The play perspective of videogaming

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Priscilla

Play seems to be something unreal. At first it seems intuitively clear what is meant by play; it is obvious when one is playing and when one is in earnest. The distinction between real and play seems clear, but at closer inspection the concept of play reveals itself to be a complex one. Before a very specific type of game play can be discussed, a definition of play in general must be given.

Caillios (1957) defines play as an activity that is essentially free, separate, uncertain, unproductive, governed and make-believe. Meaning that we cannot be forced into play; it is something we undertake by our own choice. If we would be forced, the experience would cease to be play and become an assignment. Furthermore, play is separated from normal day-to-day living. Often this separation is physical; one chalks lines on the ground for hop-scotch to physically limit the playing field or plays a board game on a board and only on this board does the game exist.

Play is also separated in time: there is a start and a stop to the playing. Play also requires some level of uncertainty; will it work, will it be fun, will the audience laugh and of course who will win? If the outcome of the undertaking was certain play would turn into a task. It would be no more than a series of steps to achieve an outcome. The achievement of an outcome must also be absent; the product of play can only be play itself, otherwise it becomes merely a means to an end. To control all the things play must or must not be, play requires rules. Finally, play can never be real. Huizinga sums it up as
“a free act, that is consciously ‘not meant’ and outside of normal life, that still might completely absorb the player, to which no direct material interest is connected, or use is gained, that unfolds itself in a purposely set up limited time and space, which adheres to certain rules and order, and brings forth a sense of community, which gladly shrouds itself in secrets or is distinguished from the real world by use of disguise.“ (translated from p. 41, Huizinga, 1938).

The definitions of Caillios (1957) and Huizinga (1938) both define play as a domain that is within society yet different from it, a domain which has no merit beyond itself, in which chance is always of influence in a complex structure governing the fantasy of which the domain is created and a domain to which one must enter voluntarily. An important part of play is the interaction; with oneself but often in a social setting. “Playing is always communication” (Ohler, 2008, p. 3638), whether this is intra- or interpersonal communication. These definitions give a solid structure to hold the fuzzy concept of play.

The way we play might differ between cultures but there is not one culture in which play is absent (Huizinga, 1938). We engage in play to fulfil a number of basic human needs. Based on Self Determination Theory, Ryan and Deci (2000) attribute three fundamental needs to every human being; a need for competence, a need for autonomy and a need for relatedness. When these needs are met psychological well-being is heightened and self-motivation is increased. By playing these needs can be met. The need for competence is fulfilled by a task not too challenging but not too simple so one can feel competent, which relates to the concept of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). The need for autonomy is met by one of the ‘ground rules’ of play; that it is voluntarily. The player autonomously decides to play. The relatedness we find in the social aspects of play, most playing is done in a social interaction. Be it between several players, between a player and an audience or between a player and a mediated character.

“Play is a credible developmental and evolutionary antecedent to the more sophisticated forms of entertainment we engage in today” (Vorderer, Steen, & Chan, 2006, p. 13). One of the more sophisticated forms of play that we engage in today is interactive gaming. Gamers are a different type of media audience: Contrary to most audiences, they are active.

For the TV, radio or newspaper audience communication is mostly one-way and the users are passively on the receiving end of the medium (Katz, 1962). Games are a fixed part of the media landscape that we move in today; “…[games] are now considered main stream media, competing with newspapers, television, radio, and film for attention and dollars” (Williams, 2006, p. 199). Gamers and internet users search and demand content specific to their needs, interacting and possibly adapting it as they see fit. Creation of new content is also high among gamers. For example, almost a quarter of the popular MMORPG Everquest players had created their own artwork or fiction based on or around the game play (Griffiths, 2003).

Concepts such as curiosity, surprise and suspense work very different in interactive video games compared to other media entertainment and therefore most media enjoyment theories are not directly applicable to interactive gaming (Grodal, 2000). A likely more suitable perspective on the investigation of interactive media is a play-perspective. “The analysis of interactive media entertainment especially can be based on a play frame (Ohler, 2008, p. 3639)”.

