Gamification vs. Game-Based Learning - Theories, Methods, and Controversies
WhyGamesAreFunWhyEducatorsShouldCare
1. WHY GAMES ARE FUN
Why Educators Should Care
presented for:
Play! A Symposium
World Festival of Children’s Theatre
Stratford , Ontario
June 11, 2016
Todd Vercoe, M.A.
2. What is a game?
boardgames
war games
card games
collectable card games
dice games
drinking games
table top miniature battles
chase games
TTRPGs (Table Top Role Playing Games)
LARPs (Live Action Role Playing Games)
football
soccer
hockey
baseball
basketball cricket
tennis
curling
house
cops & robbers
ring-around-the-roses
British bulldog
pinball darts
foosball air hockey
fox hunting
deer hunting
game fishing
Childhood Adventures
capture the flag shuffle board
Parlour Games
chase
Amusements
Sports
Blood Sports
badminton
rugby
tag
Computer Games
MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons)
MUSHs (Multi-User Shared Hacks)
MOOs (MUDs Object Oriented)
real time strategy games
turn based strategy games
sims
flight sims
vehicle sims
action adventures
text adventures
graphic adventures
fantasy sports
RPGs (Role Playing Games)
first person shooters (FPS)
third person shooters
dance games
music games
god games
sidescrollers
maze games
puzzle games
search games
trivia games
matching games
3. The problem of language
the German ‘speil’
the Dutch ‘spel’
the French ‘jeu’
the Korean ‘nori’
Italian, Japanese, Chinese,
Arabic
5. “... a free activity standing quite consciously
outside “ordinary” life as being “not serious”, but at
the same time absorbing the player intensely and
utterly. It is an activity connected with no material
interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It
proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time
and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly
manner. It promotes the formation of social
groupings and tend to surround themselves with
secrecy and to stress their difference from the
common world by disguise or other
means.” (Huizinga, 1955)
“...an activity which is essentially: Free (voluntary),
separate [in time and space], uncertain, unproductive,
governed by rules, make-believe.” (Caillois, 1957)
“The major ingredients are held to be a combination of all
or some of the following characteristics: they are activities
freely engaged in; their purpose is uniquely pleasure or
fun; they are in essence unproductive activities; they are
challenges against a task or an opponent; they are
symbolic activities governed by rules; they are arbitrary
situations clearly limited and separated in time and space
from real-life activities. When a distinction is drawn
between play and games, the dimension that is generally
used as a cutting point is the existence or the lack of rules
and thereby, of competition, for competition is difficult to
conceive of without some rules explicitly or tacitly agreed
upon by which to recognize the winner of the encounter.
(Inbar and Stoll, 1970)
6. “To play a game is to engage in activity directed towards
bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means
permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient
in favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are
accepted just because they make possible such
activity.” (Suits, 1978)
“At its most elementary level then we can define game as
an exercise of voluntary control systems in which there is
an opposition between forces, confined by a procedure and
rules in order to produce a disequilibrial
outcome.” (Avendon & Sutton Smith, 1981)
“A game is a system in which players engage in an
artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a
quantifiable outcome.” (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003)
“a game is a form of recreation constituted by a set of rules
that specify an object to be attained and the permissible
means of attaining it.” (Kelley, 1988)
“A game is a semibounded and socially legitimate domain
of contrived contingency that generates interpretable
outcomes.” (Malaby, 2007)
7. “I perceive four common factors: representation [“a closed
formal system that subjectively represents a subset of
reality”], interaction, conflict, and safety [“the results of a
game are always less harsh than the situations the game
models”]” (Crawford, 1982)
“An interactive structure of endogenous meaning that
requires players to struggle toward a goal.” (Costikyan,
2002)
“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, 2003)
14. Play
Figure 2
Games
Non-Game Play Activities
Examples
Creative expression
Creative writing
Dramatic production
Artistic creation
Musical play/creation
Dance
Socio-dramatic play
Athletics
Free play
26. My definition
The gamestate is our awareness of a rule bound playtool
capable of producing replicable temporal narratives that
provide us an attempt to govern chaos through a blend of
contest, puzzle, simulation, drama and other unknown
elements.
28. Ludi Magister • Magister Ludi
Ludus
(play, game, sport, training)
Ludi Magister
(Game Master/Teacher)
Magister Ludi
(Master of Games)
Ludology
(The study of games)
30. Eight Elements of Successful Game Design
Sensation (Game as sense-pleasure)
Fantasy (Games as make-believe)
Narrative (Game as drama)
Challenge (Game as obstacle course)
Fellowship (Game as social framework)
Discovery (Game as uncharted territory)
Expression (Game as self-discovery)
Submission (Game as pastime)
(Hunicke, LeBlanc, Zubek, 2004)
31. Gee & Koster... a conversation
The player must probe the virtual world.
A variable feedback system. The results of the encounter should not be completely predictable Ideally,
greater skill in completing the challenge should lead to better rewards.
Based on reflection while probing and afterward, the player must form a hypothesis about what
something might mean in a usefully situated way.
The Mastery Problem must be dealt with. High-level players can’t get big benefits from easy
encounters or they will bottom-feed. Inexpert players will be unable to get the most out of the game.
The player reprobes the world with that hypothesis in mind, seeing what effect he or she gets.
Failure must have a cost. At the very least there is an opportunity cost, and there may be more. Next
time you attempt the challenge, you are assumed to come into it from scratch – there are no –“do overs.”
The player treats this effect as feedback from the world and accepts or rethinks his or her original
hypothesis.
(Gee, 2003, Koster, 2005, italics and bold, theirs)
32. Specific to Education Games
Individual Motivations
Challenge:
The activity should provide a continuously optimal
(intermediate) level of difficulty for the learner.
Curiosity:
The activity should provide an optimal (moderate) level of
information complexity or discrepancy from the learner’s
state of knowledge and information.
Control:
The activity should promote feelings of self-determination
and control on the part of the learner.
Fantasy:
The activity may promote intrinsic motivation through the
use of fantasy involvement.
Interpersonal Motivations
Cooperation:
The appeal of the activity may be enhanced by enlisting the
motivation to cooperate with others.
Endogenous cooperative motivation may be produced by
segmenting the activity into inherently interdependent parts.
Competition:
The appeal of the activity may be enhanced by enlisting the
motivation to compete with others.
Endogenous competitive motivation may be produced by
creating an activity in which competitors’ actions affect
each other.
Recognition:
The appeal of the activity may be enhanced by enlisting the
motivation to compete with others.
Endogenous recognition motivation may be produced by
activities that provide natural channels for students’ efforts
to be appreciated by others.
(Malone and Lepper,1987)
33. Try not to forget Gardner
(connectionsacademy.com)
34. Gamification - Some Thoughts
Gamification c. 2004
Gamify, not scorify
Gender differences
re:prizes
“Purple” Leisure
