This is a bit of a bonus post that I'm putting up here in the interest of capturing all of my thoughts on the subject of my current project. This isn't referenced or researched, it is all my own words however - based on what I've read so far. It concerns the nature of 'Story' and a few other random things. I scribbled this down over the weekend just gone in the interest of getting my head together.
We need games in our lives because they take the real world and remove real world consequences, allowing us to expose ourselves to risk and experiment without any truly impactful outcome. Games allow us to experience all of the features of a 'real life' experience - immersion, emotional catharsis - expansion of knowledge - without having to deal with any 'Real' outcome of the actions we take. To take an obvious (and pretty prolific) example - in a game, you can commit virtual murder and experience the consequences of that in the game (as in, say, Fahrenheit), or not (as in any number of first person shooters), and then you can turn off the game and go about life like nothing had happened. There are real life benefits and consequences, but these are not 'in-game', unless you're playing a truly pervasive game; any effects are usually as a result of the act of playing the game, not what happens in it.
The library sector, in particular, is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the advent of gaming becoming mainstream, and receive a new burst of life itself in the process. Computer games are beginning to suffer from a dearth of story, becoming shells that look pretty but are hollow. Technology is moving faster and faster, according to Moores Law, but we aren't finding, at a consumer level - that many new things to do with it. Cat videos dominate the cyberscape, and the concept of the Reboot for major movie franchises has gained wide exposure in recent years. The selfie photo has become an art form. The world is crying out for more new ground to cover, but using new technology. The world is wanting more stories.
Stories do not exist within a vacuum - rather, they take existing information and in themselves remove real life consequences of that information, creating an explorative space to ruminate on different aspects of human experience. The stories, like games, may have real life benefits and consequences - but within themselves, there is merely conjecture on existing information. In short - Stories are Information Gamified.
Reflection - Thoughts on the concept of 'Story'
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Monday, 23 September 2013
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Gamification in Libraries: What doesn't work
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Sunday, 22 September 2013
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design principles,
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In my last post, I talked about some of the
aspects that work to make gamification of libraries a success. As a flipside to
this, I'm going to spend this post talking about some things that will kill
your project. I'm not going to bother going over any examples that haven't
worked - there are enough out there and I just don't have time to run over
them. I think you'll find that most of these aspects are pretty easy to pick
out anyway.
In the interest of determining what
'doesn't work' I've taken as a standpoint that these things don't contribute to
influencing or motivating players in any way. In some cases they actively
denigrate players' experiences.
Not respecting the players
As far as cardinal sins of gamification go,
this is on par with the 'immersion' point for holy virtues (if you'll let me
torture an analogy). This even goes beyond an aspect of gamification in
libraries - in any endeavour you're creating a product or service for
customers, treating them as an entity worthy of respect on their own terms and
not merely a means to an end is crucial. So why does it bear mentioning here?
Two reasons - first, it's another one of those so-simple-you-forget-it things,
and second, libraries and gaming are - at least at time of writing - a bit like
oil and water. There seems to be a deep suspicion of why libraries should be
accomodating to this new medium. Christy Sich (2006) relates this current state of affairs to when music compact discs
first came out; there was outcry over whether or not libraries should carry
those, and now they almost seem reluctant to properly engage with games. Given
the popularity of games of all types and the potential they have for all facets
of modern life, this doesn’t seem forward-thinking or respectful of library
clients/players. Even the literature that strongly supports the educational and
cultural worth of games – such as Futurelabs’ Computer games, schools, and young people (Williamson, 2009) and Steven Johnsons’ Everything Bad is Good for You (2006) seem to justify their standpoint with an overload of data to give
organizations who might want to consider games a hard sell. It seems that given
the massive popularity of the genre outside of the library sector, as an
information repository we should be clamoring at the chance to make the best
possible use of the concept as we can. The extremely slow uptake and excessive
debate around the subject all bespeaks a negligence here, at least to me. It’s
essentially, ‘It might be good enough for consumers out there, but gamification
isn’t for us. We’re a serious
organization’. And that is why this bears mentioning here. If it’s good
enough for them ‘out there’, it should be good enough for us ‘in here’.
