CARACTERÍSTICAS DEL MODELO

There are a variety of terms similar to gamification that are often confused with it: serious games, games with a purpose, game based learning, games for learning, edutainment, and exergames. All of these, and gamification, have in common that they refer to a use of games

that goes beyond pure entertainment. They present different approaches, however, and should not be confused. Serious games may be the oldest of the terms and its definition is unfortunately also subject to discussion. The earliest available definition goes back to Abt, who requires serious games to “have an explicit and carefully thought-out educational purpose” and not to be “intended to be played primarily for amusement” (Abt, 1987, p.9). Later definitions of the term have extended beyond educational use. Zyda (2005), for example, defines a serious game as “a mental contest, played with a computer in accordance with specific rules, that uses entertainment to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives.” Even this definition seems oddly specific in its broadness as it names a variety of fields that serious games can be used in but by naming them implicitly excludes other fields. For the purposes of this work, we will follow Micheal and Chen’s definition of the term instead. According to them, serious games are “games that do not have entertainment, enjoyment or fun as their primary purpose” (Michael & Chen, 2006). It should be noted, that this definition is not without contention. Loh et al. (2015, p.14) stress the importance of performance/skill improvement in serious games and distinguish them not only from entertainment games but also “message broadcasters/edutainment”. This distinction is certainly necessary in research on game-based learning, but it leaves us without an overarching term for games with a non-entertainment purpose; hence our reliance on Micheal and Chen’s definition in the following.

Similar to gamification, serious games therefore combine a non-game context (e.g. train- ing) with games. Deterding et al. very clearly state a separation in their definition however: Where serious games refer to the use of complete games, gamification refers to the use of elements from games. Other authors are less clear on this distinction. It is useful for academic purposes to distinguish between the two approaches since the results are quite

different. Contemporary gamified applications with their points and badges would clearly fail to be considered games in most of the classic definitions, while serious games very clearly are games. Loh et al. (2015, p.9) discuss this, saying “Gamification is not a game at all! Instead, it borrows from the concept of game mechanics to motivate people to continue certain behaviors [. . . ] through points systems, badges, or monetary awards”. The distinction is not always this clear, however. Let’s assume, as an example, that we could take an existing game and break it down into its elements (a difficult task, but not hard to imagine in the abstract), then we would take all these elements and apply them to a non-game context. We would end up having reassembled the game, all the while following Deterding et. al’s suggested approach of using game elements only. At which point did we stop creating a gamified system and started creating a game instead? Deterding et al. already depicted the difference as a gradient, not an absolute (Deterding et al., 2011), which is just not reflected well in their use of “whole game” as a descriptor. We would suggest that the two ends of the scale should not be “whole” and “parts”, but rather “serious” (or a similar term) and “game”. Serious games and gamification would then be different expressions of the same phenomenon. Figure 2.4 shows this concept with examples for various types of serious games and gamification along the scale; we call it the serious–game scale. Both would be found somewhere in between the poles (not fully serious, not full games) with gamification being rather closer to the serious pole, while serious games are further towards the game side of the spectrum. Essentially, gamification would take a serious system and make it more game-like, while serious games take a game, and make it more serious.

This view also allows for mixed forms, which clearly exist. There are various examples out there, that are hard to classify as either a serious game or gamification — such as the protein-folding application fold-it13 _{(Cooper et al., 2010). Depending on your point of}

view, fold-it can either be considered a protein folding application with game elements (such as points and a leaderboard) or a puzzle game that delivers protein folding data. For the purposes of this thesis, we will consider systems that are clearly tilted to one end of the scale or the other appropriately, and err on the side of inclusion in borderline cases. It should be noted that there are authors that do not consider this distinction to be relevant

manual labour (e.g. cutting wood)

loyalty programs

(e.g. frequent flyer miles)

PBL gamification (e.g. Nike+)

human computation (e.g. fold.it)

games with a purpose (e.g. Google Image Labeler)

recruitment / marketing games (e.g. America‘s Army)

full games (e.g. Bejeweled)

more gamified

does not

resemble a game

shares some

properties

with games

is a game

more serious

Figure 2.4: The serious–game scale. Gamification and serious games approach a syn-

thesis of a non-game context and games from two sides of the same spectrum. Example placements are approximate, the further right an example is, the more game-like it is. The vertical axis has no meaning. Own illustration.

at all. Kapp (2012, p.16–17), for example, considers serious games and gamification to be essentially the same. Considering the ambiguity shown in the serious–game scale, there is certainly some merit to this. From a process point of view, however, there is a difference between taking a game and adding serious elements to it and taking a non-game context and adding game elements to it. When we refer to gamification, we will therefore refer to systems that can be found between the center and the left side of the scale in figure 2.4, systems that have been enhanced with game elements.

