Confession of a Nord

It began previous summer. During a long episode of die-hard studying and personal development I promised myself to have a gaming spree. I'd get a heavy duty pc that would play games on ultra-high graphic settings and I stacked up on games during steam summersale. So it came to be.

My steam account is full of wonderful games that allow for a high level of immersion and my graduation present has an i5, 16GB ddr3 ram and 2GB ddr5 graphic card. It takes 20 seconds to boot fully, heck I can't even sit down properly before it's finished booting. Around 6 weeks dedicated to gaming went by in a breeze. I didn't even care for that for a feeling of accomplishment, I was just gone for a while.

The game I played most (by far) was Skyrim. It was a sense of true freedom I felt, and some stories truly thrilling. Till now I haven't played a game with a story as AWESOME as Chrono Trigger, but still it came close. By now I've put in over 600 hours of gameplay in total, about 15 weeks of 40 hour work. Yesterday I even did some real research concerning the lore of the game, and discovered that there were many layers of depth still to be discovered.

Last week I went to Spil Games for a job interview, it ended up not being my cup of tea. But still I was asked a question I hadn't asked myself in a while, "why are you so fascinated by games?" . After my thesis on motivation in games and this gaming spree it's time for a recap. Talking and writing about games and the interplay of game and psychology always lights a spark in me. No other medium been able to capture me so deeply while allowing me so much freedom, even if the freedom is only imagined. And that link created by the interplay of the self and a thing is truly mesmerizing to me.

Games do not simply provide a few things like emotional stimulation, no it's far more elegant. Games trick players in seeking out what they want and need. It's easier for a game so to say to entertain a media user than a movie for example. The director has to try and match the movie to what he/she things the needs of the audience are. There's no going back after the movie is shot. Some games trick players to create their own movie.

How does this interplay arise?
First of all the identification processes, each character you play, you play in your own way. The actions are not only related to the character but also to yourself. This creates a bond that is potentially far stronger than any other medium. Open world rpg's like Skyrim and probably GTA take this even farther, allowing you to fully customize your character. Stories allow for further identification and can give more depth to the character.

A second part that's very true is the challenge you feel during certain parts of the game. Games that have an unbalanced difficulty curve are not nice to play and break your personal movie. The challenge is preferrably created by different elements but mainly with cognitive challenges and puzzles (could have been better though in Skyrim) and skill challenges (like fighting) that generally requiere a certain level of mastery of the game mechanics. Skyrim allowed me to pursue the skills that I felt were challenging

A third part is arousal, from adrenaline rushes to pure joy after surviving an ordeal. I can not even count the times I was suddenly startled by a hidden enemy, or sometimes the thrill of chasing and facing something. This arousal can be experienced as a refreshing shake up from mundane life. Luckily probably, I wouldn't want that many "Ooooh shit" moments as in games.


Still something that precedes this all is the gratification of interest. People select to a certain degree their media on their interest. Though interest is a pretty vague concept in my opinion, we still follow it. Things that stimulate my fantasy are always on the top of my list.

What game did you spend a significant part of your lifetime on?

Highscores indepth

Games and education should go together like milk and cookies, maybe demonstrated by the recent buzz on educational games. After White (1959) wrote his piece to reclaim motivation from behavioralists, a lot of research was conducted on motivation in education. One of the media that is researched quite a bit in relation to motivation are (video) games. So a lot of recent work on motivation in video games is actually building on previous education research.

One of the game elements that's often misunderstood is the place of highscores. Ever since 1959 has game theory been rejected as the sole explanator for behavior contingent to points gained after an action.

The problem can be detected easily using a model of limited effects, as used in communication science.

"Who says What to Whom through Which channel with What effect?"

Behavioral psychologists mostly use very simple models that allow them to expect behavior after a certain stimulus. But these models will always fail to predict reactions of first introduction to a stimulus like a game and learning behavior thereafter, because our environment is complex and we don't do everything just for arousal (what use would such a big brain be). Still our social worlds are grey, so even behaviouristic prediction models can predict a percentage of the outcome of actions.