If the players/clients aren’t respected on
their own terms, as autonomous people who might in fact know what is best for
them in at least some cases, then we don’t open ourselves to the full potential
of the concept – which is why we end up with things like:
Tacked on Content
Slightly removed from the most core reason
that gamification fails at certain times described above, this seems to be the
next big one. As Andrzej Marczewski (2013)describes in the first of a few reasons why gamification can fail:
‘If
you stick a thin layer of gamification on a broken system, it will have no long
term effect’.
This explains pretty succinctly the issue
that I’m describing here – gamification won’t fix something that is already
broken or boring. It needs to be layered into a successful system to provide a
deeper engagement and enhance motivation. At best, the system that’s applied
will seem like a gimmick, and at worst it will just be insulting to
clients/players – it certainly won’t make a bad system usable. I think this
goes back to repecting the player – they won’t be dazzled with pretty lights.
Aleks Krotoski (2010) describes this as the ‘Dancing Clown Problem’.
Gamifying everything/timing it badly
In keeping with the idea that intrinsic
motivation and immersion is key to making a successful gamification project,
the idea of subtlety really came through too. Shoving game mechanics into
players' faces doesn't work, as numerous failed schemes have shown. Echoing the
same line of thought I wrote about in my last post, I’ll bring up Seth Priebatsch and his TED talk (2010) again. Seth briefly discusses how credit card schemes and corporate
affiliation programs make use of game mechanics but don't offer any element of
fun or engagement in undertaking them. It’s all too easy, owing to the
immersive and popular nature of gaming, to view it as the panacea that I talked
about in my last post. Appropriateness and timing are needed to preserve the
impact that such a diverse concept can have for audiences. From a design point
of view, Christy Sich also comments:
'If
developers take the focus off learning objectives... we can simply adopt the
Marshall McLuhan adage and trust that the medium is the message'.
This also has relevance to the idea of not
gamifying everything, because it helps keep things in perspective. Focussing on
the narrative and getting smaller amounts of gamification done right whilst
also getting rid of the inherent distrust that august old organizations like
libraries have for the perceived frivolity of games and gamification (ie.
trusting that the medium will be the message) goes a long way to making
attempts at gamification work, it seems.
Organization-centred design
Basically put, when a concept that depends
on user uptake is designed to directly benefit the organization over those
users, it has a very short use-by date. This problem often seems to befall
those organizations who like the idea of gamification, but lack the respect,
knowledge and and/or resources to implement the concept well, and view it as an
easy way to cash in on the latest pop culture craze. Indeed, there are parts of
the game development community who view the very concept of gamification as a
gimmick cooked up by the corporate sector for that very purpose. One of the more
vocal proponents of this point of view has been Ian Bogost, whose post
‘Gamification is Bullshit’ (2011) outlined fairly explicitly how the concept could be seen as a
marketing tool that bastardizes the true nature of gaming. This bears thinking
about here because it draws into pretty stark relief how easy it would be to
create something organization- as opposed to user centred. Considering my
previous assertions that users are wise to knowing when they’re being overtly
manipulated for gain and that gaming (upon which gamification is based on, if
it’s different at all) is an intrinsically motivated concept, the idea of
placing the organizations’ benefit above those of the users renders all of this
null. It’s easy to see how this could sink a gamification project. Bogost (2013) has even gone as far as to suggest the term ‘exploitationware’ in place of gamification, with the benefits of (amongst others) ‘disassociating
the practice from games’.
Taking the wrong thing and running with it
This final point is along the same lines as
the ‘Have Fun!’ point that I made in the last post – this is more of my own
observation here, and it sort of ties everything I’ve said over the last two
posts together. I get the feeling, after all of this reading, that we took the
boring part of gaming – that is, the rules – and attempted to crèche that into
our library systems. The problem here is that our library systems aren’t broken
– they’re just in a state of flux. We run the risk of libraries falling into
the trap of cheapening the gaming experience by doing a bad job of gamifying
themselves, whilst at the same time missing not only using the interesting bit of
gaming, but also failing to utilize one of the libraries’ chief resources.
