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What games taught me

KahWee Teng
September 12, 2014
54

What games taught me

What is it in games that makes you continue to play? Can we apply game thinking and mechanics to motivate ourselves?

KahWee Teng

September 12, 2014
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Transcript

  1. Menu of the day 1. What makes a game a

    game? 2. Common features in games 3. Applying gamification 2
  2. What makes a game a game? ! ! ! !

    ! ! ! ! (P.S. This is the best stock photo in the internet.) 3
  3. Waiting in a restaurant • Waiters are busiest during dinner

    time • High stress • Surely this is not a lot of fun 4
  4. Waiting in a game • Join Flo the most hardworking

    waitress of an American- styled diner in Diner Dash • Flo does these by herself: • Seats customers • Brings them food • Clears the dishes 5
  5. Fighting a war in Shanghai • Typically a high risk

    activity for the individual • Casualty is unavoidable • Not entirely sure why Shanghai is targeted 6
  6. Fighting a war in game • The new Xbox One

    game Battlefield 4 brings the player to a near-impossible scenario of taking over territory in the "China Rising" DLC pack. • Unsurprisingly, it is banned in China. 7
  7. Controlling air traffic in airport • Highly stressful • Air

    traffic controllers are being rotated every few hours to keep them alert 8
  8. Controlling air traffic in game • In the excellent simulation

    game, Flight Control, players assume the role of an expert air traffic controller to guide airplanes safely to a runway while preventing possible collision. • Costs 0.99 USD in iTunes • 4.5 stars • HD version also available now 9
  9. Why are banal activities becoming games? • It’s not about

    being a waitress or controlling traffic at all! • It’s the mechanics that makes a game fun 10
  10. What are experience points • Experience points (EXP) is just

    a number to reflect progress to gaining a new level. • Each time you kill a monster, you gain bits of EXP 21
  11. PAYDAY 2 I see a lot of numbers, must be

    good Excellent! Level up! Now to Level 66.
  12. Experience points and levelling • Experience points show progress •

    Players are conditioned that the higher the level, they get access to more features in the games. E.g. • Can wield better weapons, armours and items • More story progression • More skills and abilities • A status symbol 24 Showing progress and not telling you how many more
  13. – UrbanDictionary.com. Postmodern authority in English “Achievement unlocked is the

    official phrase used on Microsoft's Xbox console. The phrase appears on the screen after the player has accomplished a specific in-game task.”
  14. Viva Pinata in Xbox You get an achievement for making

    friends You have 37 achievements, you need 50.
  15. Achievements • Encourage users to try out features in game.

    • Be acknowledged of tiny wins to reach a bigger goal. • Status symbol, again. 30 Motivation 101
  16. Objectives and rewards • Objectives needs to clear and guided.

    • People don’t like to feel lost. • Rewards verify that the user is on the right path. Examples: • Can be just a tick beside an objective. • Can be a free item • More Experience points and achievements! 34 Todo list
  17. What to learn from game mechanics? • Objectives are clearly

    listed.! • Usually a main story mission and optional side quests. • Measurables are important.! • Know where you are and how much you have done. • Use achievements and rewards to validate behavior.! • Overdoing it is costly. 36 Key performance indicators Top 5 / MIT Awards and recognition
  18. Gamification, what is? • Gamification is the use of game

    thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users in solving problems. 38 What we just learnt! Tremor Video Knowledge work You & I
  19. Case study: To-do list • To-do lists are a list

    of goals you have. • It’s good to break down the goals into smaller sub-goals. • You have to put them in relevant buckets. • Each time you finish a task you progress a bucket by striking off the task. • The feeling of striking off is the Reward. • The number of items you strike off is the Measurable. 45
  20. Case study: To-do list • Why do we gather things

    in a list? • Give you a sense of volume of the stuff you have to deal with • It lets you know where the “end of the tunnel” is • when you’re doing the actual work, you don’t want to be distracted by all the stuff that you might still need to do. This allows you to operate in a state of enhanced focus and control 46 Getting Things Done by David Allen
  21. Karma — Auto test runner Dynamically watches of changes and

    reports results in the background 51 Change aware. Autowatch. Progress bar (not as pretty) Success count Test case coverage Component Japadog
  22. Case study — Improve JS code quality • Determine what

    will Objective is. • Team should code consistently • We can test for code style compliance, e.g. JSHint • Count the number of failures. Reach zero JSHint warnings. • Code performs as reliably • We can write test cases • Get the percentage of test case successes. Reach 100%. • Get percentage of coverage for test cases. Reach 70%. 52 I want customers to use a glitch-free Analytics console Arbitrary value
  23. Case study — Improve JS code quality • Pitfalls •

    You can write silly test cases to gain coverage. • Mitigated by code review. • You can write true === true test cases to push success percentage. • Mitigated by code review. • There are 2 fundamental assumptions:! 1. improving code quality leads to lesser to-be-reported defects,! 2. close-to-zero reported defects translate to quality product 53
  24. Case study — Improve JS code quality • We need

    to make up proxy measurables and agree that they matter. • We count defects fixed • We count test cases covered • Other real life usages of these proxies • Per-capita GDP serves as a proxy to quality of life 54
  25. Monetary rewards Pay rise and tokens of appreciation ! !

    ! ! ! (I’m not sure if that’s a stock photo of a robber or a well-deserving employee.) 56
  26. Choosing the right reward • Should there be a reward?

    • There was a trial program in US to encourage students to read by paying them by the number of books they read (Measurable). • The students did read more books, however, they were found to read thinner books. • Why is money a bad reward here? 58
  27. Choosing the right reward • Daniel Pink explains that extrinsic

    motivators like cash doesn’t work when people are given lateral-thinking tasks • In fact, when cash is introduced as a motivator, people’s performance on creative or complex tasks drops. • Therefore cash rewards are not ideal for incentivizing creative thought process. • In the case of reading, the reward is having to read. That is intrinsic. 59 Drive by Daniel Pink
  28. Case study: Open-source • MIT management professor Karim Lakhani and

    BCG consultant Bob Wolf surveyed 648 open-source developers to understand why they participate in these projects. • They found “that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver.” • A large majority of programmers, the researchers discovered, reported that they frequently reached the state of optimal challenge called “flow.”. 60 Drive by Daniel Pink
  29. Criticisms towards gamification • No matter what the player thinks,

    the house will always win in a well- designed game. • The illusion of winning is vital to motivating players, this may reduce significance to bigger goals. (Keep grabbing low hanging fruits.) • It’s hard to make a perfect system and people can exploit a poor system. E.g, children reading thinner books. 61
  30. Should we gamify the workplace? • Maybe. Maybe not. •

    We can however make Objectives and Measurables obvious, make recommendations and enable everyone to define their own successes. Rewards come in to validate we are on the right path. 62