Games are capable of helping students learn any number of different skills. Likewise, simulations can be used to help students from one discipline learning something more intuitively than they would from traditional classroom instruction.

One of the most general outcomes for games-based learning is the development of student’s soft skills. These are skills that can be used across a number of different areas, industries, and outlets.

So what soft skills can games be used for? How are games used for soft skills development?

This article will cover the different areas that games-based learning can be used for addressing soft skills development. This article will cover cognitive internal development; relational development; as well as how games can be used to develop students’ communication and creativity. This article will close with actionable items for using games-based learning to achieve these skill competencies.

Cognitive internal development

Digital games often don’t provide any wait time for players. Individuals take single actions and then are immediately awarded. This helps with the feedback loop of players in traditional game design. However, table top games offer a different perspective for players. They often require players take actions now that won’t produce any measurable effects until much further along in the game. In this way, table top games reward students’ patience for continued and engaging play.

Likewise, table top games also test students’ applications of logic and strategy. I recently spent this holiday playing a large and diverse array of table top games with family my same age as well as much younger cousins. Despite the age difference, I saw many applications of logic and strategy in games as simple as Doce and as complex as The Manhattan Project. Each one was challenging in their own right; but the amount of effort needed to excel at both was considerable.

The Manhattan Project is available on Amazon

Lastly, games also facilitate students’ critical thinking and problem solving by posing the most basic question in most scenarios: what moves can I make to help me win the game? These can be as simple as just continuing to survive in endless running games like Temple Run or in heavier games like FTL: Faster than Light. In both scenarios, players must problem solve on the fly and think critically about how decisions they take now will affect their player later on throughout the game.

Relational development

Games do not exclusively help students develop their own internal cognitive development. They can also facilitate their relational development: specifically how their actions affect the state of the game as well as their relationships with other players.

One of the most common types of relational development is through spatial reasoning:

the capacity to think about objects occupying a space and then draw conclusions about how those objects fit in relation to one another.  One of my all-time favorite games Blokus is the king of this genre as players are challenged to get all of their pieces on the board to score the most points. Though other games like Patchwork and Convert also test players’ spatial reasoning capacity.

Blokus is available on Amazon, as is Patchwork

In addition, games can test and reinforce players’ collaborative skills as they work with and for other players in order to achieve their goals.  One of the best table top examples of this is the Matt Leacock line of collaborative games like Pandemic, Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert, and Forbidden Sky. Each one tests players’ abilities to collaborate and cooperate with one another in order to achieve a common goal. More serious players might consider games such as Mage Knight, Gloomhaven, and Spirit Island as options that further push the limits of what is possible from table top cooperating gaming.

Pandemic, Forbidden Island, and Forbidden Desert are all available on Amazon, as are Mage Knight, Gloomhaven and Spirit Island.

Lastly, games test players’ abilities to manage limited resources to achieve their game goals. This is most prominent in modern euro games where any number of player actions are disguised as different things that players can do that turn one thing into another thing which turns into victory points. While that description alone doesn’t sound that enticing, there are entire communities of players who are enthralled by it. Modern classics such as Agricola and Settlers of Catan rely heavily on resource management as a way for players to excel and win the game.

Agricola is available on Amazon, and so is Settlers of Catan.

Communication and creativity

Perhaps one of the most salient aspects of games-based learning supporting soft skills growth is in players’ development of communication and creativity. Both of which come through more highly social and creative games.

Returning to one of my old standby games Balderdash reminded me of the kind of creativity needed to not only think of definitions to obscure words; but to write them in a such a way where other players would vote for them. Likewise, new entrants to the field like Just One require that players take the simple action of selecting just one clue to reveal to a teammate. But the commonality and creativity of that clue is what helps set players apart from one another.

Balderdash is available on Amazon and so is Just One.

Creativity alone doesn’t have to be about creating made up definitions. Working in uncertain conditions where negotiation and interaction are prioritized definitely fall within the domain of games. A favorite large group game of mine Empires relies on the negotiation aspect in order to move play along. The Sheriff of Nottingham emphasizes this even more where interaction and negotiation form the hallmark of the game’s core loop.

Empires is available on Amazon and so is Sheriff of Nottingham.

Communication and creativity seem to be one of the most promoted ways of utilizing games-based learning as games are seen as a way to replace traditional media like lectures, audio, and video. This is particularly relevant when using something like roleplaying and simulations. Both of these represent real life scenarios where students will need to put their learned skills into practice.

