


With extrinsic motivation you complete a task because you expect something in return. So If you see on
the slide this looks to be some a chart for a child’s work and behavior. If he or she makes the bed in the
morning or reads a book they will receive a star. Five stars will give that person a reward. They’re not
necessarily compelled to do the work because they want to, it’s because they’re gonna get something
cool for doing the crappy work.

DECI, ET AL. (1999)


Edward Deci from the University of Rochester headed up a metaanalysis of 128 studies which dealt
with how extrinsic motivation affected intrinsic motivation. They found extrinsic motivation actually
DECREASES free will intrinsic motivation. Meaning, those who accomplished goals didn’t do it so
much for their own growth and sense of accomplishment, but for rewards and achievements given by
other people to denote an accomplishment took place.

DECI, ET AL. (1999)
128 Studies



DECI, ET AL. (1999)
128 Studies

Extrinsic rewards on
intrinsic motivation



DECI, ET AL. (1999)
128 Studies

Extrinsic rewards on
intrinsic motivation

Rewards for
tasks completed
decreased free-will
motivation



You have to find game design that
resonates with what you are trying to do
and brings out its essence; mental context.
Business travellers (sic) care about status,
but if you were at Toys R Us and the
cashier announced you were now a
‘platinum level toy buyer’ you’d be
embarrassed; pleasure is contextual.

~ Jesse Schell, 2011


Assessment without purpose (in the eye of the user) is a large oppositional issues in gamification.
Because of the talk Schell was invited back to debate social gaming/gamification with Zynga’s chief
game developer Brian Reynolds. Schell did not discuss the definition of gamification so much as he
wanted to go into greater detail about the concept of pleasure. Essentially that if you get pleasure out of
something, that is when you will do the action, play the game, etc. But what Schell gets and
unfortunately a lot of game and educational game designers do not is that the pleasure is contextual. If
we really enjoy doing something it’s not necessarily for the extrinsic reward like what is offered as the
carrot in many gamified environments.

(A lovely look at a Gamification Dystopia in Schell’s DICE talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nka-
_Mhp7f0)


There was an episode of Family Guy where he and Quagmire are at a party, Quagmire asks Peter if he
wants play drink the beer, Peter obliges and drinks the beer asking what he wins. “Another beer!”
responds Quagmire, and Peter responds “Oh I’m going for the high score”.

This illustrates the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that Schell talks about. It’s the pleasure of drinking
that really drives Peter ... he was going to play drink the beer anyway because it makes him happy.
Same for the episode that parodies Willa Wonka when Peter is trying to find the golden ticket for a tour
of the Pawtucket Patriot factory. He just really likes drinking.

More specifically,
gamification is marketing
bullshit, invented by
consultants as a means to
capture the wild, coveted
beast that is videogames and
to domesticate it for use in
the grey, hopeless wasteland
of big business, where
bullshit already reigns
anyway.
~ Ian Bogost, 2012


Ian Bogost is a games researcher who strongly believes that gamification and the implementation of it
up to this point is questionable. He thinks gamification is just a corporate ploy to attract more people to
their product with additional bells and whistles.

He proposes that we use the term “exploitationware” as a more correct definition of what exactly these
applications and games are doing in regard to our consumer and life choices.


As an example of this marketing, or games as propaganda, IDF Ranks, a game sponsored by the Israeli
Defense Force, is a social media project where players were rewarded through Facebook or Twitter
when they redistributed news posted by the IDF to as they state ‘let the world know what’s really going
on in Israel’.


In IDF Ranks, when the user logs into their Facebook or Twitter account, their activity, their likes,
shares, retweets and comments earn points that advance them through IDF ranks. Retweeting something
five times is a badge, ‘learning the truth about Hamas’ through the IDF earns a badge, as is learning
more about recent rocket attacks between Israel and Palestine.

Ultimately, the real reward of seeing
friends more often and breaking outside
your routine has nothing to do with virtual
badges or social life points or online
bragging rights. The real rewards are all
the positive emotions you are feeling, like
discovery and adventure; the new
experiences you’re having...and the social
connections you’re strengthening by being
around people you like more often.
Foursquare doesn’t replace these rewards.
Instead, it draws your attention to them.

~ Jane McGonigal, 2011


Jane McGonigal, on the other hand, would not deny some negative implementations of gamification, but
offers a much more positive spin to what Bogost proposes. Her feelings are that there are very powerful
motivations in games that can be harnessed to improve the world.

(Jane’s TED Talk about this is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM)


McGonigal’s idea is to try to use games for the betterment. According to her she “believes that many of
us become the best version of ourselves” when we are in these game worlds. She and her group, the
Institute for the Future based on Palo Alto, have developed collaborate gamified environments with
cooperation from the World Bank and other major groups. One of her newest games, Superbetter, was
designed for people to take proactive steps to a better lifestyle, being rewarded along the way.


