CHI 2015: Seoul, South Korea

Last week I was in Seoul for CHI 2015, where overall UCLIC had a really good year and some great talks. With respect to my own work, I presented my paper with Anna Cox on "Moving Beyond Fun: Evaluating Serious Experience in Digital Games" on how we evaluated the games that were entered into our persuasive game design competition for students. Not much work has been done around this sort of thing, so we developed a method that involved expert judging, play-testing with interviews and post-play emails to establish which of the entries was most likely to lead to reflection on human error and blame culture within the context of healthcare. In the paper we argue that our methods allowed for a consideration of domain relevance and potential to lead to reflection (expert judging), gameplay experience and engagement with competition themes (play-testing and interviews) and longer term resonance (follow-up emails). While you can find the games entered into the competition here, the winner, Nurse's Dilemma serves as a great example of how a one-off uncomfortable gaming experience can lead to reflection on previously taken for granted assumptions about responsibility and blame within healthcare. 

I also went to the workshop on diverse perspectives on players which was a great opportunity to talk about player research, methods in the area (including case studies), and challenges the area is facing, such as ecological validity, conceptions of gameplay, plus the need to operationalise key terms and to agree on definitions! We ended up drawing a road map of our discussions - see pic below, where we really did end up with karaoke :-)

There were quite a few games sessions at CHI, though I was a little annoyed that one of them clashed with the session I was in, plus I missed the alt.chi talk on Games Against Health but I guess that just means there is more to add to my reading list! I'm also going to have to add the work-in-progress paper It Was Sad But Still Good: Gratifications of Emotionally Moving Game Experiences by Julia Ayumi Bopp and colleagues as it sounds intriguing. Of the talks I did go to, there was a lot of interesting work presented including Alena Denisova on 1st vs. 3rd person perspectives and immersion, Rodrigo Vicencio-Moreira on techniques for player balancing in FPS games, Daniel Johnson and Lennart Nacke on characteristics of MOBA gameplay, Peta Wyeth on differences between playing cooperative games with avatars (people) and agents (AI characters) and Sauvik Das on comparing linear and open world game structures.

I particularly enjoyed Melodie Vidal's talk about The Royal Corgi, a game that uses eye tracking as a mechanic (see video below). Basically, you play a character in medieval England who wants to gain favour in the royal court by becoming a trainer to the King's corgi and you have to convince other characters in the game that you are worthy of the job - and where you look will matter as some want you to look them in the eye (but not at their wife) and others expect deference and a lowered gaze... The idea seemed quite novel, where eye tracking was able offer an additional channel of communication and I was particularly interested in some of the strong reactions the game provoked.

Chris Preist also gave a really good talk on using gameplay as an extrinsic motivator for learning, in this case as a way to encourage teenagers to revise for their Mathematics GCSE exams. They adopted an approach based on free-to-play games in a game that was like Clash of Clans where instead of having to make micro-payments to get resources and speed up the game, the students had to take a revision test. The students were allowed to play the game when they liked over three weeks and the findings indicated that those in the game condition improved significantly more those in the quiz only and control conditions - plus, the game condition students spent more time on the revision quiz than the quiz only group. Further, the qualitative data suggested it was at the expense of their normal gaming time. While there are some potential issues to consider - it could be argued that revision is not the same as having to learn new content, and it's not clear whether an intrinsic game could lead to larger learning gains or whether this approach would sustain revision over longer periods of time (see below) - but all in all it came across as a relatively simple way to get students to do more revision, which, in the authors words, is already "associated with the extrinsic motivation of passing an exam"!

With respect to the rest of the conference, the game competition has got me thinking a lot more about reflection so I made sure to go along to other talks that I thought might be relevant. Some of the highlights include Geraldine Fitzpatrick considering reflection in relation to food waste and highlighting the emotional dimension of the process (something which I'm not sure if always discussed), Eric Baumer introducing conceptual dimension of reflective informatics (relating to breakdown, inquiry, and transformation), and Jeffrey Bardzell highlighting how research through design can contribute to knowledge (through invoking experiences rather than representing reality). I'm getting quite intrigued by critical design but I do feel like I haven't quite got my head around it yet, so while I missed the talk, so I've put Pierce et al's paper on Expanding and Refining Design and Criticality in HCI on my reading list as well. 

I also enjoyed Ben Kirman and Shaun Lawson's talk that presented the quantification of pets as a case study that, through speculative design fiction, was essentially a critique of the quantified tracking movement. Besides getting a man in a dog suit to walk on stage, they presented a number of speculative design fictions, such as a dog collar that can tell you whether your dog is happy or sad and a way to track cat movements in gardens through their microchips (see quantifiedpet.com for more details!), which they presented to focus groups consisting of pet owners an animal behaviour experts. While the owners mostly really liked the ideas behind the designs as they wanted to understand their pets more, the experts raised important concerns about the scientific basis of these technologies and how they might actually undermine the bond between animals and humans - particularly since that bond at least partially relies on human beings being able to interpret complex animal behaviour. So there was lots of food for thought here in relation to both trying to quantify pretty much everything but also in terms of using design fictions within research. 


To close the conference we had Psy as the final keynote speaker but while he gave a rather humble, honest and engaging talk about the explosion of Gangnam Style, and the conference centre was in the Gangnam district, I'm not entirely sure it had much to do with HCI... In general though CHI gave me lots to think about (and to read up on!) and Seoul was a great city to visit - I'm glad I made sure I had a little extra time to explore :-)

 View from the National Museum of Korea

CHI Play 2014: Toronto

Last month I went to the first CHI Play conference in Toronto - and it was fun :-) The full papers from the conference are openly available for a short time only so make sure to check them out here.

On the Sunday I took part in the somewhat provocatively titled "Participatory Design for Serious Game Design: Truth and Lies" workshop organised by Rilla Khaled, Mina Vasalou, Vero Vanden Abeele, and Maarten Van Mechelen. Participatory design (PD) is something I've recently become more interested in and our submission "Designing Persuasive Games through Competition" was about how PD influenced the organisation of the competition I ran at UCL earlier this year and some of the tensions that arose during the whole process. The workshop was a great experience as I got to meet a load of interesting people and to hear about different types of PD game research. And I learnt that defining PD, while a good learning experience, isn't particularly easy!

