Archive for Game Mechanics

Looking into Badges – University of Washington

April 20, 2014 Badges, Theory No comments

When the University of Washington moved to a skill-based promotion system (from seniority-based), they looked int piloting a bagdes program to encourage skill development for student employees. Student employees make a a 50+ person team that manage IT labs, and assist in technology related help services. State introduced legislature in 2009 meant a freeze on wage increases, and the only options for these student staff were moving to jobs with increased pay and responsibilities. This meant those starting in freshman year may never have seen a pay rise over the course of their employment.University of Washington Logo

UW implemented a tier-based system upon where each level indicated an increased degree of skill and responsibility. Promotion up the chain required justification and documentation of skills. As a result they identified that there was inconsistency around how a student achieved the skills needed for the promotion. Thus UW investigated digital badges as a solution to show that a group of skills could represent expertise within the team.

Wallis and Martinez acknowledge that informal learning is not recognized, and degrees and certificates do not represent a complete picture of a learners skills and abilities. They identify the Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure as a potential framework solution. UW-IT “started to investigate badges primarily as a way of measuring and documenting their [student staff] skills, and encouraging them to continue to improve their skills”.

Wallis and Martinez then launch into a discussion about the options for a badge system, in particular the division between Open source and commercials solutions. Open examples such as Badg.us and BadgeOS, and commercial solutions such as Credly. In reviewing Seton Hall’s code for a badge system they UW identified the priorities for integration, adn flaw in using an open source method. Seton Hall’s (pre-GitHub Release version) had inelegant coding implementations (such as individual modules for authentication), while badg.us did not accommodate functions such as meta-badges.

Wallis and Martinez conclude that more exploration of options is required. Noting that there was further interest in pilot participation from other units on campus and that students enjoyed the Code Academy model. The authors also note their concerns about ad-hoc badge issuing for informal learning, leaderboards and student inflexibility, and note that “we want to be cautious that badges do not become a completely extrinsic motivator”. Intrinsically motivated students will seek learning, badge system or not. They also note the key points of Ryan and Deci’s Self-determination theory, Autonomy, competence and relatedness. Then mentions the historical perspectives of badges as either representation of expertise/experience or power/authority (Alexander Halavais, 2012, “A genealogy of Badges: Inherited meaning and monstrous moral hybrids”).

 

References

Wallis, P., & Martinez, M. S. (2013, November). Motivating skill-based promotion with badges. In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM annual conference on Special interest group on university and college computing services (pp. 175-180). ACM.

 

Badges workshop at ANU

March 22, 2014 Badges, Game Elements, Projects No comments
open badges anatomy

I was lucky enough to get in on a Badges lecture and workshop happening at the Australian National University (ANU) 20-21st March 2014. Here is what we covered, sprinkled with some of my own thoughts.

Day 1 – Badges Lecture – By Joyce Seitzinger

Joyce gave a great introduction about personal learning networks, and the importance of informal learning within those networks. Joyce engaged the class with a quick activity to map out individual use of online tools that can facilitate this process. This was all mapped to a matrix of degree of use (visitor to resident), and the purpose (personal to institutional). Here is mine as example. This exercise demonstrated how much I use the internet for one, but more importantly how much I learn informally, and how this shapes who I am, and the kind of leaner I have become.

We soon moved on to pathways of learning, and a desire to move towards a model that was less prescriptive. Allowing the learner to construct their own path and how badges may be key to drawing these diverse learnings together. Using examples of some insulated systems such as Duolingo and Code Academy as badge issuers, this shows how open badges could pull this all together. However, these example systems offered badges and recognition that was not transferable.

Learning Pathways

Towards the end of the lecture we got to badges, what they are, what they mean, how they can be used, and a discussion on trust economies. Joyce did drop that Mozilla are working on a app store concept for badges, something like their beginner badge earning offerings. I’m quite eager to see where this might lead. Since one of the flaws of that systems was identifying what options to earn badges were available, which in turn made getting started with your back just that little bit harder. It also has the potential to improve the MOOC space, just the about a catalog of courses across different systems gets me excited.

open badges anatomy

 

Day 2 – Workshop – By Joyce Seitzinger and Inger Mewburn

This was an opportunity to roll up are sleeves and start thinking about the design process for a badge. The attendees were split into three groups to think about how they might design a badge related to research skills. For this we worked through the digital me badge development guide. In all three cases is was hard to develop one badge in isolation without considering the eco-system. For example our Research Ninja badge end up being awarded after the learner had earned a number of other smaller badges that mapped to smaller tasks.

We also discussed a number of other projects, initiatives and examples, including:

It will be interesting to see what ANU do with this insignia project. The student me is jumping for joy at the potential for having informal learning recognized. However I have become very jaded having working the the Higher Education sector. I am aware that what I see now and the potential is not likely to the the tools I may well receive. If you are interested make sure you keep posted on the project here - Insignia project.

Why am I here? – Motivations for playing games online

September 20, 2013 Game Mechanics, Theory, Video Games No comments

Yee (2013) conducted a study to investigation players motivation for MMORPGs. Early he critics the lack of empirical data behind Bartle’s Player types. Noting that the player types were not mutually exclusive and in fact have a significant degree of crossover. Yee opted for a factor analytic approach, “Players used a five-point fully labelled construct-specific scale to respond” to a 40 question survey.

The Results

Yee (2013) exposed the following factors and sub components in motivation. Noting the the data identified that a high score in one factor did not suppress a high score in another factor.

