This document discusses theories and concepts that are core to understanding "player engagement" in philosophy, science, and gamification. It begins with several summaries of studies on how unconscious brain processes can influence decisions and behavior, such as how brain activity can predict decisions before people are consciously aware, how using nouns instead of verbs can increase actions like voting, and how homophones can unconsciously prime behavior. It then discusses how storytelling can change brain chemicals related to empathy, distress, and optimism. Additional concepts covered include how synchronous group behaviors like singing or dancing together can increase cooperation, and how dopamine is released in anticipation of rewards rather than at the moment of reward receipt. The document suggests that gamification does not always increase engagement as intended

1. 철학과 과학 그리고
게이미피케이션
(‘Player engaging’ 위해
핵심적으로 고찰이 필요한
이론과 개념 중심으로)
2017
Billy(최병호)/BillyChoi@gmail.com
Seoul Social Economy Center strategy consultant/
중앙대학교 교수/
성균관대학교 일반대학원 휴먼ICT융합학과 교수/
홍익대학교 영상대학원 강사(HCI개론 강의)/
연세대학교 공학대학원 강사(서비스디자인경영 강의)/
InnoUX CEO/
Research Data: http://www.slideshare.net/BillyChoi/
Blog: http://blog.naver.com/soularchitec
Twitter/Facebook: ILOVEHCI

2. © 2017 Billy All rights reserved.철학과 과학 그리고 게이미피케이션
(‘Player engaging’ 위해 핵심적으로 고찰이 필요한 이론과 개념 중심으로)
Brain Activity Predicts Decisions Before They’re Consciously Made*
1
Your experience is that:
1. You make a conscious decision about what
song you want to hear.
2. You move your muscles to select the song.
But here’s what really happens:
1. Unconscious parts of your brain make the
decision of what song to listen to.
2. Those unconscious parts of your brain
communicate the decision to other areas of
the brain that control your motor movements.
3. Your arm/hand/finger start to move to
execute the decision.
4. Information on what the decision was (finally)
appears in your conscious brain areas.
5. You have the conscious experience of picking
a song.
6. You use your finger to press the name of the
song.
Brain scan research by Chun Siong Soon(2008) shows that it takes
about 7 seconds from the time you make an unconscious decision to
when your conscious brain thinks you have made the decision.**
* Source: Weinschenk, Susan. 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) (p. 74). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.
** Soon (2013) devised a different experiment to see if the same delay holds for making abstract decisions that don’t involve simple motor movements. He
found similar results. Up to 4 seconds before the person was aware of making a conscious decision, unconscious areas of the brain had made the decision
and started acting on it. In this experiment, participants had to decide whether to work on a word task or an arithmetic task.

3. © 2017 Billy All rights reserved.철학과 과학 그리고 게이미피케이션
(‘Player engaging’ 위해 핵심적으로 고찰이 필요한 이론과 개념 중심으로)
Nouns Spur Action More Than Verbs Spur Action*
2
One group of participants answered a short set
of questions that referred to voting with a noun:
“How important is it to you to be a voter in the
upcoming election?”
Another group answered similar questions
worded with a verb:
“How important is it to you to vote in the
upcoming election?”
Christopher Bryan and Gregory Walton (2011) conducted studies to
see if this idea of nouns and verbs would affect voting.
* Source: Weinschenk, Susan. 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) (p. 82~85). Pearson Education. Kindle
Edition.
Participants in the noun group expressed significantly more interest (62.5
percent) in registering to vote than participants in the verb group (38.9 percent).
As they had predicted, participants in the noun condition voted at a significantly
higher rate than participants in the verb condition (11 percent higher).
Using a noun invokes group identity.

4. © 2017 Billy All rights reserved.철학과 과학 그리고 게이미피케이션
(‘Player engaging’ 위해 핵심적으로 고찰이 필요한 이론과 개념 중심으로)
Homophones Can Prime Behavior(동음이의어는 행동을 점화한다)*
3
* Source: Weinschenk, Susan. 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) (p. 86~88). Pearson Education. Kindle
Edition.
** Priming is when exposure to one stimulus influences your response to another stimulus.
*** Homophone Activation is Unconscious
Derick Davis and Paul Herr (2014) wanted to see
if homophones would act as primes**, and if so,
how strongly and under what conditions:
Bye/buy
Write/right
Carrot/carat
Air/heir
Brake/break
Cell/sell
Cereal/serial
Coarse/course
Fair/fare
Know/no
One/won
Profit/prophet
• Research on reading has shown that a lot
of the time people automatically and
unconsciously*** suppress the activation
of homophone associations. It takes some
cognitive work to suppress homophone
activation.
• This means that as you become more
mentally busy—as your cognitive load
increases—your susceptibility to the
homophone priming increases, too.
Good-bye/Good buy
You/Ewe
Ewe/You

5. © 2017 Billy All rights reserved.철학과 과학 그리고 게이미피케이션
(‘Player engaging’ 위해 핵심적으로 고찰이 필요한 이론과 개념 중심으로)
Dramatic Arc Stories Change Brain Chemicals*
4
* Source: Weinschenk, Susan. 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) (p. 106~109, 112). Pearson Education.
Kindle Edition.
** Zak then gave people a chance to share money with a stranger in the lab or to donate money to a charity that helped children who were ill. In both cases,
the more cortisol and oxytocin people had released, the more money they donated.
Empathy, Neurochemistry, and the Dramatic Arc: Paul Zak at the Future of Story
Telling 2012 (https://youtu.be/q1a7tiA1Qzo)
The dramatic story arc.
• He found that when people felt distress they
released cortisol, and when they felt empathy
they released oxytocin.(If the story has a happy
ending, then dopamine is released (dopamine
makes people feel optimistic and seek action)).
• Zak concluded, “The narrative (story) is changing
behavior by changing brain chemistry.”**
The rising action contains
tension. When there’s tension,
people pay attention. If people
sustain attention long enough,
then they begin to identify
(transportation) with the
characters in the story. This will
lead to oxytocin release, which
then leads to empathy.

