D&D was created in 1974, by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and grew out of miniature wargames, using a ruleset from Chainmail, a 1971 game, as its starting point.

Where D&D differed from wargames was that it allowed a player to create and play their own character, rather than playing a military unit – that and the magic and the goblins, I should imagine. Characters took on a race (e.g. Human, Dwarf, Elf etc.) and Class (in the original game only the Fighting man, Cleric, and the Magic-user), and characteristics.

As a result of their actions in the game, characters would gain experience points, which would accumulate and eventually allow them to ‘level up’, augmenting their ‘stats’ for characteristics like Strength, Wisdom and so on, in the process. Combat encounters and other events in the game were resolved by using (polyhedral) dice, and tables of outcomes. Players could not only choose to adventure in the scenarios created and sold by the publishers of the game, but could create their own scenarios using the rulesets, and the raw material for them to do this has been added to by the publication of bestiaries of monsters, spellbooks, and handbooks of items, both magical and mundane, and so on.

In 1977 the game was split into two, with the (relatively) rules-light original version being joined by a more complex Advanced D&D (AD&D), which have since continued to develop separately.

Dungeons and Dragons is available on Amazon

The Challenge of Complexity

The basic characteristics, rules and mechanisms of D&D (and AD&D) went on to inform many of the games and systems mentioned below. But for many, the relatively high demands of the complex rulesets and mechanisms for resolving actions within the game world, remain a barrier to accessing play. That, along with the high fantasy settings, have probably contributed to an (unwarranted, in my opinion) reputation of D&D players (and by association, players of other RPGs), as being ‘nerdy’ or ‘odd’.

It seems like a fairly harmless, or even funny, trope – the girlfriendless teenaged boy pretending to be a wizard in a darkened room with his friends, and has been used to comic effect in shows like ‘The Big Bang Theory’, but such cultural shorthand is never entirely benign. Indeed, mentions of magic are always problematic for certain more conservative sections of society. In the 1980s D&D, perhaps inevitably, became the subject of a moral panic, linking the game to demonic worship, and a number of murders and suicides involving young men. No causal link was found, including through research by the Center for Disease Control, but although now less lurid in nature, these attitudes towards RPGs still persist, making it more difficult for them to be completely acceptable in mainstream applications such as education or workplace learning.

The Quest for a Generic Role-playing System

This article will just scratch the surface of the vast array of RPGs which have been created in the wake of D&D, just focusing on those which are notable for their innovation. Perhaps more interesting to Games-based Learning and Gamification practitioners are the variety of game systems which have emerged. Many of these have sought to ‘solve’ the complexity of D&D and similar systems. This is an attempt to make RPGs not only more accessible to play and create, but also to make games which are shorter in length and to create ‘generic’ rulesets which can move beyond the traditional ‘medieval fantasy’ settings.

Although this article is entitled ‘a history’, what follows is not necessarily chronological.

In 1986, Steve Jackson Games published GURPS (Generic Universal Roleplaying System), which was a system developed to allow players to play in whatever setting they chose (Old West, Noir Detective etc.), while utilising the same basic rules and mechanisms. The series was published as a set of books, first covering the core system and later supplements providing raw material for building scenarios and games in different genres and settings.

One of the notable characteristics of the GURPS system is the ‘Reality Check’, where players are encouraged to step away temporarily from the game mechanics to make a reasoned decision about whether something would work in ‘real life’. For example, a character falls from a height of 100 feet, and damage as rolled has her seriously injured but not dead, but given that she has fallen onto jagged rocks, is that realistic?

In 1986 a free PDF of a reduced ruleset called GURPSLite was made available.

Role-playing in Books and Comics

The RPG community are an inventive lot, and also not without humour, so it was inevitable that parodies of the genre would arise. TWERPS (The World’s Easiest Role Playing System) was published in 1987 by Reindeer Games. Despite being a parody of the overly complex games systems which we prevalent at the time, this is a perfectly playable game in its own right, and became quite popular.