On the following day, I presented our paper on Player Strategies: Achieving Breakthroughs and Progressing in Single-player and Cooperative Games (Iacovides, Cox, Avakian & Knoll, 2014 - thanks to Anna Cox for the photo below!). The paper resulted from two UCLIC MSc projects I supervised and the conference also gave me a chance to catch up with Tom Knoll, one of my co-authors who is now at Amberlight. The paper builds upon my PhD work by looking at the types of strategies players use in an attempt to overcome breakdowns and breakthroughs. In single-player games, we found players use trial & error, experiment, stop & think, repetition and take the hint, while in coop games this extended to also include knowledge exchange, guidance and surrendering control/taking over. My favourite design suggestion from this work came from co-author Ara Avakian who suggested incorporating a "Quantum leap mode" in coop games but you'll have to read the paper to find out more about that :-)

In related work, Conor Linehan spoke about "Learning Curves: Analysing Pace and Challenge in Four Successful Puzzle Games", where learning curves refer to the structure and pace at which challenges are introduced to the player. We discussed how there might scope to combine our work as it would interesting to see how these learning curves actually map on to what players actually experience - particular in relation to more and less "successful" types of game. Essentially, it would be worth finding out out whether you see similar patterns of breakdown and breakthrough around the introduction of different mechanics and whether different types of learning curve lead to different types of strategy.

Some of the other highlights of the conference related to considering the design process e.g. Kathrin Gelring and Bob de Schutter presenting a framework for Gerontoludic design; Mina Vasalou reflecting on cultural appropriation when designing a Day of the Dead game for children; and Chad Richards considering the importance of context in developing gamification systems. Other highlights related to understanding game play practices e.g. Nicole Crenshaw highlighting the complexity of naming practices in online games; and Marcus Carter focusing on the use multiple screens to play different games at the same time. Meanwhile Zachary Toupes' categorisations of different cooperative communication mechanics (environment modifying, automated communication, immersive, expressive, emergent and attention focusing) got me thinking about how these forms of communication might relate to different kinds of player strategies.

There were also multiple presentations on games being used for different purposes such Michael Cristel discussing the development of a game for teaching children about the Cognitive Triangle concept of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors and Zachary Fitz-Walter discussing the gamifying university orientation (with mixed results). At a more meta-level, I also enjoyed Marcus' second presentation on paradigms in HCI game research and I'm definitely planning on looking at the paper in more depth. In addition, there was also quite a large industry presence at the conference, where I particularly liked the idea of "guerilla techniques" for user testing mobile games (e.g. at a hot dog stand) by the team from Scopely.

The keynotes were both delivered by people in industry, though I have to admit being a little disappointed by Mike Ambinder from Valve. His talk was titled "Making the best of imperfect data" and though he talked a lot about methodologies (e.g. user testing, data analytics) he mainly seemed to be lamenting the vast amounts of data he has access too and the constraints of not being able to do "proper" research in a commercial environment. Perhaps it's the result of having a background in experimental psychology (which I have too!) but it sounded like what he mainly wanted was the ability to measure everything, tools to automate data analysis and to magically remove all forms of bias. Which is fine, I guess, but I'm not really sure about the specifics of what he was wanted to find out and a lot of "why" questions he did seem to be asking a (e.g. rationales for player choice) really felt more suited to - dare I say it? - qualitative research...

In contrast, Jason VandenBerghe, Creative Director at Ubisoft, did a really good job of showing how he had engaged in research in this area and managed to use it in a positive way. Based on work such as the Big 5 personality traits and Self Determination Theory (SDT - recently applied to video games) he presented the "Engines of Play" - this is basically a tool for considering player motivations over time and for communicating with his team. His talk clearly outlined a problem space, involved some great game examples, suggested areas for further improvement (e.g. what about players drives such as "collecting"?) and managed to be entertaining as well :-)

Oh, and I almost forgot the student game design competition! This was a really quite an impressive showcase - there were games about privacy, sexual health, and even poetry while there were plenty of multiplayer opportunities e.g. a quest game involving IRC chat (and a lot of arguing!). The winner of the competition was a very cool looking game called OHR that took place in a Machinarium inspired world and required the use of physical electronic components. Below is a photo of Anna Cox enjoying a game where you have to shout into a mobile phone mic to avoid on-screen obstacles :-) Also, in the poster session, as part of Citizen Cyberlab, Anna presented some work on RedWire, a re-mixing tool for game design.

All in all, CHI Play was a good experience - and I'm sure I've missed loads out! I'm really looking forward to next year, where it looks like I'm going to be helping organise next year's conference in London :-)

Failing in Games at Aarhus University

 Last month I was invited to present at the Aarhus University's Interacting Minds mini-conference on "Failing and Confusion in Games and Gaming" along with Jesper Juul, Dennis Ramirez and Charlotte Janasson. Thanks to Andreas Lieberoth for the invite and organising a seriously interesting day :-)

Mine was the final talk of the day, where I presented some of my PhD research on Investigating Game-play: Are Breakdowns in Action and Understanding Detrimental to Involvement? (see pic below). You can find my slides here. I'm waiting to hear back about a journal paper we put together on the findings but in the meantime you can check out my DiGRA paper on why I did not find physiological data to be useful for identifying breakdowns and breakthroughs in game-play. My main argument was that action and understanding breakdowns will contribute to involvement when the player feels responsible for overcoming them but that they will decrease involvement if they take too long to overcome or have major consequences e.g. a loss of progress. There was some interesting discussion in the Q&A afterwards around defining involvement, whether "positive engagement" is a helpful term, the importance of triangulation and how we can avoid players getting into "negative cycles" where breakdowns don't lead to breakthroughs. While I think my work can help explain when certain breakdowns are likely to disrupt involvement, I think there is still plenty of scope to consider how and why some players are able to avoid these negative cycles and others don't.

(Thanks to Andreas Lieberoth for the twitpic)

In terms of the other presentations, I was glad to hear more about some of Andreas' initial work on Quantum Moves (a citizen science game) where they investigated player motivations e.g. in terms of fear of failing i.e. trying to avoid looking bad or achieving mastery challenges. While they chose a different focus, there is definitely some overlap with some work I presented at CHI this year in relation to the Citizen Cyberlab project, looking at why people chose to play citizen science games. I'm definitely looking forward to Andreas visiting next term so we can get into some more discussion about our research.