Those two things are one and the same, it seems – the stories of gaming and
that the library acts as a repository of. More than scoreboards and
leaderboards used the foster bursts of activity and engagement, we need to
harness the deep meanings present in narrative to provide a service and
education to our users. That might seem a bit lofty, but after these last two
posts, that’s what it seems works best.
In my next post, I’m going to look at a few
of the considerations that libraries should take into account when they decide
to gamify an aspect of their organization. Thanks for reading.
References:
Gamasutra - Persuasive Games:
Exploitationware. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2013, from
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134735/persuasive_games_exploitationware.php?print=1
Gamasutra:
Andrzej Marczewski’s Blog - Why does Gamification Fail? A few reasons...
(n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2013, from
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndrzejMarczewski/20130819/198562/Why_does_Gamification_Fail_A_few_reasons.php
Games_and_Learning_educators_report.pdf.
(n.d.). Retrieved from
http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/project_reports/becta/Games_and_Learning_educators_report.pdf
Gamification
is Bullshit. (n.d.). Ian Bogost. Retrieved September 20, 2013, from
http://www.bogost.com/blog/gamification_is_bullshit.shtml
Johnson,
S. (2006). Everything bad is good for you. Penguin.
Krotoski,
A. (2010). Serious fun with computer games. Nature, 466(7307),
695–695. doi:10.1038/466695a
Seth
Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world | Video on TED.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_top_of_the_world.html
Sich,
C. (2006). From game studies to bibliographic gaming: Libraries tap into the
video game culture. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science
and Technology, 32(4). Retrieved from
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=christy_sich
Gamification in Libraries: What works, Part 2: Aspects of Gamification that let it work
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Thursday, 19 September 2013
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design principles,
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In my last post, I
covered three examples of gamifying libraries that worked - that is, they
carried out their purpose well without compromising the libraries' reputation
or duty to society. In this post, I'm going to look at a couple of the common
threads that I saw throughout those examples and other journal articles on the
subject, in an effort to answer the question of 'what works in gamification of
libraries'. In the interest of this, some of the wider reading I undertook on
the subject borrowed a bit from the field of education and game design itself.
As education is both an industry that libraries support and a central tenet of
libraries themselves, I thought this to be appropriate. In the interest of what
makes a good game, I thought that looking at what game designers had to say on
the subject might be good too. I'll finish up with a few comments of my own.
So - What works to
successfully gamify a library?
Immersion
The first thing that
really stuck out to me about everything I saw and read was that immersion is
really key in creating a successful gamification experience. The people we
(being, librarians, teachers and whoever else is looking to gamify something)
are marketing to are not naive or silly - they are savvy and literate, and they
will be able to tell when an experience is 'tacked on' to an already existing
concept or entity. This will more than likely not draw them in and might even
repel them, as they take issue with being treated like a commodity. The game
has to be authentic. As Christy Sich ( 2006) comments on the rise and failure of
Edutainment -
'One reason
(edutainment failed) has to do with the generation of younger people and their
use of technology. They are born and bred using games. They are being trained
to be visual learners with a preference for active learning and intolerance for
purely passive learning...'
Here, I equate 'active
learning' with immersion in whatever game system the player is using. It
illustrates that a game existing only to educate and/or gain some other benefit
from the players (ie. money) is doomed to fail, at least after an initial
period of early adopters. This is mainly because there is no immersion there -
there's action, and reward. It seems like it's just too mechanical for the
player/client to get any intrinsic satisfaction from the process. Immersion is
the most core of the aspects of what works in gamification, and some of the
concepts I discuss from here are linked into it.
Bringing a story
Another common thread
that was present throughout all of these examples and much of the literature
that I read was that narrtive was of huge importance in the world of gaming and
gamification. This ties in with immersion, in that it provides the impetus, the
pull in information pull to draw gamers in the number that it has. In Find the
Future, the players worked to discover the stories behind artifacts at the
museum. In Defense of Hidgeon: The Plague Years(2008), players worked to provide a plan of survival
against the Black Plague to the town. Even in the vast scope of International
Games Day, the narrative was made by the people playing the games, in addition
to the narratives they took from the commercially available games they played
at the participating libraries. Aleks Krotoski (2010) tells how 'The playing experience must beimmersive, coherent, and believable'. Bohyun Kim, in her article 'Harnessing the Power of Game dynamics'(2012), gives us a few examples of basic gamification
in a library. What's interesting about these is that they're just rules - but
they describe points along a story that the player makes themselves. In the
suggestion to include 'level-up experience' for library users, we're given the
example of going from 'novice' to 'super researcher', and it's suggested we
think up more appealing terms. This simple suggestion in itself is pregnant
with potential, and though it really is pretty simple, it shows how rules are
really just a means to interface with a deeper narrative that is what players
really want from gamification. Of all of the points that I have looked at, I
think this one is one that bears the most thinking about.
