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Perception of “This is Not a Game”: Definition and Measurement
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction
Abstract
Participatory narratives are compelling, at least partly because of their ability to help players suspend disbelief in the fictional world in which they engage. Game makers have used the phrase “This is Not a Game” (TINAG) to capture the willingness of players to buy into such narratives in ways that promote productive roleplaying and authentic engagement. Although TINAG has permeated the academic and popular literature on gaming and immersive narratives for decades, there has not been a scientific grounding for the term that provides researchers support for a more rigorous study of the topic. This paper makes two primary contributions. First, it provides a definition of the Perception of TINAG based on a systematic literature review of 50 articles that define or describe critical characteristics of TINAG: The Perception of TINAG is a player’s acceptance that they are embedded in and able to influence a fictional story woven into the real world . Second, the paper develops and validates a survey instrument that researchers can use to measure the Perception of TINAG and its three unique components: 1) the player accepts that they are embedded in a fictional story, 2) the player believes their actions influence the narrative, and 3) the player perceives that the story is woven into the real world . We evaluated the instrument using exploratory factor analysis using expert reviewers and game players. We include a table of the 50 articles describing TINAG and our final scale to facilitate future research.
Background: Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) evolve online, whilst engaging large numbers of participants who play concurrently. Their online socialization component is a primary reason for their high popularity. Interestingly, the adverse effects of MMOs have attracted significant attention compared to their potential benefits.
Methods: To address this deficit, employing PRISMA guidelines, this systematic review aimed to summarize empirical evidence regarding a range of interpersonal and intrapersonal MMO well-being outcomes for those older than 13.
Results: Three databases identified 18 relevant English language studies, 13 quantitative, 4 qualitative and 1 mixed method published between January 2012 and August 2020. A narrative synthesis methodology was employed, whilst validated tools appraised risk of bias and study quality.
Conclusions: A significant positive relationship between playing MMOs and social well-being was concluded, irrespective of one's age and/or their casual or immersed gaming patterns. This finding should be considered in the light of the limited: (a) game platforms investigated; (b) well-being constructs identified; and (c) research quality (i.e., modest). Nonetheless, conclusions are of relevance for game developers and health professionals, who should be cognizant of the significant MMOs-well-being association(s). Future research should focus on broadening the well-being constructs investigated, whilst enhancing the applied methodologies.
Sustainable HCI (SHCI) constitutes a relatively new research field within HCI. We have identified four literature reviews of the field conducted between 2009-2014. In this paper, we present and discuss the results of a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed conference and journal articles that have been published in the field during the last ten years (2010-2019). To this end, we apply the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to classify and discern high-level goals SHCI researchers have worked towards during this period. This paper contributes to HCI by 1) identifying Sustainable Development Goals that SHCI researchers have worked towards, 2) discerning main research trends in the field during the last decade, 3) using the SDG framework generatively to enumerate and reflect on areas that this far have not been covered by SHCI research and 4) presenting takeaways and opportunities for further research by the larger HCI community.
This article highlights and discusses potential opportunities, limitations and problems
related to using games and game technologies (such as gamification) in education. For the purpose of the study, games are seen ontologically as conditional realities. The world-of-work and world-ofplay concept, which stems from the ideas of social phenomenology about lifeworld and multiple realities, forms a methodological basis for the analysis and differentiation between game and nongame activities, thus underlying the scientific novelty of our study. The following conclusions were inferred: By turning learning into a game we may prompt students to perceive the world-of-work (duties, responsibilities) as the world-of-play (desires, freedom); then, either the school will lose its socializing role in preparing students for life, which is a world of work and commitments rather than a world of game, or students will become bored with the game that will lose its appeal (or suggest manipulations). Thus, despite all its advantages, game-based and gamified education should not be seen as a panacea.
