Stage 1 roundup: Summary, reflections, and future direction for Libranarchy.com

In this blog post, I'm going to reflect on my learning experience for this part of the blog and identify a couple of the features of said experience, with a view to giving a better idea of the scope of what I've done so far. I'll identify some of my own strengths and weaknesses (albeit from a much more subjective point of view than the SWOT analysis that I carried out before), and give a bit of explanation of where I'm going to go with this blog from here. The university-based part of this project is over, for which I've received an excellent mark.

To being with, here’s a screencast of the presentation that I did. It basically gives an overview of what I covered in the course of the blog. (14 minutes)

This was a fairly hard project for me to maintain - not really because of the format, but because of the other pressures that I had in my studies and the fact that it was much more academically grounded than I am used to. I like blogging, but I'm not a huge fan of referencing and research (which seems kind of silly seeing as I'm studying, and I'm studying to become a librarian). I found the academic grounding pretty eye opening, however, and I feel a lot more confident in progressing with my studies now that I've done a bit of actual research into the area I plan to pursue. The effort has definitely paid off and I am looking forward to pursuing the idea of gaming as a learning tool.

In terms of the research I did, I realize it's not completely infallible, but it is still fairly robust. I may not have been critical enough during my investigation, but there are two reasons for this - first, I just didn't have the time to undertake a multi-faceted account of the concept. I had a full study load and - to be blunt about it - a bunch of other life stuff to look after. It just wasn't practical to take a devils' advocate approach and look at the downsides of gaming, though I think the Negative aspects of the SWOT analysis made an excellent attempt.

The second reason I didn't take a more critical view of gaming in libraries is to do with my own personal viewpoint and the purpose of the blog. I am a gamer, more than I am an academic or librarian. It interests me and I can see a lot of benefits for the concept in a library environment. I also think that there's enough hard data to justify the medium as a legitimate tool - I'm not so concerned with that as I am implementing it in a setting where it can be of use. To me, the debate is done - let's work out how it can best be used. This was a huge challenge in the blog - at times, it felt like I was a bit of a bull at a gate, wanting to progress straight to the design aspect of a/the game and skipping all of the background. The blog is driving towards practical implementation and that design aspect, not a drawn out scholarly debate about the pros and cons of gaming.

I hope that so far, this blog has provided a decent starting point for those looking into gaming, from what amounts to essentially a library patrons' perspective (seeing as I neither work in a library nor have a particularly strong academic interest in the subject). It may even serve as a jumping-off point for further research, if someone else wants to take that up. I'd like to publicly thank my Supervisor, Ann Gillespie and Helen Partridge, the Coordinator for the course that I began this blog for. Their guidance allowed me to produce pretty much every entry here thus far and I am appreciative of their time and effort, especially considering that my chosen subject matter was a bit outside everyones experience.

Just to cap off the main learnings that I've gained from this stage of my research -

o   Gaming and gamification are valuable and useful tools that can have a huge payoff when done right

o   Story is one of the most important, hard to get right, and valuable elements of gaming

o   As informal learning spaces, games resist quantification but are qualitatively rich

o   Most of the problems involving the implementation of gaming  stem from biased or dated perceptions of the idea of play

           

These are the major points that I feel bear mentioning at this stage, in the interest of rounding out and summarizing this part of the blog. In terms of future direction, I intend to take more of a design/implementation path here. I want to design games that are of use for purposes other than entertainment (or even as well as being entertaining), but I don't want to gamify things - I'm totally on board with 'gamification' being a bit of a marketing gimmick, and bastardising the medium into a tepid version of itself. This blog will hopefully become my vehicle to chronicle my explorations into creating working game systems and texts, including my reflections on the process. There will be more referenced posts on the subject, mainly involving the theoretical side of gaming and the narratological aspects that I've found to be so important to developing fully functioning games.

Thankyou for reading and I hope that this has rounded out the academic justification for gaming having a place in the library, which I've been exploring up to this point. I'm looking forward to getting into the fun stuff from here on out. Cheers!

Gamification vs. Gaming – the difference

This is another personal reflection that I’ve decided to undertake partly because I’ve noticed that I often use gaming and gamification almost interchangeably throughout my posts. I’ve also been questioned a couple of times about the difference between the two, and I thought I’ share some thoughts on the topic.

Gamification as a concept involves the use of gaming mechanics in situations that wouldn’t normally make use of such mechanics in an effort to increase engagement and loyalty. The term was coined by Nick Pelling (2003), a computer game writer, and has gained popularity since around2010 (2013), when technology had evolved sufficiently to allow gaming to cross the divide between being a niche pastime to a commonplace hobby. That’s the super skinny cliff notes version. You can find out more about the concept on Wikipedia (2013) and the Gamification Wiki (2013). It should be noted that the term is a heavily loaded one, and a simple google search will send you into a veritable warzone of divergent opinions and attitudes towards it.

For the record, I am not a real fan of the ‘textbook’ definition that I’ve given here. As has probably been evident in my other posts, I’m not particularly grounded in rules or quantitative data sets – I’m much more creative and interested in the qualitative aspects of gaming as a whole. I sometimes think of this part of gaming as the ‘spirit’ of gaming, with the rules acting as a point of reference for characters to relate it to their world. I have to say I’m not a fan of gaming being bastardized into a business strategy either – it feels like using a Porsche to do farmwork.