The other terms mentioned above can be considered subsets of serious games. Games with a purpose are a form of crowdsourcing, or human computation, that employs games as motivators. von Ahn (2006) first described this concept and gave image labeling as an example. Two players would be paired in a game, shown the same image and would each have to guess what words the other would use to describe the image. While this is purely a game from the users’ perspective, the operator of such a system would gain valuable

information about the contents of an image — a task that computers are not yet very good at. Such data can be very useful, for example for a search engine.14 _{The aforementioned}

fold-it is also often mentioned as an example, although it differs in the transparency of its use. It is very clear to the users of fold-it that they are helping to fold proteins instead of simply playing a game.

Oh and Yang studied a variety of definitions for the term exergame, and proposed to define exergames as “an experiental activity in which playing exergames or any videogames that requires [sic] physical exertion or movements that are more than sedentary activities and also include strength, balance, and flexibility activities” (Oh & Yang, 2010, p.10). In essence, exergames are games used to promote exercise or physical activity in general. Exergames have been created for a variety of target groups and purposes. Many studies focus on the elderly, such as the work by Brox et al. (2011) on increasing seniors’ physical activity through the persuasive effects of video games; a study of the impact on cognition by Anderson-Hanley et al. (2012), or the work by Agmon et al. (2011) on improving elderly user’s balance. The target group is not the main differentiator between exergames and gamification, however. Exergames are rather found at the “game” end of the scale we proposed above, focusing on full games that make the user exercise while playing rather than enhancing exercise with game elements, as seen in the examples studied by Lister et al. (2014).

One area in which games are being studied extensively is that of education and informal learning. We have already discussed that serious games originated in this area, but there is a variety of other terms that cover games with an educational intent. Game based learning is

probably the most commonly used these days, but games for learning and edutainment are

also mentioned. Breuer & Bente (2010) provide a good overview over these terms and their differences. For the purposes of our research, however, these terms are similar enough (and indeed overlapping, as seen in Bente and Breuer’s work), that we will simply refer to game based learning to cover all of them. Prensky (2001) prefers to discuss digital game based learning, but a limitation to digital systems seems unnecessarily restrictive. (See section 1.1 14_{As evidenced by the fact that Google licensed von Ahn’s system and used it to improve image search}

results for five years. The company later launched an application with a similar approach for collecting landmark data for its mapping service. The mobile game Ingress rewards users for submitting pictures and descriptions of local landmarks (Celino, 2013).

Game Characteristics Instructional Content Behavior/Attitude Learning Outcomes Instructional Content Game Characteristics

Game Cycle Learning Outcomes

Figure 2.5: Top: Theory of gamified learning, adapted from (Landers, 2014). Bottom:

Input-Process-Outcome Game Model, adapted from (Garris et al., 2002). It is proposed that game characteristics in gamification have an indirect impact on learning outcomes, while their impact is direct in serious games.

for a discussion on the relevance of the medium.) Game based learning, as we use the term here, therefore refers to any use of games to foster learning. On the serious–game scale discussed above, game based learning would be situated on the side of games rather than the serious side. Game based learning employs (more or less) full games that educate or train. This is not limited to games that were actively created to include educational content, but also includes games that are used to teach certain skills. E.g. one might use a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) to teach management and teamwork.

Landers (2014) proposes a theory of gamified learning that distinguishes between gam- ified learning and serious games. He defines gamification of learning as “the use of game elements, including action language, assessment, conflict/challenge, control, environment, game fiction, human interaction, immersion, and rules/goals, to facilitate learning and re- lated outcomes” (Landers, 2014, p.757) in a synthesis of the definition by Deterding et al. (2011) and a taxonomy of game attributes by Bedwell et al. (2012). The major distinction Lan- ders makes between gamification of learning and serious games (for learning) is the way in which they use game characteristics to impact learning. He adapts an input-process-output

model from Garris et al. (2002), stating that instructional content and game characteristics are combined to form the game cycle which in turn directly causes learning. In Landers’ theory of gamified learning, on the other hand, instructional content and behavior/attitude both cause learning, where instructional content influences behavior/attitude and the latter has a moderating effect on the learning effect of the former. Game characteristics only come into the picture in so far as they influence behavior/attitude, having only an indirect effect on learning outcomes. Landers (2014, p.760, emphasis in the original) states that “[t]he goal of gamification cannot be to replace instruction, but instead to improve it. If

the instructional content does not already help students learn, gamification of that content cannot itself cause learning.”

Both the mediating and the moderating paths in Landers’ model rely on gamification causing a targeted behavior/attitude and on that in turn either causing learning (Landers names time on task as an example) or moderating the learning process. This creates two possible points of failure for a gamification effort: gamification could be ineffective at causing the target behavior, or the target behavior might not affect learning outcomes (through either moderation or mediation.) Importantly, this means that the measurement of learning outcomes in gamified learning can be less useful in determining the effects of gamification as a tool in general. One might employ an effective gamification strategy (as in: the employed gamification elements cause the desired target behavior), yet not see any effect on learning outcomes. The same can also happen if the instructional material was ineffective to start with (c.f. Landers, 2014). We discuss Landers’ theory further in the context of collecting data for our planned experiment in subsection 5.2.3.