The use of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) in management research has increased over 2,117% in recent years, from 6 papers in 2012 to 133 in 2019. Among scholars, though, there is a mixture of excitement about the practical and logistical benefits of using MTurk and skepticism about the validity of the data. Given that the practice is rapidly increasing but scholarly opinions diverge, the Journal of Management commissioned this review and consideration of best practices. We hope the recommendations provided here will serve as a catalyst for more robust, reproducible, and trustworthy MTurk-based research in management and related fields.
Since their origin, Alternate Reality Games or ARGs have presented a great variability in their structures, forms, rules and objectives, compromising a definition capable of describing them in a univocal way. This circumstance has forced writers and designers of ARGs in the first place, and secondly researchers and theorists of the games, to articulate different classifications capable of bringing together all manifestations of the phenomenon. As if this were not enough, the different attempts of classification on the genre have had to face its spirit always tending to contingency, change and transformation according to technological advances or new experiences of use, a fact that forces the constant updating of the categories or sub-genres in which ARGs could be divided. This paper aims to analyze the fundamental characteristics of the different types of ARGs with the intention of proposing an updated taxonomy that covers all cases in a generous and flexible way but trying to delimit the boundaries as clearly as possible.
Games User Research (GUR) focuses on measuring, analysing and understanding player experiences to optimise game designs. Hence, GUR experts aim to understand how specific game design choices are experienced by players, and how these lead to specific emotional responses. An instrument, providing such actionable insight into player experience, specifically designed by and for GUR was thus far lacking. To address this gap, the Player Experience Inventory (PXI) was developed, drawing on Means-End theory and measuring player experience both at the level of Functional Consequences, (i.e., the immediate experiences as a direct result of game design choices, such as audiovisual appeal or ease-of-control) and at the level of Psychosocial Consequences, (i.e., the second-order emotional experiences, such as immersion or mastery). Initial construct and item development was conducted in two iterations with 64 GUR experts. Next, the scale was validated and evaluated over five studies and populations, totalling 529 participants. Results support the theorized structure of the scale and provide evidence for both discriminant and convergent validity. Results also show that the scale performs well over different sample sizes and studies, supporting configural invariance. Hence, the PXI provides a reliable and theoretically sound tool for researchers to measure player experience and investigate how game design choices are linked to emotional responses.
ABSTRACT
This article aims to investigate the Grand Challenges which arise in the current and emerging landscape of rapid technological evolution towards more intelligent interactive technologies, coupled with increased and widened societal needs, as well as individual and collective expectations that HCI, as a discipline, is called upon to address. A perspective oriented to humane and social values is adopted, formulating the challenges in terms of the impact of emerging intelligent interactive technologies on human life both at the individual and societal levels. Seven Grand Challenges are identified and presented in this article: Human-Technology Symbiosis; Human-Environment Interactions; Ethics, Privacy and Security; Well-being, Health and Eudaimonia; Accessibility and Universal Access; Learning and Creativity; and Social Organization and Democracy. Although not exhaustive, they summarize the views and research priorities of an international interdisciplinary group of experts, reflecting different scientific perspectives, methodological approaches and application domains. Each identified Grand Challenge is analyzed in terms of: concept and problem definition; main research issues involved and state of the art; and associated emerging requirements.
BACKGROUND
This article presents the results of the collective effort of a group of 32 experts involved in the community of the Human Computer Interaction International (HCII) Conference series. The group’s collaboration started in early 2018 with the collection of opinions from all group members, each asked to independently list and describe five HCI grand challenges. During a one-day meeting held on the 20th July 2018 in the context of the HCI International 2018 Conference in Las Vegas, USA, the identified topics were debated and challenges were formulated in terms of the impact of emerging intelligent interactive technologies on human life both at the individual and societal levels. Further analysis and consolidation led to a set of seven Grand Challenges presented herein. This activity was organized and supported by the HCII Conference series.