On the other hand, the broader concept of gaming is simply the overall concept of interactive entertainment for just that – entertainment. It doesn’t carry any pretensions about education or increased engagement, and as a concept exists largely independent of the stakeholders that produce gaming texts (at least, that’s my view of it). There may be financial considerations that companies in the games industry have in relation to their games, but the games themselves don’t carry any purpose other than to entertain. Incidental learning takes place as a result of increased engagement and the creation of ‘information pull’ on players, but aren’t explicit goals that they set out to achieve, as may be the case in gamification.

Again, as I’ve alluded to in previous posts, I think that the main difference between the pair is that gamification is geared towards an ulterior motive, and that it takes the rules and the ‘number side’ of gaming and holds these up as what are attractive about the concept, whereas gaming concentrates on having fun and brings more to the table than the simple sum of its’ parts. At the time of writing, I’m firmly convinced that the ‘more’ that gaming brings is the narrative and unquantifiable nature of experience as it’s lived.

I don’t necessarily think that gamification is a bad thing – it just fills a purpose. It’s not in the interest of a major shopping centre to simply entertain their customers with a rewards scheme, and there’s nothing wrong with them instituting such a scheme. I do think that gamification is very often poorly executed and pointless – as I’ve said before, I don’t think I know anyone who has spent more on their shopping than they otherwise would because they want to accumulate more points in the aforementioned example. I do wonder if there’s a ‘story-based’ gamification that deals primarily with narrative and the users journey and eschews rules, and how effective it would be if instituted.

So, there we go. Gamification is application of gaming mechanics for increased engagement, and gaming is play for no reason other than entertainment. I hope that irons out any confusion (and doesn’t make my previous posts more confusing).

References:

Conundra Ltd - Home Page. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2013, from http://www.nanodome.com/conundra.co.uk/

Gamification. (2013, October 29). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gamification&oldid=579238980

Gamification Wiki. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2013, from http://gamification.org/

Google Trends. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2013, from http://www.google.com/trends/explore

SWOT analysis chart and advocacy of gamification of libraries – the beginning of the end (of the beginning)!

This post will begin the development of my argument for advocating gaming and gamification in the library. I have spent the last few posts dissecting the concept and relating it both to the current wider information landscape and the organization of the library itself, and now that I’ve examined all of this, I think it’s time to reflect on the process overall. I’ll begin with a chart that sums up the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) that I’ve investigated:

 

Strengths and Opportunities

Taken together, the positive aspects of gamification in libraries represents an excellent tool that fits in well with the form and function of the library. It can be adapted in many ways to fit with the already existing resources of the organization, as well as employed at service points to increase engagement with the systems in the library themselves. Gaming itself also lends itself to be well integrated into the model of ‘library as community hub’ as it is a heavily interactive concept that allows spectatorship and has a low barrier to client participation once initial considerations are dealt with.

The overall benefit to the organization here is increased immersion in all aspects of the service, a service that offers excellent return on investment when applied properly, and a creative outlet for both staff and clients. Given the massive popularity of gaming and gamification in almost all aspects of world culture, the implementation of them almost seems a no-brainer, as far as benefits go to an institution whose main deliverable is information.

Weaknesses and Threats

As with many negative aspects of any project, the ones present here often spring from outside concerns exacerbating inherent flaws in the concept itself. Here, the immersive and subtly educational aspects of gamification are mainly at in the line of fire, which is interesting because they are also some of it’s greatest strengths. Though the idea of a flawed concept may sound like a very bad thing to bring into an advocacy statement, it should be said that no concept is completely foolproof; anything, applied in the wrong way, will result in a failure. The problem in regards lies in the earlier mentioned immersion and lack of overt educational value – it’s all too easy to get these things wrong in the implementation phase and not realize until it’s too late and the player decides that the game isn’t worth it; they’re over it and have to be coaxed back, with heightened expectations and blunted enjoyment. It’s not until the outcome is revealed that the effectiveness of the means can be judged, if that makes sense.

Talking about the dangers of gamification as a simple case of misunderstanding  might seem like a bit of a copout, but this reveals a bit more of the nature of gaming to those uninitiated – the medium relies on complex machinery behind the scenes to achieve what seems to be a fairly cosmetic and formulaic outcome. A seemingly complicated game might be governed by a few simple rules; a beautifully intuitive game might have an absolutely mind wrecking algorithm behind it, or rely on unquantifiable nuances to present an equally unquantifiable story. This goes back to immersion and respecting the player, as well as the nature of the game being informal and fun – true gamefulness comes not only from an understanding of concepts but an adaptability to the changing situation of the player. In turn, that adaptability is another thing that libraries are having to come to terms with, not only in relation to themselves in the new knowledge economy, but within themselves at the vanguard of that changing economy. The old paradigm is falling away, driven off by technology, and the new one is coming. Games are now more accessible than ever, and it’s because of this that I make my case that libraries should be getting on board with it.

Reflection

The idea that stories and games don’t exist in a vacuum can’t be ignored, and neither can the idea that libraries collect the information that those media are dependent on in vast amounts. The organizations themselves are in the enviable position of having access to thousands, if not millions of texts, and the collective resources to capitalize on them to present hungry audiences with an engaging, interesting, and fun way to consume them.  Given the sheer scope of the gaming industry alone, it’d be remiss of our information repositories to dismiss the concept as not worthy. It’d be tantamount to dismissing compact discs or any form of new media that came out after books.

I say let’s feed the audiences what they want, in a considered and sustainable way. It can only benefit everyone.

Reflection - Thoughts on the concept of 'Story'

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.

Gamification in Libraries: What works, Part 2: Aspects of Gamification that let it work

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