Combination of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation
This leads on from the
last point about bringing a story. Though narrative - an intrinsic motivation -
is a big part of what allows gamification to work, there also has to a
practical reward - an extrinsic
motivation - of some kind. Well balanced rewards plus an immersive story gives
players the short term, regular reward that gratifies them, as well as the
deeper meaning and satisfaction of engaging in something over time. Two things
to note here - first, in the interaction between intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation, the rules of the game really come into play. They not only give the
narrative a means of interfacing with 'The Real', but they provide signposts
that make it easier for designers to decide when rewards should be given.
Again, a good (if fairly simplistic) example of this comes at Bohyun Kims'
suggestion that library clients could spend accumulated points on coffee at the
library cafe. The points would be accumulated through the clients' use of
library resources (engaging in their own narrative through knowledge building),
and the extrinsic reward comes in the form of free beverages. If I can break
the academic patina I've got going here (or at least that I hope I’ve got
going), that is so elegant it almost brings a tear to my eye. Though this is a
fairly fine line to walk, it was definitely something that I became aware of as
I moved through my readings.
Know when not to gamify
In the interest of
keeping on the topic of what works, I'll keep this fairly to the point - it's
all too easy to see gamification as a panacea in an organisation, owing to its'
immersive nature and current popularity. Seth Priebatsch expounds briefly in
this during his TED talk (2010), where he comments that systems of game
mechanics overlaid onto corporate benefits 'aren't very much fun' and that
basically 'they suck'. This is a great example of knowing when to appropriately
use game mechanics to the users' benefit, and not the organisations. Three
other thoughts here - first, the ever- present immersion factor and how knowing
when to gamify keeps the subtlety that is needed for full immersion. The second
is that knowing when not to gamify an aspect of the library itself almost seems
to demonstrate a degree of maturity in the organisation, as well as a respect
for their clients/players. Finally, knowing when not to gamify raises the
interesting concept of 'dead' games for me - gamification schemes that neither
excite not influence their players. I haven't heard of too many people who have
been motivated to buy more than they usually would because of flybuys
membership, for example. This topic will more than likely be revisited in my
next post on what doesn't work, so for now, I'll leave this here.
Make it fun!
Finally, in regards to
gamification and what works, this seems to be a pretty common one. It's fairly self
explanatory, but I get the feeling that it gets lost in all of the talk and
hand wringing over how this sort of thing is done successfully. I think that
libraries and other organizations could take a few cues from the (multi billion
dollar, rapidly expanding, soon-to-be-all-pervasive) gaming industry in this
matter. This really seemed one of those 'so obvious you forget about it' things
that I read a lot about but was rarely mentioned explicitly and had to be
consciously written into the list I had to expand on.
Reflection
To put it simply, I
get the feeling that in most gamification attempts to date, we took the wrong
thing to run with. Personally, the vast majority of games I play isn't for a
high score or because of a really great new bunch of rules - it's for the
stories and the thoughts and feelings that come out of the experience of
playing it. I'm not saying that every incidence of gamification has to become
an epic of grand scale, but fetishizing rules and rewards and leaderboards
seems only ever seems to have a short term effect at best. Successful
gamification relies on longer term motivations and giving the players a space
to make their own, with a bit of reward thrown in.
In my next post I'm going to touch more
explicitly on what doesn't work - even though I've probably done a pretty good
job of that here.
References:
Kim, B. (2012). Harnessing the power of
game dynamics Why, how to, and how not to gamify the library experience. College
& Research Libraries News, 73(8), 465–469.
