James Carse talks about this in his book: Finite and Infinite Games. He says: Finite games usually end with a victory or loss. While infinite games don’t end. They are focused on progress and continuation of play. So how do you go about designing game ecosystems in which winning isn’t the goal? When the goal is learning or just simply continuation of play.

Finite and Infinite Games is available on Amazon 

I build games for learning in which learning must happen irrespective of a win/lose state for players. There are a few things I’ve learnt over the years which have helped me to focus on the learning outcomes as opposed to winning and losing in a game ecosystem. Here are some of them.

Reorient the player learning narrative

Most players enter a game ecosystem for the following reasons:

• To have fun
• To learn
• To get better
• To win
• To take down the bad guy
• To conquer an epic quest
• To pass time

And on and on…

As you can see, for a player, winning isn’t the only objective (while it may be important) it isn’t the only one. So when I design game ecosystems in which winning isn’t the goal, I dispel the idea that we’re here to win. Instead, I make it abundantly clear from the very beginning that we’re here to learn, to play, to revisit something we knew but weren’t sure about or to discover something entirely new. Doing this changes the narrative of the player and makes them think about why they’re here. It reorients them to start to see things from another perspective.

Design for reflection

When you bake into your design the opportunity to reflect from the learning, the learners are less likely to focus on absolute outcomes like win/lose. This requires you to start by reorienting the players’ narrative and then identifying the important reflection areas to direct the players’ attention to after the game-play.

Focus on progress and activity instead of “Victory”

While I can’t imagine a finite game that does not have an end goal, one of the things I’ve been able to do is make the end goal less obvious by increasing focus on real-time activities that the player must do to eventually get to the end goal. If done right, the activities themselves are so engaging that most players will feel busy and content with staying there. I’ll encourage you to read about core and dual loops to learn more about that. When players focus on the activities at hand and gain progress (and have fun) through that, they are likely to care less about the end outcome. Needless to say, this isn’t a blanket statement as we know there are all kinds of players out there. Ones who play to play and ones who play to win.

Why dampen the effects of win/lose states in learning games

In most games, this shouldn’t matter as much. But in games that are designed for learning, this element plays a significant role. Think about how you feel when you win a game. Now about how you feel when you lose. A stark difference right? No matter how balanced and zen-like you are, you feel a sense of elation when you win and little pinch when you don’t.

As I designed and ran learning games for various corporate teams across the world, I began to realize that when teams won the game, they would bask in their glory of how incredible they were. While when they lost, they would often sulk so much that they didn’t want to have anything to do with the game. Some went as far as blaming my games to be “rigged”.

Over time I realized as I shifted the focus from winning or losing to playing and learning, I was able to keep the players balanced through the game. If they won, there was something to learn from the experience just as much as if they lost. Through the years as I ran tests with the three parameters, I learned that the cases in which the learners did not focus on winning/losing were the cases in which players took away the most learning from the game irrespective of whether they won or lost in the game.

The post The Effects of Win/Loss States on Learning first appeared on Ludogogy.

There is no human being on Earth who hasn’t experienced conflicting emotions inside themselves at least once in a while. And most of us experience them every day. Often in almost unrecognizable dimensions and situations and at times of the epic and intimidating scale.

The internal struggles

We doubt, criticize, and defend ourselves in our thoughts. We are fearing and courageous, if not simultaneously then often in close succession.

Each of us can find both of these two persons and more:

“One who would throw caution to the winds, another who would worry endlessly.” 

— Nora Roberts, Daring to Dream (Dream Trilogy Book 1)

Here is what a well-known American brain researcher, Jill Bolte Taylor, who experienced a stroke and shared her experiences shortly before, during, and afterward in her acclaimed book My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, wrote in this respect:

“It appears that many of us struggle regularly with polar opposite characters holding court inside our heads. In fact, just about everyone I speak with is keenly aware that they have conflicting parts of their personality.” 

— Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

And a little later in the same paragraph, she wrote,

“Many of us speak about how our head (left hemisphere) is telling us to do one thing while our heart (right hemisphere) is telling us to do the exact opposite. Some of us distinguish between what we think (left hemisphere) and what we feel (right hemisphere).”

Before reading the quote above for the first time, I often thought about how far apart these conflicting parts are situated inside of me. Ultimately, my heart is around the center of my body, and my head is on top of it. But reading this made me aware that the same entity of myself generated my thoughts and emotions.

Whatever side and color these thoughts and emotions took — ambitious or cautious, joyous or skeptical, optimistic or pessimistic, enthusiastic or procrastinating, pressing on the gas pedal or pulling on the brakes — they were communicated or set off in the same space inside me, my brain.

“Brainy Olympic Games”

The above epiphany was very inspiring and enlightening. I discovered the quotes above in the first couple of years of turning my life into fun games. That was when I realized that by designing and playing my self-motivational games, I was organizing something I started thinking of as the “brainy Olympic Games.”

In my first self-motivational game, which I called the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, I pursued a project or activity of my choice (for me, it started with writing one of my books) for five minutes a day for a month and recorded my score after each game session.

Get the 5 Minute Perseverance Game on Amazon 

If I managed to write for at least five minutes on any given day, the enthusiastic and driving part of me got the point, and if I didn’t, the point went to my procrastinating self. If I did something, but in less than five minutes, these two parts of me shared a point. At the end of the month, I checked which part of me won that monthly round.

Competitive and collaborative games for ourselves

So you could say the ambitious part of me competed with the procrastinating one. That means the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, along with many other self-motivational games I created for myself, is a competitive game.

A competitive game is “[a] game with two or more players and a single winner.” — Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design is available on Amazon

It might seem that there is only one winner in this game, and there is. But none of my self-motivational games remain static. I adjust their design as my experience and preferences change, remembering that:

“the destiny of games is to become boring, not to be fun. Those of us who want games to be fun are fighting a losing battle against the human brain because fun is a process and routine is its destination.” — Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

Theory of Fun for Game Design is available on Amazon

In the process of designing games for myself, I realized that this activity of turning my life into fun games is a game in itself with a specific gameplay loop involving awareness, moving one tiny, effortless step at a time, and taking and appreciating this step in fun, playful, and gameful ways.

So the designing activity in itself is a game too. And this game is a collaborative one:

In a cooperative game,

“[p]layers coordinate their actions to achieve a common win condition or conditions. Players all win or lose the game together.” — Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms

Building Blocks of Tabletop Games Design is available on Amazon

Takeaways

When we turn our lives into fun games, we adjust the design of whatever we are up to so that it feels like an exciting and enjoyable game. That is why I call the result of turning life into fun games a self-motivational game. The motivation is available on tap in the process of their gameplay and development.

We are both the designers and the players of these self-motivational games. We pay attention to our own emotions and adjust when something doesn’t or stops working in such a way that we want to engage and play again. Or we find or design a new game — be it one in a traditional sense or a real-life one — to engage in.