References
Caillois, R. (1957). Le jeux et les Hommes [Man and play] (M. Barash, Trans.): University of Illinois press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow. New York: Harper and Row.
Griffiths, M., Davies, M., & Chappell, D. (2003). Breaking the stereotype: the case of online gaming. Cyberpsychology and behaviour, 6 (1), 81-91.
Grodal, T. (2000). Video games and the pleasures of control. In D. Zillmann & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Media entertainment: the psychology of its appeal (pp. 197-212). Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Huizinga, J. (1938). Homo ludens. Proeve eener bepaling van het spel-element der cultuur. In Verzamelde werken V. Cultuurgeschiedenis III (pp. 26-146).[Homo Ludens, Test of determination of the gaming-element of culture. In the Collected works of Cultural history III] Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk Willink & Zoon N.V.
Katz, E., & Foulkes, D. (1962). On the use of the mas media as “escape”: clarification of a concept. Public opinion quarterly, 26, 377-388.
Ohler, P. (2008). Playing. In W. Donsbach (Ed.), The international encyclopaedia of communication (pp. 3638-3640): Blackwell publishing.
Ryan, R., & Deci, E. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.
Vorderer, P., Steen, F., & Chan, E. (2006). Motivation. In J. Bryant & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Psychology of entertainment (pp. 3-18). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Association.
Williams, D. (2006). A brief social history of game play. In P. Vorderer & J. Bryant (Eds.)

– this is an excerpt from my MSc-thesis How Alternate Reality Gaming changes reality –

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So you think you can…

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Priscilla

Self-efficacy, health and reappraisal

Self-efficacy has proven to be an important concept in the chase of understanding and predicting what we do, and what we don’t. Bandura (1994, p.1) defines perceived self-efficacy as

“… people’s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives. Self-efficacy beliefs determine how people feel, think, motivate themselves and behave. Such beliefs produce these diverse effects through four major processes. They include cognitive, motivational, affective and selection processes.” (Bandura, 1994)

Research has shown that self-efficacy is an important construct in many health behaviours, and it is widely seen as an important part of creating short- and long-term changes in health related behaviour. “Higher self-efficacy has been related to less addictive behaviors (Diclemente et al., 1995), lower physiological stress responses (O’Leary & Brown, 1995), and lower relapse rates of smoking cessation (Gulliver, Hughes, Solomon, & Dey, 1995). Additionally, greater self-efficacy is related to better adherence to a medical treatment regimen (Dennis & Goldberg, 1996; Rosenbaum & Smira, 1986).” (Maher, 2014)

Persons with high (trait) self-efficacy see the world as a place with challenges that they can learn to master, persons with low self-efficacy see the world as a possibly threatening place and experience setbacks as a personal failure from which they find it hard to recover. Belief in self-efficacy can be promoted in four ways (Bandura, 1994, 2004, 2006)
1) Mastery experience,
2) Social models,
3) Social persuasion and
4) Reappraisal of somatic and emotional state.

The experience of our own success builds up our perceived self-efficacy while experiencing failure lowers our perceived self-efficacy. However, if our successes are too easily achieved we do not learn any efficacy in the face of obstacles and our built up perceived self-efficacy collapses at the first unexpected setback. A robust sense of self-efficacy comes from the experience of overcoming obstacles; mastery is something that requires effort and leads to success.
Through the observed efforts and results of others we influence what effort we expect to lead to what results in our own behaviour. This social modelling depends highly on the perceived similarity between the social model and ourselves; the more similar we judge them to be to ourselves, the more our perceived self-efficacy shifts depending on the efforts and results of the model. We look for models that display the skills we desire and try to learn ways to achieve such skills from them, leading to a higher sense of perceived self-efficacy.
Persuading people that they are capable of mastery can heighten perceived self-efficacy in the sense that it can lead to a short-lived increase of effort and commitment, whereas people might have given up without such persuasion, resulting in a successful mastery experience. However, it is easier to undermine self-efficacy through social persuasion than it is to promote is. Psychological boosts are easily deflated by reality and do not provide any resilience over time. Social persuasion is more successful when it focuses on teaching people how to structure situations to maximize the chance of success and measuring success in terms of self-improvement instead of comparison to others.
We tend to interpret our physical responses and our mood-state as related to our capabilities, while this need not be the case. Persons with a high sense of self-efficacy can interpret a state of arousal as a motor to action whereas persons with a low sense of self-efficacy can interpret the same state as an obstacle to action, or even an indication to cease all efforts. Since these are the same states, it is not so much the occurrence but the interpretation that determines its’ influence on perceived self-efficacy. The interpretation of such physiological indicators  appears to be most important when it pertains to health functioning and physical activity.

