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Games

Current Issues in Web TechnologyMichael Heron

+Introduction

Games are big business. In 2011, UK gamers spent three billion on the industry.

Games advertise on television.

Big game launches are worthy of television news coverage.

There are massive conventions dedicated to games of all types. And games of any type.

The ‘internet culture’ is full of memetic references to games, and tributes to the forms. Such as the dozens of game webcomics and review videos.

+So?

But why should you, as a Serious Professional care about games? You should care because games contain with them very

valuable lessons for how to build our own projects.

While games are (supposed to be) fun and (supposed to) tell a story, that’s not all they are. They are tremendously efficient teaching engines. They can create a positive mental state known as flow. They are ruthless engines for creating addiction.

This has led to a research field of known as serious games. And an associated topic known as hard fun.

+The First Serious Games

Perhaps the first serious game was The Oregon Trail (1971). It was designed to teach children about pioneer life on the

Oregon Trail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GH0-hr1u_k

The player leads the party of settlers from Missouri to Oregon. And along the way have all kinds of whacky adventures like

dying of dysentery.

A huge number of variants have been developed over the years.

And its popularity has resulted in it having considerable memetic popularity.

+The First Serious Games

One of the earliest examples of a Serious Game was the vignette driven ‘Alter Ego (1984). http://www.playalterego.com/

The design of the game was derived from hundreds of psychological interviews and written by a qualified psychologist.

The aim was to allow people to explore the consequences of their decisions in a safe, sand-box environment. Similar in general subject matter to The Sims, but a

serious game.

+The First Serious Games

Will Wright’s Sim City (a precursor to the Sims) was a city simulator in which players took on the role of mayor of a city they created themselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKI2SI9mp8I

Despite its relatively primitive look, it and its descendants have been used in universities across the world to teach lessons in urban planning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Wp1e3UqGoQ

Electronic Arts, in deference to its role as a teaching tool, have donated it to the one laptop per child project.

+The First Serious Games

Sid Meier’s Civilization places the player in the position of an immortal leader from history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_28ZS3jcgA

Technologies are researched by the player. When they are researched, an encyclopaedic description is

given.

Technologies have pre-requisites, requiring a technology tree to be traversed.

This has been used to within schools to give a context for history lessons.

+Other Serious Games

Games have also been used to highlight sensitive political issues. Darfur is Dying

http://www.darfurisdying.com/

They have been used to create positive impressions of organisations. Such as the American Army who used games to recruit:

http://www.americasarmy.com/

They have been used to train police officers. http://www.policeone.com/police-products/training/articles/

5468350-Video-game-just-for-cops-NH-trains-cops-with-simulators/

+Why?

Why has so much effort been spent on making serious games? Why not just make serious educational tools?

Have you ever worked with educational software? On the whole, it’s dire.

Early educational games missed an important element of the formula. They weren’t fun.

And yet, nowadays… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJFHPD5R8y0

+Games gotta be fun, yo

Games have to be fun before they trigger the benefits we talked about earlier. Flow Learning Addiction

However, it’s hard to define specifically what it is that makes games fun. We know it when we see it.

It’s surprisingly difficult to even define what is meant by a ‘game’

+Why are games fun?

Game playing is core to humanity. And many other animals.

We learn through play. As do animals.

Dogs learn what is an acceptable level of biting by playing with other dogs.

Raph Koster phrases it – ‘After all, the young of all species play’

Even games as sophisticated as Chess have been played for millennia.

+Crawford and Koster

Chris Crawford and Raph Koster believe that games are fundamentally tools for learning. They are engines for providing opportunities for people to make

interesting decisions and develop mastery. Koster - In other words, games serve as very fundamental and powerful

learning tools. It's one thing to read in a book that 'the map is not the territory' and another to have your armies rolled over by your opponent in a game. When the latter happens, you're gonna get the point even if the actual armies aren't marching into your suburban home.

Crawford identifies the following elements: Fantasy fulfilment Overcoming social restrictions Demonstrating prowess Social lubrication A need for recognition

+Nicole Lazzero

Nicole Lazzero identifies the following elements: Easy Fun

Fantasy fulfilment Hard fun

Challenge and demonstrating mastery The People Factor

Social lubrication and overcoming social restrictions. The Generation of Emotion

Bringing about of altered states.