This partnership between the players and designers in ourselves is one of the best kinds of self-partnership there can be, and it turns the process of turning life into fun games into a collaborative game, in which all parts of us win.

Thus, the paradox of this collaborative and competitive duality of turning life into fun games doesn’t come from the fact that various parts of us both compete and collaborate in the games we create, but from the fact that there are no losers against the popular belief and self-doubt. We often consider ourselves losers, but we are not. We are winners, even when we don’t see it that way.

And this win-win situation becomes more than apparent when you become aware of your powers of being both your life’s player and designer.

The post The Collaborative-Competitive Paradox of Self-Gamification first appeared on Ludogogy.

Have you ever been so engrossed in a game that you couldn’t stop playing? Or ever played a game that was so tedious that you couldn’t even complete it? Now consider how these games differed from one another. Because scoring is typically a big influence on in-game performance and player interest, they likely have radically different scoring mechanisms as well as win states. Designing games and especially successful learning games requires proper game scoring systems.

What is a Win State?

Before moving on, first, we need to understand what a win state is.

“A situation or state in a game or level that indicates that a specified task or objective has been completed successfully.”

When it comes to developing win-or-fail states for your game, think about what someone who has no understanding of what they are doing would do.

Allow people to play the game without directing them. Just watch what they’re doing and don’t tell them where they are going wrong. Make the appropriate adjustments and see if they do what you want them to do this time or if they are going off course less.

Win States and Engagement

To keep the players hooked on playing a game, a competent game designer should present them with ongoing challenges, each of which leads to another challenge. In addition, A strong backstory may make competition much more exciting. In various Internet forums and game-magazine sections discussing video and board games, a solid plot or storyline is considered essential to a good game. Surprisingly, a magical environment inspires participants to win games. And real-life scenarios can be recreated or imitated in games.

Players are immersed in a world comparable to that which they will discover outside the screen of their computer, and replicating real-world circumstances. These simulators allow users to engage with a different environment while also allowing them to practise the skills and ideas learned throughout the game. Examples could include engineers trying to build a dam or bridge, or surgeons simulating different options prior to actual surgeries.

In a typical example of scenario-based games, people are stranded on an island and the goal of the game is for the player to lead acrew as they construct a hot-air balloon to escape the island and return home safely. To do so, they must understand all of the characteristics of a successful leader and team manager, such as encouraging and praising their co-workers, resolving disagreements, allocating responsibilities, and coaching.

Scoring Systems as Rewards

Scoring systems are significant in-game mechanics because they allow players to be rewarded with points for completing a task in the game. Game players’ sentiments regarding the complex scoring systems used can vary considerably, and their attitudes toward these systems can significantly impact how satisfied they are with the game as a whole.

As scoring techniques become more diverse, it becomes more difficult to pinpoint the exact features of scoring that have the most significant influence on player engagement. Game designers are obliged to integrate scoring based on personal experience because it is difficult to categorize scoring systems. Some key principles guide the design of a scoring system for a learning game:

1. Keep scoring simple: Complicated scoring may force players to review the rules repeatedly, or worse, may confuse and discourage them. Players are not learning if they don’t comprehend the game or cease playing.
2. Link scoring to learning outcomes: The goal of a learning game is to teach rather than to amuse. The scoring algorithms aren’t well-designed if expert gameplay allows players to win without learning. Similarly, success should not be overly reliant on luck. Players must succeed, advance, or otherwise, prosper in the game.
3. Make scoring transparent: If the rules aren’t appropriately described in an introductory tutorial, rule book, or explanation screen, players will become confused or frustrated and leave the game.
4. Include some variety: Games in which everyone gets the same score can get monotonous. Instead, provide additional points for answering more difficult questions or hitting targets in say shooting games that require more precision, finishing levels faster, or submitting accurate answers with fewer attempts. Multiple players can learn this, but they won’t all get the same score.
5. Don’t put too much emphasis on winning: Losing might demotivate players. You face the danger of demotivating anyone who loses if you build a competitive game. You may avoid this issue by focusing on learning rather than winning. Better create a cooperative game rather than a competitive one. Because players work together to achieve a common goal, cooperative games do not have victors and losers.

Examples of ‘Scoring’

You’ll also want game scoring systems. A well-designed and entertaining game will employ them to allow players to score in a few different ways.

1. Earning points: in-game cash, bonus points
2. Levelling up: entails achieving new game levels, increasing the degree of difficulty, and earning avatar abilities.
3. Acquiring recognition: badges, awards, and titles
4. Adding new content: new quests, new questions, and new learning objectives

Competition vs Cooperation

Cooperative games provide a fresh perspective on gaming. In traditional competitive games, only one player can win and the others lose. Different structures apply to cooperative games. Players do not compete against one another in cooperative games. Instead, they share a similar purpose, and they all win or lose together. Many learners spend many hours each week playing video games with their fellows. Peer connections and relationships may be influenced by how they play games.

Competitive and cooperative play have different consequences on aggressiveness, prosocial behaviour, empathy, and trust, according to research.

Playing a competitive game can have negative impacts on relationship quality. Furthermore, the manner of play affects the participants’ conduct during the game, with the cooperative condition exhibiting more positive, and less negative, and hierarchical behaviour. Cooperative games are also inclusive since no one is left out. To be a valuable member of the team, you don’t have to be the brightest, best-looking, most aggressive, most popular, most athletic, most talkative, or luckiest player. It is in everyone’s best interests if each player feels valued and gives their utmost. This can help promote group cohesion when members come from different backgrounds or have different social statuses.

In short, game designers need to consider many aspects to develop a game that hooks the players and encourages them to continue playing. They need to come up with a solid story and score system and consider both the complex interplay between the urge to compete and win, and the potential benefits of more collaborative modes of play.

The post Win States in Games to Keep Players Playing first appeared on Ludogogy.

Fail to Learn: A Manifesto for Training Gamification is available from Amazon

“Press the green button to pick up the gun.”

“No, the green button.”

“Green button.”

I had never played a first-person shooter before. In fact, it was quickly becoming clear that I’d barely picked up a video game controller. My younger brother Collin, on the other hand, was a gaming pro. So I sat and listened carefully to his patient instructions over the phone. We were about to head into battle, and it was his job to help me survive.

But I was still the older brother, and I hated looking dumb in front of Collin. So I insisted the first game we play be something he’d never tried before either.

The game started, and our avatars were suddenly in the virtual wilds of Northwestern America. It was a fitting location since the two of us were separated by the actual wilds of Northwestern America. Say what you will about technology, but it’s certainly made online cooperative gaming a breeze.

Yet, despite this high-tech platform, I still couldn’t figure out how to make my avatar pick up his stupid gun.

