If you haven’t already read about gamification, then please do so before you read the rest of this post. Thanks.
It’s OK. I’ll wait.
In the meantime, I thought I’d think with you about some of the reasons we play games in the first place.
We sometimes play for not-so-altruistic reasons. We play so that we can get accepted by other people who play, so that we can demonstrate our skills (preferably, our unassailable superiority), so that we can meet people, so that people can meet us. But we also play so that we can create a closer bond with our children or parents, peers or partners.
We play for money, for respect, we play to prove ourselves, we play to win, forever.
We play to exercise our mind or body (preferably both). We play to learn things about ourselves or the world. We play to practice and develop skills. We play so that we can better understand, empathize, commiserate.
Sometimes, we make up games to help us do things we have to do, like learn something. Sometimes to keep us from getting scared when we find ourselves in scary places. Sometimes, just to keep ourselves from getting bored. Because boredom isn’t fun, being afraid is’t fun, doing what we don’t want to do isn’t fun, studying isn’t fun.
People (lots of them), have also been exploring how they can make make us want to play things that aren’t really fun. They are trying to do for us what we do for ourselves when we encounter the unfun.
Most of the games we make to help us get through things that we have to get through aren’t really very good. But that’s not the point. The point is that they help us endure. Most of the games that the gamifyers and educators make to help us get through things are also not very good. Because they are not really invitations to fun. They are, like the games we create for ourselves, at their heart, medicinal. Palliative.
It’s like “educational checkers.” It’s checkers, alright. Except that in order to move, you first have to do a little adding, or long division, or exercise. Not really what I’d call fun. Me, I’d rather make up my own game. Or just make myself exercise.
Despite the apparent nobility of the higher calling, unless I, personally, want to learn what they are teaching me, no amount of fun-likeness makes me actually want to play these games. In fact, it does the opposite. It violates something, a trust. I feel like they are trying to fool me into doing something that they think is good for me. And despite the righteousness of their causes, I feel, at the end, well, fooled.
What I’d really like – if these people were really about helping me do something I don’t seem to want to do, even though I know I need to do it – is for them to do for me what a really good teacher might do: help me find the fun. Show me how exercise really is fun, really feels like fun; help me find the fun in multiplication and long division and chemistry and learning French. Don’t make me think it’s a game when it’s not. Don’t make it look like fun when it isn’t. Show me the fun in it, the fun of it. Invite me to the joyful core of it. Share with me the delight.
Speaking of sharing delight, I had the opportunity to share the draft of this post with my delightful colleagues, Chris and Becky Saeger. They made me aware of a connection between the educational system and gamification with which I had apparently been so familiar that I had failed to see it. The use of grading (both to determine what “class” you belong in and in evaluating the quality of your performance) is in itself gamification. It creates divisions between students and encourages them to compete for extrinsic rewards and recognition that are neither integral nor essential to the learning experience.
Chris and Becky also suggested that I add more emphasis to a fundamental observation about play and purpose, that “regardless of why we play, if we are really playing, we choose to play freely.” Or, as I would put it, we play because it’s fun. What this means for gamification is something I hope they, and you, will comment on further.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Bernie,
Thanks for doing this article. In thinking about this post, I was delighfully distracted by the previous article that led me to the IPA conference and then to reading some of the papers. From the papers I wound my way to this quote from the Welsh Assembly Government Play Policy. (Play policy? wow, I never saw a play policy before, is there one anywhere in US officialdom)
“Play encompasses children’s behavior which is freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated . It is performed for no external goal or reward, and is a fundamental and integral part of healthy development – not only for individual children, but also for the society in which they live” (WAG, 2002: p3)
This pretty much sums up what Becky and I were trying to get to in our discussion about your post. What I am thinking about next is the relationship of play as defined above and games. Some games are self invented, others (like the one coming up this weekend in your fair city) are performed for external reward and are not personally directed. Yet we call all of it games. Maybe a game that is made up and played just for the sake of playing is like what James Carse called an infinite game. I think it is good to distinguish infinite play from the finite participation in educational games. In any case your post is a good jumping off point to a deeper understanding and implications of the marketing buzz.
Play on…
Chris
“Gamification” just sounds like a marketing soundbite to me. The only PLAYERS involved in such ventures as marketing and “educational games”, are in my opinion, those behind said ideas/ projects. Playing something boring with results intended by by the provider is only playing, I suggest, if subversion or zooming off in some other direction is involved. Rather like kids might find old toys in a garbage heap and find ways to play with them totally at variance from their original intention.
I’d be interested, Chris, whether, like me, you have found going forward with Carse’s thinking extremely challenging as well as rewarding.