Richard Rouse broadly agrees, adding in bragging rights and an emotional payoff from participation.

+Fun

The rewards that come from game-play trigger genuine physiological reactions within our bodies. The release of dopamine, for example.

Raph Koster again: One of the subtlest releases of chemicals is at that moment of

triumph when we learn something or master a task. This almost always causes us to break out into a smile. After all, it is important to the survival of the species that we learn - therefore our bodies reward us for it with moments of pleasure. There are many ways we find fun in games, and I will talk about the others. But this is the most important.

Serious Games derive from these lessons. We can co-opt them for other purposes.

+A Facsimile of Fun

Some games have all the payoffs but none of the ability to develop mastery. We talked about Farmville briefly last week.

It is possible to tickle certain parts of the game without actually having a ‘game’ to go with it. Reciprocity effect

Addiction Manipulation of social networks

Recognition by peers Random treasure

Gambling dopamine releases Sunk Cost

I can’t give up, look how high level I am.

+Brain Chemistry

Games are tremendously efficient manipulators of brain chemistry. It’s very easy to fall to the Dark Side when consciously designing

these kind of game experiences.

In some cases, playing a game causes increases of 100% in the brain’s dopamine levels over a long period of time. Not as much as eating good food or having good sex, but

noticeable.

Randomness hooks into this. If we always lose, we get a decaying amount of dopamine. If we always win, we get a decaying amount of dopamine. If we win often enough to be interesting, we can sustain dopamine

levels indefinitely.

+Casual and Hardcore Games

Something of a division has emerged in gaming design, between casual and hardcore games.

Hardcore games require significant investment on the part of a player.

Hardcore games (usually) involve at least something of a narrative.

Hardcore games are designed to build incremental mastery through sustained interaction.

Some hardcore games have dozens of hours of playtime and complex internal mythologies. The Mass Effect series, for example.

+Casual and Hardcore Games

Casual games go entirely the other way.

They are designed to be accessible to everyone. Just pick one up and play.

They are designed to be easy to learn and difficult to truly master.

They are designed to be very short term, intense experiences. Although you may accumulate benefits on the basis of many of

these sessions.

Popcap is the premier purveyor of games in this genre. Peggle Bejewelled

+Casual and Hardcore Games

Two entirely different demographics are being dealt with here. There’s some crossover, but not as much as you’d think.

Platforms such as smartphones and tablets have massively boosted the market for casual games. Not everyone wants to spend a day of their life getting to

the end of some fictional character’s story arc. Almost everyone has a few minutes to kill at various points

during the day.

Perhaps the most instantly recognisable game in popular consciousness is Angry Birds.

+Angry Birds

You can play this online in various forms. http://chrome.angrybirds.com/ if you have chrome http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zArI_kyB3Y0

How successful was it? It earned ONE TRILLION DOLLARS.

Not really. Roxio earns an estimate 80 million dollars a year from it.

Why was it so successful? Sense of progression Easy to learn Difficult to master Cute and entertaining Evokes flow

+Angry Birds

What does Angry Birds do right? Response time between release and result

Time to relax and examine consequences of actions. Opportunities for mastery

Short term memory Calculation of trajectory Strategic placement of projectile birds

Mysteries Question marks on future levels

Sound Evokes positive neurological responses.

Action syncing

+So, why are we talking about this? In the next two lectures we are going to delve into two main topics.

Flow Gamification

Both of these topics are informed by our understanding of the topics discussed today. And they’re two topics that are generically applicable to a wide range of

non-gameplay situations.

If we want people to become immersed in our products, we need to inspire flow.

If we want people to persist with our products, we need to inspire addiction.

Gamification is the way in which we do both of these things.

+Class Exercise

Read http://www.mauronewmedia.com/blog/why-angry-birds-is-so-successful-a-cognitive-teardown-of-the-user-experience/

Self directed research Find examples of three games in each of the following

categories: Educational Political Simulation

Identify the features that would mark them out as casual or hardcore games.

Identify features that suggest that they are serious games or not.