While many games can be re-purposed for games-based learning; almost all table top games can be used in one fashion or another to promote communication skills between players. Effective communication is perhaps one of the most important soft skills to develop. And if you ever need a forum to practice it: try explaining 4-5 different board games a week to different players on a regular basis.

Actionable items

Games can be used to meet a great many learning outcomes for educators. The most salient of which is to address communication barriers between students and players. Playing games provides a structure from which educators can scaffold the interactions between players.  Games’ involved formal elements and structures already form the method where individual players can interact with one another.

In addition, educators can praise students’ agency, efficacy, and perseverance in a games-based learning environment. Of course players will want to win; but in most circumstances winning will not be the most important outcome. Therefore, equal focus on making sure that players continue to play and engage is just as important.

Takeaways

This article covered the different areas that games-based learning can be used to address soft skills development. The article covered cognitive internal development; relational development; as well as how games can be used to for students to develop better communication and creativity. This article was about using games for soft-skill development. To learn more about soft-skill development in gamification, check out the free course on Gamification Explained.

If you have enjoyed this article – consider getting yourself lifetime access to Dave’s 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 catalogue 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 Building Soft Skills in Games first appeared on Ludogogy.

The core loop is what most players engage with and remember when they are playing your game. The core loop is the most engaging and active element of your design. The core loop matters whether creating the next great video game; table top game; or games-based learning application.  You’ll need to carefully examine how the core loop attracts and engages your player in order to keep bringing them back to the game.

But what is the core loop? How do you design around it? What are some key mistakes to avoid?

This article outlines what a core loop is as well as provides direction in its design.  Examples of core loops are provided as well as some fatal mistakes to avoid in the design process.

What is the core loop?

The core loop is the primary game system or mechanic which defines your game. This is the element of the game that players remember most frequently or engage with most often. You can think about this as the “engine” for your game and what empowers individual players to keep playing.

The core loop comprises the most basic kinds of actions that players can take. Whether that is moving around the map in League of Legends; drafting cards in Splendor; or platforming across the screen in Super Mario Bros. The genre of your game doesn’t matter. What does matter is making sure that your players continue to engage over time through a well structured core loop.

Splendor is available on Amazon

You can think about your core loop as the lowest level activity that players engage with during your game. In rouge-like learning; you can define these basic actions as something that players engage with and develop over the course of a run. Educators can also use the core loop to develop core competencies for their students. These are competencies that students will return to time and time again during your class in order to progress further in the course.

Design direction with the core loop

The core loop is both a simple design as well as a complex one. But it’s something that many designers struggle with. Especially when establishing a core loop and then designing a game around it.  It’s also important to ask yourself “what kind of experience do I want my player to have?”  That player experience is essential to define in order to convey its essence through your game’s core activities.

A well designed core loop can create a myriad of senses for your players. It can help them feel attached, engaged, or accomplished. Keeping your players challenged through similar activities in your core loop is important to retaining them in your game.

Think about some of the most enjoyable and memorable mobile games you’ve played. They are most likely built around some enjoyable repetitive actions that trigger rewards (feedback loop) for you before you are presented with a new challenge.  That feedback is another loop which forms the larger framework within your game. Those other loops work in tandem, parallel, and in a hierarchy to create larger dynamics in game play.

The development and showcase of your core loop to both players and students is important. Their first interaction with your game is often through the demonstration of your core loop. So if their first impression is not a good one; it may also be their last.

So what makes a good core loop?

In the end your game could have incredible graphics; great table presence; fantastic components; deep mechanics; and a satisfying narrative. But if the core loop is not fun and engaging, then your players will eventually lose interest.

When developing your core loop, you must define a clear goal; keep it short; and connect it well to the theme of your game.

Having a clear goal is paramount to making sure that the loop is a tight one.  Players must relate and equate their actions in the game world and how it affects their status; ranking; and progression.

You can do this best by making sure that your loop is a short one. Have your player take action ‘A’ to get rewards ‘Z.’ That’s it. That’s the only benefit that you need to show players in the meantime. Now building off that loop and reward structure is what will continue to keep players engaged over time.

Best of all: if you can create a clear goal that is connected to a short loop that is ALSO thematic then you have the foundation for a great game on your hands.

One of my favorite gaming memories is playing Super Punchout. It’s a game that doesn’t <ahem> pull any punches. Because it’s a boxing game: it’s about punching your opponent. Everything that the player does in the game goes back to the core loop of the player punching opponents until they win or lose. Everything else is built around the punching core loop. 

Designing around the core loop

Now that you know what makes a good core loop, it’s time to design around it. Those steps revolve around picking an idea that has potential (your mechanic or theme); creating a prototype; and then testing and evaluating it.

