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.

My Research Journey Levels Up

September 17, 2013 Research Journey No comments

Last week I made the decision to embark upon the process of doing a Masters degree with the University of Wollongong. I emailed a potential supervisor, hoping for a positive response. He agreed to meet with me to discuss my topic. On Friday I spent an hour polishing the long list of notes and dot points I had been accumulating whilst mulling over the idea of a research degree. I was reasonably happy with the first draft of what looked like an ok research proposal. No doubt if the potential supervisor likes it, then it will be ripped to shreds with the editing and refining process.

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

My First MOOC

August 16, 2013 Education, Online Resources, Research Journey No comments

Since finishing my degree I have felt this gap in my life. I think more so it’s the ways in which I now need to fill spare time I have. Spare time in previous years has been a somewhat foreign concept. Though now that I have no study commitments, I have no pressure to be spending spare moments researching, and reading. In saying that I feel like there is a small void that video games and leisure reading just isn’t filling. I have identified this as missing learning. I enjoy the process of learning and research, I enjoy acquiring new knowledge.

Image courtesy of lisamcalister.com

How do I address this insatiable desire to learn? I have no desire for another bachelors degree, and my university opportunities for further studies in my desired fields are slim, at best. So I have turned to the latest trend in education, MOOCs. A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course. So its basically anyone in the world with an interest in a given topic connecting to the course. Why? many people have a variety of reasons to engage in online study.

I have enrolled in The Global Business of Sports, delivered by Penn, University of Pennsylvania, on Corsera. My course so far consists of lectures and discussion forums, with 2 assessible quizzes coming, one at the mid-point and one at the end. The lectures have been split up into modules, with a module released each week. The lectures are split up into nice digestible chucks, 20-25 minutes a piece. Then we have the forums. Coming in a little bit late to the course (mid-week 2) discussion had well an truly kicked off. This meant for some of the more interesting debate topics in the forums, postings had already reached beyond 300 posts. I found this a barrier to engaging with that particular topic since reading more than 300 posts and comments isn’t really my idea of a good time. So I sought out topics that I could jump into that hadn’t yet reached a such a size, and have had some great (almost academic) discussion. Though mostly so far it has been very low key, with most people offering their opions with no references and discussion about farourite sports and teams. I look forward to moving a little further beyond this.

Retention rates for students in MOOCs are generally pretty low. Many sources note that students will enroll but not complete the course. I need to find some good statistics for this. For the current course there is no way I can see to find out how many students are currently enrolled, and this is not something the teaching staff have shared yet. I can see many reasons for low retention rates, beyond the usual reason students may drop out of face to face style courses. There is the appeal of free, the ease in which to enroll, the seemingly low commitment required, and a dislike of the teaching method or style. I would imagine that for many it is combination of these.

This is week still week two of the course. I’m interested in if I manage to stick it out and complete the course, or whether I just become another statistic. Stay tuned.

 

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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