It features four rules and one character stat, Strength, which is used to resolve all of the usual role-playing events, success in combat, damage taken and so on.

TWERPS was published as small comic-style booklets, and several supplements covering different game scenarios and genres were also issued. TWERPS 2^nd Edition material is still available.

A whole generation of children were introduced to RPGs in an extremely accessible way through Fighting Fantasy (FF) books by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson (no relation to the creator of GURPS). These books built on the Choose your Own Adventure series which preceded them by a few years, by combining the branching scenario format of the former with a dice-rolling RPG mechanic built into the books. Readers played as characters with three stats, Skill, Stamina and Luck.

FF was voted as no 47 in the 50 most popular RPGS of all time, and both the stories from this series and the mechanics have been developed into several other formats including video games, a separate RPG, board games, novels and audio dramas. Inkle’s Sorcery! series was based on the related Sorcery! books by Steve Jackson.

Character Generation

Amazing Engine was a series of games published as books by TSR between 1993 – 1994 using a set of minimal generic rules. The characters had four key stats, and the intention was that the stats could be transferred from book to book, while keeping the same general character concept. This is despite the fact that the books had widely differing settings.

CORPS started life in 1990 as the Conspiracy Oriented Role Playing System – with a Techno thriller game incorporating both magic and science, but was later rewritten to be a generic system and renamed the Complete Omniversal Role Playing System. Characters consisted of two types of statistics, Attributes and Skills, which have to be purchased using using ‘points’ dependent on setting and character type. E.g. a ‘normal human’ might start with 100 Attribute points and 75 skill points whereas a superhero would start with more.

Additional points can be gained if the character is willing to accept ‘disadvantages’ such as being elderly or having some physical weakness. Advancement within the game is also purchased through points.

Just FUDGE it!

While GURPS and other systems were designed to help players create their own games, FUDGE (first, Free-form Universal Donated Gaming Engine and later, Free-form Universal Do-It-Yourself Gaming Engine) goes one step further, being a toolkit for creating games systems. Therefore, designation of things such as what character stats will be used are left to the players to design for themselves. Once attributes and skills (Character Traits) have been decided, they can be valued, instead of numerically, by points, with one of seven adjectives Terrible, Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good, Great, and Superb. Any character traits which are not described by this sliding scale can be designated as (positively) Gifts and (negatively) Faults. (See also Savage Worlds system for the similar concept of ‘Edges and Hindrances).

FUDGE (now often simply called Fudge) uses Fudge Dice (six sided, with two sides with a plus sign, two with a minus sign and two blank), which are rolled to modify traits to resolve actions in the game.

The FATE (now known as Fate) system also uses these dice, unsurprisingly, as it is based on Fudge. Similarly freeform, Fate assumes that all characters are ‘mediocre’ at any skill, unless that skill is specifically listed for that character as being ones they are good at. Skills can be used in the game to attack, defend, ‘overcome obstacles’, or ‘create an advantage’.

The Fate Core System is available at DriveThruRPG

Fate dice are available on Amazon

Simple ‘points’ systems

Characters also have Aspects and Stunt. Stunts are exceptional abilities (or possessions) which characters can evoke in specific circumstances e.g. ‘Carries a Winchester Rifle’ or ‘Can identify people by smell’.

Aspects are freeform descriptors created by a player for their character, e.g. ‘well-muscled’ or ‘sagacious’. Aspects can also be applied to settings and groups. Both Aspects and Skills are used in the game to decide outcomes.

Another feature of Fate is the use of fate points. Generally fate points are earned by players when things don’t quite go their way and they can spend them to attempt to influence things in their favour.

Descriptor based characteristics

QAGS (Quick Ass Games System) is a another generic RPG system, with a different approach to character creation. Characters are defined in terms of six words, Brain, Body and Nerve – which define abilities and Job, Gimmick and Weakness which help to define what the character does, how they are unique and a major drawback that they face. Each of these characteristics is assigned a numeric value (the latter three are also given a text descriptor, e.g. Lion Tamer, is invisible but only when nobody’s looking, fatal allergy to cats). These values are used to roll a D20 against to resolve events in the game. Dice rolls can also be augmented by the use of ‘yum yums’ basically a bribery system using small edibles.

