Aspectos Fundamentales del Rendimiento Académico

On 21^st May 2010, Google, as part of the 30^th Pac-Man anniversary, created the most interactive Doodle²⁶ up to date (Figure 15); every time a user was visiting the front page for a quick web search, a small Pac-Man game was loaded waiting for them to play. As one of the most popular videogames of all time, the image was very familiar with most users who just had a go with it.

The statistics for the time spent on that little game were staggering. ‗RescuTime‘, a company specializing in productivity tracking and optimization, calculated 4,819,352 of man-hours extra (36 seconds more on average per user) spent on Google‘s front page on 21^st May, as a result of the Pac-Man anniversary Doodle.

Figure 15. Google‟s Pac-Man 30th anniversary Doodle

So what are the qualities of (some) games that can imbue people so much motivation so that they put aside anything else in order to play them, and how can we extract them for other

26 A Doodle is a modified version of Google‘s logo, usually themed around an event, holiday or a memorial (for more see http://www.google.com/logos/)

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uses? The answer is indeed a rather complex one, with many different theoreticians and philosophers offering their own explanations about what is that makes game so alluring.

However, despite the differences in all these models, a look in the bibliography of game design will reveal that the dominant model is based on an instrumental approach of the player experience of pleasure; an experience of pleasure primarily based on the cognitive psychology notion of chunking and pattern recognition. As such, games are often viewed as series of cognitive exercises, puzzles the solution of which leads to pattern deciphering, turning the whole player experience of pleasure into a learning process:

―Games are […] concentrated chunks ready for our brains to chew on, […] they serve as very fundamental and powerful learning tools. […] Fun from games arises from mastery, from comprehension. […] Fun is just another word for learning.‖ (Koster, 2005, pp. 34, 36, 40, 46)

This perspective of games as mediators for learning experiences, leads to game design approaches of play that are falsely dichotomized between the play act and the experience of that act; in other words between play and playfulness. For game design theory, this very often translates into much more rigorous and thorough focus on the former rather than the latter, essentially addressing play only within the formal elements of games (see Zimmerman & Salen, 2004; Koster, 2005).

The reasoning behind such a unilateral approach is attributed to two factors. First and foremost are the spatial and temporal characteristics of the transition of play with/in games; the conscious, voluntary and essentially autotelic passage of the individual into the game‘s context.

This de facto assumption of the ―lusory attitude‖, as Suits terms it (Suits & Hurka, 2005), as a mandatory component of play within games very often leads to an uncritical stance about how it was construed in the first place.

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As such, many theorists perform an analytical division, which separates the attitude from the act, placing the role of ―pulling‖ the player into the play experience, or imbuing the lusory attitude, beyond the boundaries of game design²⁷:

―Designing the seduction of a game means understanding all of the formal, social and cultural factors that contribute to the player‘s experience. It is important, for example, to understand how marketing, promotion and distribution work in the game industry.‖

(Zimmerman & Salen, 2004, p. 333)

The other factor is of course the subjectivity of such process; the lusory attitude is a subjective expression and as such, it ―resists‖ strict ontological analysis. Thus, it is left to the subjectivity of the player to determine the circumstances under which they adopt the attitude. As Bernard Suits claims, the lusory goal, the reason for participating in the game, is a shared goal among all humans:

―Finally, the goal of participating in the game is not, strictly speaking, a part of the game at all. It is simply one of the goals that people have, such as wealth, glory, or security.

As such it may be called a lusory goal, but a lusory goal of life rather than of games.‖

(Suits & Hurka, 2005, p. 53)

Of course subjectivity is an issue, and indeed we do not argue against it here, but our argument goes against the inconsequence of such an analytic division. By drawing the line of the gamespace, the above analysis does not only divide the space and time of play and non-play, game and non-game but also the motivation for approaching the game and playing it:

―First, players are seduced into entering the magic circle of a game. Second, players are seduced into continuing playing.‖ (Zimmerman & Salen, 2004, p. 333)

This dichotomy here raises a discontinuity that is problematic not only for analytic purposes but also practical²⁸. We believe that gamification is only intensifying this paradox due to the spatial characteristics of gamified applications; how is the lusory attitude of game construed when the

27 As such, it should not come as a surprise that many gamification arguments and actual applications come from individuals that have limited or no background in game design but rather come from a marketing or technological background.

