5. 5/38
Some aspects of Games, cont.
Flow
Activity requiring skill
Merging of action and
awareness
Clear goals and feedback
Concentration on task
Paradox of control
Loss of self-consciousness
Transformation of time
Activity becomes its own
purpose - autotelic
Skill
Flow
Difficulty
Frustration
Boredom
Czikszentmihalyi
8. Origins of Games for Serious
Activities
Olympic Games
Communication with
the gods
The Origin of
Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind
(Julian Jaynes)
9. Early Serious Games?
Ludus Regularis Seu
Clericalis
Balderic, 12th century
Bowling
Heathen Killing
10. War Games and Simulation Gaming
von Reiswitz
Kriegspiel, 1812-1824
Birshtein
Red Weaver, 1930s
11. Game Theory
von Neumann, 1944 (1928)
Economics
Biology
International Diplomacy
12. Gamification
Deterding et al.
“the use of game
design elements in
non-game contexts”
James Paul Gee
Jane McGonigal
Reality is Broken
13. Thinking too small
Games
Gamers
Gaming
Typically a focus on
creating or modifying
artifacts
Games are needed to
game (play)
15. Gaming Educations
Snyder
The Hidden Curriculum
unstated academic and
social norms
Miller & Parlett
Up to the Mark - a
study of the
examination game.
Cue-seekers
Cue-aware
Cue-deaf
16. Gaming Warfare
MAD
Von Neumann
World War I
Trench Warfare 1914–
1918: The Live and Let
Live System
(Ashworth, T.)
17. Gambling & Stock Trading
Kelly Criterion
Thorp & Shannon
Gambling
Beat the Dealer (Thorp,
1966)
Stock Market
Beat the Market: A
Scientific Stock Market
System (Thorp, 1967)
23. Definitions of Game and Gaming
“playing a game is the voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” (Suits,
Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia)
”...a game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to
achieve their objectives in some limiting context.” (Abt, Serious Games)
”A game is a form of art in which participants, named players, make decisions in order to
manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.” (Costikyan, I Have
no Words and I Must Design)
”Games are an exercise of voluntary control systems, in which there is a contest between
powers, confined by rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome.” (Avedon &
Sutton-Smith, The Study of Games)
”A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that
results in a quantifiable outcome.” (Salen & Zimmerman, Rules of Play)
”A game is a rule-based formal system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where
different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to
influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the outcome, and the
consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable. “ (Juul, Half-Real)
25. Observations
Most systems can be interpreted as games
Most systems can be gamed
Most systems can be seen as gamified
already
But not conscious gamification
problem
26. Takeaways
Gaming can be seen as a stance towards
doing many activities
Activities including rules and goals make this easy
Games are artifacts specifically designed to
encourage this stance through the activities they
offer
Designers aiming at creating or modifying
activities may benefit from considering users
gaming these activities
Not considering this may be very problematic…
Side-Blotched Lizard The Orange throat is very aggressive and operates over a large territory - attempting to mate with numerous females within this larger area 2) The unaggressive Yellow Throat (called “sneakers”) mimic the markings/behavior of female lizards and sneakily slip into the Orange Throat's territory to mate with the females there (thereby overtaking the population), and The Blue Throat who mates with and carefully guards ONE female - making it impossible for the sneakers to succeed and therefore overtakes their place in a population…
Or rather focus on artifact and not activity
Thorp reported that his personal investments yielded an annualized 20 percent rate of return averaged over 28.5 years