Games created using the SAGA system use ‘fate cards’ to tell stories and run the game. These card replace experience points, in that the maximum number of cards that a player can hold is designated according to the number of quests that character has completed.

Licensing of RPGs

While the Dominion Rules games system did not depart in any significant way in terms of its mechanics and play, it is notable for being one of the first games to be issued under an open source license, known as the Dominion Rules License, similar to the way that Open Source software works, this encouraged the development of new game material, settings, abilities and so on by an interested player community.

The OGL (Open Gaming License) is a public copyright license by Wizards of the Coast that may be used by TTRPG (tabletop role-playing game) developers to grant permission to modify, copy, and redistribute some of the content designed for WoC’s games, such as Dungeons and Dragons. However, they must share-alike copies and derivative works.

Honourable mentions of other Game Systems should go to EABA (End All Be All) – often praised for its ease of use and portability, RPC54 – a system which uses playing cards to decide the outcomes of events in the game. Also take a look at Saikoro Fiction – a Japanese system which uses different ‘skill tables’ for each game and Gumshoe, a system specifically developed for creating games which involve storylines around investigation and detection.

RPGs and Games-based Learning

So what can the above offer to us as games-based learning practitioners? The concept of a Quest can usefully be applied to many workplace learning, or educational settings. It is not a massive stretch to imagine an educator structuring a semester of study as a Quest. Indeed, this is precisely the idea behind Lee Sheldon’s Multiplayer Classroom (available on Amazon). There are many workplace ‘events’ that could be usefully thought of as ‘quests’ or ‘campaigns’. this has implications for games-based learning, giving us the tools to build simulations and games for projects, change initiatives, mergers and similar. In really forward-looking organisations, this gameful thinking might even be applied to the design of work itself.

Likewise, the varied options for character creation and development give us almost limitless opportunities for facilitating learning which puts us in other people’s shoes. Learning outcomes around  leadership, culture, customer experience and so on which require empathic understanding, can be well catered for by RPG character mechanics.

The more recent developments in RPGs are covered in Learning Powered by the Apocalypse

The post A Brief History of Role Playing Games first appeared on Ludogogy.

There are many names for the types of games which are now being produced by indie designers, but interestingly these terms are often rejected by the people who are doing this work. Many of the individuals and communities creating these games identify themselves as marginalised, and dislike being labelled by others, even in terms of the work they produce, so you may find that the when you explore the games listed below, they will be categorised differently than they are here.

Many of the below continue the idea of simplifying RPG systems and making the games more accessible to players, quicker to start and more portable in terms of material needed to play.

Powered by the Apocalypse (PbTA)

In 2010 D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker published the critically acclaimed, award-winning, Apocalypse World (AW), and created their own games system especially for it. Games which use this system are known as games Powered by the Apocalypse or PbtA. The game itself is set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic world, but games created using the engine can have any setting, and the traits of characters can be created as appropriate to the context of the game. In AW these traits are Cool, Hard, Hot, Sharp and Weird. Characters are run from ‘Playbooks’ which list Traits and Moves which are triggered when the character encounters specific situations.

PbtA games are hard to define, not least because the Baker’s define PbtA as a policy rather than anything else.

“PbtA isn’t the name of a category of games, a set of games’ features, or the thrust of any games’ design. It’s the name of Meg’s and my policy concerning others’ use of our intellectual property and creative work. […] Again, ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’ isn’t the name of a kind of game, set of game elements, or even the core design thrust of a coherent movement. (Ha! This last, the least so.) Its use in a game’s trade dress signifies ONLY that the game was inspired by Apocalypse World in a way that the designer considers significant, and that it follows our policy [with respect to] others’ use of our creative work”.