This is a Public Access article available at:
https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2019.1619259
The widely publicized impact of user-generated review (UGR) sites on sales has spawned a large number of studies on user behaviors on UGR sites. These existing studies center on conversions of visitors into paying customers, and the creation and dissemination of online reviews. UGR site visitors will consider emotional cues in reviews more seriously if the product offered is more enjoyment-based, hedonic, than utilitarian. This study examines the impact of user enjoyment, when reading reviews on hedonic products, on dissemination of those reviews with their personal social circles. Specifically, to examine user enjoyment on UGR sites, we apply the concept of flow – enjoyable experiences that are intense and enticing enough to convert visitors to endorsers. We conducted two online surveys to contrast our suggested flow-based explanation on dissemination against alternative rationality-based one. The findings from our surveys show that the flow state increases their intentions to recommend the establishments, while the objectivity of reviews and expertise of reviewers are limited in explaining such.
As qualitative research becomes increasingly recognized and valued, it is imperative that it is conducted in a rigorous and methodical manner to yield meaningful and useful results. To be accepted as trustworthy, qualitative researchers must demonstrate that data analysis has been conducted in a precise, consistent, and exhaustive manner through recording, systematizing , and disclosing the methods of analysis with enough detail to enable the reader to determine whether the process is credible. Although there are numerous examples of how to conduct qualitative research, few sophisticated tools are available to researchers for conducting a rigorous and relevant thematic analysis. The purpose of this article is to guide researchers using thematic analysis as a research method. We offer personal insights and practical examples, while exploring issues of rigor and trustworthiness. The process of conducting a thematic analysis is illustrated through the presentation of an auditable decision trail, guiding interpreting and representing textual data. We detail our step-by-step approach to exploring the effectiveness of strategic clinical networks in Alberta, Canada, in our mixed methods case study. This article contributes a purposeful approach to thematic analysis in order to systematize and increase the traceability and verification of the analysis.
The infusion of mobile and collaborative technologies into our everyday lives enables new forms of pervasive games and play. We use the term pervasive play as shorthand for technology-mediated, playful experiences that are tethered to our everyday lives through the physical and virtual spaces we inhabit. This includes a variety of game and play genres ranging from alternate reality games to urban games to mixed reality performance and playful uses of public displays. The goals of the workshop are to (a) strengthen and broaden the community of pervasive play researchers and practitioners, (b) explore design frameworks for creating novel pervasive play experiences, and (c) identify key research questions, methods, and challenges for future research in this area.
The advent of the Internet has been instrumental in producing new Game Based Learning (GBL) products where education and game play converge. GBL allows educators to leverage the power of computer games to engage players to develop new knowledge and skills. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are one such tool that can offer engaging GBL experiences. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are cross media narrative-based games that use the Internet as a central communications platform. The interactions of participants drive the progression and direction of the story and play experience. Boundaries between reality and fiction are disguised, as game designers ensure that characters and scenarios react dynamically to player input. Working collaboratively, players collate a fragmented narrative by deciphering codes and clues. When used for educational purposes, Serious ARGs provide a novel form of GBL that encourages critical thinking, develops problem-solving skills and fosters collaborative learning. The pedagogical application of ARGs is still relatively new though, and their potential as a teaching tool has yet to be fully realised. This article presents a background to ARGs and Serious ARGs. Furthermore, this article also presents lessons drawn from an empirical study - the creation of Plunkett's Pages, a Serious ARG that allows players to learn about the events surrounding Ireland's 1916 Easter Rising. Plunkett's Pages offers insights into how an ARG can be used to support learning. A design-based methodology steered its development. This article analyses how an ARG's game design correlates with the desired learning outcomes, reflects on how an ARG can motivate players, and explains the techniques that enriched players' learning. A selection of evaluation criteria, extracted from the reflections of those who played Plunkett's Pages, are furthermore presented. These criteria specifically relate to engendering learning through game play, and are intended to enable novice ARG designers, or educators seeking to use ARGs, to formatively evaluate an emerging ARG design.