But even though McGonigal’s view is very different from Bogost’s, she also acknowledges the
difficulties in gamifying environments where the player does not want to participate. The game will
only work, if you want to play.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=2251015

That is the biggest problem with the early implementation of game layers to real world environments, is
that we have rushed to shoehorn in these types of play into our work and education.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=2251015

A not-so-distant Garner report found that up to 80 percent of gamified environments will fail because of
poor design. Whether that be people abusing the system or simply not caring enough to play are major
questions, and just one of many reasons why while gamification is an interesting proposal to advance
training and education, we cannot see it as a panacea.

Side effects of design

Deterding, 2010

Sebastian Deterding is a PhD researcher at the graduate school of the Research Center for Media and
Communication, Hamburg University.

In his talk “Pawned: Gamification and its Discontents,” Deterding speaks of the perils of unintended
kinks in the gamification design. One example was a game sponsored by BMW to support their line of
fuel efficient cars. They challenged people to use as little fuel as possible and then record it for a
leaderboard in their area. People were really taken with the challenge. Anyone know what happens
when you stop at a red light? (PAUSE) What does idling do? (PAUSE) It uses gas. So what uses less
gas? (PAUSE) When you just keep going. So drivers starting practicing unsafe driving habits like not
stopping at red lights in order to be the better, more efficient fuel driver.

These are side effects of design and some of the perils of gamification according to deterding. Simply
slapping on game layers to real world environments does not make it better.

They are glorified report cards that turn
games into work and life into play, and
users into pawns rather than players ...
What I’m saying is they’re not
necessarily playful at the moment.

Deterding, 2010


How might we preserve the point in
being pointless?

Deterding, 2010


Both Schell, McGonigal, Bogost, and Deterding acknowledge that game spaces can be powerful
motivators if not for playfulness, corporate advertising, or health and critical thinking. As such there is
bubbling up another conversation


What steps and design techniques can we use in the near and distant future that will make our gameful
layers in work and school less like blue and gold stars.


And more like actual play?

I’m going to turn things over to my colleague John Martin right now, but please feel free to post
followup inquiries from my presentation in the chat box. I will answer the best I can in chat, or later
through my twitter feed, @ryanmmartinez. Thank you, and here is John...

GAMES


“Thanks Ryan! So let’s downshift a bit from the larger topic of gamification to the smaller topic of
easier places to start. I’d love to hear from you all, so please share your favorite examples of games that
teach (and what they teach, if it’s not evident in the title), or ideas that you might have that you’ve not
tried; that someone else may have — let’s get a conversation going on the side...”
Where Gamification is the process of adding game elements to an existing structure — and in education,
we tend to think of that something as an entire course — we can also look to games to help teach the
specific content.

For that matter, we can also start smaller by gamifying any single component in a course, whether
content-focused or administrative focused. Or we can just include any already-created game in the
curriculum if it can address what we want it to; OR, if your students see a connection, even if we don’t!

The top row are augmented reality games that John has been involved in creating. The second row is
from game jams we’ve held as part of classes for high school and college students. The third row are
science games created by colleagues in GLS, and the last two rows are some of the games our friends at
Filament games have been making.

WHERE TO START?


Your students have a life outside the classroom, right? And in that life, many of them play video games
that cost millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours to create. How can we compete with that?
Well, it’s really hard.


There’s some success (relative success) by simply adding sound effects and badges and levels to what
you’re already doing; some call this “chocolate-covered broccoli”. What many in the Games + Learning
+ Society research group instead look at, is the learning that takes place in (and outside of)
professionally-created games. The GLS conference — bringing together folks fromthe games industry,
games scholars, and educators — is a good place to start, as there are sessions on all sorts of games and
gamification topics.


Or, if you can’t come to Madison in June, but want more on videogames and learning sign up for the
MOOC taught by GLS scholars Kurt and Constance. Ryan and I are doing instructional design for it. It
should be good.

But here’s the thing about MAKING educational video games — it’s hard and expensive to make good
ones. So for the next few minutes let’s focus on first steps.

HINT: Systemize — think in game language

http://gamingmatter.com/GM/Commentary/Entries/2013/1/10_Trying_out_a_Multi-player_Classroom.html


First, start thinking about learning from the perspective of game players. My colleague Seann Dikkers,
at the University of Ohio has been experimenting with bringing gaming elements into the curriculum.
What he did was simply change the paradigm of the course structure from one where you start with an
“A” and maintain it, to one where you start with nothing, and have to earn your way through levels.
There’s more about it here: http://gamingmatter.com/GM/Commentary/Entries/
2013/1/10_Trying_out_a_Multi-player_Classroom.html

HINT: Harness students — prompt peer interaction

Side quests Easter Eggs
• First to turn in a project early • First to organize a social event not
related to course work
• First to publish a project to a larger
audience • First to achieve level 10
• First to authentically amaze me with • First to change or modify an
awesomeness assignment for something far more
difﬁcult to complete.
• First to gather & lead a group in class
• First to make me laugh
• First to be recruited to a group because
they had a discrete skill needed • First to make the class laugh during
meeting times
• First to visit my ofﬁce
• Any/All submissions of course work
• First to lead a class meeting online that to a conference or journal accepted
wasn’t required for class for presentation

• First to publicly praise another student • Any/All that knock a class leader off
(or student work) as inspiring them to the leader board after week seven
try something new.