One experiment that follows the line of Reappraisal of somatic and emotional state is the work of Alison Wood Brooks (2013) “Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement”. She conducts several experiments in which participants are faced with tasks that make them anxious and are prompted beforehand – or prompt themselves – either with “I am calm” or with “I am excited”. The calm-prompt follows the usually taught response to being anxious, which is to try and calm down. In these experiments Brooks consistently found that the participants with the excited-prompt performed better on their tasks while remaining highly aroused, this was measured by raised heart rates throughout, as compared to the calm-prompt participants (Brooks, 2013).

References:
Bandura, A. (1994). Self‐efficacy: Wiley Online Library.
Bandura, A. (2004). Health promotion by social cognitive means. Health education & behavior, 31(2), 143-164.
Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspectives on psychological science, 1(2), 164-180.
Brooks, A. W. (2013). Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement.
Maher, K. (2014). The effect of youth diabetes self-efficacy on the relation among family conflict, disease care and glycemic control. (PhD Dissertation ), Virginia Commonwealth University.

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Apps and Gamification

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Priscilla

Let us start off with the comment that to me, using ‘Apps’ as a distinctive category is the same sort of categorisation as ‘Books’.  It is a media-format. It might be a little more suitable for some content than for others, but building a good App cannot be viewed without inspecting the content.  So what defines an App? After some scouring of the Internet I define Apps as an application or piece of software that is small, has a limited use, can be used instantly and is developed for the mobile platform.

In the last feature we find marvellous possibilities for Gamification. In our pockets (or handbags) we carry a sensor array concealed as a device for making phone calls. With every smartphone we carry around the possibility for audio visual processing, timekeeping, location tracking and an open connection to the world biggest collection of information. All means for measurement which can be used to power feedback, or to build henceforth unseen structures overlaying our reality.

In more ways than one – Gamification is the art of creating new and inventive ways for feedback. A game structure, or a part thereof, can hold a story and through that story we can find (new) meaning.  In our hand we hold the technical tools necessary for measurement and processing, while in our head we can hold structures linking such measurements together. The way this is woven together gives meaning to cold, hard data.

Figure Running for example, uses the measurement of GPS, placing the collected data over the existing structures of maps and adds the creative freedom of drawing on this map with your feet.  We can interpret the resulting drawing for it is telling us a story.  Through technical application and feedback we’ve created a new structure in reality. Sounds like a game to me.

I would encourage the masses of Appmakers to view the measurement data they can tap into as opportunities for feedback, to see such data as building blocks for unseen structures and the idea of play as a way to weave such things together.

Gamification is a very useful framework to look at your user and to go from pointless data to engaging information.

Blog written for the Appril-festival 2014

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Kunst & Kennis in VR || Hersengedrag

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Priscilla


Voor Hersengedrag.nl hebben wij ongeveer 200 mensen Virtual Reality laten ervaren met de Oculus Rift tijdens de nacht van Kunst en Kennis. Voor bijna iedereen die in de rij stond was het de eerste persoonlijke ervaring met VR.

 

We hadden twee korte demo’s bij ons: de AsoBot demo en een abstracte achtbaan.

AsoBot is specifiek gemaakt voor deze demonstratie en geeft een beeld van een van de onderzoeken die Hersengedrag doet in een echt lab. In dit onderzoek wordt gekeken naar de emotie-regulatie van hele jonge kinderen met autisme met behulp van een kleine robot zich ‘agressief gedraagt’.  De AsoBot demo is een virtuele kamer waar je rustig in rond kunt kijken.  Het lieftallige meisje van de Hersengedrag website staat in het midden van de kamer en half verscholen achter haar staat een GROTE robot. Na een externe trigger verdwijnt het meisje, gaat het licht uit en verspringt de robot van plek naar plek in het knipperende licht totdat hij vlak voor je neus staat en een aantal keer naar je uithaalt. Daarna gaat het licht weer aan en schuift de robot naar zijn oude positie en komt het meisje terug.