Jesper then kicked off the main talks by discussing failure in games (he's also written a book about the topic called the Art of Failure). Amusingly, he got different people in the audience to try out Super Hexagon and China Miner - I think I lasted about 10 seconds in the latter! Juul argued that while failure can be a source of learning, it's still an unpleasant experience and pointed out that there is a bit of a paradox going on here - normally we want to succeed but when we play games we seem to be seeking out experiences where we will fail (at least part of the time). I wonder though about how you define failure? I don't think all breakdowns are necessarily failures, often they are part of the challenge, or quickly overcome, whereas the word failure seems to indicate something more serious. What was really interesting was how when he pointed out how games can promise to repair some sort of inadequacy in us, but it is an inadequacy the game actually created in the first place! I think I'm going to have to read his book to get more to grips with the various paradoxes and philosophical arguments outlined in the talk but Jesper also suggested failure in games differs from real life as games offer a certain amount of plausible deniability e.g. "It's just a game", "It wasn't fair", or even "I wasn't trying that hard in the first place". I have thought about "its not fair" comments before - I see them as an indication that involvement has been disrupted, since the player sees the game rather than their own actions as being at fault - but either way I think they indicate a serious breakdown has occurred as player are essentially distancing themselves from the game.

Dennis' talk on his PhD research followed similar lines but he focused a little more of what failure means for learning and educational games. He pointed out that only 20% of players actually reached the end of Hitman Absolution (and apparently only 10% of players will see the end of any game) and argued that it's important to consider the metric being used to assess success within a game. Dennis also discussed various approaches to using games and assessing them - from chocolate covered broccoli e.g. Math Blaster to thinking about model based assessment e.g. Schaffer's epistemic frames. I particularly liked how he pointed out that we can't always infer competence from completion and when he discussed more recent approaches to evaluation that relate to "big data" (though also stressed the importance of talking to players too). For instance, he talked about some work going on at Wisconsin-Madison that was looking at heat maps in terms of how different players move through the game. The fact that progress doesn't always guarantee learning is something I've considered in my PhD research i.e. you can achieve action breakthroughs without understanding (though chances are these will be less satisfying) but it was good to hear more about what that means in terms of assessing learning from an educational point of view.

Charlotte provided a different perspective with her talk on Learning from errors in education. While not focusing on digital games, she provided an interesting account of failure in real-life settings, in this case a vocational school. She made the argument that while not exactly a game, school isn't quite real-life either and vocational schools offer a sort of real-life work game - where failure is considered part of the learning process. Charlotte used an example of the students learning how to clean, cook and prepare flounder (apparently very tricky!). She noted that the instructors treat the school as a practice space where errors are ok, but not if they are made as a result of knowledge you should have acquired already. Further, it seems that developing expertise is about becoming more skilled at paying attention and knowing what to pay attention too. Her talk got me thinking about my work on CHI+MED and errors within a healthcare environment, where I've been interested in how nurses are trained to use infusion devices. But, if errors are an unavoidable part of work practice and learning from them can help you become an expert, then how on earth do you go about supporting this process in an environment where the consequences of errors could literally be life or death?! I guess using a pump isn't normally that complicated but I do wonder about what sort of knowledge nurses have and how they develop expertise in this context.

Overall it was a really good day and it got me thinking a lot about games, failure and errors in the workplace. It was a great opportunity to talk to attendees at the event, catch up with Andreas and Yishay Mor, and enjoy lots of discussion afterwards when we went out for a lovely meal in Aarhus :-)

CHI 2013 (Part II) - Citizen Science, biometrics, gamification@work and student games

So on to part two. Apart attending a workshop, I also presented a poster at CHI: Do Games Attract or Sustain Engagement in Citizen Science? A Study of Volunteer Motivations (see below). The poster is based on some work being carried out as part of the Citizen Cyberlab project that Charlene Jennett and Anna Cox are involved with. The paper reports on the findings of a set of pilot interviews that Cassandra Cornish-Trestail carried out with people who play citizen science games - in this case, Foldit and Eyewire. The answer to the question in the title is no, game mechanics didn't seem to attract volunteers but, in addition to tools such as chat facilities and forums, they do help to sustain involvement over time. Essentially, the people who play these games are already interested in science, they aren't gamers. In addition, what game mechanics allow for is greater participation in a range of social interactions while also providing ways in which to recognise volunteer achievements as being meaningful. I really quite enjoyed chatting about the poster and luckily there were quite a few interested people to chat too :-)

I got to meet Elaine Massung a researcher from Bristol who was involved in the Close the Door project - where they were investigating motivations around crowdsourcing to support forms of environmental activism. Interestingly, their work suggests that game mechanics such as points can actually decrease motivation for some people. I also met Anne Bowser, a PhD student from Maryland University who presented the PLACE (Prototyping Location, Activities and Collective Experience - see below) framework for designing location based apps and games earlier on in the conference. I enjoyed hearing about Anne's work with on floracaching (a form of geocaching) and how they developed the Biotracker app - a serious geocaching game for citizen science that encourages players to gather plant phenology data. I'm hoping to be able to use at some point in the UK too!