The advent of the Internet has been instrumental in producing new Game Based Learning (GBL) tools where education and games converge. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are one such GBL tool. Interactive narrative games that use the Internet as a central communications platform, ARGs challenge players to collaboratively collate a fragmented story. When used for educational purposes, Serious ARGs provide a novel form of GBL that encourages critical thinking, develops problem-solving skills and fosters collaborative learning. However, the pedagogical application of ARGs is still relatively new. This article presents a background to ARGs and Serious ARGs. It also outlines the lessons drawn from Plunkett's Pages, a Serious ARG that focuses on actual historical events. A selection of evaluation criteria, extracted from the reflections of those who played Plunkett's Pages are presented. These criteria are intended to enable novice ARG designers or educators to formatively evaluate an emerging ARG design.
Many teens today who use the Internet are actively involved in participatory cultures—joining online communities (Facebook, message boards, game clans), producing creative work in new forms (digital sampling, modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction), working in teams to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (as in Wikipedia), and shaping the flow of media (as in blogging or podcasting). A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits of these activities, including opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, development of skills useful in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship. Some argue that young people pick up these key skills and competencies on their own by interacting with popular culture; but the problems of unequal access, lack of media transparency, and the breakdown of traditional forms of socialization and professional training suggest a role for policy and pedagogical intervention.
This report aims to shift the conversation about the "digital divide" from questions about access to technology to questions about access to opportunities for involvement in participatory culture and how to provide all young people with the chance to develop the cultural competencies and social skills needed. Fostering these skills, the authors argue, requires a systemic approach to media education; schools, afterschool programs, and parents all have distinctive roles to play.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning
Successful Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), such as The Lost Experience, I Love Bees and Urgent EVOKE have solicited thousands of active participants and, often, millions of spectators from around the world. ARGs require significant resources not only in terms of initial design, but also in implementation, since live, dynamic interplay between players and designers is an inherent aspect of their interactive storylines. This paper outlines a novel design framework for creating reusable ARGs that will help extend the lifespan of ARGs and allow them to permeate new domains such as education. The framework includes three key reusable design objectives (replayability, adaptability, extensibility), each of which can be enacted at different levels of depth. We also identify barriers to reusable ARGs and design strategies for overcoming those barriers, drawing upon ARG designer interviews and existing ARGs.
We describe the first iteration of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) designed to lead players into a newly enfranchised relationship with history and engage them in scientific thinking and information literacy practices. We found that the points at which the game's mythology blurred the lines between fact and fiction prompted middle school students to move beyond rote memorization of content. Instead, they began to question, analyze, and make hypotheses about the data presented. However, striking a meaningful balance between "true" history and imagined events poses new design challenges. We present a formative typology of counterfactual design patterns that can help designers, educators, and players locate interesting fault lines in reality that facilitate the expansion of ARG mythologies.
Alternate Reality Games (ARG) tend to have story-driven game structures. Hence, it is useful to investigate how player activities interact with the often pre-scripted storyline in this genre. In this article, we report on a study of a particular ARG production, Conspiracy For Good (CFG), which was at the same time emphasising the role of strong storytelling, and active on-site participation by players. We uncover multiple levels of friction between the story content and the mode of play of live participants, but also between live and online participation. Based on the observations from the production, we present design recommendations for future productions with similar goals.
We review the first iteration of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) designed to engage middle school students in the interpretive process behind history and the mathematical roots of cryptography and cartography. Building from the core characteristic of ARGs as collaborative sense-making systems, we sought to integrate elements of effective cooperative learning environments, such as positive interdependence, into our game design. We detail how cooperative learning constructs were designed into the narrative and game mechanics, and how evidence of these features emerged during play. We found that the jigsaw puzzle design of game challenges supported collaboration between groups; daily, whole-class discussions strengthened group processing; and real-time, chat-based dialogue among students themselves and students with an in-game character enhanced promotive interaction (e.g., providing positive reinforcement). However, we did note weaknesses in positive interdependence within groups. We conclude with design implications for future iterations of the ARG.