He also started to harness student-to-student interactions. Students are better at entertaining each other
than you are; social interactions are far more rich and vibrant and emergent than anything you can write
into your game. Instead of tightly controlling the game (and “cheating”), let things emerge.

HINT: Keep it “open” — let them play their game
Acting
Killers Achievers

harrass, heckle, hack, win, challenge, create,
cheat, taunt, tease compare, show off
Player

World
give, express, comment, explore, view, rate,
share, greet, like, tease curate, vote, review

Socializers Explorers
Interacting Bartle (1996) http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm


We’ve heard much about badges lately, and they seem to work for some people (Achievers), so it’s hard
for me to dismiss their potential. Personally, I am not very motivated by badges, etc. I like to play games
that let me play them my way (I’m an Explorer).

So, if and when you build a game, be sure to create multiple ways to engage in it. If you make it a
solitary task about collecting points or badges, you’ve alienated many of your players.

Title: Can
Quantum-
Mechanical
Description of
Physical Reality
Be Considered
Complete?
Journal: Physical Review
Impact Factor:

Times Cited: 5521
Article Age: 1935
Citations in article: 0

ATTACK:

DEFENSE:

INITIATIVE:


Here’s a simple “Magic-style” game we’re developing to teach Science Literature research, where you
build your deck with articles, using the Journal’s Impact Factor (among other things) to figure out
values. Then you play them against other players’ articles. (this card is not complete)

HINT: Dip your broccoli — at least they’re eating


Here’s a shot and screenshot from a Sustainability game we just finished using ARIS. 120 students
walked through six campus buildings to see and interact with sustainability themes. They had roles and
goals, and collected items, and were prompted to interact with each other — and it was alright. It wasn’t
a fantastic game, BUT it was 1) PLAYFUL, and 2) it SITUATED THEM in an authentic environment
with real issues, and 3) it got them thinking at a very low level about some of the issues. Most
importantly, they had a group experience with all the themes of the class that the instructor can refer
back to as she covers them more in depth througout the semester.

This one took several hundred TA hours to create a 2.5 hour game experience.
(For more on ARIS, see http://arisgames.org/)

HINT: Dip your broccoli — (at least they’re eating)


Here’s a similar one done last Fall in ARIS (arisgames.org) for a Folklore class, where 80 students
geotagged their campus with 1) a significant place; 2) a story (inteview); and 3) two examples of folk
art (grafitti). That alone made it a wonderfully-emergent and personal game, but the social genius of it
was that the instructor had them visit two places that others had tagged, and comment on the Folklore
themes and class statuses that were tagged (e.g. what did freshmen tag vs seniors).

Was it fun? sort of; it was more frustrating than fun due to technical difficulties of uploading video with
bad cell covereage, but it WAS very engaging, and the engagement helped them get through the
frustration.

This one took ~4 hours to create a 3-week game experience.

HINT: Start small — iterate on successes


So start simple and slow! Start by making one week or theme, or one over-arching theme for the
semester into an extra-credit game or game-based assignment. Don’t make it voluntary, but make the
stakes REALLY LOW!

Build off the successes and expand to larger chunks.

HINT: Manage expectations — Set the bar low

Consult the
command:

tome of wisdom!

INVENTORY
Tome of Wisdom

Sword of Grammar


If you shoot too high, be aware that your awesome game that you’ve spent 2 years and all your grant
funding to build WILL SUCK. I have personally built many terrible games that felt good to me. I was
wrong because although, in and of themselves, instructor-created games may be wonderfully
educational —

HINT: Manage expectations — Set the bar low


... relative to what your students are playing, the graphics are terrible, the worlds are tiny, the ways to
play them are limited, the algorithms are off, they look like educational games — and your students will
judge you harshly.

HINT: Have them lead — Set the bar low


Instead, have them make games. The games will actually be worse than yours (which will make you feel
smart!), but they’ll enjoy making them, they’ll engage in critical thinking by integrating course
concepts, and they’ll enjoy sharing them with the other students — and it’s better than a final paper.


This “Chutes and Ladders” variation uses the TV show “The Wire” to start a discussion about Achieving
the American Dream. First of all, it raises the question of whether it’s all about luck by rolling a 6-sided
die to get to the top row. But then notice that when you get to the top row, you have to roll a 7 to win —
there’s actually no way to win. The game is then over, but now the discussion really gets heated! — this
is a teacher’s dream!


At the K-12 level, Minecraft is being used to teach all sorts of things; it’s a creative, collaborative open
environment that can be harnessed by higher education as well. See this: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=RI0BN5AWOe8

(How might this connect with Maker-bots? See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klQ7bb8bBsQ)

DISCUSS?


Speaking of discussion, we’re probably at a point where you may have some questions... so let’s end it
here.

Other links:

https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/ vs. Cool-It (video: http://engage.doit.wisc.edu/sims_games/roundtwo/
application_videos/pfotenhauer.wmv )
http://engage.doit.wisc.edu/games-showcase/cool-it.php
http://engage.wisc.edu/games-showcase/

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