Anne presented at the session on game design, where I also got to hear about Pejman Mirza-Babaei's work on Biometric storyboards. Unfortunately, Pejman couldn't make the conference but his supervisor Lennart Nacke was there to present the paper. I first became aware of Pejman's work during my PhD and it was really nice to see how far it had come. I'm not a big fan of biometrics, I didn't find the raw data I collected to be useful in relation to identifying game-play breakdowns and breakthroughs within my case studies but the tool that was presented during this talk was pretty cool. It allows for designers to consider the what they want players experience to be (see below) and provides a neat visualisation of the GSR (galvanic skin response) and EMG (electromyography) data that can them be compared with what was intended. The fact the Pejman also compared using this tool with a classic user testing approach (alongwith a control group) was great too and the results indicated that the BioST approach did lead to higher game-play quality. However, I do have some questions about the work carried out, even after reading the paper. The main thing I'm not sure about is whether the BioST approach took more time than the standard gamer user experience approach. This is important, as I know from visiting Playable games, there isn't always a lot of time to get some feedback and provide suggestions to designers. There weren't actually that many differences between the BioST and Classic UT approach, is the former really worth it if it takes a lot longer? I was also unsure about how the tool dealt with artefacts such as movement - does the researcher have to manually clear these up and how long does this take? Finally, I noticed that the BioST tool allowed for player annotations where it looks like players were asked to review a recording of the game-play session and add their comments but I'm pretty sure the classic UT condition didn't also do this... Considering this is what I asked my participants to do and I got a lot of rich data from it, I wondered whether the conditions really were a fair comparison - could the player reviews have been helpful without the biometric data? Nevertheless, I do like that the tool presented does not consider biometric data alone as I think it's important to give player's a voice too. Also, I think the way in which the biometric data was visualised provided designers with a powerful tool for interpreting play experiences so I'd be keen to see more research like this.

Later on I attended the Gamification@Work panel, which has a really interesting mix of people including Sebastien Deterding and a number of people from industry. I particularly liked Sebastien's emphasis on ensuring that autonomy isn't taken away from people when using gameful approaches at work. He also provided us with some quotes from games journalists which clearly indicated how when you have to do something for work, even playing games, the activity can lose it's appeal. I took a lot of notes in this session as it got me thinking about how I would design a game (or gamify a task) but I'm still mulling over these. The people from industry also had some insightful contributions to make but I couldn't help coming away from the session a little concerned about how game mechanics can be used to track performance and manipulate people into behaving in different ways. Why does this make me uncomforatble in relation to work but less so in relation to education or promoting health? Some interesting questions were also raised at the end and while measurements may be important for showing improvement (or lack of it) it's important to remember that not everything can be reduced to metrics.

Other highlights from the latter part of the conference include the student game competition - the quality of games was seriously impressive and I'd really quite like to check out a few of them including Machinneers (a lovely looking puzzle adventure for children stealthily teaches logical thinking, problem solving and procedural literacy), ATUM (an innovative multi-layer point and click game) and Squidge (a really cute game controller that monitors player heart rate - see below); the Women's Representations in Technology panel - again a seriously interesting mix of people and perspectives which got me thinking about feminism and how gender isn't necessarily binary; Razvan Rughinis' paper on badges in education - where he discussed badge architectures and how they can be used to chart learning routes; and finally Bruno Latour's keynote - I have to be honest and say I did not find this the easiest talk to follow but I'm sure it got my brain working! There are definitely other people who have got a better handle on it than I do (e.g. J.Nathan Mathias).

It was a huge conference and in addition to the other talks I haven't mentioend, there are also a few sessions I didn't get to go to so I've also got paper on persuasive games and behaviour change to my reading list. In general though, the conference gave me lots to think about especially in terms of how I want my own research to continue, especially in terms of considering games in relation to my work on CHI+MED, which there may be more to say about later on...

CHI 2013: Paris (Part I) - MOMA, games and learning, game players and the Games SIG

Last week I went to CHI in Paris - it's been a while since I've been to a major academic conference and I seem to have gotten out of the habit of blogging so I thought I would use this as an excuse to get back into it :-) Plus there was a lot of game sessions that have got me thinking.

It all started last Sunday with the MediCHI workshop. This was a good opportunity to talk to about the work I'm doing on CHI+MED, with respect to medical device safety, and to meet others in the field. The main conference started on Monday with a keynote from Paola Antonelli from MOMA. She gave us an overview of lots of intriguing design projects that MOMA has exhibited and while no specific HCI challenges were made explicit during the talk, I was reminded about how technology, including games, can make people think. Particularly interesting examples include PIG 05049 (Christien Meindertsma) and the Menstruation Machine (Hiromi Ozaki/Sputniko!). She also mentioned their recent games collection - extra points for the inclusion of Passage :-)

In terms of the game-related talks, Erik Harpstead discussed an educational game they had developed (a single player physics game called RumbleBlocks - see below) and how they used metrics to assess learning as part of the ENGAGE project. A toolkit was presented for logging game events and that allows for a replay of game-play so player behaviour can be analysed further. This toolkit seems like it could be really useful but my main question was whether collecting this type of logging data can actually account for situations where players progress but without gaining any real understanding of the principles behind what they are doing. This concern was partially addressed during the talk when the replay analysis indicated that the gameplay mechanics actually contravened one of the learning goals (where students were not lowering the centre of their structures, even though they were building one with wider bases and that were more symmetrical). The misalignment between content and gameplay was seen to potentially explain why there was not a difference between pre and post-test regarding centre of mass and also suggested that the game needs to be redesigned to remedy this issue.

Derek Lomas' talk on optimising learning and motivation in educational games through using crowdsourcing techniques also got my attention. What was particularly interesting about this study was the huge amount of data collected (one study has 10,000 participants the other 70,000 - all who played the online math game Battleship Numberline) and the questioning of the inverted-U hypothesis regarding challenge and engagement. Basically, flow theory suggests that if something is too easy, boredom will occur and if it is too hard, you'll get frustration - so a moderate amount of challenge would be the most engaging. However, the findings from Derek's work actually suggest that people find spent the most time playing when the challenge level was lowest thus indicating that  easier challenges are more engaging . Further, the studies indicated there is a trade-off between engagement and learning i.e. you can't have both... I'm going to have to read the paper for more details but there are several points here that I'd like to consider further. First, I'm questioning whether the length of time spent playing is a good measure of engagement (especially when children might be playing these games during school time - who is controlling the length of play if that is the case?). The terms engagement, motivation and enjoyment were all used interchangeably but I'm not sure they can all be reduced to amount of time spent playing. Surely I can enjoy something I play for less time more than something I might play for longer (e.g. if my motivation was to kill time)? Secondly, I want to look at how well integrated the game mechanics of Battleship Numberline are with the learning content - mainly because I don't like the idea that there needs to be a trade-off between engagement and learning! Further, given Jake Habgood's work on the importance of integrating game mechanics, flow and learning content I don't think there has to be. Finally, the authors also suggested that novelty might be more important than challenge in relation to engagement. This was particularly intriguing as I don't think it's something that has been explored in the literature on games and learning and I'm guessing there might be quite a lot to it.