“Someone’s coming.” Collin’s voice came through my earpiece, as I caught the blur of movement on my screen.

I gave up on the gun and steered my avatar behind a large crate. I’d seen the previews for this game. I knew it was going to get bloody.

“Are they out there?” I realized a second too late that I was whispering into my headset, as if the bots in the game could hear me.

“Dunno. Hang on a minute.”

I watched Collin’s character glide past me. He conjured up a ridiculously large rifle out of thin air, then he ducked out the door.

BANG!

“Yup,” Collin said, unfazed after experiencing what I could only imagine was a quick and gruesome death. “There’s an ambush waiting for us out front.”

I froze, both onscreen and in real life. This game actually pumped in heartbeat sounds over the audio track. As if it wasn’t enough to feel my own heart in my throat.

All of a sudden, I saw Collin run past me again.

“Wait, I thought you just died,” I said.

“Instant respawn, man. Hang on a minute.”

He poked his head out the door again.

BANG!

“Dang it. Okay, going left might not be an option.”

I thought I saw a bullet flash above my crate. I tried to make my avatar crouch down even lower. Meanwhile, Collin breezed by me for a third time.

BANG!

“Yeah. Definitely don’t go left.”

“How many lives do we get?”

“Lives? Infinite.” Collin said, as if confused by the question. He raced by me once more. He was moving faster this time, already getting familiar with the game’s controls.

“What should I do?” I asked, spinning my crouched character in a desperate circle.

BANG!

“Come join me this time. No? Well then I’ll just—”

BANG!

“Oh, I see what they’re doing now. Maybe we should try—”

BANG!

I risked a glance over the top of my crate. Collin was already out front for a seventh time, guns blazing. His avatar looked close to death (again), but he also looked like he’d gotten even farther away from our starting point.

BANG!

This time a bullet hit me. My screen flashed. “Am I dead?” I shouted. “Where are you going? You’re supposed to help me survive!”

By the time I finally poked my head out the door, all the bad guys were gone and Collin’s character was waving to me from the top of the hill.

“Here’s a survival tip,” he said. “Try dying.”

DEATH AND PERMADEATH

In 2014, the “Golden Joystick” award for Best Game of the Year went to an action role-player called Dark Souls II. In addition to the sweeping journey Dark Souls II took players on, it also gave some great behind-the-scenes data. We got to see how often players of Dark Souls II died.

Adding up just the Dark Souls console gamers (e.g., people who played on PlayStation, Xbox, etc.), people were dying in this game a whopping 150,443 times per hour, which equates to 42 deaths every second.

That means, in 2014, the death rate in Dark Souls II was 23 times higher than the actual death rate in the real world.

In order to beat Dark Souls II on PlayStation 3, a player died 860 times on average.¹ That’s a failure-to-success ratio most of us would be comfortable with in the “real world.”

I’d say I have a healthy fear of death. It keeps me from base-jumping and lion-taming, but it also apparently keeps me from developing any skills as a game-player.

Death is one of the most common learning mechanisms in games. From the classic chess board to the zombie hordes of Resident Evil, games help us learn by killing us over and over again. Your average gamer expects to die in nearly everything they play. To them, death and rebirth is just a dressed-up version of trial and error.

It’s usually only the very experienced gamers who seek challenges without a “respawn” option. In these rare environments, if you die, you’re done. No do-overs. No refresh from the last save-point. In the gaming world, it’s known as “permadeath.”

Even for experienced video gamers “permadeath” can be an agonizing thing to experience. Just ask Phil Watson, who holds the world record for longest survival time in “Hardcore” mode of the video game Minecraft. This mode combines all of the most difficult game settings, along with a permadeath state, meaning if you die, you lose the entire world you’ve built.

Some of the best Minecraft Hardcore players are able to survive for a few weeks. Phil Watson lived in his Minecraft world for five years.

It made his character’s demise all the more tragic. A video of Watson’s last fateful seconds (which occurred in April 2019) has over a million views online. In it, you can hear the anguished cries that lie at the heart of any permadeath scenario:

“Noooo!! Really?! That’s how I die?”²

KILL THE MONKEY

When it comes to dealing with death, I’m somewhere between my little brother and Phil. To be honest, I’m probably closer to Phil, in the sense that I felt like screaming and pulling my hair every time I messed up in a game. The same applies to all the times I failed in the classroom.

Games are helping me change that perspective, and become a better learner (and facilitator) because of it.

One of the things games do to help me (and the millions of other loss-averse people out there) is to actually make failing an enjoyable, even funny experience.

Picture this: You’re a monkey trapped inside a glass ball. You need to get from one side of a platform to the other. You pedal desperately through different speeds and slopes, and more often than not, you roll off the platform into the dark abyss below. You scream your high-pitched monkey scream all the way down.

This is the general premise of the game Super Monkey Ball 2. Like all games, you’d assume players would be most interested in beating levels and completing the game.

You’d be wrong.

Psychologists in Finland had a group of people play Super Monkey Ball 2 while hooked up to biosensors. They wanted to see at which point in the game people experienced the biggest spikes in physiological activity.

When players achieved the set objectives of each level, their pleasure increased. When they missed an objective, their frustration increased. No surprises so far.

But then the researchers noticed something weird happening. When players deliberately tried to fail—when they purposefully sent the poor monkey spinning off into space—they registered not frustration or boredom, but pleasure. “Although the event in question represents a clear failure, several physiological indices showed that it elicited positively valenced high-arousal emotion (i.e., joy), rather than disappointment.”³

I’ll admit, there’s something innately pleasurable about sending a tiny cartoon monkey screaming into the void. The researchers concluded that negative events in a game can still elicit positive emotional responses. Ultimately, they found that attaining the game’s original objectives actually decreased a player’s level of interest overall.⁴

Sometimes, it’s just more fun to kill the monkey.

EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE

Let’s face it: most of us have pretty fragile egos when it comes to learning something new. No one likes being the unskilled novice. Making a mistake doesn’t often feel good. In fact, some of the studies that show the benefits of error-driven learning are quick to point out that it only works “if students have the emotional resilience to respond to mistakes adaptively and flexibly.”⁵

In other words, learners have to feel secure enough and brave enough to lose. So what is the best way to create a flexible, emotional resilience to making mistakes?

Play a game.

“Despite the societal taboo against failure,” one educator writes, “there is one place where it is expected and embraced – games. In particular, video games are built on the premise that progress happens through a process of experimentation, failure, and adaptation.”⁶

Studies conducted by everyone from the American Psychological Association to Columbia University found the same thing.⁷ Those who played games tend to be more emotionally resilient than those who do not. Some studies even found that video game players showed “significantly higher intellectual functioning, higher academic achievement, better peer relationships, and fewer mental health difficulties.”⁸

A lot of this emotional resilience can be traced back to the fact that game-players can build up a bigger-picture perspective about failure. They get used to telling themselves “it’s all just a game.” And slowly, those fragile egos become tempered through the process of playing, until they have the steely resolve to sustain just about any error in real-life.