Krotoski,
A. (2010). Serious fun with computer games. Nature, 466(7307),
695–695. doi:10.1038/466695a
Markey,
K., Swanson, F., Jenkins, A., Jennings, B. J., St. Jean, B., Rosenberg, V., …
Frost, R. L. (2008). The Effectiveness of a Web-based Board Game for Teaching
Undergraduate Students Information Literacy Concepts and Skills. D-Lib
Magazine, 14(9/10). doi:10.1045/september2008-markey
Seth
Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world | Video on TED.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_top_of_the_world.html
Sich,
C. (2006). From game studies to bibliographic gaming: Libraries tap into the
video game culture. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science
and Technology, 32(4). Retrieved from
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=christy_sich
Gamification in Libraries: What works, Part 1: Three examples
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Sunday, 15 September 2013
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Gamifying libraries is something that requires a fine balance of various aspects in order to do well. This post is going to examine what's worked in the 'real world'. By this, I mean events and programs that have been successful in increasing client/user/player engagement in a library system. I'll take a quick look at the events themselves, including what they entailed and their outcomes, and then I'll explain why I think they've been successful. Part 2 will be more of a broken down look at different aspects of gamification that work. I'll be looking at exactly what makes users engage with a game in a library context, and mix in a little bit of game theory as well (known as Ludology).
One of the better known examples of gamification working in a library is Find the Future, a night-long event held at the New York Public Library on May 20th, 2011. The game involved 500 library clients getting into teams of 8 and searching the library for various objects within it's collection, each of which had an element of a story attached to them. There were 100 items in total and social media and technology in the form of mobile phones was used extensively through the course of the game (the game also has its own app which allowed library visitors outside the event itself to play their own version of the game). After the event was completed, a book entitled '100 Ways to Make History' was compiled from the players' efforts. The event was held as part of that libarys' 100th anniversary and gained a large amount of media attention.
Find the Future is an excellent example of gamification working in a library because it made use of many of the aspects of games to a positive outcome for everyone involved. It was heavily collaborative, and large in scope. It made use of the libraries resources in a creative way, resulting in information pull instead of push. It gained the library media attention, exposing the library to new audiences and also simultaneously reinventing itself for a new generation whilst using the resources it already had. It also resulted in an extension of the libraries' resources in the form of a book that was made through collaboration based on already existing resources. It's also a good example of how to layer gaming mechanics into an event and make them an integral part of one, instead of laying them over the top of something that isn't built as a game and trying to make it work. There were no scores in this event - it's possible there was a leaderboard and there would have been some sort of a schedule that it had to run to in order to be completed in time, but what the players were there for was the story they were creating, and the stories behind the objects - not to win against anyone else.
In 2008 the University of Michigan also gamified part of one of their courses involving Information Literacy. The game itself was a web-based board game called Defense of Hidgeon: The Plague Years, and combined the story of how a medieval-era town surviving the Black Plague with both on- and offline research methods for those playing. The ruleset was quite involved and the learning payoffs were staggered to introduce the characters to various tools that they could use to progress in the game, resulting in a high level of engagement. The game also worked well as an experiment in gamification as data was collected on play styles, overall engagement, and payoff in learning outcomes. A number of recommendations were given for gamification itself after the experiment had been completed.
Defense of Hidgeon is another good example of how to integrate game mechanics into a model for education and increase engagement without forcing players to deal with pointless gaming features that don't really count towards the task at hand. This example was more competitive than Find the Future, which is interesting because my initial feeling on gamification was that 'Cooperation meant sustained interest, but competition meant limited engagement'. I can't comment on whether or not Defense of Hidgeon would eventually have caused disengagement with the students who played it (indeed, some didn't engage at all), but it seems that for the time it was played, it provided a valuable learning experience. It's also interesting to note that throughout the course of playing the game, some events that the teachers planned interrupted the flow of the game, causing disengagement with some of the players. Though this did not sink the game, it was a large issue for the teachers. It seems to me that this is a good example of a 'tacked on' event that isn't properly integrated with the game mechanics/learning outcome symbiosis that I've been talking about.