The first thing you will want to do is pick out an idea that has potential. That could be a thematic choice or a mechanical element. I’ll use a game that I’m developing right now called Shelf-Life that’s about buying and selling groceries at the super market (exciting right!)  That’s the theme I want to use.  I want this game to be a tableau builder with items going into a common “store” shelf from players’ individual storage shelves. Moving goods from their personal shelves to the store shelf is the main mechanic.

I’ve built my prototype using paper and cardboard components and tested it out with friends and colleagues to determine if this core loop (moving items from personal shelves onto the store shelf to score points) is a solid one. I’ve justified the theme of players taking this action because they all play super market stockers.  Their job it is to keep the shelves stocked as shoppers make their purchases.

After a few play tests I’ve gotten some information about the core loop and its effects on players. They seem pretty engaged with it so far; but sometimes it’s not as simple as I would like it to be. So I’m currently working on changing it up so that there is a stronger connection between player actions and the feedback they receive from it.

Other examples of core loops

There are as many examples of core loops as there are games. So it’s important to play as many different and varied types of games as possible.  This will help acclimatize yourself to the different possibilities and varieties of core loops available.

You don’t even have to play “traditional” video games and table top games. Take classic sports such as soccer, hockey, and basketball. The core loop of those games is to get the ball or the puck into the opponent’s net to score points. Baseball’s core loop is similar in that all plays originate from the batter hitting the ball. That simple element brings much strategic depth to the game given teams, players, and specific scenarios.

Even simple games like Tic-Tac-Toe have a core loop of placing your symbol in one of the starting nine squares. You continue to place your symbol in one of the available squares until one player has achieved three in a row. At its face value it’s a simple core loop of placing your symbol and then evaluating the game state. But you can create and build a game off of this same core loop. Think about Scrabble.  You have a hand of several symbols (letters) that you must place on the board (in a specific order) to get a result (points from words created).

Fatal mistakes to avoid

Now that you know what a core loop is, as well what makes one great and engaging, it’s necessary to review some mistakes to avoid in your design process.

One of those mistakes is forgetting to include a core loop. Rather, some designers collect a series of disparate and unrelated “activities” that don’t keep a user engaged while demonstrating progress. If you can’t demonstrate to players why they are playing and why should continue playing with the core loop; then you may already have lost them.

However, if you are going to keep players around, you also have to reward (or reinforce them) for their activity. The core loop should end with a pleasurable experience. A player should get something; improve their position; or otherwise advance the game state to where they can see their own progress through their actions.

It’s the lack of evidence of progress that dooms many other games in general. A game can have a significant core loop; but without a demonstration that they’re making some headway they can quickly become disengaged.  A classic educational example of this is not returning students’ work in class with substantive feedback in the form of notes or a grade. Without that kind of feedback; students don’t know where to go next; what to prioritize; or how to improve their position in the game (i.e. your class).

Takeaways

Excellent core loops make it a priority to entice and engage players more and more so that they continue to play and stay involved.  Understanding the core loop is a critical part of designing your game. Having a core loop as the base of your game makes it so that all actions; activities; rewards; and outcomes originate from the same place.

This article outlined a core loop is as well as provided direction in its design.  Examples of core loops were provided as well as some fatal mistakes to avoid in the design process.

To learn more about core loops in gamification, check out the free course on Gamification Explained.

If you have enjoyed this article – consider getting yourself lifetime access to Dave’s 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 catalogue 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 Core Loops in Games first appeared on Ludogogy.

Sometimes you’ll play a competitive game where you realize that you can’t win anymore. It’s kind of depressing to think about. However, there are things that you can do and actions that you can take that will help someone else win. This scenario is called “kingmaking.”

This article will define and outline what a kingmaking scenario is. A history of kingmaking will be discussed as well as reasons that it may arise in different situations. Kingmaking as a spoiling tactic in game mechanics will also be covered. Kingmaking in tournament situations and table top games will be included. Finally, kingmaking can have an adverse impact on both player agency and the player experience. Both areas will be discussed in addition to how kingmaking takes effect in scenarios outside of games.

What is a kingmaking scenario?

Kingmaking is often described as a negative effect in game play. However, the definition includes someone who can still wield their own power, agency, and influence. They just cannot do so in order to win the game. Instead, the best that they can do is help (or hurt) someone else’s chances of winning and being picked as “king.”