Alternate reality games (ARGs) are a new genre of transmedia practice in which players collaboratively hunt for clues, make sense of disparate information, and solve puzzles to advance an ever-changing narrative that is woven into the fabric of the real world. This paper highlights the potential for ARGs to promote 21st-century literacy skills. We propose a meta-level framework for 21st-century literacies composed of seven core literacies: gather, make sense, manage, solve, create, respect, collaborate. We then describe how the unique properties of ARGs can be used to teach these core literacies, drawing upon expert interviews and examples from numerous ARGs. Finally, we outline the major challenges and opportunities for using ARGs in the service of education, focusing on reuse, budgetary issues, scale, and improvisation. We end with an outline of key research questions that need to be addressed to merge ARGs and education.
A major symptom of postmodernity is the loss of utopian energy, of which the popularity of dystopian cultural production is evident. The dystopian genre, however, is cautionary, and thus utopian. Associated is the influence of technology on post-utopian culture—although it has been viewed pessimistically, technology allows for new ways of telling dystopian stories. One such mode of telling dystopian stories is the Alternate Reality Game (ARG), a narrative, multi-media game, using several different technologies that puts the player in a fictional reality. One ARG that exemplifies the idea of dystopia as having utopian energy is Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero, which shows that technology can have utopian energy, offering new ways of telling dystopian stories such as via the ARG, thus locating some utopian energy in postmodern culture through the form’s culturally critical structure and interactive nature, which equals a call to action against the dystopian nature of contemporary society.
As machines become increasingly intelligent, the HCI community is presented with new challenges regarding methods to capture and understand user experience (UX). In the case of autonomous driving (AD), this involves new scenarios where humans and intelligent vehicles need to act together in real-life traffic situations with other road users. This article responds to this context by 1) outlining a longitudinal design ethnography method whereby participants drove semiautonomous cars in their everyday environments to capture such human-machine relations in real-life settings, 2) demonstrating the complexities of the relations between humans and AD vehicles, 3) engaging theories of socio-materiality and entanglement to understand the human-machine relations of AD cars, and 4) identifying anticipatory experiences that emerge from these relations and their implications for informing UX design.
In this paper we introduce an approach to cybersecurity education and helping students develop professional understanding in the form of a Playable Case Study (PCS), a form of educational simulation that draws on affordances of the broader educational simulation genre, case study instruction, and educational Alternate Reality Games (or ARGs). A PCS is an interactive simulation that allows students to “play” through an authentic scenario (case study) as a member of a professional team. We report our findings over a multi-year study of a PCS called Cybermatics, with data from 111 students from two different U.S. universities who interacted with the PCS. Cybermatics increased student understanding about certain key aspects of professional cybersecurity work, improved their confidence in being able to successfully apply certain skills associated with cybersecurity, and increased about half of the students’ interest in pursuing a cybersecurity career. Students also reported a number of reasons why their perceptions changed in these areas (both positive and negative). We also discuss design tensions we experienced in our process that might be encountered by others when creating simulations like a PCS, as they attempt to balance the authenticity of designed learning experiences while also sufficiently scaffolding them for newcomers who have little background in a discipline.
Conversational agents (CAs)—frequently operationalized as chatbots—are computer systems that leverage natural language processing to engage in conversations with human users. CAs are often operationalized as chatbots which are used for many applications including technical support, customer service, and digital personal assistants. Despite their widespread use, little research to date has investigated how improving the conversational skill of a CA impacts user perceptions of the agent. To elucidate this relationship, this research uses Social Presence Theory to describe how conversational skill influences perceived social presence and ultimately anthropomorphism of a chatbot. We conducted a series of studies in which 450 participants interacted with CAs exhibiting varying levels of conversational skill. We show that people perceive a more skilled CA to be more socially present and anthropomorphic than a less skilled CA. This research advances the knowledge of computer-human interface in information systems, as CA research to date has largely focused on the technical challenges rather than the behavioral questions of how users interact with CAs.