6. © 2017 Billy All rights reserved.철학과 과학 그리고 게이미피케이션
(‘Player engaging’ 위해 핵심적으로 고찰이 필요한 이론과 개념 중심으로)
Synchronous Behavior and Cooperation*
5
* Source: Weinschenk, Susan. 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) (p. 134). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.
Scott Wiltermuth and Chip Heath (2009)
conducted a series of studies to see whether, and
how, synchronous behavior affects how people
cooperate:
They tested combinations of walking in step, not
walking in step, singing together, and other
movements with groups of participants.
Dancing, tai chi, yoga, singing, clapping, and
chanting in time are all examples of synchronous
activity.
;Synchronous activities are actions that people
take together, where everyone is doing the same
thing at the same time in physical proximity to
one another.
;When people sing together, their breathing
and heartbeats sync up.(Björn Vickhoff, 2013)
• The researchers found that people who
engaged in synchronous activities were
more cooperative in completing
subsequent tasks, and more willing to make
personal sacrifices to benefit the group.
• The mere act of doing the synchronous
activity seemed to strengthen social
attachment among the group members.
(Scott Wiltermuth and Chip Heath, 2009)
And It helps the survival of the
group.(Jonathan Haidt, 2008)
• Oxytocin reduces inflammation and helps
heal wounds. This is one of the reasons why
having a strong social network keeps you
healthy—the bonding releases oxytocin
and the oxytocin reduces inflammation.

7. © 2017 Billy All rights reserved.철학과 과학 그리고 게이미피케이션
(‘Player engaging’ 위해 핵심적으로 고찰이 필요한 이론과 개념 중심으로)
It’s all About Unpredictability and Anticipation(모든 것은 불확실성과 기대감에 달려 있다)*
6
* Source: Weinschenk, Susan. 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) (p. 198~200). Pearson Education. Kindle
Edition.
Robert Sapolsky is a neuroscientist who studies
dopamine in the brain. He trains monkeys to
know that when a light comes on that is a signal:
• Once the signal arrives (the light comes on),
the monkeys know that if they press a
button 10 times, after the 10th time, a food
treat will appear.
• Sapolsky measures the amount and timing
of dopamine release in the monkeys’ brains
during the cycle of signal—pressing—food
treat.
• Sapolsky points out that the dopamine
release starts as soon as the signal arrives,
and ends at the end of the bar pressing.
Many people think that dopamine is
released when the brain receives a reward,
but dopamine is actually released in
anticipation of a reward. It’s the dopamine
that keeps the monkeys pressing the bar
until the treat arrives.
Dopamine Jackpot! Sapolsky on the Science of Pleasure
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xh6ceu

8. © 2017 Billy All rights reserved.철학과 과학 그리고 게이미피케이션
(‘Player engaging’ 위해 핵심적으로 고찰이 필요한 이론과 개념 중심으로)
People Don’t Always Engage more When you’ve Used “Gamification”*
7
* Source: Weinschenk, Susan. 100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) (p. 237~238). Pearson Education. Kindle
Edition.
As of 2012, articles started appearing about how gamification wasn’t working. It wasn’t living up to its
promise. The problem lies in what the companies meant by gamification and what they actually implemented.
There are three main problems. Many of the gamification attempts I see miss one or more of the important
motivators above, and they implement them poorly even when they think to use them.
Most of the implementation of games in non-
game settings seems to center around
competition and rewards. Certainly both
competition and rewards can be part of a
gamification strategy, but they’re just two
strategies, and they aren’t even the most
powerful. More motivating than competition and
reward are things such as.
These are intrinsic motivators. Rewards are
extrinsic motivators. Most of the time, intrinsic
motivators are more powerful and effective than
extrinsic motivators.
Using rewards in particular tends to counteract
the desire for mastery.
1. Stories. Many games include a
story/plotline, and compelling characters to
identify with.
2. Desire for mastery.
• Give people autonomy. When people
feel they have control over what they do
and how and when they do it, the desire
for mastery is stimulated.
• Provide clear feedback.(without praise)
• Provide the right amount of challenge.
3. Need to belong. Part of the motivation of
playing a game can be the fact that you’re
part of a community of people who also
play that game.

9. © 2017 Billy All rights reserved.철학과 과학 그리고 게이미피케이션
(‘Player engaging’ 위해 핵심적으로 고찰이 필요한 이론과 개념 중심으로)
문제의 창조 & 문제의 해결
8
문제의 창조
M
D
A
올바른
문제의 정의(발명)
문제의 해결
M
D
A
주어진 문제의
정확한 해결

10. © 2017 Billy All rights reserved.철학과 과학 그리고 게이미피케이션
(‘Player engaging’ 위해 핵심적으로 고찰이 필요한 이론과 개념 중심으로)
원리상의 문제(de juri, in principle)
9
마음의 원리 뇌의 원리
게이미피케이션의
원리
게임의 원리

11. 경청해주셔서
고맙습니다!