Kingmaking in game theory surrounds the end game scenario where a player has the ability to make a winning move for another player.  This is often seen as a negative effect of game design due to limited player agency. While the player does still have the capability of making a choice; they cannot make a choice that secures their own victory.

This can also be referred to as a “lame-duck” situation where someone can take actions that doesn’t have any positive beneficial effect for themselves or their interests. This is often a terrible situation to be in because the player often realizes that they cannot win.

This gives rise to certain options that the kingmaker has. Do they keep playing to maximize their score and improve their position despite their inability to win? Should they ignore other players and make the best “sound” move?

All of these are considerations for what players can or should do in the game. However, knowing some history about kingmaking and how it has become part of the common game vocabulary is worth noting.

History of kingmaking

Kingmaking was first identified as an English term by Richard Neville who served as the 16th Earl of Warwick. In his position, Richard played an instrumental role in the deposition of Henry VI during the War of the Roses, which lead to his replacement by Edward IV. This later resulted in Warwick turning against Edward and restoring Henry to the throne.

It’s from this historical interaction that we identify kingmaking. Richard Neville was able to exact agency and power in the political affairs of the country. However, it was not enough in order to secure the throne for himself. Instead, he could only choose the next successor to the throne.

This represents the English origin of the term “kingmaker” in 1599. However, it would take some time before the term became common usage in scenarios other than the original historical one.

The more common and modern applications of the term are still used to identify specific political situations. However, it now encompasses scenarios and situations in games and game theory as well.

Reasons behind kingmaking

Sometimes kingmaking is done purposefully; sometimes it’s done out of spite; or sometimes it is done out of ignorance or lack of acknowledgement of the other players. Yes, kingmaking makes is so that players don’t have much recourse given the set of actions presented to them. However, the act of kingmaking has its biggest impact when it’s done out of spite.

That’s because spiteful activities don’t really adhere to the playfulness and magic circle of games. Spiteful activity subverts the acknowledgement of why players play to begin with. However, when in a kingmaking situation, there are a few options that players have at their disposal.

The first option is usually to make the best scoring play possible. This may leave the game open for other players to make an even bigger scoring playing; however that is not up to you. This entails making the best possible move given your circumstance to win the game (even if it is likely that you will not).

Another option for players is to play for “justice.” That is to reward players that might have had a hand in helping you through the game. This could be from another player who gave you’re a resource; a hand of cards; or didn’t select an option that would have negatively affected you.

However, these options do seem to skirt on the edge of the magic circle. By agreeing to play a game; we’ve agreed to adhere to the rules and spirit of the game. This sometimes means that more experienced players could be the target of “reductive play” that might reduce their ability to win.

This can expand into more experienced or regular players who often engage with one another. In those circumstances; players that seem to win more frequently than others may become the target of these “reductive plays” and may not benefit from positive kingmaking activities.

Kingmaking as spoiling

Kingmaking (when taking into account actions outside of the magic circle of games) can be seen as spoiling the game. Returning to the origin of kingmaking with Richard Neville, this activity can be interpreted as spoiling an experience that should rightfully be won by other players based on merit.

This is perhaps the reason why kingmaking negatively affects the player experience: because it is considered an undesirable resolution to the activity of the game. Since a player cannot win; their only options are to take actions that can only result in other players winning.

Therefore, one player’s strategy in kingmaking is when they take an action which directly benefits another player (direct action). Otherwise, the kingmaker could take an action which helps another player while also affecting their own final ranking in the game (indirect action).

These are actions that can be taken by kingmakers near the close of the game or during endgame phases. However, kingmaking could also be interpreted as a series of activities that progressively helps another player benefit unfairly – not just at the end. This can happen in poker when players “play softly” against a specific opponent in order to setup them for other hands as the game (or tournament) progresses.

This kind of player behavior skews into areas of collusion where individual players or teams fail to play at the best of their ability in pursuit of the common goal of the game. This can occur in sports when “running down the clock” or otherwise using delaying tactics that are outside the scope of more traditional play activities.

Kingmaking in game mechanics

Design of game mechanics can go a long way in mitigating these kingmaking scenarios. However, these situations cannot always be avoided in more advanced and complex games. Despite this, there are considerations that game designers can undertake that would aid them in mitigating these types of scenarios.

One of the most common design choices is to obscure victory points or progress towards victory conditions. Not possessing perfect information about the game state can help players retain agency while also preserving the feeling of the ability to win despite their current situation.

A hybrid situation can also be implemented in game design. This can take the form of a score track that is public knowledge while players hold onto a hand of cards that is private knowledge. The value of the hidden hands of cards is then revealed at the end of the game to indicate the final score. Ticket to Ride implements this practice in its design.