Within the same session, Stephen Foster talked about designing diverse and sustainable educational games that support competition and meta-cognition. Inspired by the way Chess and Starcarft II players relfect and review their game-play, Stephen presented a game called CompetitiveSourcery based on the pre-existing CodeSpells platoform. The game requires players to compete by designing "spells" in java and using them against each other. Three users were observed over two months as they prepared as a team for a tournament - this included playing the game but also discussing strategies, bebugging each other's code and updating a team wiki. In general, this was a good example of tapping into both micro and macro involvement for the purposes of learning but I was surprised not to see any mention of Gee's discussion player affinity groups that exist around games (though Gee is mentioned in the paper). Plus, the idea that teachers should consider meta-level activities isn't entirely new (see Paul Pivec's BECTA report for the importance of the meta-game) while encourgaing discussion through having a tournament has been done before (e.g. research on Racing Academy). Also, while Stephen makes claims about the sustainability of this approach, there is always going to be an issue concerning whether all players will actually engage in the meta-level activities to the same extent. I'm not sure how you address that though...

There were several other game related sessions including Max Birk talking about the relationship between controller type and personality and Jeff Huang talking about patterns of game-play and skill in Halo. For both these talks I wanted a bit more detail on the methods so I'm going to have to add them to the pile of post-CHI papers to follow-up. In relation to the former, I was a little confused about the relationship between my "real" self, my "ideal" self and my "game" self as I'm not sure any of these can be static constructs but there may be some interesting differences to explore here (do standard controllers really make gamers more neurotic?). In relation to the latter, an awful lot of logging data was collected but I was a little disappointed that "patterns of gameplay" was more about how long people play for and how often than it was about gameplay strategies (but that's only because I'm more interested in player strategies!). Other highlights included Nicholas Graham discussing a tabletop game where one person plays the game and the other orchestrates the experience in real time i.e. builds levels and obstacles. This reminded me a little of Sleep is Death but Tabula Rasa seemed a bit more light-hearted in it's approach to foster open-ended creativity. Tamara Peyton (see below) then spoke about the alternate reality game I Love Bees and showed how leadership emerged from team-play. Interestingly, the players spontaneously used military terms and take on different roles within the team which she classified as General, Lieutenant and Private. I particularly liked that she emphasised that disjuncture can be as important as flow - essentially we should also be thinking about what it means to fail and how failing isn't necessarily a negative experience.

I also attended the SIG on Games and Entertainment and was pleased to see that there really is quite an active games community at CHI. Katherine Isbister and Regina Bernhaupt led the session but handed over the reigns of the SIG to Magy Seif-El-Nasr and Heather Desurvive. The topics that came up ranged from needing to foster links between industry and academia, introducing further games courses at next year's conference, and discussing other venues for games research. It was clear that while some people were interested in the user experience side and methods for assessing game-play others where interested in using games as research tools e.g. for the purposes of collecting data. Regarding the latter, there was a suggestion that there might be a workshop or course next year with a focus on how you might evaluate this kind of large-scale data but I think that will depend on whether someone volunteers to run it! I enjoyed the session overall and found a good way to see the range of game-related interests across the CHI community.

Ok, I think that's enough for today. There is still plenty more to write but I'm going to have to leave it for another post! For now I'm going to leave you with a pic of Charlene Jennett hugging a bear to make one jump on screen :-)

Being more open about my research

As I mentioned in the last post, my recent part-time work where I've been looking at digital scholarship at the OU, has got me thinking about what it might mean to be a scholar in the digital age and how openness can be a part of that. I have touched upon aspects of my research in this blog, but mostly I tend to use it as a way to reflect about my own gaming experiences and as a way to keep track of my thoughts about different events I go to. As I was writing up the post about ECGBL 2011, I realised that I really did want to say more about what I had been doing and this might be quite a useful thing to do, especially as I'm currently writing up my PhD thesis.

So, in terms of what I have done my research, consists of three phases. Phase one included a conceptual overview of different frameworks of engagement and motivation and a set of interviews with a range of different games players (from casual to hardcore). This led to the development of a set of learning categories, which I presented at EARLI this year (extended abstract) where basically I found that people learn through games in three different ways: through play, through others and through external resources; and on three different levels: on a game level, skill level and personal level. The personal level refers to instances such as picking up general knowledge but also in terms of people mentioning things like developing perseverance and viewing game characters as role models - possibly an area that has received the least amount of attention in game studies though this is likely due to the difficulty of assessing it! I also developed a set of themes that relate to a concept Mia Consalvo calls gaming capital (in turn based upon Bourdieu's notions of capital), which players gain not just by being good at games but in terms of being knowledgeable about them. These themes were: competence, knowledge, community and identity. We published a journal article earlier this year, based on work I presented and GBL 2010, which introduces some of these concepts and outlines my position on engagement and motivation in terms of thinking about them as forms of involvement.

Phase two consisted of a set of case studies I carried out where I examined people playing games on a micro and macro level (i.e. analysing instances of play and wider involvement with players and resources). This consisted of eight case studies, again with a mix of players, some who identified as gamers and some who did not. At DiGRA, I presented the methods I adopted (which you can access here) while at ECGBL I focused on analysing game-play through analysing breakdowns and breakthroughs in terms of what they can tell us about learning and involvement in games (which you can find on ORO here). Whilst at ECGBL, I was asked about the use of AAA games within the case studies - I didn't choose to focus on these but the focus on consoles in the lab setup (see picture below) meant I was much less likely to look at more independent games like Braid or low budget games like Farmville. However, some of the observation sessions did involve more casual games like Big Brain Academy and some less familiar titles like Flower (which was produced by an indie developer) and Endless Ocean 2. Plus, I did try and tap into the different types of games people play by asking them to keep a diary of their experiences outside of the lab, though admittedly there is less detailed information about these in terms of considering breakdowns and breakthroughs. I was also asked about the types of players that took part but pointed out I was more interested in tapping into a range of experience by getting older/younger, male/female, casual players/gamers to take part in order to maximise the differences between cases, than in considering whether someone was an "explorer" or not. I probably should have been more explicit about how I was trying to contribute to a general theory of how involvement and learning relate to each other rather than trying to make statistical generalisations about how involvement and learning might differ with respect to player type/motivation and genre. That said, as I'm writing up, I will need to point out that in terms of the observation sessions at least, any claims I will make will relate to games where players control some sort of avatar and navigate through virtual environments (with Big Brain Academy as the only exception).

