Detailed summary Gamification and Applied Games (INFOB3APGA)
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Course
Applied Games (INFOB3APGA)
Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Book
The Gamification of Learning and Instruction
This summary includes all the lectures from the course Gamification and Applied Games. I excluded the articles as this tends to change every year. I did include a summary of all the chapters of the book in this summary. I also write very detailed with lots of examples so that all terms are easy to ...
College 1: Introduction
Some games use game concepts and technologies for non-entertainment purposes, such as
health care, policy making, research and education. These games are referred to as serious
games. Serious games are any computerized game whose chief mission is not entertainment.
They might also be entertainment games which can be reapplied to a different mission other
than entertainment. They do not have enjoyment or fun has their primary focus. This does not
mean that serious games are not entertaining, enjoyable or fun. They are games that use
computer game and simulation approaches or the technologies for, primarily, non-
entertainment purposes.
For effective designs of such serious games, we need to focus on the analysis of games at an
academic level. Moreover, it is important to integrate interdisciplinary scientific insight with
novel game design and technology. An example of a serious game is Mindlight. You explored
the old and dark house of your grandma. The purpose is to get the lights back on with Teru, a
magical hat that shines light when you feel relaxed. You relaxation brings light into the world.
Together with Teru, you try to get rid of your fear for the darkness and get the lights back on
to save your grandma. It is developed for children with anxiety disorders. Another example is
Deep with is a meditative VR game controlled by your breathing. A custom controller
measures diaphragm expansion in order to sense deep breathing. This information is fed back
to the player in a variety of visual cues, intimately linking their consciousness and breath. It
encourages the players to slow their breath, to sink deeper and relax. It can be played for
therapeutic or aesthetic reasons.
Interactive playgrounds with for example interactive floors as ideal tools for performing
research. Moreover, they are also very fun. There is the possibility to steer certain behavior.
You can for example stimulate positive behavior or stimulate new experiences. Re-mission is
another serious game example. It puts players inside the body to defeat cancer by making use
of weapons. These weapons are for example chemotherapy, antibiotics and the body’s
immune cells. This is designed for teens and young adults who are at risk of adverse cancer
outcomes due to poor treatment adherence.
Besides these games, games can also be used for behavior change. An example is a power
saver game. Games can also be used for teaching.
Article 1 Success factors for serious games to enhance learning: a systematic review:
Kapp Chapter 1:
A game is a system in which players engage in an abstract challenge, defined by rules,
interactivity and feedback. This results in a quantifiable outcome, often eliciting emotional
reactions. Gamification is the use of game play mechanisms for non-game applications,
particularly consumer-oriented web and mobile sites, in order to encourage people to adopt
the applications. It also strives to encourage users to engage in desired behaviors in
connection with the application. It makes technology more engaging.
,Gamification is not the superficial addition of points, rewards and badges to learning
experience. This is because the real power of game-bases thinking is in the other elements of
games such as engagement, storytelling and problem-solving. Those are the foundations upon
which gamification needs to be built. Such mechanisms are points, rewards and badges alone
are insufficient to turn a boring experience into a game-like engaging experience, but they are
crucial building blocks used during the gamification process. Gamification will typically not
be successful without a well-designed experience, often leveraging engaging visuals or audio.
How an experience is aesthetically perceived by a person greatly influences his or her
willingness to accept gamification. Perhaps the most important element of gamification is
converting an everyday experienced into an activity that has elements of competition,
cooperation, exploration and storytelling. What is often underestimated is the attraction of
people’s attention and subsequently keep involving them in the process that you have created.
Motivation is also an essential element of gamification. It energizes and gives direction,
purpose or meaning to behavior and actions.
Gamification is growing, soon a gamified service for consumer goods marketing and
customer retention will become as important as Facebook, Twitter and Amazon. Gamification
techniques can be applied to learning application within any type of industry, from the
military to retail to computer services. Gamification can promote learning because many
elements are based on educational psychology. An example is assigning points to activities,
presenting corrective feedback and encouraging collaboration. Gamification, however,
presents these elements in an engaging game space that ideally both motivates and educates
learners.
The competitive nature of many games often encourages players to do their best and solve
problems encountered in the process. The cooperative nature of other games often encourages
players to solve problems together.
Serious games are created by using game-based mechanisms, aesthetics and game thinking to
engage people, motivate action, promote learning and solve problems. They are created
through the gamification of traditional learning content. A serious game is an experience
designed using game mechanisms and game thinking to educate individuals in a specific
content domain. Gamification is viewed as a trivial use of game mechanisms to artificially
engage learners and others in activities in which they would otherwise not engage. Serious
games and gamification are both trying to solve a problem, motivate people and promote
learning using game-based thinking and techniques. Serious games tend to take the approach
of using a game within a well-defined game space like a game board. Gamification on the
other hand tends to take the use of a game outside of a defined space and apply the concept to
items like walking up the stairs. The creation of serious games falls under the process of
gamification in this book. The use of serious games is thus a form of gamification.
Artikel 2 The key features of persuasive games. New perspectives on the social aspects of
digital gaming:
Artikel 3 Persuasive gaming: Identifying the different types of persuasion through
games:
,College 2 and Kapp chapter 2:
Typical goals of applied games/gamification are learning knowledge, procedures or skills. It
is about creating awareness. Another goal is influencing a person’s beliefs, attitudes,
intentions, motivations or behaviors. This is about persuasion.