Ticket to Ride is available on Amazon

Kingmaking in tournaments

There is one instance in which kingmaking in gaming can have an inexorable impact on the validity of a fair contest. That’s when kingmaking scenarios occur in tournaments. This is because tournaments often provide scenarios where contestants are already guaranteed placement in the next round of play. However; they may use their future play to influence which other contestants make it to the next round.

This gives rise to tournament strategies that use kingmaking to their advantage. This is because it is often strategically important to help weaker contestants proceed to future rounds of play. This makes the playing field for the kingmaker as easy as possible.

Kingmaking in these tournament scenarios and more competitive games is where the phenomenon becomes annoying for players and tournament officials alike. While rules can be created by game makers and referees; it appears that kingmaking cannot always be totally eliminated in these circumstances. Instead, its effects can only be reduced or mitigated.

Kingmaking in tournaments is particularly harmful because contestants caught in such scenarios could be accused of cheating or collusion. Perhaps one of the applicable ways of addressing this is asking contestants to conceded tournament games in which their win has no effect on their progress within the event.

Kingmaking in table top games

Kingmaking can occur in many different types of games: especially table top games. Kingmaking has a particularly influential effect in games with high degrees of player interaction such as Diplomacy; The Godfather; or Survive: Escape from Atlantis.

Diplomacy is available on Amazon

One of the aforementioned ways of dealing with kingmaking in games is to hide the victory point track. Puerto Rico does this in order to conceal which player is in the lead. The introduction of this hidden element supports the ability for all players to believe that they have a chance of winning through the end of the game.

However, kingmaking can and does still occur in other games. Kingdomino for instance provides opportunities at the end game for players to draft tiles that may only help them a little; but hurt the winning chances for the remaining players.

Kingdomino is available on Amazon

Likewise, Viticulture players could fulfill an order during the end game to ensure that they finish second. Whereas another player could have used the space to potentially win.

Viticulture is available on Amazon

Despite this, there are instances in games where players can determine that they are not in a position to win and therefore have no more agency to affect the outcome. This can occur in Dominion when players discover that there are no longer enough VP cards left in order to stage a comeback.

Dominion is available on Amazon

No more is kingmaking more frustrating then when it is informed by metagaming experiences. This can occur when players work with each other to stop a more experienced player from winning in spite of negatively affecting their own play.

Survive: Escape from Atlantis is available on Amazon

However, kingmaking does have its place in some games: especially those games that involve much negotiation and interaction between players. Games such as Cosmic Encounter; The Sheriff of Nottingham; and Empires involve much interaction and negotiation. Thus kingmaking might even be a thematic and welcoming player interaction within the game.

Cosmic Encounter is available on Amazon

Kingmaking and player agency and experience

Perhaps one of the most negative aspects of kingmaking is removing the agency of players and thus affecting the player experience. That’s because in these scenarios players can no longer play for themselves. Instead their actions (at best) can only affect other players.

The Sheriff of Nottingham is available on Amazon

Thus, making moves that might otherwise negatively impact the game experience for other players could be seen as unsportsmanlike and not adhering to the rules of the magic circle. This could take place by players intentionally slowing the game down or otherwise taking illogical moves.

Empires is available on Amazon

Despite this, players always have the option for finishing better than their peers through the remaining actions that they take. While they might not be able to win; they could potentially still do relatively better than the rest of their competition.

Kingmaking has a potentially disastrous impact on casual games when players realize that they can no longer win and must still continue to play the game through its conclusion.  Such a position is not enviable for anyone and overall negatively impacts the player experience.

Kingmaking outside of games

Kingmaking originated outside of games. Its basis was a political move by actors who could only make the decision to decide the next king. For applications in modern democracies; kingmaking could be considered antithetical. This is again because it provides the choice to choose a leader without having the ability to nominate oneself.

Finally, kingmaking could even be seen as a benefit in certain scenarios. One of them is the TV series Survivor where the last seven to ten contestants who have been voted out form a jury that chooses a winner from the last two contestants. In this situation, kingmaking can be a dramatic addition to the reality show game.

Takeaways

This article addressed the kingmaking scenario in games as well as its historical origins.  Reasons behind kingmaking were discussed as well as how this effect is interpreted as a spoiling activity in game play.  Kingmaking in game mechanics were covered in addition to how kingmaking can adversely affect tournament scenarios.

Finally, kingmaking in table top games were discussed and how its effects and influences both player agency and the player experience. Kingmaking outside of games were discussed in relation to politics and reality television.