The final example I'm going to discuss involving gamification of libraries is probably a little bit more 'gaming in libraries' than 'gamification of libraries', but I think it's still worth discussing - International Games Day. This yearly event takes place around the world and is organized by the American Library Association. It involves libraries operating as venues for clients to play games of all kinds, from computer games to board and puzzle games. The event attracts a lot of attention - despite an election being held at the same time and Hurricane Sandy disrupting many services in the Northeast of America, over 1000 libraries and 17 000 clients participated there. It also provides community-building between libraries themselves, with international games of Chinese Whispers and inter-library video game tournaments taking place as well.
International gaming day is a valuable concept to look at when discussing gamification of libraries. In addition to being an established resource and community, the fact that it is a library initiative that demonstrates the power of gaming in that setting can't be overlooked. This is gaming done right because it appeals to the masses; it shows how popular the concept is and shows that libraries can function as venues for it. It wouldn't be a big jump for libraries to start to integrate gaming and the traditional holdings together from this sort of event, given its success and huge scope. Though not of the same breed of gamification as Find the Future, International Gaming Day is its own entity, and that makes it a valid consideration for me as I progress from here.
These three examples all have different aspects that allow them to work in a library context. I think they demonstrate the diversity of the medium and the many applications that gaming could have for libraries, and this helps give me an idea of the scope of what I'm talking about here. In my next post, I'm going to think about a couple of the elements of games that allow them to work within a library setting.
One of the better known examples of gamification working in a library is Find the Future, a night-long event held at the New York Public Library on May 20th, 2011. The game involved 500 library clients getting into teams of 8 and searching the library for various objects within it's collection, each of which had an element of a story attached to them. There were 100 items in total and social media and technology in the form of mobile phones was used extensively through the course of the game (the game also has its own app which allowed library visitors outside the event itself to play their own version of the game). After the event was completed, a book entitled '100 Ways to Make History' was compiled from the players' efforts. The event was held as part of that libarys' 100th anniversary and gained a large amount of media attention.
Find the Future is an excellent example of gamification working in a library because it made use of many of the aspects of games to a positive outcome for everyone involved. It was heavily collaborative, and large in scope. It made use of the libraries resources in a creative way, resulting in information pull instead of push. It gained the library media attention, exposing the library to new audiences and also simultaneously reinventing itself for a new generation whilst using the resources it already had. It also resulted in an extension of the libraries' resources in the form of a book that was made through collaboration based on already existing resources. It's also a good example of how to layer gaming mechanics into an event and make them an integral part of one, instead of laying them over the top of something that isn't built as a game and trying to make it work. There were no scores in this event - it's possible there was a leaderboard and there would have been some sort of a schedule that it had to run to in order to be completed in time, but what the players were there for was the story they were creating, and the stories behind the objects - not to win against anyone else.
In 2008 the University of Michigan also gamified part of one of their courses involving Information Literacy. The game itself was a web-based board game called Defense of Hidgeon: The Plague Years, and combined the story of how a medieval-era town surviving the Black Plague with both on- and offline research methods for those playing. The ruleset was quite involved and the learning payoffs were staggered to introduce the characters to various tools that they could use to progress in the game, resulting in a high level of engagement. The game also worked well as an experiment in gamification as data was collected on play styles, overall engagement, and payoff in learning outcomes. A number of recommendations were given for gamification itself after the experiment had been completed.
Defense of Hidgeon is another good example of how to integrate game mechanics into a model for education and increase engagement without forcing players to deal with pointless gaming features that don't really count towards the task at hand. This example was more competitive than Find the Future, which is interesting because my initial feeling on gamification was that 'Cooperation meant sustained interest, but competition meant limited engagement'. I can't comment on whether or not Defense of Hidgeon would eventually have caused disengagement with the students who played it (indeed, some didn't engage at all), but it seems that for the time it was played, it provided a valuable learning experience. It's also interesting to note that throughout the course of playing the game, some events that the teachers planned interrupted the flow of the game, causing disengagement with some of the players. Though this did not sink the game, it was a large issue for the teachers. It seems to me that this is a good example of a 'tacked on' event that isn't properly integrated with the game mechanics/learning outcome symbiosis that I've been talking about.