Games give us “a kind of lightness and freedom,” educator and designer Jesper Juul explains. The reason we’re okay with failing so often in games is because “we have the option of denying that game failure matters.”⁹ And the more we play, the more we can bring this perspective to all other parts of our life.

Fail to Learn: A Manifesto for Training Gamification is available from Amazon

Read Scott’s other article for Ludogogy where he explores the idea that not all failure is created equal.

The post Die Trying – Learning through Failure in Games first appeared on Ludogogy.

When Song Ha-na says “I PLAY TO WIN!” in Overwatch, this Korean character, could be talking about not only Overwatch but all FPS (First-person Shooter) games. The purpose of the game is to have fun. Despite the trolling, nuisance, and boosting, it’s still fun if the player wins.

In other words, the player needs to win for the game to be fun. For this, s/he must gain victory by crushing or killing others. However, unlike Song Ha-na, who plays only to win, gamers can also take pleasure in any moment of being interested and impressed by the game.

So, what does it mean to say ‘Win’, ‘Victory’, and ‘You Win’?  So, let’s look at two questions “Is it necessary for players to win the game?”, and “Should a ‘winner’ necessarily be better than other players?”.

When we all knew what it meant to ‘win’

When I was young, the purpose of games in arcades or DOS-game was very simple and primitive. The player killed NPCs (Non-Player Characters), or beat the game quicker than other players, or got higher points. There were no community websites, Youtube, or social networks. So, knowing many effective methods of attack were important.

There was a huge difference between “It didn’t work when I did exactly what you said” and “It worked when I did exactly what you said”. Among peers, knowledge of how to play well, conferred status. Knowing more than others meant beating the competition.

In the early 2000s when high-speed internet infrastructure such as ADSL or VDSL was spreading in the region, Korean young people began to show off their game skills and thirst for competition. It was an age of ‘rivalry of warlords’ (Yu-Gi-Oh card reference – Ed). From this time on, players needed to be able to deal with other players via a LAN cable, not with an NPC in the computer. There were only two options – ‘Beat down’ or ‘Be beaten’. It was still clear what needed to be done to win the game.

Simply put, the ‘winner’ is the one who hears ‘GG’ (Good Game) from other players.

The quest to be ‘faster than anyone, and higher than others’, continued. Teenagers who liked games believed this above all else. Just like in the school classroom, the game means competition. They had to win by any means, beat the final boss by any means, and be able to show off “I reached the end-stage with only 10 cents”. Outside the competition in school, they competed in games skills in PC bang (Korean LAN gaming centre) and arcades.

However, nobody felt the competition to be a burden or tried to escape this situation. Even young people who hated competition in school, liked it in games, and really wanted to be Pro-Gamers (professional gamers).

Young people who played the game well started to form groups to decide the best player among them, and, in time, this was broadcast on TV. From then on, young gamers on TV were called Pro-Gamers. However, with this added status came the increased stigma of being beaten in the game. For a Pro-gamer winning each game, and winning in game leagues, became all-important.

The age of rivalry of warlords among Pro-Gamers was not a simple passing trend or a firework that would eventually fizzle out. There is still a similar mood from that heated time. The first generation became parents whose children now dream of becoming Pro-Gamers. So, there is now no quarter given in play between parents and children.

Johnver (Hodler) Wins

However, unlike games from arguably simpler times, recently published games allow gamers to achieve victories in many various ways. New paths to victory other than being ‘better’ than other players emerged. In the past, the single route to victory was clear. Now, there was variety.

The game, ‘PUBG: Battlegrounds’, clearly showed players all over the world that they could win the game without ever engaging in combat. Previously, in FPS games, gamers had previously thought that battle couldn’t be escaped. Now, they realized that ‘Johnver’ (HODL, Holding on for dear life), wins were possible. Doing nothing and staying still in PUBG: Battlegrounds could result in a win. The primary objective of the game is to neutralize others by using guns, but the player can win without firing a single round of ammunition.

In FPS, this concept was quite unfamiliar, but gamers really started to be enthusiastic about it. But wouldn’t FPS gamers in ‘Quake’ or ‘Counter Strike’ think that this kind of play is like being a coward?

In the genre of Battle Royale games in which the player must survive as the last one standing among one hundred people, the traditional rule that the player wins by killing others, is a dominant strategy. So adopting a strategy without combat feels like it is not in the spirit of the game. However, developers intentionally include opportunities to avoid competition from the beginning, clearly indicating that this is a valid strategy to win.

Anybody can do it, but it is not easy. Those choosing this strategy must know the game well and have the capability to make appropriate moves. If the player can watch and read a combat situation well,  and thus weasel out of becoming involved themselves, this kind of play is acceptable.

Battlegrounds’ decision to subvert the FPS genre definitely makes the game very popular. Also, many gamers and streamers deliberately set themselves missions like ‘no shooting’ or ‘no item farming’, which makes people keen to watch whether they can achieve it. When ninety-nine people aim a gun at each other, but the eventual winner has prevailed by intentionally weaseling out – many gamers are crazy about it. There is another meaning of ‘Victory’.

What if it’s better to lose?

However, not all methods of winning a game are acceptable. Badly designed games can lead to gameplay experiences and opportunities which are very different from the original intention. Gamers are very clever. If the balance between ‘do nothing’ and ‘intentional escaping’ is broken, this can lead to strategies which are actually just abuse.

‘Abuse’ in games means to repeatedly exploit faulty features. Gamers can maliciously and intentionally be beaten by using features of the game that do not work as intended.

In Mercenaries of Hearthstone, the main game mechanic was ‘combat’ by a one-to-one card game, so it should have been that the only way to ‘win’ was to prevail in this competition.

However, there can be unintended consequences of the way a game is designed, leading gamers to choose to ‘lose’ rather than win. In this game the more losses there were, the more rewards built up for all players. There was also the option to ‘surrender’ in a game. Players were able to choose to lose (by surrendering) as a way of ‘grinding’ for rewards.

’Surrender Run’ only for rewards. If the purpose of the game changes into ‘grinding for rewards’, the game goes in an unexpected direction which is against the intention of developers. Designers need to be aware of the potential for unintended consequences.

Therefore, the purpose of the game becomes to click ‘Surrender’ first to gain greater rewards?’. There is little fun in this kind of victory. If the other player simultaneously quits at the start of the game, the gamer can achieve ‘Victory’, but all related aspects of gameplay are omitted. This is pretty much exactly the opposite of what was intended for the gameplay experience of Hearthstone. If rewards incentivize but there is no penalty for surrendering, or otherwise acting against the spirit of the game, this will become a widespread gameplay decision.