Henry Jenkins, former professor of humanities, MIT, is one of the leading science authorities in the analysis of New Media. Today, he is Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at USC. In this dialogue, Jenkins explains how technology is transforming the traditional view of humanities. He outlines his vision of convergence culture in his book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide . He explains why he thinks the idea of copyright is an aberration. He goes on to relate the causes for conglomerates losing control of media flows and how to deal with this situation. He describes the new logic framework under which our current participatory culture is run. He defines himself in this dialogue as a critical utopian trying to demonstrate how to harness the great power that changes taking place in new media have on people. Emphasizing the ‘new social skills’, which bring about new forms of ethics, interactions, politics, types of economic activities and legal culture, in the clash between the new digital media and the old mass media.
This chapter presents a new platform for technology-mediated learning that holds the promise of helping to teach students to both think and act like professionals in a particular discipline. It provides an educational experience that goes beyond presenting information- and skill-based content knowledge and leading students to develop greater interest and more mature perspectives of the field. We have called this new educational platform a Playable Case Study (PCS). It is planned to be a 2-week interactive simulation that allows students to take the role of a professional and interact with fictional characters through online mediums such as emails, online chats, and videoconferencing. We present findings on research conducted with a group of college-aged students who participated in a PCS called Cybermatics, designed to introduce students to the work of a cybersecurity professional. We found that the Cybermatics PCS was successful in giving students a hands-on, interactive skill-building experience that ultimately reshaped their perceptions of cybersecurity and increased their interest in the field. We believe that the PCS has potential to be a useful learning tool to teach beyond instructional content and help students develop skills, attitudes, viewpoints, values, and interest in not only cybersecurity but other fields as well.
This article argues that our intimate entanglement with digital technologies is challenging the foundations of current HCI research and practice. Our relationships to virtual realities, artificial intelligence, neuro-implants or pervasive, cyberphysical systems generate ontological uncertainties, epistemological diffusion and ethical conundrums that require us to consider evolving the current research paradigm. I look to post-humanism and relational ontologies to sketch what I call Entanglement HCI in response. I review selected theories—Actor-Network Theory, Post-Phenomenology, Object-Oriented Ontology, Agential Realism—and their existing influences on HCI literature. Against this background, I develop Entanglement HCI from the following four perspectives: (a) the performative relationship between humans and technology; (b) the re-framing of knowledge generation processes around phenomena; (c) the tracing of accountabilities, responsibilities and ethical encounters; and (d) the practices of design and mattering that move beyond user-centred design.
A Playable Case Study (PCS) is a hybrid learning experience where students (1) participate in a fictional narrative that unfolds through an immersive, simulated environment and (2) engage in classroom activities and lessons that provide educational scaffolding and promote metacognition through in-game and out-of-game experiences. We present the Microcore PCS to illustrate the potential of this new type of experiential simulation that incorporates aspects of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) to increase immersion and teach workplace literacies in the technical communication classroom. We explore results from a pilot test of Microcore with an undergraduate technical communication course, identifying design strategies that worked well and others that led to improvements that are currently being incorporated. We also provide questions to prompt future research of playable case studies and discuss our findings in a broader context of technical communication pedagogy.
This textbook contains the proceedings from the 3rd International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE 2006). The contributions are grouped into six sections, which include subjects like virtual characters, story authoring, narrative systems, and examples of their application. During recent years, Interactive Digital Storytelling has evolved as a prospering - search topic, banding together formerly disjoined disciplines stemming from the arts and humanities as well as computer science. The subject of this book is of course strongly related to the notion of ‘storytelling’, which has been used as an effective means for the communication of knowledge and social values, ever since the early history of humankind. It also tries to build a bridge between current academic trends, for example, by investigating and formalizing narrative aspects of computer games, and by its developments for the experience-based design of human–media interaction in general. Starting with a scientific workshop at national level in 2000, the Digital Sto- telling group at ZGDV Darmstadt originated TIDSE, the International Conference for Technologies in Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment. TIDSE 2003, TIDSE 2004, and TIDSE 2006 continued this series, and provided the latest research outcomes and indications for its usage within entertainment applications.