Achievement Social Immersion
Advancement – Progress, Power, Accumulation, Status
Mechanics – Numbers, Optimization, Templating, Analysis
Competition – Challenging Others, Provocation, Domination		 Socializing – Casual Chat, Helping Others, Making Friends
Relationship – Self-Disclosure, Find and Give Support
Teamwork – Collaboration, Groups, Group Achievements		 Discovery – Exploration, Lore, Finding Hidden Things
Role-Playing – Story Line, Character History, Roles, Fantasy
Customization – Appearances, Accessories, Style, Colour Schemes
Escapism – Relax, Escape from Real Life, Avoid Real-Life Problems

 

References
Yee, N (2006) Motivation for Play in Online Games, Cyber Psychology and Behavior. Volume 9, issue 6. pp 772-775.

Motivating Learners – Just add badges right?

September 7, 2013 Badges, Game Elements, Gamification, Theory No comments

Reading through Play As You Learn: Gamification as a Technique for Motivating Learners (2013) by Ian Glover gives an overview of the current state of gamification, with particular relevance to  education. Glover first states the three basic parts of most games:

  • Goal-focused activity
  • Reward mechanics
  • Progress tracking

Glover then notes some current uses of gamification including popular social network FourSquare.

Eventually gets to the good stuff, and touches on some criticism of gamification. These included the detriment of providing extrinsic rewards for learners who are intrinsically motivated, the addictive behaviours often associated with certain personality types (notes from Zichermann, 2011), the competitiveness of leaderboards (Williams, 2012), and the types of engagement when gamification is removed (Thoma, Millen, and DiMicco, 2012).

Glover’s main points include the following

  • Careful consideration needs to be taken before the application of gamification to learning
  • Providing extrinsic motivation for intrinsically motivated learners is detrimental
  • Gamification in earning should therefore be optional
  • Popular Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) and LMSs (Learning Management Systems) provide an ideal opportunity, with tracking data already available
  • Rewards need to be desirable to all learner to motivate behavior
  • Gamifiation can be applied to non-electronic contexts

 

My references

Glover, Ian (2013) Play as you learn: gamification as a technique for motivating learners. In: HERRINGTON, Jan, COUROS, Alec and IRVINE, Valerie, (eds.) Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2013. Chesapeake, VA, AACE , 1999-2008. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/7172/

 

Glover’s References
Thom, J., Millen, D., & DiMicco, J. (2012). Removing gamification from an enterprise SNS. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ’12), 1067-1070. Accessed: 27/11/2012 -http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2145204.2145362.

Williams, J. (2012). The Gamification Brain Trust: Intrinsically Motivating People to Change Behavior (part 2). Gamesbeat, Panel discussion, Wallace, M. [chair], Accessed: 26/11/2012 – http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/22/the-gamification-brain-trustintrinsically-motivating-people-to-change-behavior-part-2/#h8geQcI5BUyR5Ihv.99

Zichermann, G. (2011). Gamification has issues, but they aren’t the ones everyone focuses on. [Editorial] O’Reilly Radar. Accessed: 26/11/2012 – http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/06/gamification-criticism-overjustification-ownership-addiction.html

The Rules as Law

July 27, 2013 Game Mechanics, Rules, Theory No comments

Games and sports have many things in common, in particular rules. A game requires rules to maintain order and construct boundaries. The enjoyment of games and sports often comes from the sense of achievement in succeeding in the scenario, given the restrictions of the rules. There is significant differences between the ways in which rules are enforced depending on the game or contest. In video games mostly the computer program or AI (Artificial Intelligence) provides the rule enforcement, for physical board and card games the rules are general socially enforced (with the exception of tournament play), and for sports umpires or referees enforce the rules.

In Taking Umpiring  Seriously: How Philosophy Can Help Umpires Make the Right Calls J.S Russell discusses the role of an umpire and their impact on the game, specifically looking at Major League Baseball. Russell leads off the theory of performance utterance (J.L Austin), in which he explains in the case of baseball that the action that occurs is not in fact an action until it is called so. For example a pitcher pitches his ball, until the home plate umpire makes a call it is neither a strike nor ball.

The more important point this article brings to light is the concept of the umpires use of the “Spirit of the game”. To illustrate his point Russell  refers to the 1983 Pine Tar incident in a baseball game between Kansas City Royals and the New York Yankees. The George Brett (Kansas City Royals) had applied pine tar to his bat. Prior to the knowledge of this Brett had hit a game-changing home run. Pine tar is a sticky residue that hitters apply to the handle of their bat in order to increase grip. According the the rules at the time the residue could only be applied to no more than the bottom 18 inches of the bat. In Brett’s case he had applied pine tar to more than that. The Yankee’s team manger (Billy Martin) challenged the awarded home run. In which they applied the rule and the run was disallowed. Then on another challenge, after extensive discussion the ruling was reversed (with the Home Run allowed). Umpire Brinkman stating that it was not in the spirit of the game to disallow the run. The application of pine tar to the hitting surface of the bat would create a disadvantage more so than any extra advantage. This point in baseball history has been much remembered.

Pine Tar Incident Bat

 

This incident, quite rightly, lead to same changes in the rules for the following Major League season. Referee discretion is now written into many codes of sports to allow umpires and referees to maintain integrity of the sports over which they preside. Russell also notes that for the sport to survive integrity must upheld by its rule enforcers.

 

References

Ruseell, J.S. (2004) ’Taking Umpiring  Seriously: How Philosophy Can Help Umpires Make the Right Calls’ Popular Culture and Philosophy. Accessed 14/07/2013. http://www.georgereisch.com/popularcultureandphilosophy/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Taking_Umpire_Seriously.pdf

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