28 How does the game and the game designer account for this ―deception‖? Couldn‘t this be also seen as the root of the long and deep problem between game developers and game publishers about what sells (i.e. recognizable IP or good game play)?

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―game‖ in the application is seamed in with everyday life, eliminating the gamespace boundaries players/users have to cross?

Thus, we would like to offer an approach that would examine these two levels – the play form and the play experience – as a unified process; we do not argue here against a conceptual division, but an analytical one. It is the only way to avoid the logical mistake of confusing them by a strict ontological division:

―Without recognizing that these two levels exist, the two are easily confused, and one can feel comfortable assuming that he knows the one from the perspective of the other.‖ (Stevens, 1978, pp. 321-322)

We would like start by rejecting the somewhat naïve belief that all games have some special structural or design qualities that make them irresistible to play. Instead, we suggest that it is rather the process of interacting with a game; people are driven to the act of playing a game, a process that takes place in time and space. Hence, we have to look into the spatial and temporal characteristics of the broader play situation between player and game, in order to encapsulate the process of player motivation.

Perhaps a useful and maybe good way to start understanding this relationship is to examine its temporal characteristics. There is certainly a range of processes that take place even before the actual use of the game; when the potential player (an individual that has not yet started playing, but is in the process of deciding to do so) is confronted with the game. In that situation Juul positions the inception of the subjective cognitive process between the videogame and the player, with the latter not only coming to an understanding of the former‘s use and structure, but also having a strong compulsion to play it; he terms it ‗the pull of videogames‘:

―look at the video game shown in [Figure 15]. If you have ever played Pac-Man, you know your mission is to eat the dots and avoid the ghosts, and from a brief glance at the screen, you may already have planned where you want to go next in the game. This is the pull of video games, and indeed, of non digital games too. You can see what you need to do in the game, you can see, more or less, how to do it, and you want do to it.‖

(Juul, A Casual Revolution, 2010, p. 2)

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Obviously, Juul frames the pull around the subjective experiences of the player; not everyone has played Pac-Man before and thus cannot feel its pull. In addition to this, Juul also adds the personal taste of the player, and the time required, in the set of criteria that determine the activation of pull. Obviously then the pull as a concept could not only be limited to videogames;

it can be applied to any finite situation between an artifact and a user:

―Consider the jigsaw puzzle shown in figure [Figure 16]. In all likelihood you know how you would complete it. You can imagine the satisfaction of moving the final piece, of finishing the puzzle. The jigsaw begs you to complete it. […]In music, or in stories, we experience a similar type of pull: When Frank Sinatra sings ‗‗I did it my—‘‘ we want him to end the melody on ‗way‘. There is a pull toward the final note of the song, the tonic in musical terms.‖ (Juul, A Casual Revolution, 2010, p. 2)

Figure 16. Complete the puzzle (image ©kowalanka Fotolia.com)

By finite here, we mean that the interaction between the user and artifact has to have a clear point of completion (i.e. when all the dots in Pac-Man level are eaten, when the last puzzle piece is placed, when the verse of the song is sung). In that context of leads and endings, finity takes the form of bounding them in individual processes that are communicated between user and artifact.

In that broader context, the pull may be used as a term to describe a feeling, or a situation between the user and the artifact; it refers to that almost uncontrollable sensation of using the artifact in a specific way, when perceived and intended use come together. Thus the pull is not about the artifact or the users themselves, but for a specific situation, where the former is

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―communicating‖ to the latter, the action that needs to be taken so that their synergy comes to a consensual conclusion.