In this chapter, alternate reality games (ARGs) are examined as an example of immersive and pervasive play, in which game play may escape a proscribed sphere and permeate into ‘ordinary’, non-ludic life. Particular attention is addressed to this genre of games’ dissimulative, ‘this is not a game’ rhetoric, which seemed to early critics to promise (or threaten) a compelling engagement with a deviously simulated reality. Using the 2007 game World Without Oil as a case study, the chapter examines the potential for ARGs to blur the boundaries between in- and out-of-game realities in a practical sense without resorting to the sort of seamless simulation or requiring the naive reception that early criticisms assumed were features of play.
Alternate Reality Game (ARG) represent a new genre of transmedia practice where players hunt for scattered clues, make sense of disparate information, and solve puzzles to advance an ever-evolving storyline. Players participate in ARGs using multiple communications technologies, ranging from print materials to mobile devices. However, many interaction design challenges must be addressed to weave these everyday communication tools together into an immersive, participatory experience. Transmedia design is not an everyday process. Designers must create and connect story bits across multiple media (video, audio, text) and multiple platforms (phones, computers, physical spaces). Furthermore, they must engage with players of varying skill levels. Few studies to-date have explored the design process of ARGs in learning contexts. Fewer still have focused on challenges involved in designing for youth (13-17 years old). In this study, I explore the process of designing ARGs as vehicles for promoting information literacy and participatory culture for adolescents (13-17 years old). Two ARG design scenarios, distinguished by target learning environment (formal and informal context) and target audience (adolescents), comprise the two cases that I examine. Through my analysis of these two design cases, I articulate several unique challenges faced by designers who create interactive, transmedia stories for – and with – youth. Drawing from these design challenges, I derive a repertoire of design strategies that future designers and researchers may use to create and implement ARGs for teens in learning contexts. In particular, I propose a narrative design framework that allows for the categorization of ARGs as storytelling constructs that lie along a continuum of participation and interaction. The framework can serve as an analytic tool for researchers and a guide for designers. In addition, I establish a framework of social roles that designers may employ to craft transmedia narratives before live launch and to promote and scaffold player participation after play begins. Overall, the contributions of my study include theoretical insights that may advance our understanding of narrative design and analysis as well as more practical design implications for designers and practitioners seeking to incorporate transmedia features into learning experiences that target youth.
In this paper we argue that games and play research in the field of Human-Computer Interaction can usefully be understood as existing within 4 distinct research paradigms. We provide our rationale for developing these paradigms and discuss their significance in the context of the inaugural CHI Play conference.
In the summer of 2010, the pervasive game Conspiracy For Good, conceived by Tim Kring and sponsored by Nokia, pitted players against the fictional Blackwell Briggs, a global corporation bent on using a private security force and CCTV network to surveil British citizens in the name of fighting crime and terrorism. In the game, players were recruited to join a ‘conspiracy for good’, in which socially responsible individuals organized to thwart the villainous corporation's proposed overreach. In this article, I explore Conspiracy For Good's potential to define and orient the subjectivities of its players, and in particular to place in its players in specific relationships to surveillant practices. The game scenario identifies surveillance as troublesome in the hands of the overtly malevolent Blackwell Briggs, but simultaneously a powerful tool for resistance of corporate overreach in the hands of consumers. By positioning game sponsor Nokia on the side of right in the game's melodramatic central conflict between concerned citizens and a powerful corporation, the game also stages an inversion of the 2009 revelations that Nokia Siemens Networks equipped the Iranian government with technology enabling the monitoring and interception of individual communications during protests over the disputed 2009 presidential elections.