De abstracte achtbaan demo is opgebouwd uit kleurige vlakken die in het niets hangen. De vlakken vormen samen het spoor en de zijkanten van een kort rondje achtbaan. Na een externe trigger begin je langzaam bergop te gaan, om met grote versnelling naar beneden de eerste bocht in te duiken. Harder, langzamer, bocht en nog een bocht. In twintig seconden heb je het hele rondje gedaan.

Het was interssant om zoveel mensen (miniem) fysiek te zien reageren op verschillende punten in de demo’s.  Ademhaling die even stokt als het licht uitgaat in de AsoBot demo – met het hoofd heen en weer op zoek naar die robot en terugdeinzen als de robot ineens dichtbij verschijnt. Een atletische meneer ging spontaan boksen met de robot – gelukkig zat ik er niet recht voor.  Bij de achtbaan hingen mensen vaak licht mee in de bocht of helden naar achteren als het spoor omhoog ging. Heel veel Oh en Ah en soms meer Aaahh!

Er stond de hele nacht een flinke wachtrij – tijd om er veel bij uit te leggen was er helaas niet. Geen discussie over wat nu het verschil is tussen een animatie en een VR-omgeving. Geen gesprekken over hoe de menselijke psyche omgaat met een ervaring waarvan we weten dat het niet ‘echt’ is maar die toch anders dan ‘nep’ voelt. Geen technische vragen en tot grote teleurstelling van Zephod geen “Wow, dit is cool – hoe maak ik dit?”.

Wel veel enthousiaste mensen die vrijwel allemaal verrast reageerden op het ‘zijn in VR’. En er is zoveel meer dan wat we hebben laten zien – deze demo’s waren om praktische redenen erg simpel en erg kort. Er is al zoveel beter en het gaat nog zoveel beter worden. Hersengedrag wil de mogelijkheden van VR in neurologisch onderzoek graag verder verkennen – wij ook.

 

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Broccoli Chocolate swirl

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Priscilla

When discussing coding in education (and many of the STEM topics) together with game-based learning, the chocolate covered broccoli objection is often mentioned. Meaning that changing to a game or gameful structure for these topics will not work as you are ‘simply’ adding a thin layer of nice to something that is inherently disgusting but good for you. I have three issues with this:

1) You don’t get your content.

If you think that your content is ‘broccoli’ than you are the wrong person to create a learning environment for that content. If you start from the assumption that your content is a terrible thing to do to a human being, you are never going to be able to make any good learning environment for it. First things first; find out from the people that enjoy and work with what you are trying to teach WHY they enjoy it. Find out its merits, its intrinsic value and its possible applications.

2) You don’t get game-based learning.

The idea of ‘layering’ a thin coating of gameful over anything is not how game-based learning works at its best. This kind of thinking resembles the approach where doing the work is rewarded with something gamelike; which is not game-based learning, but a reward structure using the pleasantness of games as the reward. Instead of chocolate covered broccoli, what the idea should be is more of a double-baked broccoli chocolate swirl cake. The gamefulness has to grab on to the content WITHIN the process of learning and not as an afterthought. Preferably, what you want to get across can be translated into one of the game mechanics. If this seems implausible, the content has to be intertwined with the experience of the gameful environment. There are no pre-cut solutions here as it should grab onto the results of issue 1. Whatever it is that makes people interested in the knowledge and/or the application of your content should be core to the game or gamelike structure.

3) You don’t get broccoli.

I rather like broccoli – and I love chocolate. However, broccoli goes better with other things like parmesan cheese or toasted almonds. Broccoli should never be boiled into oblivion and served. Instead try it raw or ‘al dente’ slightly dusted with nutmeg. It could also be boiled and then used as one of the ingredients in a soup or a mash e.g. potato mash with broccoli and cheese piped into rosettes and baked in the oven… mmmgood. There is much to do with broccoli without involving chocolate.

 

Additional toppings:

When will broccoli taste like chocolate?
Questions on genetic traits answered by Stanford scientists.

Why serious games are not chocolate-covered broccoli. by Edutopia

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A knowledge taxonomy

Posted on May 24, 2014 by Priscilla

By applying taxonomy to explore the concept of knowledge, an organisational structure can be superimposed. This taxonomy provides a shared structure and vocabulary for a complicated concept that cuts across many scientific fields and models.

Blooms’ taxonomy (1956) was hailed in the field of education and the many disciplines that involve themselves with it. But something was missing from the taxonomy – leading to a revised Taxonomy in 2001.