Notable games which could be described as PbtA are Farflung, a far-future set game inspired by Hitchhikers’ Guide and Barbarella and similar, Monsterhearts, a game about teenage monsters by Avery Alder and Root RPG, based on the boardgame, casting the creatures as outsider vagabonds.

Root RPG is available on Amazon

‘No Dice, No Masters

This reluctance to ‘label’ games and their method of creation is common across other game ‘systems’ or ‘engines’ which are similarly nebulous. It is tempting to say that these defy definition but that you will know them when you see them. This applies to the ‘No Dice, No Masters’ framework, first attributed to Avery Alder in their game ‘Dream Askew’. You can read this game, and its companion ‘Dream Apart’, created by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum, to give you an idea of what a No Dice, No Masters game looks like, but searching the Internet to find a ‘rulebook’ or similar that you could get if you were searching for GURPS, will most likely just turn up more questions from folk who are also seeking the definitive framework.

As you would expect, these games do not feature dice rolling, and they play as collaborative storytelling among all players rather than having a Gamemaster or similar guiding others through an experience they have already created. Like PbtA games they feature playbooks which guide players through how to play a character. Their narratives deal with the struggles of the marginalised, oppressed and dispossessed, and so these games are sometimes also categorised as ‘Belonging Outside Belonging’.

There are several individuals who turn up again and again across all the related genres of indie games, as prolific and talented creators. Avery Alder is one of those and so is Jay Dragon of Possum Creek Games. Check out Wanderhome and Sleepaway.

These games are significantly simpler to run than the RPGs of the past and narrative is partially driven forward by characters spending tokens to make things go their way, and gaining tokens when they don’t or when they make themselves vulnerable in the game. This is similar to the way that Fate games use fate points.

Lyric Games

Lyric Games was a term coined in 2019 by John R. Harness, but there are many games made before this which have been defined as lyric games retrospectively. Again, notoriously hard to tie down, these games range from the one word RPG that is We are but Worms, to the beautiful emergent complexity of Logan, a game which allows the player to create a version of the author’s (and by extension their own) life, by playing through autobiographical ‘scenes’ with the help of dice rolls.

Also known as Game Poems (some of them can be ‘played’ simply by reading them) these games are designed to evoke a mood, or feeling and typically reduce the distinction between player and character. Many are solo journaling games. Lyric games experiment with the boundary of what games can be.

They often gamify real life settings and actions, finding immersion in the magic circle in the seemingly mundane.

Itch.io is the platform where many creators choose to make available their PbtA, BOB, No Dice No Masters or Lyric Games, and is an excellent place to start your exploration of the fascinating variety of games that indie games makers are creating. In line with the ethos of many of these creators games are often provided for free, but there is usually an option to pay for them to support the further work of these creatives. I would urge you to do so if you can afford it, because supporting this creativity is the best way to ensure it continues.

No Dice No Masters Games on itch.io

Lyric Games on itch.io

RPGs in Games-based Learning

Learning and experimentation have always sat side by side, and this new wave of RPGs provide not only inspiration for using RPGs in a learning setting, but tell us that we can all become creators, including our learners. The potential for using these games is immense. We can create games for our learners to play, but we can also invite them to create their own.

The earlier history of RPGs is discussed in A Brief History of Role-playing Games

The post Learning Powered by the Apocalypse first appeared on Ludogogy.

Probably the most well-known theorist / writer on the topic of Flow was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian American Psychologist who died in October 2021. He worked in the fields of Creativity and Happiness and was the author of the book, ‘Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience’.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is available on Amazon

It is likely that you will hear people referring to ‘flow’ both as a state of optimal concentration on a particular activity, and the experience of being in that state. Those who experience flow describe it as a state of complete absorption, where any external concerns, including time, the needs of the body, and so on, fall away. Many refer to it as being ‘in the zone’, and report feeling very skilled at what they are doing, where one action leads to the next seemingly effortlessly.

Csikszentmihalyi posited that three conditions contribute to the flow state.

The balance between the perception of the challenges of the tasks and perception of one’s ability to perform it. In other words, the task must lie in a perceived ‘Goldilocks Zone’ where it is neither too easy (which would break absorption through boredom) or too difficult (which would bring about the frustration of failure).