The main objective of this thesis is to enrich computer science education by studying two gameful teaching interventions: 1) achievement badges and 2) alternate reality games.
Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts, and achievement badges are one commonly used gamification method that can be used to provide optional challenges for students. We studied the use of achievement badges in a Data Structures and Algorithms course and found out that badges can be used to steer students' behavior even if they are not tied to tangible rewards such as course grades. Specifically, students used more time in the online learning environment, had more sessions in the system, and spent more time between exercise submissions when the badges were used. Furthermore, we found out that students' attitudes towards the badges varied. We also studied the use of badges in relation to achievement goal orientations that characterize students' preferences to different goals and outcomes. We found out that students who had high avoidance orientation were less motivated by the badges than other students. On the other hand, students who were the most motivated by the badges had higher mastery-intrinsic, mastery-extrinsic, and performance-approach orientations, and lower avoidance orientation. Furthermore, we compared the badge intervention with the use of heatmaps that provided feedback on one's behavior in a non-gameful way. An interest towards the badges correlated with mastery-extrinsic and performance-approach, whereas interest towards the heatmaps correlated with mastery-extrinsic and performance-avoidance orientations.
Alternate Reality Games (ARG), are games that blur the line between reality and fiction and typically they involve puzzles and an interactive narrative. We explored the use of ARGs for teaching computer science by organizing an ARG covering a wide range of computer science concepts. In the feedback collected after the game, participants reported learning several computer science concepts during the game. We also evaluated how authenticity, intrinsic motivation, and replayability were taken into account in the game design. Furthermore, we present an example of an educational ARG that was not part of any official curriculum and relied on voluntary participation. Based on the results, alternate reality games seem like a promising approach to be used in computer science education.
In addition to evaluating the two approaches, we provide support for applying them in education by describing the implementation of our badge systems and introducing a method for producing automatically assessed programming tasks that are suitable for ARGs.
This article investigates the relations between the narratological concept of transfictionality and the trendy phenomenon of transmedial storytelling. Made popular as a concept by Henry Jenkins (2006), transmedial storytelling is the creation of a storyworld through multiple documents belonging to various media. The three fundamental operations of transfictionality-expansion, modification, and transposition-are investigated in terms of their potential for transmedial storytelling. After an analysis of the variety of documents that make up the storyworld of Alpha 0.7 (Südwestrundfunk 2010), a German transmedial story system that comprises a TV miniseries, radio plays, fictional web pages, and links to nonfictional texts created independently of the project, the article asks under which conditions an alternate reality game (ARG) could be added to the system without spoiling the experience of those people who limit their exploration of the storyworld to watching the TV show. In turn, the last section asks what kind of stories lend themselves to transmedial projects and why such projects are currently popular.
An alternate reality game (ARG) is sometimes called a pervasive game or transmedia storytelling. Regardless of what you call it at its core is a game driven by a story with players performing activities that mirror real life, making ARGs a perfect fit for scenario-based learning.
This paper discusses the experiences of the three authors during their alternate reality game (ARG) session at the 2010 Digital Media and Learning Conference. Taking the conference theme "Diversifying Participation" literally, the aim of this ARG event was to advance conference learning to a new level of involvement by employing a problem-solving and experiential method of presenting. Our intent was for attendees to collectively experience how participatory digital media learning works. Within the context of the ARG, we transformed the traditional conference room setting into an immersive ludic environment closely corresponding to the social media preferences of today's youth [4, 5, 6, 9]. We argue that ARGs exhibit pedagogically desirable qualities that are ideally suitable for learning purposes, even though their dynamic and unpredictable aesthetics require specific preparation beforehand and intense follow-up thereafter. In planning an ARG for the novel and unexpected context of an academic conference, our team engaged in a learning process that touches upon the biases inherent within the juxtaposition of play and academia [1, 12, 14]. We critically examine these experiences using a self-reflexive method and offer specific guidance for employing ARGs in diverse contexts for educative purposes.