The final example I'm going to discuss involving gamification of libraries is probably a little bit more 'gaming in libraries' than 'gamification of libraries', but I think it's still worth discussing - International Games Day. This yearly event takes place around the world and is organized by the American Library Association. It involves libraries operating as venues for clients to play games of all kinds, from computer games to board and puzzle games. The event attracts a lot of attention - despite an election being held at the same time and Hurricane Sandy disrupting many services in the Northeast of America, over 1000 libraries and 17 000 clients participated there. It also provides community-building between libraries themselves, with international games of Chinese Whispers and inter-library video game tournaments taking place as well.
International gaming day is a valuable concept to look at when discussing gamification of libraries. In addition to being an established resource and community, the fact that it is a library initiative that demonstrates the power of gaming in that setting can't be overlooked. This is gaming done right because it appeals to the masses; it shows how popular the concept is and shows that libraries can function as venues for it. It wouldn't be a big jump for libraries to start to integrate gaming and the traditional holdings together from this sort of event, given its success and huge scope. Though not of the same breed of gamification as Find the Future, International Gaming Day is its own entity, and that makes it a valid consideration for me as I progress from here.
These three examples all have different aspects that allow them to work in a library context. I think they demonstrate the diversity of the medium and the many applications that gaming could have for libraries, and this helps give me an idea of the scope of what I'm talking about here. In my next post, I'm going to think about a couple of the elements of games that allow them to work within a library setting.
First post - Scoping an academically-based plan for gaming and gamification in libraries. Bonus storytime.
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Wednesday, 11 September 2013
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I am sitting down to write this in the middle of a crowded library. I have music going through headphones, because for a library, it's fairly noisy; people are chatting away and laughing with each other. The librarians are pottering about, as much stacking books on shelves as they are helping out my fellow students with the printers and self-serve kiosks. There's nary a 'shhhh' to be heard, and you know what?
I like it like this.
The changing technological landscape has become more advanced and pervasive ever since the Gutenberg managed to figure out his printing press. In a lot of ways, libraries have managed to keep up with this, and even lead the way in a lot of things. These organizations have changed over the last few decades into something entirely different to the stuffy old book despositories that they were in times long gone; now they're vibrant community hubs, offering so much more than just a place to get a good book.
I wonder though - could we be doing more?
It hasn't all been trailblazing and mobility for libraries though - quite the contrary. Along with problems with how to redesign metadata to properly organize kinds of multimedia that hadn't even been accessible ten years ago, there's an aging workforce and the 'Google Generation' to contend with. Librarians, once seen as gatekeepers of knowledge, are becoming more facilitators for an educated clientele that is precocious and hungry for more.
The problem then becomes a question of what else we can do to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge between the monolithic entities of libraries and this new breed of learners and information seekers.
There's more to my little story; the music that I've got on is a series of classical pieces set against rainstorms and the sound of water lapping the shore. They're all predetermined lengths, and on top of that, I've got a Pomodoro timer running to keep track of larger sections of time. Every now and again the timer gives me a break, and when that happens I get to take a rest and get a drink, and on a longer break I'll go get a can of coke and reward myself for completing a good block of work. It's a good little game that I like to play with myself in order to get things done, because as an independent person I often find that without that reward motivation, I'm dragging myself through study periods and assignments with the enthusiasm one reserves for visiting the dentist. Making a game out of it has created a desire to get things done that wasn't there before, it hasn't cost anything (beyond the coke), and above every other benefit, it's fun. I am thoroughly enjoying myself right now, and before I created my little game, I wasn't.
Long story short, I think this same thing can work on a larger scope with libraries.
But, it's here that I'm going to put the brakes on this train of thought. The field of gaming, gamification, and the library sector is a vast ecosystem that someone of my limited knowledge and experience can't hope to navigate properly. It'd be very easy to go off on a tangent, or lose my way with all of the pretty lights from the games I love flashing in my eyes constantly. With that in mind, I decided to mind map something of a career trajectory with a few of the issues that I want to address at each step along the way. This is an overall map of how I'm going to get from where I am, to where I want to go - bear with it and don't get too freaked out yet, though, please. This is a thesis/Ph.D/lifelong scope of work, here, but we're only looking at one or two select parts of it for now.