The important step here is that of the analysis of the relationship between user and artifact; it is not attributed to the level of properties of the artifact or the user, but rather in their synergy. The pull not only hints at, but predicates a dialogic process between user and artifact, a sequence of messages that are exchanged and interpreted. Of course under these terms the pull as a concept operates descriptively; it does not say anything about what is the content of these messages nor the way they are deployed and interpreted.

In order to refine the concept of ―pull‖, we shall examine Khaslavsky‘s and Shedroff‘s proposed model of seduction, which is a more analytic attempt to explain the inner workings of intrinsic motivational factors that mobilize users to interact with artifacts. For Khaslavsky and Shedroff seduction is a process that characterizes the whole continuum of interaction between the artifact and the user. Contrary to the pull, seduction is understood as a three step process:

1. Enticement. Grab attention and make an emotional promise;

2. Relationship. Make progress with small fulfillments and more promises, a step that can continue almost indefinitely; and

3. Fulfillment. Fulfill the final promises, and end the experience in a memorable way.

(Khalavsky & Sheroff, 1999, pp. 46-47)

Obviously the most apparent observation we can extract from this model is that Khaslavsky and Shedroff are also employing a dialogic rhetoric to analyze the user-artifact relationship. In this dialog, messages are exchanged and deployed into a field of expectations and promises that is created between the user and the artifact. As such, imagination becomes a kind of messenger, a cognitive agent that populates/fuels both expectations and promises by bridging the chronological gap between seduction and actual use:

―Interactivity is a stimulation of the power of imagination. By the power of imagination, one tries to see what will happen a few milliseconds ahead. This brings a future to the present. It is a bridge between a past and a future. Only interactivity can make such a

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jump, enabling us to escape from the chronological cage.‖ (Masaki Fujihata in Leopoldseder & Schöpf, 2001, p. 85)

In that sense, when interacting with an object, imagination is activated, and fills in both spaces of promises that the artifact is surrounded with, as well as that of their own expectations, in a way that is forecasting the eminent result. The actual conclusion of that process (see finity above) though is determining how these expectations and promises are mapped together (see Figure 17).

Figure 17. A dialogic model for user/artifact relationship

Despite the apparent division here, we should stress out once more that we address these two steps as a unified process. Thus, even though the fueling/filling of the expectations and promises dimensions precedes their actual validation, or falsification, they should not be considered independent processes; if done so, then they are reduced to mere ―daydreaming‖

and the constant of experiencing reality.

Thus, based on that analysis and by looking at both theories of seduction and ―pull‖, we can see that their authors hint at a perfect overlap between expectations and promises. This not

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only requires from imagination to populate these spaces equally, but to make them identical as well; what is promised, is what is expected, is what is played.

However, this perfect matching of expectations and promises is very often contradicted by (the same) design theorists, who call for designs that surprise and go beyond expectations; even Khaslavsky and Shedroff suggest the design of seductive experiences not by mapping perfectly expectations and promises but rather by employing ambiguity and surprise:

―Surprises you with something novel; Goes beyond obvious needs and expectations;

Leads you to discover something deeper than what you expected;‖ (Khalavsky &

Sheroff, 1999, pp. 48-49)

We thus face a critical paradox; how can surprise and ambiguity in the user-artifact relationship be accommodated together with their total lack thereof? How can intended and perceived use coincide, while leaving space for other possibilities? Indeed this paradox is very common amongst design theorists (Overbeeke, Djajadiningrat, Hummels, & Wensveen, 2002), who very often either overlook it, or try to surmount it by attributing it as part of a dynamic user-artifact relationship, like a ―dynamic gestalt‖ (Löwgren & Stolterman, 2004).