Sure, it was quickly fixed. But this clearly shows how a game can be played against the intention of developers was changed. Gamers choose ‘lose’ without hesitation if it is beneficial to them.

To win, the player must be beaten first

After playing ‘World of Warcraft’ for a long time, one thing I realized is that many attempts are needed to win a Boss Battle.

Victory in World of Warcraft, unlike Battlegrounds or Hearthstone, includes mid to long-term play. Victory in MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) includes a sort of journey, incorporating grwth and ongoing challenge, rather than a ‘single throw of the dice’. Games such as FPS, Battle Royale, or Trading Card Games can be a single bet, but the flow in MMORPGs is long. So, the feeling of achieving victory is different from that in other games. In fact, sometimes there is no win or lose at all.

When I (as a Raid Leader) tried to kill the boss for over nine hours every day for several weeks, I often thought ‘What am I doing now?’. If I narrowly missed the win because of the mistakes of others, there would often be feelings of resentment and might be misanthropy hating and doubting my teammates.

The road to victory is a long and difficult one. Frustration and losing can continue for ages without getting anything. So, in Raid or Dungeon play in which many gamers have to cooperate, strategizing about the number of participants and what approaches to use is more important than achieving the win.

This sort of situation doesn’t just happen in online games. In games like Dark Soul, the player will make many attempts. Gamers are not disappointed at the failure of catching the boss overmany attempts. Rather, they enjoy repeatedly realizing ‘YOU DIED’. They will be disappointed if the boss is beaten by just one attempt feeling the game is too easy. The purpose of the game is to win, but gamers don’t want to achieve that too easily.

Disappointment and frustration are part of what make the eventual victory so much sweeter. Simply winning for gamers is not actually as important as how the process of getting there feels. Would others go crazy over my gameplay screen? Could my gameplay be presented at my funeral, to show what a super excellent player I was in life? These are what is important.

Game developers and gamers do not want wishy-washy victory. The victory only has this kind of lasting meaning because it was preceded by so much frustration, desperation, and failure.

However, somebody will win and somebody will lose in the game. The purpose of the game is to perform the activities described by the pre-defined rules to arrive at ‘who is better’ (on that occasion), and have fun doing it. So, if you have that fun, winning or losing becomes meaningless. It is not as if only the first winner can be remembered.

Not everyone can be a winner, but people don’t need to be disappointed. We don’t all need to pursue the pre-determined victory. The process is more important than winning. Sometimes, there are more impactful experiences and fun in losing rather than winning. ‘Winning’ is sort of a milestone rather than an endpoint.

Gamers in bronze or silver tiers and newbies are more accustomed to losing than winning. However, they are often more enthusiastic than other gamers in a higher tier. By approaching the required tasks step-by-step, they enjoy the process of enhancing their skills. If the continued practice of trying and staying motivated carries on, victory will eventually naturally follow.

For gamers, the meaning of ‘Makpan’ (at the last moment) is

1. Just barely exchanging the win and loss between two teams
2. ‘Hanta’ (team fighting) in unexpected ways
3. Reversal afterwards
4. Getting the attention of my gameplay
5. Winning the game

The ‘win’ is almost like this process.

Human vs AI

In the Baduk (Go) between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol 9^th dan, what people remember is that eventually the Human beat the AI (Artificial Intelligence)’. However, Lee Sedol 9^th dan said that “In the opposite way, I am the first one who lost Baduk to an AI”. As a result, Lee Sedol 9^th dan won only one game over AlphaGo. Overall, he lost the match with AlphaGo by four-to-one games. Lee Sedol 9^th dan decided to retire because of this loss.

The reason why Lee Sedol 9^th dan eventually won over AlphaGo is that he experienced many defeats. Through this experience, he learned how to win.

Many people remember the win in the 4^th game, rather than the loss of Lee Sedol 9^th dan. Despite the overall defeat, many people think that he beat the AlphaGo because of this single win. This one win retains the valuable meaning, ‘human victory’. Although he lost to the AlphaGo, his one win is what will be remembered.

Losing is quite hard to accept, but everybody knows that victory is also hard to obtain. Many people live today for their own win or victory. The most important thing in games or life is the process to arrive at the destination. In continuous losing or failures, we achieve more than a simple ‘Win’.

It’s like a joke, but there must be a loser for there to be a winner. No losing, no win. Failure is just a stepping stone to success. So always remember – my victory is not more valuable than yours, just as yours is no more valuable than mine.

The post I PLAY TO WIN! first appeared on Ludogogy.

While to a large extent, knowing is equal to doing, in the functional skills domain, the same does not hold true for behavioural skills, because of the layers added in the form of one’s personality, environment, mindset and so on. All these layers impact our demonstrated behaviour which might not always align with what we know to be the right thing to do.

Therefore, the best learning experience would be the one that gets the learners to see the difference between what they know and what they do.

This is where the power of game based learning truly comes alive, where you get participants to play a game which requires them to demonstrate a specific behaviour to achieve or improve on the game’s objective.

Here there is a direct correlation between the behaviour they demonstrate (or don’t) and the quality of result of the game, thereby exploring the Knowing-Doing gap.

And when the game is a group activity, the the experience is even more rich as it mimics the true nature of behaviour skills, which are never really demonstrated in isolation as the people around have as much influence on one’s behavior as one’s own attitudes and mindset.

As an added benefit, the interactive and participative nature of the experience (virtual, in-person or digital) is a refreshing change from a typical content-based programme – be it instructor-led or digital.

The problem for learning professionals

Many people involved in designing learning interventions, who are new to game-based learning, often struggle to construct such a programme, including choosing the game experience, deriving the learning outcomes, and answering the ‘what’s in it for me’ (WIIFM) for the learner.

To get such learning professionals started on this journey I’ve put together a simple framework which is universally applicable to any game-based learning intervention that one might be designing.

Over the last 17+ years I have successfully used this model to design every learning experience from programmes for new joiners to leadership teams.

I call it the A.B.C.D of game-based learning. In this article I’ve chosen to keep this part brief as each of these steps, in detail, could fill an article by themselves, which I hope to publish soon for those interested in delving deeper into the model. So here goes..

THE A.B.C.D framework

Every session should start by giving an introduction to the competencies it covers. This is obvious, of course, but the idea is to go beyond programme coverage and establish context – the WIIFM for the learner. This is better done using appreciative enquiry where you help the learners land the WIIFM for themselves. This helps create buy-in and a reason the learner to stay engaged.

This is done very well using online live polls (god bless mentimeter!) that enable open sharing owing to their anonymity; not everyone may be keen or open for sharing right at the beginning of the programme. This also helps to establish also that your programme is not just about the game, but that the game itself is only a means to an end; the end being immersion.