Clear goals which help to establish the structure of the activity and to indicate progress

Clear and immediate feedback helps to maintain flow by measuring progress towards goals and allowing swift adjustment to performance.

The first of these is often seen as the most important because, if the perception of challenge is well-designed for, that will necessarily include clear goals and feedback.

In addition to the feeling of absorption and perception of achievement, flow experiences are also characterised by a feeling of being in control and loss of reflective self-awareness.

Flow requires active participation, so passive activities such as watching television will not elicit a flow experience. Given that Csikszentmihalyi believed that flow experiences contributed to overall life satisfaction, this has deep implications in fields like education and learning (passive vs experiential learning methods), and design of workplace activities, both of which Csikszentmihalyi was interested in.

Other researchers have applied his work to other fields including music, sport, games and play and the workplace. It is important to note that beyond the positive feelings experienced by people ‘in flow’, the state is also associated with persistence and high achievement, so it is seen as a beneficial characteristic to design for.

Flow in Learning

The balancing of skills with challenge is consistent with a number of other theories and practices in education and learning. For example, the practice of ‘scaffolding’, where new learning is built on a basis of previous learning is very consistent with keeping a learner in flow as their perception of complexity (of the task) and their own skills can move forward at a similar pace towards a well-defined goal.

Likewise, one of the intentions of ‘differentiation’ is to match learning to the needs and capabilities of learners, which would also serve to maximise the potential for flow-creating situations. This can also be a way to ensure ‘relevance’ to learners which is one of the requirements of the Andragogy theory of Malcolm Knowles – the level at which someone is operating within their n a workplace task, would be an aspect of the relevance of learning to their life/work.

Flow is obviously, within itself, a rewarding state, which learners are motivated to achieve, so designing for flow is an effective way to keep learners engaged in learning. It is often cited as a reason for using games in learning, because well-designed games are engines for flow.

Flow in Games and Play

Games establish clear goals through their winning conditions, as well as smaller sub goals that players must carry out in order to progress within the game.

Well-designed games make is easy for players to understand how well they are doing within the context of the game, and to adjust their actions to play ‘better’, by feeding back on player actions through mechanisms such as scoring or position.  For example, when pieces are taken in Chess, a player can see how they are doing in comparison to their opponent by how much ‘material’ they each have remaining. They can also see from the position of the pieces on the board, whether they threaten or are threatened and the capability of different pieces to influence the game.

Through the above, players take part in learning which progressively improves their ability to play. So long as the game is not seen as ‘too difficult’, or ‘too easy’, the matching of perceived ability and challenge will keep the player in flow. This may of course involve matching oneself to opponents who provide the right level of challenge, or applying a ‘handicap’ to level the game for players of differing abilities. The benefits achieved can be self-perpetuating, because the challenges of learning to play can keep the player in flow, meaning they wish to continue to play, meaning they continue to learn.

The post Flow Theory in Games and Learning first appeared on Ludogogy.

Typically, players will begin at tier one with very few options to research, with their options expanding as they ‘tech up’ i.e. move up through the tech tree options until they reach the end of the designed tree sequences.

For example, unlocking the ‘internal combustion engine’, would allow a player to explore all sorts of other possibilities around land, sea and air transportation. However, depending on how the game is organised, taking that option might close off research into alternative sources of power for transportation, such that the player would never therefore end up creating a solar-powered space craft.

The board game Civilization (1980) is credited with introducing the Technology Tree and since then it has become a feature of many strategy games including Civilization (the computer game), Age of Empires and StarCraft.

In the context of games-based learning, and specifically, organisational learning, perhaps the most obvious application of technology trees are in simulations around innovation, process improvement and methodologies like Agile – a good example of the latter can be found in this Ludogogy article by Corrado de Sanctis, about his DS Builders game.