Another question I got asked at ECGBL was about how I actually identified breakdowns and breakthroughs with respect to action, understanding and involvement. In terms of action, this is pretty simple as strategies were either effective or not, while understanding was also relatively easy as this was something pretty clear from the post-play interviews (though occasionally breakthroughs would be more gradual). I also pointed out that I collected an awful lot of data so I was primarily focused on major issues, rather than a fine grained analysis of everything. However, involvement was definitely harder to identify, especially in terms of breakthroughs as it wasn't always clear exactly when these occurred and sometimes it may have been a much more gradual process. It seemed a lot easier to identify when flow breaks down for instance, than when it is actually happening. During the analysis, I ended up identifying involvement in affective terms i.e. with respect to evidence of negative emotion (where boredom or frustration would indicate a breakdown) and positive emotion (where enjoyment or satisfaction would indicate a breakthrough). On reflection though, I'm not sure the concept of breakthroughs could be applied as easily to involvement. This is something I discuss further in the thesis, while I also consider the relationship between the different types of breakdowns and breakthroughs. Note: I also collected a range of physiological data during the observation sessions - initially in the hopes it would help us identify different types of breaks but it turned out to be less useful than we hoped as it too difficult to interpret under these circumstances (i.e. because we didn't use a controlled experimental set up).

Finally, I was asked about how my work related to education - but since my focus is on learning that occurs when we are involved in games we play outside of formal educational contexts, I can't actually say an awful lot about that. However, I do think that building a better understanding what happens when we play the games that we do can help us design more involving educational games that are able to support effective learning e.g. by suggesting that it is important to avoid situations where progress can occur without being accompanied by understanding breakthroughs. So I think my work will have implications for education but the a more significant contribution will be to the area of informal learning.

One thing I didn't discuss at ECGBL that came out of the analysis of the diaries I asked players to keep (over a three week period), was that there wasn't really a lot of interaction with the wider gaming community. Sure, participants reported talking to other people about games and using various online resources to keep up to date with news and developments; while occasionally, they consulted guides or walkthroughs, but there really wasn't a whole lot going on in terms of people contributing to these sorts of things. Further, it seemed that the participants who identified as gamers were the ones who reported using resources more frequently than the non-gamers. As this was a small set of case studies, this led to us thinking about investigating this sort of thing on a wider scale through the use of a survey; in the final phase of my PhD.

It seemed important to consider this sort of macro level involvement in more detail, and how it might relate to identity and learning, as it links in to a lot of the stuff James Paul Gee discusses when he talks about games and learning; in particular with respect to semiotic domains and affinity groups/spaces. I'm not going to go into the results in detail (as that's a whole chapter's worth of discussion!) but it does seem that players who identify as hardcore are not only likely to interact with wider range of resources but that they also more likely to say they have learnt from their gaming experiences. This is significant, because while Gee talks about the importance of identity in learning, he discusses this is terms of a player reflecting on their personal identity in relationship to their avatar rather than in terms of how they identify as a gamer. We just got a short view points paper accepted by Learning, Media and Technology on the preliminary analysis of the questionnaire, so I'm quite looking forward to writing up the main analysis after I submit.

I'm not sure how coherant that all is and I still need to link everything so I can sum up how involvement and learning come together on a micro and macro level, but it's been interesting trying to sum up what I've been doing over the last few years! Now just need to get on with finishing off the thesis...

ECGBL 2011 - Athens

After rearranging flights to avoid the air traffic control strike, I made it to Athens last week for the 5th European Conference of Game Based Learning. Not everyone was so lucky but I was pretty impressed with the conference organisers for managing to make sure the conference went ahead and that we all were looked after so well whilst we were there. It was a bit surreal having to avoid the crowds of protesters on the way to the conference venue and trying to make sure we didn't get caught up in any of the running battles with riot police on the way back... We did avoid the worst of it (which, on the first conference day involved ducking into a restaurant for a little while until the trouble outside died down!) with only piles of burnt rubbish around the city to remind of us of what was going on (see below).

Oh, and t-shirts like this :-)

In terms of the conference itself, I am very glad I managed to make it as it was a great opportunity to meet up with people I had met before, like Alex Moseley from Leicester and Jantina Huizenga from Amsterdam and to talk to new people about games and research like Magnus Johansson and Kimmo Oksanen. In terms of the talks, one of the highlights came from Carlo Fabricatore from the University of Worcester, UK and Ximena Lopez from Initium Studios, Italy introducing the area of sustainability games - something I also know my OU friend Stefan Kreitmayer who I went to the conference with was very interested in (since he is working on creating collaborative games that deal with climate change issues). The presenters provided a good rationale for how games are able to support problem solving and systems thinking, and a review of some of the existing games you can find online. The review revealed that there is definitely room for improvement as there aren't a lot of games out there that consider sustainability in terms of environmental, economic and social issues, or that actually allow for emergent complexity. Further, a lot of these games seem to be directed at children so there it would be interesting to see more of them aimed at adults. While it wasn't the focus of the presentation, it also made me wonder how you might be able to evaluate this sort of systems thinking within a formal educational context.