ACTIVITY

The ACTIVITY or Game sits at the centre of every module. Each activity should be carefully selected in a manner that success or failure in the activity is directly a result of demonstrating (or not) the behaviours associated with that competency. The game environment helps create a non-judgemental, non-threatening and a fun-filled learning atmosphere. Pick activities where your confidence is high in their ability to deliver the desired responses which will in turn will help you land the learning conversation.

BEHAVIOUR

Instinctive responses and real emotions lead the individual and group to make choices and decisions. And these decisions lead them to positive or mixed results. Exploring this ‘Cause and Effect’ forms the basis of all learning where the experience acts as a mirror for the participant, of the gap between knowledge and demonstrated ability. Your job is to provide the right questions that will drive the right reflections so that you may guide the participants into having their own A-ha moments. Patient and mindful exploration is the key, not calling out behaviours or making pointed remarks.

CONTEXTUALIZATION

The next step is to move the participants from generalised learning outcomes to those which are relevant to their own specific job roles and functions. Behavioural competencies are not black and white and may challenge each learner differently.

Each module should contain simple tools or frameworks that will address this critical WIIFM to make the learning personalised and practical. A simple approach will be to map elements of learners’ job roles and aspects or elements of the competency or learning topic. The key is to make it so simple that it is self-explanatory.

DEMONSTRATION

Change, especially in the behavioural context is about creating a new habit or changing an old one. It is therefore important to move the learners from deep learning and realisation to articulating actions, which, when practiced consistently, may become new habits. Learning to Action tools have to be an integral part of every module to complete the learning cycle as the participants leave with concrete actions to be shared and committed to their line managers and stakeholders.

I hope this has interested you enough for me to later put in the effort to provide a guide, templates and sample on how each of the ABCD steps is operationalised.

Keep watching this space.

The post GAME BASED LEARNING – As Easy as ABC (and D) first appeared on Ludogogy.

There are two ways to win most games (AKA Victory conditions). Either reach a certain goal first (get a number of points, reach the last square, checkmate your opponent), or have the most ‘points’ of one kind or another when the end of the game is declared (e.g. the deck runs out of cards or time runs out).

There’s nothing wrong with either of these set-ups. But they tend to promote a certain play dynamic among the players: straightforward competition. Resource acquisition. Racing. Slanting every situation for your own or your team’s advantage. Also, they don’t easily promote complex or nuanced decision-making: you should always make the choice that gives you the most points, or moves you furthest forward in the race.

For learning games, this can be a problem. Is this the approach you want to encourage? Is your learning experience about these approaches and skills? Do you need to develop players’ handling of complexity, or simulate the complexity of real-life decisions and goals? It’s easy to sleepwalk into one of these approaches by default when it’s not the best framing for your game’s learning objectives.

So before you settle on one of these, consider what other set-ups might do for your game, and the way players approach things. I’ve divided other approaches to victory into six broad sections. A detailed analysis of how each game works is beyond the scope of this article, but I hope to provide inspiration and expand your horizons around alternatives. To understand each game’s approach better, I encourage you to look at the games themselves, or better yet, play them.

Ask your players to co-operate

In the most obvious alternative, the players succeed or fail together. The boardgame Pandemic has become a well-known example of this. Players have individual turns and autonomy, but common goals. The result feels very different to more competitive games, and promotes joint problem-solving and co-operation.

A learning game that leverages this dynamic is Colourblind, a communication game originally developed to train Air Traffic Controllers in precise communication. Blindfolded players must communicate information about physical game pieces that they hold, and players succeed when their communication is good enough to correctly match pieces.

The online learning game Evivve does something similar, but emphasises strategizing how each player will contribute their effort towards the common goal. This promotes group discussion and inclusion.

(Terry Wrote a review of Evivve for Ludogogy)

Even if co-operation is not total, allowing for the option of joint wins can create a dynamic where competition can be put aside. The boardgame Cosmic Encounters allows for two or more players to achieve the win condition in the same action, and with it a joint victory. Between Two Cities is another boardgame that makes every action contribute to either a joint effort between the player and their left-hand neighbour, or one with their right-hand neighbour. Any pair can win, but individuals cannot.

Don’t have a set goal at all

Some games have no goals: the goal is to play. Or you can set your own goals. Minecraft is a great example of this. There is no ultimate goal or victory condition. Many people set themselves a goal, to create something, or create their own games within the system. Role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons are also a kind of sandbox limited only by your desires and imagination, as are open-ended computer games like Crusader Kings III. (Also see Terry’s other article about Crusader Kings III)

The ‘life game’ SuperBetter, by Jane McGonigal asks players to nominate things in their real life as ‘allies’, ‘quests’ and ‘power-ups’; goals are set entirely by the player. SuperBetter has been immensely successful in helping people around the world build their personal resilience. Players can set goals that are appropriate to their personal journey and challenges.

Make victory conditions secret or individual

There are many Asymmetric boardgames, such as War of the Ring, based on The Lord of the Rings, where, much like the book and films, one side has to destroy the ring, the other to use it. Their options and resources are built to help them achieve their goal. In the card game Android: Netrunner, one side has to defend a computer system, the other side has to hack it. Each side has cards designed to help them achieve that goal.

The boardgame Argent: The Consortium has ten hidden cards that determine how points are earned at the end. Players must deduce or discover what’s on the cards as part of gameplay. And in the boardgame Ankh-Morpork, players each have a secret victory condition, and other players must figure it out to stop them. The boardgame Dune has a very interesting mechanic, where one player (playing the mystical Bene Gesserit faction) writes down a player and a turn at the start. If that player wins on that turn, the Bene Gesserit player wins instead, which can lead to all kinds of strategic manoeuvring and thoughtful play.

Such arrangements make for more strategic games, with players spending time working out what they should prioritise. This can reflect some real-life situations and skills development, where working out which ladder to climb can be more important than efficient ladder-climbing.

Use more innovative victory conditions

Sometimes changing the dynamic can be as simple as changing the idea of ‘most’ or ‘first’. In the boardgames Ingenious and Tigris & Euphrates, there are a number of different ‘tracks’ that players chart scores on. The winner is the player who, at the end, can say that their lowest-scoring track is higher than anyone else’s lowest-scoring. This promotes broad play that covers many bases, rather than optimising for one thing.

Some games (e.g. the card game Black Maria) just ask you not to lose. Others give two options for a win, such as the card game Seven Wonders: Duel, which allows you to go for a victory based on scientific achievement or one based on military might. Others (e.g. the card game Fluxx, the computer game Baba is You) allow gameplay to change the victory conditions, so that players can’t ever be sure that the route they’re taking will lead to victory, or can change the goalposts partway-through.