The mindmap:
Please note for the time being, I am ONLY CONCENTRATING ON THE BOXES COLOURED YELLOW. This will constitute the entirety of the project that I am currently undertaking in my university studies. The rest - hopefully - will come later, either on my own time of once I've found gainful employ. As we can see, there's quite a bit there to look at - but for now, the journey of a million miles starts with a single step, and it helps to compartmentalize. I don't even know if the things above are relevant or if they'll get looked at down the track - that map was mainly done as an initial brainstorm for personal reasons. I hope that this helps demonstrate the sort of scope I'm starting with, and where I want to end up.
For the purposes of the project I am undertaking, I intend to post at least weekly over the next couple of months with findings from academic reports, personal reflections, and other tidbits of information that I hope will be useful to turning my interest (passion?) into a well grounded and considered approach to the idea of gaming in libraries.
I hope this works. Timer just went off, time for that coke.
Bodie
I like it like this.
The changing technological landscape has become more advanced and pervasive ever since the Gutenberg managed to figure out his printing press. In a lot of ways, libraries have managed to keep up with this, and even lead the way in a lot of things. These organizations have changed over the last few decades into something entirely different to the stuffy old book despositories that they were in times long gone; now they're vibrant community hubs, offering so much more than just a place to get a good book.
I wonder though - could we be doing more?
It hasn't all been trailblazing and mobility for libraries though - quite the contrary. Along with problems with how to redesign metadata to properly organize kinds of multimedia that hadn't even been accessible ten years ago, there's an aging workforce and the 'Google Generation' to contend with. Librarians, once seen as gatekeepers of knowledge, are becoming more facilitators for an educated clientele that is precocious and hungry for more.
The problem then becomes a question of what else we can do to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge between the monolithic entities of libraries and this new breed of learners and information seekers.
There's more to my little story; the music that I've got on is a series of classical pieces set against rainstorms and the sound of water lapping the shore. They're all predetermined lengths, and on top of that, I've got a Pomodoro timer running to keep track of larger sections of time. Every now and again the timer gives me a break, and when that happens I get to take a rest and get a drink, and on a longer break I'll go get a can of coke and reward myself for completing a good block of work. It's a good little game that I like to play with myself in order to get things done, because as an independent person I often find that without that reward motivation, I'm dragging myself through study periods and assignments with the enthusiasm one reserves for visiting the dentist. Making a game out of it has created a desire to get things done that wasn't there before, it hasn't cost anything (beyond the coke), and above every other benefit, it's fun. I am thoroughly enjoying myself right now, and before I created my little game, I wasn't.
Long story short, I think this same thing can work on a larger scope with libraries.
But, it's here that I'm going to put the brakes on this train of thought. The field of gaming, gamification, and the library sector is a vast ecosystem that someone of my limited knowledge and experience can't hope to navigate properly. It'd be very easy to go off on a tangent, or lose my way with all of the pretty lights from the games I love flashing in my eyes constantly. With that in mind, I decided to mind map something of a career trajectory with a few of the issues that I want to address at each step along the way. This is an overall map of how I'm going to get from where I am, to where I want to go - bear with it and don't get too freaked out yet, though, please. This is a thesis/Ph.D/lifelong scope of work, here, but we're only looking at one or two select parts of it for now.
The mindmap:
Please note for the time being, I am ONLY CONCENTRATING ON THE BOXES COLOURED YELLOW. This will constitute the entirety of the project that I am currently undertaking in my university studies. The rest - hopefully - will come later, either on my own time of once I've found gainful employ. As we can see, there's quite a bit there to look at - but for now, the journey of a million miles starts with a single step, and it helps to compartmentalize. I don't even know if the things above are relevant or if they'll get looked at down the track - that map was mainly done as an initial brainstorm for personal reasons. I hope that this helps demonstrate the sort of scope I'm starting with, and where I want to end up.
For the purposes of the project I am undertaking, I intend to post at least weekly over the next couple of months with findings from academic reports, personal reflections, and other tidbits of information that I hope will be useful to turning my interest (passion?) into a well grounded and considered approach to the idea of gaming in libraries.
I hope this works. Timer just went off, time for that coke.
Bodie
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