Within education, tech trees are found in many games exploring the actual historical advancement of specific civilizations, communities or industries, and many commercial off the shelf (COTS) games could be used in a classroom setting without much adaptation. Examples include Brass: (Birmingham and Lancashire) and Orleans. COTS games with tech trees suitable for classroom learning around specific science topics and environmental systems / sustainability include Genotype and On Mars.

The post Technology Tree first appeared on Ludogogy.

Initiative –  In Agile terms an Initiative is a collection of projects which are designed to meet a common goal. For example, let’s say your software company wants to penetrate a new market. Moving into that market is the initiative, and you might undertake a number of product development projects to achieve the goal of that initiative.

Sprint – In Agile product development, a sprint is a set period of time during which specific work must be completed and made ready for review.

Each sprint starts with a planning meeting. During that meeting, the person requesting the work and the development team agree upon the work to be done during the sprint. The development team has the final say on how much work can realistically be accomplished during the sprint, while the person who requested the work has the final say on the criteria under which the work will be approved and accepted.

Components – Components are discrete parts of a product which are to be delivered to complete a project.

Dependencies – Dependencies are relationships across work that needs to be done. They can also be thought of as ‘things that need to happen’ before progress can be made. For example, it might be necessary for one piece of work to be signed off before work can start on another. Dependencies are disruptive because they cause delays, and they must therefore be mitigated, or better still, eliminated.

Internal Dependencies – These are dependencies which are under the control of the teams doing the work. To give an example from outside software development, you must finish plastering your wall before it can be painted.

External Dependencies – These are dependencies which are outsidethe control of the teams doing the work. For example, waiting for funding to be released by the Finance department before the next stage of development can start.

Solve Dependencies – term fixes to get around dependencies might include creating additional coordination roles, but the best way to solve dependencies is to eliminate them with long-term strategic actions such as upskilling, or change organisational design.

Timebox – A previously agreed period of time during which a team works towards a goal. A Sprint is timeboxed.

Integration – Agile integration is a software development approach that tries to ensure that new development meshes seamlessly with existing systems.

Velocity – In Agile velocity is the amount of work done during a sprint. Velocity describes the distance your team travel to reach to sprint objective.

Retrospective – In Agile, retrospectives are regular meetings at which the team reflects on how to become more effective, then adjusts its behaviour accordingly.

Scrum of Scrums – If the development team is large (over a dozen people), it can be split into smaller teams of 5-10. Each daily scrum meeting (which sets the context for the days work) within a sub-team ends by designating one member as “ambassador” to participate in a daily meeting with ambassadors from other teams, called the Scrum of Scrums.

PO Sync – This is the content-focused equivalent of the Scrum of Scrums, to ensure alignment of the product vision.

Backlog – This is a list of what must be delivered to complete a product or project.  A Product Backlog contains ‘everything’ whereas a Sprint Backlog contains just those items that relate to the work of a specific sprint. Backlog Consumption relates to the completion of those items – working your way through your to-do list.

Sub-optimisation – A Sub Optimal system is a system where the optimisation of the system or the elimination of waste has been undertaken based upon the value stream of part of the system. These efforts may actually cause the entire system to be less efficient.

The post Agile / Scrum Terminology for Dummies first appeared on Ludogogy.

McGonigal is known for advocating the development and use of games for tackling real-world problems and for fostering mass collaboration. As such she has often been linked with ‘Gamification‘. However, she dislikes this term and has spoken out against the use of games to get people to do things they don’t want to do. She states “If the game is not about a goal you’re intrinsically motivated by, it won’t work.”

Her first book ‘Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How they Can Change the World’, was published in 2011. Drawing on research into Positive Psychology, she argues that games that games are a powerful force for good, helping players find meaning and motivating them to collaborate on real-world issues.

Reality is Broken is available on Amazon

Her second book ‘SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver, and More Resilient’, was published in 2015. This book details the game design which grew out of McGonigal’s own struggles after suffering a severe concussion in 2008. the effects were long-lasting, leading to depression and even feeling suicidal. She responded by creating a game ‘Jane, The Concussion Slayer’, which later was renamed Superbetter. This game uses quests, powerups and allies to help players, beat the ‘bad guys’ to overcome real-life challenges, such as illness.

SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach… is available on Amazon

Other games developed by McGonigal include:

• A World without Oil – an alternate reality game (ARG) created to call attention to, spark dialogue about, plan for and engineer solutions to a possible near-future global oil shortage, post peak oil. McGonigal co-created this with game writer and designer Ken Eklund, who talks about in this article for Ludogogy.
  
• I Love Bees – an alternate reality game (ARG) that served as both a real-world experience and viral marketing campaign for the release of developer Bungie’s 2004 video game Halo 2.

Jane McGonigal became the Director of Games Research and Development at the Institute for the Future (IFTF) in 2008. Read Ludogogy’s review of her IFTF / Coursera course on Futures Thinking.

The post Jane McGonigal – Games Designer and Futurist first appeared on Ludogogy.

• Killers
• Achievers
• Socialisers
• Explorers

It is important to note that Bartle’s research can only strictly be applied to players of MUDs, and potentially MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games).

The four types are mapped into quadrants separated by two axes, acting<–> interacting and player<–>world.

He later added a third axis explicit <–> implicit which meant that there were two subtypes for each quadrant.

Achievers

• Planner (explicit)
  • They set a goal and aim to achieve it.
• Opportunist (implicit)
  • They look around for things to do, but they don’t know what these are until they find them.

 Explorers

• Scientist (explicit)
  • They are methodical in their acquisition of knowledge.
• Hacker (implicit)
  • They have an intuitive understanding of the virtual world, with no need to test their ideas.

Socialisers

• Networker (explicit)
  • They assess who’s worth hanging out with.
• Friend (implicit)
  • They enjoy their company.

Killers

• Politician (Explicit)
  • Their aim is to get a big, good reputation.
• Griefer (implicit)
  • Their vague aim is to get a big, bad reputation.

Read Bartle’s paper or take a version of the Bartle Test to find out your own Bartle type, and see also Andrzej Marczewski’s Hexad of Player Types for Enterprise Gamification.

The post Richard Bartle and his Player Types first appeared on Ludogogy.

The Six types can be used in conjunction with other frameworks such as Octalysis.

The commentary below discusses the player types with reference to Octalysis Core Drives (CDs)

Disruptor
Disruptors are motivated by Change. They want to effect (hopefully) positive change, but possibly negative change by interacting with your experience.
There are 4 sub types in Andrzej’s model. We do not want Griefers or Destroyers in our system. We must either convert them to the two more positive types, or get rid of them as their influence is wholly negative and destructive. Therefore the below diagrams consider only the drives which appeal to the subtypes Improver and Influencer. These two player types favour:

• Improver – they like to explore a system and find ways to make it better. They are disruptive problem solvers
• Influencer – they like to changes things by using their influence over others.

Disruptors are largely driven by CD2 and CD4, but also CD3, CD5, and to a lesser extent by CD8.

Philanthropist
Philanthropists are motivated by Purpose and Meaning. They want to ‘do good’ and do not expect rewards for doing so. They are most driven by CD1, but to a lesser extent by CD2, CD3 and CD5.

Free Spirit
Free Spirits want autonomy to create and explore. Self-expression is also important to them. CD3 and CD7 will drive them most strongly, but also CD2 and CD6 to a certain extent.

Socialiser
Socialisers want to interact with other people and make connections. Mainly motivated by CD5, they also favour CD3 and CD7, or even CD4 (‘my’ friends).

Achiever
Achievers are motivated by Mastery, wanting to learn new things and improve themselves. They need to feel they are overcoming challenges. Achievers are obviously strongly driven by CD2, and CD4 and CD6 will also influence them. They will also enjoy finding creative ways to achieve (CD3)

Player
Players are motivated by Rewards. They will do what is needed of them to collect rewards from a system. They are in it for themselves

Check out the hexad and more of Andrzej’s work at Gamified.uk

The post Andrzej Marczewski’s Hexad of Player Types first appeared on Ludogogy.