The exact effects of these options can vary depending on the set-up, but they all introduce new factors that complicate player decisions, and make them think carefully.

Focus on the margin of victory

In the American Football boardgame, Paydirt, players each select a real-life team, each of which has a rating to reflect their strength. When two teams are mismatched, the player with the stronger team must win by at least the difference in the teams’ ratings to claim a victory.

In Bridge, players in pairs must bid based on their hand strength, predicting how many tricks they will take. The pair with the highest bid has the opportunity to earn points for following through, but bid too high and fail to make the predicted number of tricks, and you end up losing points.

Some boardgames, like Churchill and The Fox in the Forest, award victory for whoever has the most points, unless they have more than a certain amount, in which case they lose. The in-game reason for this is around not rubbing your victory in the faces of those you need to live alongside.

All of these tricks encourage players to assess their strength and make a plan based on that, or aim more precisely at a goal instead of just trying to earn as many points as possible.

Stated goals are not the real victory conditions

Finally, some games pretend that the goal is to win via points, while having a separate, more important, hidden goal. This is quite common in learning games, particularly when you want the players to exhibit and potentially improve on problem behaviours.

A famous example is the Red/Blue Game, a variation on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, where two teams could each maximise their points by cooperating, but often compete by default, with both losing out. Similarly, in Culturallye, players are focused on winning chips, but the real point of the game is to show what happens when new people come into a group or culture, who don’t know all the rules of behaviour.

The original point of Monopoly was to highlight the dangers of unfettered capitalism. The hope of the author was that players would play and realise, to use a quote from the 1980s movie, WarGames, ‘the only winning move is not to play’. A lesson that the computer in that movie applies to Tic Tac Toe, as well as eventually learning about the more serious ‘game’ of global thermonuclear war.

Terry’s innovative learning design tool, The Transform Deck is available to buy from his shop.

The post How victory conditions frame play first appeared on Ludogogy.

Do educational games need winners? This would seem to be a self-evident proposition, and in fact most of this issue of Ludogogy will probably provide ample arguments to that effect. If you’re reading Ludogogy, you probably don’t need a tutorial on the benefits and utility of educational games, but you may feel strongly about the need for a clear set of winning outcomes.

Permit me to offer a dissenting view: that winning, as defined by explicit victory conditions that players compete against one another to achieve, can be an impediment to game-based learning. This argument is primarily focused on teachers seeking to use and adapt games for their classrooms, but game designers may find what I have to say useful as well. To make my argument, I’ll discuss three potential pitfalls to winning in game-based learning, and then offer three avoidance strategies that de-emphasize victories in favor of learning.

The first challenge that winning in educational games presents is the strong possibility of creating unhealthy in- and out-group dynamics in the classroom. Many educational games, such as tabletop games, require playing in groups due to classroom sizes. Even when educational games provide individual roles, they are typically grouped into contingents or factions for ease of management. This understandable organizational strategy has a potentially serious flaw, though. An economic analysis of group dynamics in games found that highly cohesive groups could actually increase the possibility of conflicts among groups.[ii] In other words, groups that are heavily focused on victory may create strong cleavages in the classroom that negatively impact the learning environment.

A second problem is that games which allow early achievement of victory conditions can lead to disengagement by other players. Many of us have experienced this personally in our lived by falling behind in a “friendly” family game of Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit. But this effect is also found in classrooms, as noted in a study of player engagement. The researchers found that reasons for continuing to play a game can differ greatly from reasons for beginning to play a game, with a “negative affect” correlating closely with player disengagement with a game over time. Completion and progression of a game were particularly important for sustained play.[iii] Therefore, a perceived inability to win could easily undermine a game’s potential for engagement.

Winning isn’t everything

Finally, many of us have heard the time-worn phrase “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”[iv] This attitude is prevalent on sports fields and pitches to educate players about the need for a tight focus on winning to the exclusion of secondary concerns. But this perspective can definitely have a negative transfer when brought into the classroom. A study of virtue ethics in games provided a strong recommendation for so-called “inconsequential choices”, which allow for greater experimentation with unfamiliar options and dynamics.[v] This, coupled with other findings that urge games to be perceived as ethical objects and players as ethical agents, suggests that an all-or-nothing approach to victory in educational games is problematic.[vi]

The good news is that there are several avoidance strategies that can help mitigate some of the negative effects just discussed. Game design is a major part of this, with cooperative and collaborative games becoming more and more popular. Some examples in multiple modalities include the Pandemic board game series and the Nordic Live Action Role-Play style. An analysis of both academic and commercial game reviews of collaborative/cooperative games found that interest in these games is steadily rising in recent years. The authors of that analysis speculated that this rise is driven by both greater awareness of these kinds of games and a growing desire to mirror their components in learning environments.[vii]

The effect of diverse teams

Another approach that can have an ameliorating impact on negative winning mechanics, especially in- and out-group dynamics, is to structure the game around diverse and inclusive teams. In one meta-analysis of literature on diversity studies, diverse teams were found to have a positive association with creativity and higher satisfaction with outcomes. The same study found that diverse teams also tended to have greater task conflict and looser social integration; all the more reason to de-emphasize winning conditions.[viii] However, diversity is not a magic wand for increased cohesion; unless that diversity is accompanied by truly inclusive mechanics, teams may actually suffer from greater marginalization of some members and lowered group performance.[ix]

Finally, it is helpful to remember that for many games, the journey is more important than the destination. Rather than putting the focus solely on the game’s outcome, student assignments and work should provide reflective opportunities throughout the game. This may not entirely replace a winning condition, but it can help deflect the sole focus away from that condition to be more broadly inclusive of the entire game experience. A meta-analysis of the literature on serious games concluded that “the positive effect of multiple training sessions on learning is larger for serious games than for conventional instruction methods.”[x] A scholarly study of applying a game-based framework to problem-based learning concurred with this finding, emphasizing the utility of the multi-session nature of the construct.[xi]

There is a time and a place for victory conditions in learning games. Don’t let yourself become so focused on them that you lose sight of the bigger objective: engaging students for learning.

The post Winning is Overrated (in Educational Games) first appeared on Ludogogy.

Have you experienced that feeling of triumph before? The one you get from completing a really difficult level or beating an experienced opponent?  You know, when you throw your hands up over your head in triumph? That feeling is called fiero. Fiero is highly addictive and highly engaging. Often that feeling comes after we’ve become completely engrossed in the game. That’s called being a state of “flow.”

This post will cover the roles that flow, fiero, and games play in shaping our teaching and learning experiences.

Emotions & Player Experience

Games are experiential. They are about the player’s experience. But not education is the same way.  Sometimes when we teach we are highly focused on the instructor, the modality (in person, online, or hybrid), or on the content.