Andrew,
I was introduced to Finite and Infinite Games back in 1985 or so. It is one of the most influential books shaping my worldview right next to “The Well Played Game”. I think your comment above reflects my sense about gamification as well. To play you have to freely choose to play.
On your second point, I agree that the “real game and players” may be the people behind the games. Having said that, school can be viewed as a “game” of sorts. I think it would be better to bring that “game” into the open and make an invitation to the students to participate in that game.
I wrote to Bernie earlier today about his post. With his permission here are some snippits that I think amplify both the post and your comment.
Me-”When I read your post now it strikes me that it bothers you when educators use a game to make learning palatable. Would you react so strongly if someone said teachers should make learning engaging?”
Bernie–”Of course teachers should make learning engaging. Engaging every aspect of the child – mind, body, soul, community. But it seems to me that the engagement is most meaningful when it comes from the sense of wonder that is central to whatever field or topic is to be learned. If the engagement is produced by means that are extrinsic to the subject matter (gold stars, grades, certificates, competitions, M&Ms) then, no, I don’t believe it’s a pedagogically sound approach.
However, it seems to me that a good simulation can help people get at the core of something. It invites their total participation, engagement, but it also invites them to reach their own conclusions. The simulation Star Power is so effective because it makes people think, it seems to me, about class struggle in capitalism.”
When I converse with Bernie, even by email, I feel like I am in the presence of a true Bodhisattva
Best regards,
Chris
Nice to hear from you Chris. I’m sure you’re right about ‘a good simulation’. Maybe what underlies some of these concerns is the old ‘progress rhetoric’- the idea the play is good for children, leading to the idea that adults can direct play for children.
Regarding finite and Infinite Games, it’s one of my most important books- but also one I struggle with. It seems to me Carse uses games metaphorically his main focus being the contrast between culture (as an infinite game) and more ossified, self defeating ways of fitting in to society. In the process he cast some light on the vehicle of his metaphor, but, at the same time there’s a lot about true games that he doesn’t seem to value or understand. For example, his idea of a “master player” who knows and sticks to a winning strategy, does not correspond to the much more vital and precarious position of being a top player in any sportized game. It is much closer to the approach of a swindler, say a chess player who knows the relevant tricks to defeat inferior players (for egoic or financial benefit) and who neither settles into a sportized approach nor into any friendly and sustainable play relationships. having made such a ‘correction’ you can posit further insights into the finite games concept such as the connection to swindling on a grander scale in such forms as social (and right up to international injustices). I am afraid revising carse is totally beyond me but I always hoped that someone with a better understanding of games would carry his ideas further!
1. Every now and then, as I was writing The Well-Played Game, I had to stop so that I could allow my spiritual bent to wallow in the sheer significance of it all. That’s one of the reasons I stopped using that word, “game.” It means so much, applies to worlds far beyond the confines of the playground or backyard or arena. The games, for example, of work, school, parenting, living. Eventually, I cooled off enough to remember I was writing about the games kids play just for fun. Or was I?
2. There are many different games. So when using games as a metaphor for anything, you always run into problems, because so much depends on what kind of game your metaphorizing. Are we talking economics or baseball or hide and seek?
3. Kids play infinite games. All the time. Hide and seek is one. Tag another. Catch. Knock-knock jokes.
4. I so like completely agree with you about the chess player. I had a friend (well, acquaintance) like that. When he’d play ping pong And it was his serve. Even if he were playing against a 5-year-old. All he knew was the score.
There’s a different between mastery and mystery. The true master seeks both.
I haven’t read Finite and Infinite Games, so I am a little lost to this discussion, but as an aspiring teacher, and as someone who helps children learn to play I’ll say this.
As adults, we make up our own games to “get us through” the things we know we should do. We sing in the shower, we make bubble castles out of our dishwater, we let ourselves check facebook when we get done x amount of studying. Would we still do the things we need to do? I suppose so, but I’m really not sure. What I know is that fun is personal, not everyone finds the same things fun. For a teacher at the front of a classroom presenting material (the life cycle of frogs for example) She (or he) could bring in frog eggs and allow them to hatch in an aquarium in the classroom, and watch as they eventually turn into frogs. She could let the students get involved hands on, in helping to catch adult frogs. And some students would find that amazingly, sparklingly fun, but some would be disgusted by the entire process. She has 25 students, and not all activities will be fun for all of them, but in some cases they will still have to participate. That’s where the extrinsics come in.
As someone who has used Applied Behavior Analysis, it worries me when extrinsic rewards are underappreciated and undervalued. As one of my teacher friends put it, “students may not understand the benefit of a new behavior we need them to learn until months or years down the line. Extrinsic rewards help them ‘buy into it’ until they get there”. Should school be fun? Absolutely. Should students be intrinsically motivated to learn? You bet. But what do you do with the ones that aren’t? Well, for those, you promise a reward that they find fun, if they promise to do what you find fun first.