Entertainment
Hedonic entertainment experiences are generally associated with positive mood and arousal
regulation such as feeling delighted or joyful. In other words, it is the consumption of media
for fun and pleasurable reasons. Eudaimonic entertainment experiences tend to stimulate
contemplation, meaning and connectedness. It often included mixed affective responses such
as being moved, a fulfilment of intrinsic needs such as competence of relatedness or a
cognitive component where individuals are stimulated to think and reflect.
What makes a game motivational, exciting or irresistible? Why can some games be played
over and over again? Answering these questions make us look at Game elements and Game
Mechanics that create interest in playing a game. What is important is that a single element or
a few elements rarely makes for an engaging, immersive learning environment. It is often the
interrelation of the elements that makes a game engaging.
Abstractions of Concepts and reality
Suppose you want to base a game on the complexities or running a rollercoaster theme park, a
major city or a military assault. These games are rather common and often work not because
they include all complexities, but because they reduce the complexity. Here, the player is
involved in an abstraction of events, ideas and reality. A game may be regarded as a dynamic
model of reality in which the model provides a representation of reality at a particular period
of time. A game is based on models of the real world. It provided a representation of reality at
a particular period of time. This is known as the operating model. The modeled reality may of
course be hypothetical, imagined or fictional. Abstracted reality actually has a number of
advantages over the real situation:
1. It helps the player manage the conceptual space being experiences. It thus helps the
player understand what is going on within the game which minimizes complexity. In
Monopoly for example, it is possible for the players to engage with the concepts of
strategy and financial acquisition without having to experience being in a monopoly
themselves. It is now possible to manage the concepts easily within the abstracted
space.
2. Cause and effect can be more clearly identified. In a large interconnected system like a
city, raising taxed might eventually cause people to move away. Waiting for years
does not provide clear cause and effect relationship to those living in the city. Games
highlight relationships and make those relationships more clearly linked so that once a
city manager raises taxes, characters might move out in one or two subsequent turns.
3. It allows us to remove everyday occurrences that would make for uninteresting game
play. The military campaign does not have to be paused for a haircut J get shot? You
do not have to go to the hospital to remove the bullet.
4. It reduces the time required to grasp the concepts. Controlling a formula 1 racing car
for example is very complication. A racing game, however, allows you to focus less
on all the controls and more on the driving experience.
Goals
Jumping on a trampoline with friends is playing. Whoever jumps highest wins, is suddenly a
game. Goals like this add purpose, focus and measurable outcomes. We can now measure
, how well a player is doing. Typically, in a game, it is clear if you have achieved a goal. Often
it is also clear how far from achieving the goal you are, via visual feedback. Visually
understanding how far you are from a goal provides incentive, feedback and an indication of
progress. It is often also a measurement against others “Hey, I have a higher score than you!”.
The goal of the game is the primary device for a player to determine the required effort at a
certain point in time (as well as for determining strategies and moves), and ultimately, who
wins. A goal often gives the player the freedom and autonomy to pursue, ideally in a way that
feels good to the player. It allows for creative thought and motivation for problem solving.
However, a game’s goal is the death of play. This means that achieving the goal of the game
means the game is over. And, we need to make sure that a player has the skills necessary to
complete the game. So how can we maintain motivation for players to achieve a goal that lies
far in the future?
Rules
At its core, a game is often just a set of defined rules. Examples of these rules are:
• The maximum number of players
• How to score points
• What is (not) allowed
• How high can a character jump
In Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, four types of rules are identified:
1. Operational rules: rules that tell how the game is played. An example is that you can’t
open the door until you collect the right key.
2. Foundational rules: rules that tell what is happening in the background such as
mathematics formulas used to calculate how many times the number 6 will appear on
a die. They tend to be abstract and need only be understood by the designer of the
game.
3. Behavioral rules: etiquette or implied social rules that define what is fair play-
behavior. In other words, the rules related to being a good sport about the game. These
rules are often not written but have a powerful influence over the game.
4. Instructional rules: the insight/knowledge/rules/behavior that you wish a player to
learn/internalize after a game has been played. This is typical for Applied Games.
Conflict, competition or cooperation
There are three typical game formats:
1. Conflict: This is when a challenge is provided by a meaningful opponent. An example
is that you have to defeat a human opponent. The meaning is to become a winner
while avoiding a loss at the hand of an opponent, by for example scoring more points.
2. Competition: This is where opponents are constrained from impeding each other and
instead devote the entirety of their attention to optimizing their own performance. An
example is setting the fastest lap-time in a racing game, without interfering with the
opponents.
3. Cooperation: This is working with others to achieve a mutually desirable outcome. It
is the social aspect of games that many people enjoy.
Often, more than one format is adopted within the same game.
Time
Time can have many functions in game design and game play. Time limit can serve as a
motivator or to raise stress levels. Similarly, time can be a resource that needs to be allocated
within the game world. An example is thinking about what to prioritize, should you focus on
gathering treasures or on investing time in other mission? Compressed times (or other forms
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