Blooms’ taxonomy was devised to standardize test items for measuring educational objectives. Together with several measurement experts he published the “Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook I:  Cognitive Domain” (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956). This taxonomy had six main categories:

  1. Knowledge
  2. Comprehension
  3. Application
  4. Analysis
  5. Synthesis
  6. Evaluation

This structure would later be referred to as the original Taxonomy (after the revised Taxonomy was published (Anderson, Krathwohl, & Bloom, 2001)). The original Taxonomy gained wide recognition and was translated into 22 languages. The original Taxonomy was often used to analyse a curriculum on whether all categories were being (sufficiently) taught. Such analysis tended to show that there was a large emphasis on recognition and recall and not enough on items from the categories Comprehension and Synthesis – which are widely regarded to be vital goals of education. [Even more so now with the whole 21st century skill movement in education – note].

The revised Taxonomy has adapted itself to the thinking and wording of the developing field of cognitive psychology. It has added a subcategory to the Knowledge dimension: Metacognitive Knowledge. The revised Taxonomy has also discerned two dimensions: The Knowledge dimension and the Cognitive Processing dimension. The categories go up in complexity and form a hierarchical scale “Cognitive Process dimension is a hierarchy, and probably one that would be supported as well as was the original Taxonomy in terms of empirical evidence” (see Anderson, Krathwohl, et al., 2001, chap.  16). Both dimensions contain several categories and subcategories:

Structure of the Knowledge Dimension of the Revised Taxonomy

A. Factual Knowledge – The basic elements that students must know to be acquainted with a discipline or solve problems in it.
Aa. Knowledge of terminology
Ab. Knowledge of specific details and elements

B. Conceptual Knowledge – The interrelationships among the basic elements within a larger structure that enable them to function together.
Ba. Knowledge of classifications and categories
Bb. Knowledge of principles and generalizations
Bc. Knowledge of theories, models, and structures

C. Procedural Knowledge – How to do something; methods of inquiry, and criteria for using skills, algorithms, techniques, and methods.
Ca. Knowledge of subject-specific skills and algorithms
Cb. Knowledge of subject-specific techniques and methods
Cc. Knowledge of criteria for determining when to use appropriate procedures

D. Metacognitive Knowledge – Knowledge of cognition in general as well as awareness and knowledge of one’s own cognition.
Da. Strategic knowledge
Db. Knowledge about cognitive tasks, including appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge
Dc. Self-knowledge

Structure of the Cognitive Process Dimension of the Revised Taxonomy

1 Remember – Retrieving relevant knowledge from long-term memory.
1.1 Recognizing
1.2 Recalling

2 Understand – Determining the meaning of instructional messages, including oral, written, and graphic communication.
2.1 Interpreting
2.2 Exemplifying
2.3 Classifying
2.4 Summarizing
2.5 Inferring
2.6 Comparing
2.7 Explaining

3 Apply – Carrying out or using a procedure in a given situation.
3.1 Executing
3.2 Implementing

4 Analyse – Breaking material into its constituent parts and detecting how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose.
4.1 Differentiating
4.2 Organizing
4.3 Attributing

5 Evaluate – Making judgments based on criteria and standards.
5.1 Checking
5.2 Critiquing

6 Create – Putting elements together to form a novel, coherent whole or make an original product.
6.1 Generating
6.2 Planning
6.3 Producing

These two dimensions can be combined in a table. “Using the Table to classify objectives, activities, and assessments provides a clear, concise, visual representation of a particular course or unit. Once completed, the entries in the Taxonomy Table can be used to examine relative emphasis, curriculum alignment, and missed educational opportunities.” (Pintrich, 2002).

Knowledge Dimension

Cognitive Process Dimension
Factual Knowledge Remember Understand Apply Analyse Evaluate Create
Conceptual Knowledge
Procedural Knowledge
Metacognitive Knowledge

References
Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., & Bloom, B. S. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives: Allyn & Bacon.
Bloom, B. S., Engelhart, M., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: Handbook I: Cognitive domain. New York: David McKay, 19(56).
Pintrich, P. R. (2002). The role of metacognitive knowledge in learning, teaching, and assessing. Theory into practice, 41(4), 219-225.

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