Another talk I enjoyed, came from Matthew Jewell, a game designer from Rosetta Stone which produces language learning tools. He presented a game called Prospero which includes speech recognition software so players can practice their grammar (see below). This was pretty interesting because the game is part of a portal of flash games that are directed at different levels of language learning and it made me think a lot about intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and integrating game mechanics with learning. Prospero is a neat little game that gives players points for pronouncing the correct sentences and utilising a treasure hunting mechanic to allow players to choose a task, which also provides further reward to the player. I think you can also compete with other players if you want. On the surface, this seems to go against a lot of what is discussed in the literature (the importance of intrinsic motivators etc) but in reality I can see how it's a really effective way to get players to practice what is a essentially a dull task (learning correct grammar) in order to become proficient at it. Further, the only way to progress in the game is to pronounce phrases accurately and I can see how variable reward (in the form of finding treasure) can provide help provide the sort of "stickiness" that Matthew was aiming to achieve. And at this level of learning at least, it does seem like it will help make the player more likely to practice. I'm not entirely sure how Rosetta Stone evaluate their products (or if they want to share that info!) while I'd be curious to see some of the other games in the portal and how they work, especially since the Rosetta blog suggests: "once you gain a little more confidence, you can progress to one of our conversational games, like Identi or Chatonium." I guess I'm curious about whether the gaming mechanisms evolve along with the learning complexity. In general, I really enjoyed talking with Matthew about games as he pointed out things like how casual games can be ignored by game-based learning research in favour of more complex solutions and he made me think about how maybe the lines between the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are more blurred than we sometimes like to think!

My own session on breakdowns and breakthroughs experienced during game-play went ok too, and seemed to generate some interest. I'm actually going to do a seperate blog post on this as I'd like to introduce my research a bit more as I'm realising that it's not something I've been too explicit about on this blog. I've recently taken up some part time work on a project about digital scholarship which has made me think more about openess and what that might mean so I think it will be interesting to be actually put some of my work out there, especially in relation to what I have presented at recent conferences. In general though, the questions I got were interesting and gave me plenty to think about in terms of writing up my thesis.

There were a couple of other interesting talks, such as Lorenzo Romeo's talk on reflective flow, which got me thinking about whether games really do support experiential learning or whether we tend to use the term to describe active learning i.e. learning by doing - can learning in the context of game-play really be seen as a "direct encounter with the phenomenon being studied"? (this relates a little to conversations I've had with Rob Farrow about how embodiment relates to games); and Colin Lemmon giving a really interesting insight into all the problems designers face when trying to develop and get funding for serious game applications. The keynotes also provided food for thought with Nikolaos Avouris providing an useful introduction into the use of games in museum contexts (and how their is really a lot of improvement here in terms of the educational value they actually provide and tapping into more social  and mobile experiences - e.g. contrast Play with the Frieze, where you have to match pairs of pictures of the frieze at the new Acropolis Museum; with Ghost of a Chance at the Smithsonian American Art Museum). Sara de Freitas also gave a talk on the Gamification of Life which provided an interesting overview into the work the Serious Games Insitute is doing and the challenges of doing work in this area. Unfortunately, the conference was a bit pressed for time at this point so it was a bit of whirlwind tour but I would have liked to have heard more about the evaluations carried out. Also, I'm a little confused about her use of the term gamification as it seemed to be used as way of referring to anything involving games (as opposed to the DiGRA gamification session definition of using game-elements in non-game contexts i.e. not whole games) so it would have been interesting to find out why she applied the term to the work that she discussed.

All in all, it was an interesting couple of days and I really benefitted from the chance to talk to other researchers about games and games research. I think I did see a bit more of the questioning I felt wasn't there at ECGBL 2008, though it was a shame there were quite a few people that couldn't make it so - depsite the fantastic efforts of the organisers, it wasn't quite the experience it could have been. I also think that the conference would benefit from tightening up the review process a little (perhaps by adding an additional reviewer?) as there were a couple of things that surprised me a little in the presentations e.g. the use of the somewhat outdated and unpopular term "edutainment" (though as in any international conference, translation might be an issue here). I'm also very glad I got to see Athens after the protests as the lively and historically amazing city that it is so will leave with a photo of the Acropolis from my hotel room :-)

DiGRA 2011: Hilversum (Part 2)

The next day started just as well as the first with a keynote from Suzanne de Castell and Jen Jenson titled "Playing with fire: Libertarian ludolgies" (see below). They have done a lot of work over the years investigating technology and gender issues in terms of access, equity and design, with their latest research indicating that many of the "facts" we take for granted about gender e.g. girls dislike competitive play, are actually artefacts of novice play. In fact they were able to alter play styles by setting up conditions for girls to become experts and replicate these across different sites. Suzanne and Jen went on to highlight issues such as neoliberal tolerance for misogyny and violence (e.g. where expert female player try to hide their gender instead of having to deal with a barrage of abuse from other players - see Fat, Ugly or Slutty for examples and an attempt to deal with this sort of thing), the need for researchers to go beyond describing how things are and think about how to change them for the better and considering games within a wider media landscape. They suggested that we need better theories of ludic epistemology that recognise the intrinsic value of games and play; to develop innovative methods and interventions by also considering the role of the researcher plays in the process of investigation; to engage in more accountable design so we're not just producing better goods and reflecting society but using games to persuade and foster identity building; and finally they stressed the importance of critical intellectual discussion within the area. I think they said a lot of things that needed to be said, and I particularly liked the point made about shoddy research which claims to make predictions but really just describes the status quo, hence the need for critical debate and more rigorous research. Also, their perspective is hugely important in an area which often sees games and technology as "boys' toys" and I'm pretty sure their plea for researchers to think about change was at least one of the fires they wanted to set. 

After that I went along to an interesting match on identity in massively multiplier games which reflected some of the issues mentioned in the earlier keynote. Arne Schröder talked about how game spaces tended to be predominantly white, straight and male, and while there was some experimentation with gender and sexuality it was more a kind of "identity tourism" than a genuine attempt at role-playing. He also gave examples of female and gay players who had left guilds due to sexist and homophobic remarks. Nick Taylor echoed some of this when he talked about "sex-swapping" as opposed to real attempts to "gender-swap" within games. He also made some interesting points about how identity shouldn't be seen as a singular construct with a one-to-one mapping between player and avatar, especially given the fact that players often have more than one avatar they use. Further, it seems that adopting different genders and/or sexualities tended not to be seen as transgressive play but as part of expert behaviour where the player was seeking to explore as much of the game as possible.