This article was about the kingmaking in games.  To learn more about gamification, check out the free course on Gamification Explained.

If you have enjoyed this article – consider getting yourself lifetime access to Dave’s 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 catalogue 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 What is Kingmaking? first appeared on Ludogogy.

I tend to think of this principle frequently – basically, how can we get people to interact with a product, a service, or a concept such that they are introduced to it in the easiest possible way? The goal should be to make the first interaction happen so seamlessly that they feel it’s something simple and useful, which encourages them to dive further. After all, if something is too complicated, it’s likely to not generate interest or confidence.

In analogue games, you are interacting with the objects inside it directly, making it a direct application of the aforementioned principle of tactile stimulus. As soon as you are introduced to a game and its storyline, your resources and characters are all in your hands, both literally and figuratively. This is also why enthusiasts relish their collections, the meeples, the boards – they represent the experiences they had with these items. With that primer, I would like to to talk further about what makes the cardboard medium games uniquely powerful.

They are undeniably social

Sometimes games let us play ourselves – in party games, for example, we are not taking on new roles. We are bringing our own personality to games like Truth Or Dare, where mechanics like Disclosure are used in ‘Truth’ to reveal our true feelings about something (or someone). In many other games, we are required to step into the shoes of a different character, lending us to perspectives we don’t get to experience otherwise. Character sheets are used in RPGs to create personalities with some degree of control, and fascinating backgrounds that serve a purpose. Sometimes these backgrounds also lead to side plots that shed light into the psyche of the character. As a result, RPGs have been shown to improve social and emotional learning, and discussions on taboo topics.

When I talk about the social aspects of tabletop games, I usually start with Modern Art. The players operate as museums from fashionable cities like Milan and Paris, dealing in paintings from famous artists. In various rounds, through auctions and bidding, players have to buy and trade paintings, to obtain the most valuable collection and win the game. When I played this game a few years ago with absolute strangers, I was placing outlandish bets from the very start. It caused a lot of humorous frustration in the other players because of my unpredictable gameplay, keeping them on the edges of their seats. In just 30 minutes, we were all ablaze on the table. I also enjoyed listening to some commentary on the paintings from the players, and how they’d be proud to snatch it from my rogue grasp – which brings me to the next point.

Modern Art is available on Amazon

They are competitive – and fun

Psychologically, we are wired to feel proud of ourselves upon completing a task. One of the most important uses of gamification is making tasks fun so that we complete them. Achieving this becomes more convenient when we include the mechanics of competition into the mix. Anybody who has been to a long board game session can testify how intense it can get, bringing people to promises of ending their friendships.

Inside a room like that, everyone is playing to win, to explore a new tactic, and sometimes to induct newcomers into a favorite game. The atmosphere generates possibilities of competing, which is a psychological construct that motivates us to push on even when we are tired. It’s the reason gamification tactics like leaderboards work so well.

Self-improvement as a result of competition is the reason why we are more motivated to work out when our friends post their cycling journeys on Strava. In the same way, competing for rewards and resources brings a sense of urgency to a tabletop game. A classic example in this regard is Ticket To Ride. It has comparatively simpler mechanics and ways of completing the game, making its strategies more approachable to the rookie player. At the end of a game, it’s simple to ascertain what decisions and strategies could have been played better. Often, in Ticket To Ride, it’s easy to observe what a competing player did correctly, as this game’s progress and movement is visible on the board for everyone. We therefore compete better in the games to follow, and know exactly how to play the game. The sense of achievement we feel by making progress on something that’s fun is a central pillar of tabletop games culture, which is achieved by healthy competition.

Ticket to Ride is available on Amazon

They improve us

The evident connection of tabletop games with awareness is becoming more popular in recent years. It is a commonplace understanding that stories create deep empathy and connection with a setting and character. Games are essentially storylines with more choices and mechanics, at the end of the day. As a result, games are a medium that educates us about the intricacies of a situation by taking us through the experience, which is way better than a second-hand written account. Since first-hand experience is not always feasible to achieve, games fill in this gap.

Games can be defined and designed around a topic or theme, and playing it can inculcate a sense of curiosity and exploration. In the aforementioned games Modern Art and Ticket To Ride, some of the comments from newcomers have been downright amazing. They called Modern Art a crash course in understanding paintings – and that was not even the central part of the game! They said that apart from the auctioning, bidding, and social deception in the game, the conversations on common practices like layering and glazing gave them awareness they had simply not anticipated.