But game designers think of these experiences differently. Game designers pay close attention to the kinds of emotions that games evoke in players.  Educators can do the same. However, most of the time, we’re bogged down with meeting learning outcomes, assessments, and other factors that don’t deal directly with our students’ experience.

But what if there was a way for instructors to reach that high level of student engagement? How about a level of engagement so intoxicating and exhilarating that all individuals lose a sense of time and space?

That’s Flow

Flow is that highly engaging and intoxicating experience. It’s that feeling of being “in the zone,” where time seems to become a blur. This completely engrossing experience directly addresses player engagement. Because, for a time, a player is no longer thinking about whether they should be doing something else. Instead, they are concentrating on the game and nothing else.

This level of commitment is called the engagement curve. And it’s an incredibly important consideration for designers. Engagement is critical for educators as well, because focusing on the student experiences means addressing some of the key areas where flow is most likely to occur. That means creating content that has clear goals, established rules, and increasingly challenging levels of difficulty.

I remember my first time engaging in this level of flow playing a game. It was playing SkiFree on my first computer.  SkiFree is a game where you represent a skier trying to race down a mountain. But there are trees, rocks, and other obstacles in your way. Famously, there’s also a snow monster that comes out to chase you. All I wanted to do was to get away from that snow monster… To this day I never could.

As educators, we are in an ideal position to identify, direct, and design this flow state for our students. Two of the most important characteristics for flow are already included in class designs: clear goals and feedback. Thankfully classrooms are already places of clear goals and feedback. Right?

Let’s think about that for a moment. What was the last syllabus you read? Were the goals from the class completely clear based on what you read? What about getting feedback from an instructor? Did you get that feedback instantly? Was it immediately useful?

Learning design has a lot to gain from incorporating aspects of flow. The innate feeling of progress, the excitement of moving forward, and the general applicable areas of accomplishing something difficult after investing time and effort are incredible forms of feedback.

And what happens when we accomplish that one seemingly impossible task? We celebrate.

Fire in Fiero

Fiero is that celebration. It is the neurochemical phenomena we feel when we’ve invested time and effort into something through our flow state to achieve something difficult.

Fiero is the Italian word for pride which is used to describe this emotional high. Anytime you’ve beat a really hard boss, found that really rare item, or finally defeated your friends at Mario Kart: you’ve experienced fiero.

The funny thing about fiero is that it’s a common reaction across cultures, borders, boundaries, and people. We like to throw our hands up over our head. It’s often accompanied by loud screams and shouts of triumph.  It’s one of the most powerful reactions that we can feel as humans.

Think about the last time you saw a World Cup Soccer match. Player scored a goal? Yeah. That’s fiero.

Combining opportunities for fiero while players engage in a state of flow provides something very addicting and engaging. When players are in this engagement curve they experience an emotional roller coaster. Periods of inactivity, followed by highly engaging activity, followed by moments of triumph or defeat.

It’s that roller coaster of emotions combined with our desire to keep playing that keeps us engaged. That shot of dopamine to the brain when we achieve fiero is highly addictive and something that can be used for design and instruction.

Flow and Fiero

So how does flow and fiero interact and how is it used in design for both games and learning experiences? Fiero is just one aspect of good design and is something that is used to continually engage and entice the player. Too many instances of fiero and the game either becomes too easy or the player is no longer challenged. Too few instances and the game becomes too hard or lacks engagement opportunities.

The roller coaster of moments, the periods of high highs and low lows, is what brings players back into the state of flow. You want to engage them long enough to keep playing but not make the game so easy that it’s no longer challenging.

This is often where you see level design come into play.  Players are presented with challenges, opportunities, and structures to surmount them. After a while, they encounter a larger challenge or a “boss” that they must beat in order to progress. Once they do? They progress to a new level with ever increasingly difficult challenges or decisions. The path continues from there.

Those moments when players encounter a boss and triumph? An element of fiero. Those times when students ace a test? Fiero. When tennis players score the match point? Fiero. The time your students win a case study competition? Fiero.

Games and learning are two sides of the same coin. They can be highly engaging experiences ripe for applications of flow and fiero.

Fiero In the Classroom

Games and learning have long been intertwined. That’s because games are great experiential teachers. They are able to autonomously demonstrate and instruct students on how to succeed and progress. Often this is through the discovery of patterns in games that can be capitalized on over time.

But sometimes the most powerful forms of learning are not fun or engaging. Instant gratification is fun. But that’s called easy fun. For role playing games, easy fun is just walking around the world. But other types of engagement like attempting challenges, fighting bosses, or preparing presentations? That’s hard fun. It’s a type of fun gained only through significant effort on the part of the student or player.

Balancing opportunities for easy fun and hard fun is part of the engagement curve for designing these learning experiences. One way of doing this in the classroom is to provide peer-instruction tools that allow students to become the authors and purveyors of classroom learning.  Another means of providing feedbacks is through developing basic and rudimentary processes in the classroom. Those processes might be slow and difficult at first, but over time become more efficient as the student achieves proficiency.

Designing for Balance

Defining the engagement curve; balancing between flow and fiero; and creating opportunities for easy and hard fun can be difficult. The variables between all of them needs to be robust and that middle point between player exhaustion and player boredom is hard to achieve.

The best balance appears to be between 75% flow and 25% fiero for immersive and enjoyable games.  This was implemented by Blizzard Entertainment when they implemented a 25% drop rate for important items in order to keep players happy and engaged.

We can even see this in modern table top games like Settlers of Catan where die rolls determine if you earn any resources on a turn. Those resources can then be used to build settlements and roads. Both of them give you access to more resources which then give you more access to more settlements. Play then becomes a self re-enforcing active feedback loop.

Takeaways

Flow, fiero, engagement, easy fun, and hard fun are all different aspects and tools that we can use as game designers to engage our players. Educators can also use these tools to help our students learn experientially through games-based learning.

This engagement loop for players have turned them into meta-gamers where they are constantly evaluating and assessing their own play. In a way, they become agents of their own learning. It is a goal that learning designers hope and strive for when creating educational content.

To do this learning design needs to take into account several different aspects to fully engage learners: giving students the autonomy to choose their own goals; the ability to self-assess their own feedback; and the agency to play out the game (or engage with the content) in a manner of their choosing.

Doing so enables your students and learners to maximize those opportunities of getting fired up with fiero.

This article covered fiero from a games-based learning perspective. To learn more about fiero in gamification, check out the free course on Gamification Explained.

If you have enjoyed this article – consider getting yourself lifetime access to his Games-Based Learning Digital Library containing all of the content from the past two Games-Based Learning Virtual Conferences; past webinars and courses he’s created; as well as his complete back catalog of articles; podcast episodes; and videos. And more content is being added all the time.

Readers of Ludogogy can get a $50 discount on this valuable resource by using this link.

The post Fired Up Fiero first appeared on Ludogogy.