I also went to a match on values between Rilla Khaled and Jonathan Belman. Rilla talked about work carried out with Pippin Barr, where they examined the cultural values expressed in the Sims 3 and Fallout 3. They wanted to see whether these games embodied individualistic or collectivist value systems and found that while they expressed a mix of both, they tended to be more individualistic. I thought this might have something to do with the culture the designers came from, and would be quite interested to see how it would differ if looking at games directed and non-western audiences. Jonathan is doing his PhD on empathy in games and he spoke specifically about the http://www.valuesatplay.org/ project which developed a card system to guide the design process. Students were asked to pick different Grow-a-game cards (link also leads to free online version) consisting of a game verb (e.g. singing), a value (e.g. liberty), and a social issue (e.g. homelessness) and given the task of creating a game within these constraints. I hadn't realised it but one of the games to come from this project was Hush, where you play a Tutsi mother who must try and calm her baby during a Hutu raid. Apart from introducing an approach to value conscious design, the match also indicated how games are not value neutral, regardless of whether designers realise it or not.

During the day there was a also keynote from Antanas Mockus Šivickas, who is served as mayor of Bogota, Columbia. Now this seems pretty random, and it is because he's carried out all sorts of wacky and wonderful stunts whilst elected in order to promote change and improve the lives of day to day people. For instance, he hired hundreds of mimes in order to reduce traffic violations, dressed up as "Supercivico" to serve as a role model for civic behaviour and using a symbolic vaccine to reduce intra-familial violence. His talk highlighted the importance of considering legal, moral and social concerns when it comes to improving citizenship and harmonising the law (see below) and indicated how playful activities really can make a difference. All very inspiring!

After this I attended a roundtable on gamification, which was helpful in part as it provided an overview of the CHI gamification workshop. Despite the fact that many of the applications seemed directed at promoting "good" behaviours e.g. reducing environmental impact, gamification worries me because it reminds of badly designed edutainment - as it seems to involve slapping on a game-layer in order to get you to do something. Surely we've been trying to get away from this sort of extrinsic motivation? Also, as was raised during the session, some of these things might change behaviour in the short term but what about long term impact? The panel were pretty good and pointed out that there are HCI researchers who are interested in intrinsic motivation and a more phenomenological perspective. Plus, Dan Dixon suggested that we should move away from the term gamification (and its negative connotations) and use gameful design as an alternative (see pic below). It's clear this is a growing area of interest so it's something worth keeping an eye on, as I have a feeling we're going to have to sift through a lot of bad examples before finding out how to successfully use "game design elements in non-gaming contexts" in a way that doesn't feel like manipulation. Also, when it comes to things we have real trouble with, maybe we need all the help we can get, whatever form it's in. 

My match was on learning was next, with Pilar Lacasa who was speaking about the use of machinima based on Spore that students produced in biology classrooms. It seems the curriculum is more flexible in Spain so teachers could focus on supporting the development of digital literacies rather than having to assess whether playing Spore and creating machinima led to a greater understanding of biology. It was interesting to see some how different students approached the project, especially when they blended game-play footage with that of the real world. My talk seemed to go ok, though I had an awful lot to explain in about 10 minutes. The paper I submitted was more concerned with introducing the method I developed for my main case study approach, rather than on presenting findings, so most of the questions were about the set-up. Though I did like the fact that when I mentioned Sharples work on breakdowns and breakthroughs a lot of people seemed to write it down! So what games did I use? (I allowed participants to choose during the first session, but then asked them to play something they usually didn't in the second). I seemed to adopt quite an experimental setup, didn't that conflict with trying to tap into the wider context of game-play? (While I did use a lab - because I couldn't sit around people's houses! - I did not carry out a controlled experiment and tried to make sure it was as comfortable as possible). Were there any differences between what I observed in the lab and what was recorded in the diaries? (The diary reports on game-play were much less detailed, and the lab sessions probably did "prompt" game-play). I also got asked about my research questions (which revolve around the role of breakdowns and breakthroughs and identifying learning beyond learning how to play) and about how I identified involvement and did I try to measure it? Short answer, no I didn't try and measure involvement. Though we did try and use physiological data in order to do identify it, this turned out to be much harder than we originally thought and not something that could be done during observation, as originally hoped. So most of the breaks were identified from the post-play interview transcript and now we're trying to figure out how to triangulate that with the physiological data.

After this there was a bit of rant from game scholars about various things - Mary Flanagan spoke about how few women there are in the games industry (see below); Frans Mäyrä complained about the media constantly asking about the detrimental effects of games (suggesting games are actually not dangerous enough!); Maggie Greene had a go at established academics for not using the power they have to improve the situation for grad students (e.g. by getting involved as public intellectuals to promote the area), especially in a climate of reduced employment funding; Espen Aarseth stressed the importance of rigorous reviews and constructive criticism; which was echoed by Suzanne de Castell who also ranted about the fact that we tend to think of gender as a binary construct and we should be careful to avoid "hostile research" which makes assumptions based on bad theory and backs them up with bad methods e.g. all RPG players are depressed and anti-social. Mary Flanagan then followed this up with a keynote on critical play and designing games from a social justice perspective (see below). She was PI of the Values@Play project so there was mention of using games to promote specific values and with respect the holy grail of educational research - transfer. I really liked that she mentioned that a lot of game design produces extrinsic motivation and referenced a study where children were found to spend less time drawing when they were given rewards for the activity. She also suggested systems thinking reveals that big shifts come from small incremental ones, and concluded with a quote from Jane Goodall: "The greatest danger to our future is apathy".

I think that just about covers it! I did also catch the last half of the session on Minecraft where some children were being interviewed on stage whilst they showed us round the game they had set up along with one of their parents (who I think also taught at the University). It was really interesting to hear them talk about the game and what they had built - an impressive replica of Helm's Deep. At one point they were asked whether they thought they could "win" the game, to which one of them responded that perhaps you could if you mined everything! Given all the talk about values of the conference I couldn't help but wonder what that meant about in terms of what they were taking from the game... There was also some talk about how they would often look at YouTube videos for inspiration about what to create in the game, but I think only one of the older ones posted videos himself. They definitely seemed to get a lot of of the experience and their own Minecraft community too.  

So all in all it was quite an inspiring couple of days and I'm very glad I went. Thanks to the organisers for putting on a great conference and to everyone else who took part; including the students of the Utrecht School of Arts who had their exhibits on display during the event. Below is a photo of me and Jantina playing a student developed game called Fingle - if you have an iPad I recommend you check it out!

Oh and for further impressions of the conference, check out those videos:

Opening Party

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3