On the other hand, Ticket To Ride was applauded for introducing to them the geographies of the USA and Europe in a way they had not seen before. For people who do not get regular exposure to the cities in these continents, the knowledge is mostly based on what we hear about in the news, movies, etc. There is no reason for a movie to talk about a story which is based in Montréal, Atlanta, Dallas, etc. unless the story actually demands it. But since that is not the case usually, we might know their existence but not their location. After playing a game of Ticket To Ride, these very players were highly confident about the situations of such places on the map, even gaining secondary knowledge like their (approximate) distance from the coast.

Using board games for bringing a culture of experimentation, enquiry, and learning, is a severely underrated application. I’d like to make a callback to the first anecdote from the very beginning of this article –  that interaction with a MacBook that makes you just 1% more confident and aware about what the device feels like, what the wallpaper looks like, what the screen looks like, how the keys are placed. Just by achieving this, you feel a lot more optimistic about the product, as it opens a mental conversation inside you, with growing curiosity. Tabletop games introduce you to topics and people – sometimes in a deeper level, sometimes at a rookie level. The feedback mechanism wherein you express something and get a positive or negative response is short and fast in these games, and that’s what makes them an essential tool of the modern social learner.

The post Playing your Cards Right – Walkman Lab first appeared on Ludogogy.

Building Blocks of Tabletop Games Design is available on Amazon

The authors make no claim of completeness, and indeed mention a couple of times in the foreword that they are not aiming to write an exhaustive list of mechanics, but it wasn’t until this week that I ever thought there was anything ‘missing’ from this excellent book.

I started to write this article, which is intended to look at ‘Social’ mechanics and structures in games, and naturally I turned straight to ‘Building Blocks’, which was when I noticed there was no ‘Social’ section, gathering together those mechanics which (the way I see it) use players themselves as ‘pieces’ in the game, manipulate player dynamics and relationships, and otherwise ‘play with’ people.

Some of the mechanics I am referring to are in the book, of course, but they are sprinkled throughout the sections. Many others are absent altogether, and I would argue, are missing precisely because a ‘Social’ category has not been included.

Game Structure

Engelstein largely deals with player interaction in the ‘Game Structure’ category, as it is here where the very basic rules about how players interact are contain. Are they competing, co-operating, playing as individuals or teams? Is the activity designed to be experienced alone or with others?

Two interesting game structures here are the Single Loser game and the Traitor Game. The former always reminds me of the old joke about the couple who are at the zoo, when the lion escapes. One person starts to run, and the other says ‘You’ll never outrun the lion’, to which she replies ‘I only need to outrun you’.

The Traitor game is somewhat more popular, and some outstanding games have been created recently. Secret Hitler is a great example, where players unaware of each other’s identity, work towards the goals of one of two sides, and are occasionally forced into acting in a way characteristic of the other side. My absolute current favourite, however, is Shamans, which extends the secret role mechanic by having a neat ‘ritual’ mechanic which changes players secret roles mid-game, which can lead to frantic strategic backtracking to head off the consequence you yourself have been working towards.

Shamans is available on Amazon as is Secret Hitler

Clearly, a game is not a game until it is played. So, there is a social aspect to every mechanic, rule and characteristic of a game. But for me, the criteria which separates the mechanics I think of as specifically ‘social’ from the rest is that they utilise social interaction or dynamics as an experience in the game.

Social Deduction and Hidden Goals

Some of the following are not strictly ‘mechanics’, either, but are characteristics, ways of playing (desirable and otherwise), which arise from the inclusion of certain mechanics and rules.

The Traitor Game is a subset of Social Deduction games, which is itself a subset of the Hidden Role game.  In a social deduction game, it is part of the point of the game to discover the hidden role. But a hidden role does not always need to be discovered. Very often, hidden roles, and the goals which go with them are present in the game to provide differing motivations, and thus asymmetry to the game play.

Of course, roles and goals will not only inform the player’s own decisions and actions, but how they interact with other players too. Such mechanisms in learning games, provide a useful way to facilitate learnings around systems-thinking, and organisational and team dynamics, for example.

An interesting structure for such a game would not go as far as being a Traitor Game, but would nevertheless give ostensibly co-operative players differing roles, which might stymie their attempts to work effectively together towards a common strategy, thereby providing a pretty accurate analogue for the average department-based workplace.

Nor do differing roles have to be hidden. Even in games where plays can (theoretically) have complete knowledge of the goals of other players – take Root – A Game of Woodland Might and Right – each of the ‘factions’ in the games has differing moves and goals and therefore completely different strategies. The visibility of these strategies to all players makes it no less challenging to try to forward your own ends while blocking others from achieving theirs.