Awarding points to players is one such problem. Mostly points are rewarded after success in a game (task contingent), or after taking a gamble (risk contingent). I will only talk about the task contingent point rewards here. These points add as a player progresses in the game. Some players see these points as rewards for their action and are driven by it to play more and more. A lot of games reward players early on to stimulate playing and make these points harder to get later in the game. Other players see these points as a proof of personal skill and use them to measure their own competence (maybe due to a lack of other feedback). While the first kind of player is theorized to be mostly aroused by the points and gaining points, the second kind of player is not aroused by the points but finds fulfilment in rising above the challenge to their skill. Even though you might think that both these types of players would end up equally skilled, the first type of player uses a lot of shortcuts and other tricks to increase their points without improving skill. The intrinsically motivated player is more likely to attain a higher skill level, and somehow also enjoyment. [Note to self; this enjoyment might be higher because reaffirmation of skill refers back to oneself and might be more fun because of that]


But how do you point your player in a certain direction? Well for a large part you are powerless as game designer, you can't manipulate the tendencies of people to be motivated by intrinsic or extrinsic factors and you can only try to invoke their interest with a cool demo or trailer. Still there is an important difference between the two kinds of players. Players that relate points to intrinsic motivation see them as informational. This informational character can be emphasized. You can couple points with automated vocal praising to stimulate intrinsic motivation, with quotes like "you're great", "multi-kill", "wow!" Points can also be divided into categories that are related to specific actions in a skill menu and it's also possible to simply award more points to skill related actions like in Skyrim. Anyway, the points have to be related to specific actions while gaining them with clear feedback to stimulate intrinsic motivation. Pinball machines for examples seem to give you points for everything but mostly do not convey specifics, like bumber x is 10 points ans bumber y is 100 points. However some will still remain motivated by the points themselve, humans are not machines. Luckily so, else we wouln't experience the joy of games.


Literature:

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.

Lepper, M. (1983). Extrinsic Reward and Intrinsic Motivation: Implications for the Classroom. In Levine, J.M. & Wang M.C. (Eds.), Teacher and Students Perceptions: Implications for Learning. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum

White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: the concept of competence. Psychological review, 66(5), 297.

Task Motivation a starting point for game research

During my internship I wrote a summary of literature on task motivation specifically to be applied in research on games and learning. In the coming weeks I'll post translated parts of the theory section online for those interested. It serves to be a solid guiding framework into motivation to engage  different elements in games. This in turn can be measured.

Motivation to engage a task can have both an intrinsic and an extrinsic component (Lepper, Corpus & Iyengar, 2005). The intrinsic component stimulates task engagement out of a desire for challenge, pleasure and interest (Lepper et al, 2005). This is called intrinsic motivation.

The extrinsic component stimulates task engagement out of a desire for external reward or dodging punishment. This is called extrinsic motivation. If there's no internal or external stimulus to engage a task it's called amotivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985).

These motivation components are non-homeostatic drive-forces to engage a task (Gorman, 2004, White, 1959), motivation that holds no relation to direct physical needs like hunger and thirst. The concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have originated from the comments of White (1959) on the drive theories of motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Harter, 1978; White, 1959). The drive theories of motivation ascribe task motivation and desire to learn to a desire for external rewards or dodging of punishment. White (1959) used a variety of sources to show that external stimuli alone, are inadequate to explain the full range of human behaver like discovery, play, and a desire to deal with one's surroundings competently.

White (1959) proposed that many behaviors are explained better from a desire to deal with one's surroundings competent and effectively. Harter (1978, 1981), Deci and Ryan (1985) and others after him have operationalised the concepts White (1959) proposed too subsequently test it. His critique has since been tested and supported with evidence. A large part of this research has been done in the context of children and their development in education, some even longitudinal.

Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have their place during the development of children. Though time after time research has shown a correlation between school results and intrinsic motivation for school (Lepper et. al, 2005). Partly because of this, intrinsic motivation is seen as superior to extrinsic motivation. However if a child is amotivated to engage in a certain task at school, rewards may be applied to increase task motivation through extrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985, pp. 263-264).

Literature

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1987). The Support of Autonomy and the Control of Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1024-1037.

Eisenberger, R., Pierce, W. D., Cameron, J. (1999). Effects of Reward on Intrinsic Motivation- Negative, Neutral, and Positive: Comment on Deci, Koestner, and Ryan. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 677-691.

Gorman, P. (2004). Motivation and Emotion. New York: Routledge.

Harter, S. (1981). A new self-report scale of intrinsic versus extrinsic

orientation in the classroom: Motivational and informational components.

Developmental Psychology, 17, 300–312.

Lepper, M. (1983). Extrinsic Reward and Intrinsic Motivation: Implications for the Classroom. In Levine, J.M. & Wang M.C. (Eds.), Teacher and Students Perceptions: Implications for Learning. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum

Lepper, M. R., Corpus, J. H., & Iyengar, S. S. (2005). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations in the classroom: Age differences and academic correlates. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 97(2), pp.184–196.

White, R.W.(1959). Motivation reconsidered: The concept of competence. Psychological Review, 66(5).