Yu-kai Chou is the creator of the Octalysis framework.  Check out his TED talk, or visit the Octalysis group to find out more

The Octalysis framework consists of eight Core Drives (CDs)

1. Epic Meaning & Calling
2. Development & Achievement
3. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback
4. Ownership & Possession
5. Social Influence & Relatedness
6. Scarcity & Impatience
7. Uncertainty & Curiosity
8. Avoidance & Loss

In Level I Octalysis, any experience is analysed in terms of how strongly it satisfies these drives – on a scale of 1 to 10, and four further levels of the Octalysis methodology allow a deeper analysis of any experience. Analysis creates a ‘graph’ of relative strengths of each of the CDs on an eight-sided diagram.

There is also a tool to help you with mapping experience to the Octalysis framework at Yu-kai’s site.

An overall score can be derived from the sum of the squares of each of the eight CD scores. There are other aspects of the Octalysis model, which can be considered

Other aspects of the model

Black Hat vs White Hat gamification – broadly manipulative vs empowering, but less simplistic as ‘Black Hat’ does not necessarily imply a negative technique or outcome. The White Hat drives are 1,2 and 3 at the top of the Octalysis diagram, while the Black Hat drives are 6,7 and 8 at the bottom. Drives 4 and 5 could be either White or Black Hat, depending on a specific implementation.

Left Brain vs Right Brain – broadly extrinsic vs intrinsic. Yu-Kai does not intend any ‘real’ psychological definition here – left brain / right brain theories are largely being replaced with a much more sensible ‘whole-brain’ view, but this identification is at least easy to remember, not least because the Left Brain drives (2, 4 and 6) are on the left of the diagram and Right Brain (3,5 and 7) on the right. CDs 1 & 8 could be either depending on context and implementation.

Deeper levels of analysis – Level II

At Level II, an experience can be examined not as a whole but as a journey through four stages

1. Discovery – The stage between the time that people first hear about your product or experience and when they sign up to try it out.
2. Onboarding – This starts once people have signed up and contains all the activities that people carry out to learn how to use your product or experience. They explore tools and techniques and rules, and get to try the basic activities out. When they have learned enough to navigate your experience or use the product in a basic way, this stage ends. This will also be when the reach the early ‘win-states’.
3. Scaffolding –During Scaffolding participants will be engaging in the usual activity of your product or experience. This may involve them repeating the same actions again and again, so we need to be sure that motivation is maintained throughout this stage for them to do this.
4. Endgame – Once you participants feel that they have experienced everything your experience has to offer at least once, they enter the End Game. Those who remain into this phase will be your ‘veterans’ and they must find enough motivation to continue interacting with your experience, even though it is now familiar to them.

Octalysis analysis can be used to examine how well the eight drives are satisfied during the four stages.

For an example see Ludogogy’s application of Octalysis to a Sustainability Learning Programme.

Level III

Level III further interrogates an experience by factoring in ‘Player Types’ Octalysis does not suggest its own player types, as there are plenty of other experts working on this area. The particular ‘player type’ model which is appropriate depends on your target audience. If creating a game, it might be appropriate to use Richard Bartle’s four player types, which came out of his research into Multi Use Dungeons (MUDs) in the 1970s. For gamification in a work-based setting, it is more appropriate to use Andrzej Marczewski’s six player types, developed from Bartle’s work, but specifically looking at motivations in enterprise workplace settings.

Level III combines stages and player types to give a matrix of graphs for all player types during each of the four phases.

The post Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis Framework first appeared on Ludogogy.

The basis for this is three innate needs, which, if met, allow for optimum function and growth.  These are Competence, Autonomy and Relatedness.

This is a positive approach in that humans are seen as inherently inclined towards development of their potential. However, although this inclination is innate, it is not automatic and the social environment must be necessarily nuturing for this potential to be realised.

Read more at the Centre for Self-Determination Theory

The post Self-Determination Theory of Motivation first appeared on Ludogogy.