I think the issue with gameification is most likely that nobody asked the players if the reward is indeed fun. It runs into the same problem, of saying “this will be fun for you” when really it might not be. I honestly think the solution is for the teacher to have fun. Fun may be personal, but it’s also contagious.
Just my thoughts,
Love and laughter,
Lily
Bernie: in “The Well Played Game” you talk about the ‘dynamic tension’ constantly restoring the balance between the playing mind (‘innovative,magical, boundless) and the gaming mind (‘concentrated, determined, intelligent’). I think James Carse’s ‘Finite Games’ are ‘games’ where the latter is totally divorced from the former. [And I guess for didactic purposes he exaggerates; play always tends to seep back in and only in very corrupt societies can a privileged few be so grimly serious and still succeed. Even in sports some of that balance is always maintained and, as you imply a “master player” can’t be truly successful in ANY way (let alone as a human being) if the gaming mind takes over completely.)
Lily: Is part of what you are saying that ‘gameifiers’ (themselves ‘concentrated, determined, intelligent’ but perhaps overserious) are indeed a force in determining policy in education? That seems to be the case in the UK and the teachers who can battle on amidst that, and still make learning fun, are some of the most courageous and dedicated (and, of course, fun loving) people I know.
Wonderful observation, Andrew. Spot on. Thanks.
@lily — while I appreciate the desire to “add extrinsically” to “help them buy into it until they get there…”, this ignores the mountains of research that show extrinsic rewards can diminish the likelihood that they ever WILL “get there”. The collection of 40+ years of research loosely joined in Self-Determination Theory provide compelling, robust evidence for the danger of extrinsic rewards applied to areas that might one day BE intrinsically rewarding.
An operant-conditioning approach (as most incentivized learning and gamification is) can produce complex-seeming behavior. Didn’t Skinner eventually “teach” pigeons to control missile guidance systems? But in the end, all agreed that this was nothing more than a series of mindless simple behaviors chained together. No creativity, no innovation, no self-expression, no desire for anything other than triggering the reward system. The deep problem with much of what is now termed gamification is that it LOOKS and feels like we have created engagement, when we have created a flurry of activity around a reward system.
Gamification is the high-fructose corn syrup of engagement. If the behavior we are incentivizing is NEVER going to be intrinsically motivating on its own, then by all means use rewards/gamification; there is nothing to harm (as long as the rewards are never stopped). That’s why rewarding dull, repetitive, painful chores and tasks is usually all upside. But to apply extrinsic rewards to something that has even the slimmest possibility of becoming truly pleasurable for its own sake, we risk reducing the chance that it ever will be.
Even if scientists do not fully understand the mechanism by which this counter-intuitive DEmotivation occurs, the 100′s of studies show that it does. Dan Pink’s TED talk is an excellent intro to the underlying research by Deci, Ryan, and so many others. And of course Alfie Kohn sounded the alarm years ago in “Punished by Rewards”.
@Lily – ” Should students be intrinsically motivated to learn? You bet. But what do you do with the ones that aren’t? Well, for those, you promise a reward that they find fun, if they promise to do what you find fun first.”
That’s one way, but it is the risky one. It is also the easy one. The sustainable, deeper path is to help understand what makes things intrinsically motivating and bridge what is being taught to something the learner already finds engaging on its own. Montessori is just one example of a system that has been doing this for decades. In my daughter’s school, for instance, each child helped design the context in which their learning of math, science, geography, language, etc. would happen. The kid fascinated with dinosaurs brought all those subjects to bear on projects about dinosaurs. The kid obsessed with hotel brochures because his father was a traveling salesman, well, he began helping his father plan efficient routes and create better budgets. And so on.
But really, almost any topic is inherently engaging when the life is not stripped from it. ALL children /humans find learning intrinsically motivating because we are wired to do so. What we do not find intrinsically motivating is studying topics for which their is no compelling context. But considering now many people are hooked on solving simple puzzles like Sudoku, it does not take that much to create motivating challenges.
A link of semi-relevance – http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/02/03/ranking-people-can-reduce-iq/?mod=WSJBlog – “The study showed how the expression of intelligence is dependent on social setting, and may have lessons for teachers as well as managers. ” – via Kathy Sierra
Some afterthoughts: http://www.deepfun.com/fun/2012/02/the-playing-mind-and-the-gaming-mind/
Chris (thanks) points out a new post from Kathy Sierra in which she eloquently describes her understanding of the darker side of gamification – http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2012/02/26/kathy-sierra-on-gamification-in-education/