However, a closer look to the analysis of the attempts that bring this paradox into light will reveal that the ideal candidates proposed for incorporating both the surprise and its lack thereof, are in fact videogames:

―Except for some computer games, software is generally absent from lists of seductive products‖ (Khalavsky & Sheroff, 1999, p. 45)

We believe that it should not come as a surprise that many design theorists point at videogames in order to exemplify operative designs of this paradox. Indeed our own analysis and motivation has been initiated with videogames as the pivot point; it is thus relevant, to revert back to the player-videogame relationship and examine the characteristics of the messages exchanged, in order to understand how expectations, promises and imagination can work in a hyperbolic manner.

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Hence, examining the player-videogame relationship within a dialogic context we can‘t fail to indentify that the messages exchanged are indeed messages of play. The same way that Gregory Bateson describes the exchange of metalinguistic signals in mammalian play, we can claim here that govern the paradoxical relationship of player and videogame:

―»these actions, in which we now engage, do not denote what would be denoted by those actions which these actions denote.« The playful nip denotes the bite, but it does not denote what would be denoted by the bite. […] Play is a phenomenon in which the actions of »play« are related to, or denote, other actions of »not play«.‖ (Bateson, 1972, pp. 180, 181)

As such, the exchange of messages is in fact a meta-communicative, second order process, operating in symbolic virtual space²⁹ (Žižek, 1998), where expectations and promises are related to, or denote, other non-expectations and non-promises. In other words, the expectations and promises that are fueled by imagination are neither confirmed nor falsified but they rather remain as potential to be (un)delivered³⁰.

Following Bateson‘s methodology, we ―frame‖³¹ the player-videogame relationship under the prism of a premise system where we discern three types of messages, a triadic constellation of possible exchanges that describes how the relationship becomes operative:

1. Messages of the sort of mapping (an) expectation to (a) promise; the types of messages that resolve into binary matching of expectations and promises, which either confirm or falsify them.

29 Žižek is using the Lacanian triad (Imaginary, Symbolic, Real) to elaborate how symbolic processes have to be experienced in a virtual space in order to be operative. His examples include symbolic authority and beliefs. For the former to be perceived as effective and actual it must not be fully actualized but remain virtual on the level of threat, otherwise it is undermining itself. For the latter, he argues that beliefs operate in a virtual domain, in the sense that none has to directly believe; they become operative by presupposing that some else believes, thus it is enough to assume that someone else believes in order to have an operative belief. In both cases, virtuality is an essential element for them to be operative; if a threat is actualized then undermines itself and similarly someone that believes too immediately, too directly is losing subjectivity, ending up looking like a puppet.

30 In the same way that Bateson also analyses threat as possible future: ―The clenched fist of threat is different from the punch, but it refers to a possible future.‖ (Bateson, 1972, p. 181).

31 A psychological frame.

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2. Messages which simulate the mapping of (an) expectation to (a) promise; the types of messages that neither confirm nor falsify expectations and promises.

3. Messages which enable the receiver to discriminate between the two above messages.

As such, the third type of message is setting up the frame upon which the paradox is based, essentially leaving space for only three possible outcomes from a user-artifact relationship:

a) A full and perfect overlap between expectations and promises; when all expectations are promised and confirmed (see Figure 18, a). This is a perfect mapping.

b) A partial mapping between expectations and promises; when some expectations and promises are confirmed and the rest are falsified (see Figure 18, b). That is an partial mapping.

c) A framed mapping between expectations and promises; when some expectations and promises are confirmed while the rest are not falsified, remaining as potential (see Figure 18, c). This is the mapping that we term playful mapping between expectations and promises.

Figure 18. Possible resolutions of the user-artifact relationship

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Instantly one sees the important element here; playful mapping are not so much dependent on the expectations and promises that are confirmed but rather to the ones that fall in the second type of message exchange. That is to say, that playful mappings are not so much about the delivery of all expectations to the user but of the ones left as future potentials.

Of course, we do realize that not everything can be left as potential and some expectations must be mapped with promises. However, the pull operates under the premise that some

Of course, we do realize that not everything can be left as potential and some expectations must be mapped with promises. However, the pull operates under the premise that some