There is often much emergent complexity in such asymmetric games, as when playing a game where you all have the same goal, it is much easier to hold in mind both what you want to do, and what you need to stop opponents doing, than if their a multiple differing options for each of these.

Starting to get nasty

There is a whole class of games (often ‘party games’) where one plays as oneself, by which I mean that the games asks the real ‘you’, not some in-game character to make moves and take decisions based on your actual beliefs, values or other ‘real’ characteristic.

One frequent mechanic of such games is ‘Disclosure’, where you are asked to reveal something about yourself. Truth or Dare would be the classic example of this and also contains the ‘Social Manipulation’ mechanic – where the magic circle provides leverage to make players do what they would not ordinarily do ‘because it’s the rules’.

The 1980s game Scruples took disclosure to extremes, calling upon players to reveal their moral compass in response to various moral dilemmas – and is probably up there amongst the most friendship-breaking games of all time.

Scruples is available on Amazon (if you dare)

While party games which are actually designed to cause disagreements might be seen as somewhat unpleasant, some games recognise that the immersion that some from play (as opposed to less interactive forms of entertainment like films or TV) can be potentially damaging to social bonds.  Fog of Love comes with a specific warning that players should be very wary of confusing their in-game relationship, with their own real-life relationship.

Fog of Love is available on Amazon

Emergent behaviours and game characteristics

What is most interesting to me from a games for learning perspective, is the kinds of gameplay and behaviours that emerge from ‘social’ mechanics. Some of these are clearly designed for, and form part of the ‘official’ gameplay.

However, perhaps inevitably when people themselves become playing pieces, or like in some Traitor Games, or ‘Disclosure’ games, you are playing with people’s values and sense of fairness, there is some blurring of the line between one’s ‘in-game’ and ‘real-life’ persona. The Magic Circle becomes very permeable indeed. This can be a desirable outcome, if you are using the game to facilitate deep reflections in the affective domain of learning, but it should be approached with caution.

Furthermore, many less desirable modes of play can emerge, leaving players feeling vulnerable and unhappy. Some player experiences / behaviours are discussed below:

Alliances

Some games (cooperative or semi-cooperative) feature ‘official’ alliances, while many others lend themselves to players making unofficial pacts to help one another, to either further their own ends or to ‘bring down’ another player. Sometimes such alliances ‘bend the rules’ – sharing information or resources that the rules do not strictly allow. While alliances can provide valuable learning about working as a team, negative outcomes can be that such alliances impact the perception of ‘fairness’ in a game , or even make some players feel ‘ganged up’ on.

Politicking

Most games include an element of preventing progress by other players, alongside trying to advance one’s own. Games with lots of opportunities for targeting other players will tend to lead to politicking. If in addition to ‘targetting’ mechanics (voting and judging mechanics as seen in Secret Hitler or Cards Against Humanity respectively, are good examples), the game includes social mechanics which influences one’s feeling towards another player (disclosure, social manipulation etc.), we have a recipe for policticking behaviour.

Such behaviour might include lying in wait, appealing directly to players to behave in certain ways, setting players against each other with a view to mopping up the spoils later, threatening and so on.

Revenge, Kingmaking and other options

An extreme outcome would be to adjust one’s stategy with a view to hurting the play of one person (maybe even at the cost of your own position), maybe because they hurt you previously, or because you don’t like what they have revealed in the game.

Making use of relative positions in play is a common form of politicking – both turn order or current position in terms of closeness to winning.  For example, if an alliance has opted to target a player, but you are not the last player before the targetted player to take a turn, you can force a following player to take an action while reducing the obligation /cost to yourself.

When one’s own position in a game is such that you cannot win, some players opt for Kingmaking as an alternative. Perhaps this reflects the human need to feel in control of a situation. If I cannot win myself, I can at least impose my decision of who should win instead.

Offering ‘out-of game’ inducements for ‘in-game’ favours can be used in the absence of appropriate ‘in-game’ leverage. I have seen fetching drinks and food, or even the threat of withdrawing a promised lift home, all effectively used to manipulate a fellow player into making a certain play.

While much of the above may seem unpleasant, they are all very ‘human’ behaviours, which happen in real life, so with the caveat that no-one should ever leave a play session feeling genuinely hurt, it is definitely worth thinking about how social mechanics for both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ behaviours can be effectively used (or allowed, or disallowed) in learning settings.

The post People as Pieces – Social Mechanics in Games 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.

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.

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