PhD Journal Articles

I'm pleased to announce I now have two more papers published on my PhD research. The first article, "Game-Play Breakdowns and Breakthroughs: Exploring the Relationship Between Action, Understanding and Involvement" is in Human Computer Interaction and focuses on the case studies I carried out how they resulted in a theory of the relationship between learning and involvement within the context of games. The theory is represented as a set of 14 claims that relate to: micro and macro involvement; breakdowns and breakthroughs in action, understanding and involvement; progress; and agency, meaning and compelling game-play. In particular, the paper emphasises the ways in which players experience learning via breakthroughs in understanding, where involvement is increased when the player feels responsible for progress. We also argue that supporting the relationship between learning and involvement is vital for ensuring the success of commercial and educational games. (You can also find out a bit more about the methods I used in my 2013 DiGRA journal paper: "Making sense of game-play: How can we examine learning and involvement").

The second article, "The Gaming Involvement and Informal Learning Framework" is in Simulation & Gaming and provides a good overview of the three studies I carried out in and also presents the GIIL framework as the culmination of all my findings. Essentially, the framework is able to account for both how and what people learn from gaming while also highlighting the influence of player identity. Further, the iterative relationship between identity, involvement and learning is emphasised: the more strongly someone identifies themselves as a gamer, the greater their micro and macro-level involvement and the more likely they are to learn from their gaming experiences. This is represented in the figure below (taken from my PhD thesis and also reprinted within the article).

Technically these articles are still in press but both journals have put them up online before print. It's great to have them out there and see all that hard work come together :-)

My PhD thesis

My thesis is finally available via ORO: Digital Games: Motivation, Engagement and Informal Learning.  I've included the abstract below though please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or comments :-)

This thesis investigates the relationships between motivation, engagement and informal learning, with respect to digital games and adult players. Following the reconceptualisation of motivation and engagement (as forms of micro and macro level involvement respectively) three linked studies were conducted. In the first study, 30 players were interviewed via email about their gaming experiences. The resulting set of learning categories and themes drew attention to learning on a game, skill and personal level, which arose from micro-level gameplay and macro-level interaction with wider communities and resources. The second investigation consisted of eight case studies that examined how involvement and learning come together in practice. Participants were observed in the lab during two gameplay sessions and kept gaming diaries over a three week period. A method for categorising game-play breakdowns and breakthroughs (relating to action, understanding and involvement) was developed in order to analyse several hours of gameplay footage. The previous categories and themes were also applied to the data. The findings suggested a relationship between macro-involvement and player identity, which was further investigated by a third survey study(with 232 respondents). The survey helped to establish a link between identity, involvement, and learning; the more strongly someone identifies as a gamer, the more likely they are to learn from their involvement in gaming practice. Four main contributions are presented: (1) an empirical account of how informal learning occurs as a result of micro and macro-involvement within a gaming context, (2) an in-depth understanding of how breakdowns and breakthroughs relate to each other during play, (3) a set of categories that represent the range of learning experienced by players, and (4) a consideration of the role player identity serves with respect to learning and involvement.

"In The Game? Embodied Subjectivity in Gaming Environments"

It really has been ages since I last used this blog. Good news is I have finished the thesis! Viva passed, minor corrections and the final submission due at the start of Sept :-) I will make sure to post a link to it once the final version has been approved.

The last few months have been stupidly busy - I also started a new job at UCLIC - but I have managed to get some game-playing in. There are some thoughts I'd like to get down about those soon but for now I just wanted to post a video of my friend Rob Farrow presenting a paper we wrote together at the Philosophy and Computer Games conference earlier this year. There's some points he makes about meaning and choice that I'd like to think about more - particularly in relation to Skyrim and Mass Effect 3.

But for now, here's "In The Game'? Embodied Subjectivity in Gaming Environments". Thanks Rob :-)

UPDATE: We also had a longer journal article published in Philosophy & Technology, which you can find here.

ECGBL 2011 - Athens

After rearranging flights to avoid the air traffic control strike, I made it to Athens last week for the 5th European Conference of Game Based Learning. Not everyone was so lucky but I was pretty impressed with the conference organisers for managing to make sure the conference went ahead and that we all were looked after so well whilst we were there. It was a bit surreal having to avoid the crowds of protesters on the way to the conference venue and trying to make sure we didn't get caught up in any of the running battles with riot police on the way back... We did avoid the worst of it (which, on the first conference day involved ducking into a restaurant for a little while until the trouble outside died down!) with only piles of burnt rubbish around the city to remind of us of what was going on (see below).

Oh, and t-shirts like this :-)

In terms of the conference itself, I am very glad I managed to make it as it was a great opportunity to meet up with people I had met before, like Alex Moseley from Leicester and Jantina Huizenga from Amsterdam and to talk to new people about games and research like Magnus Johansson and Kimmo Oksanen. In terms of the talks, one of the highlights came from Carlo Fabricatore from the University of Worcester, UK and Ximena Lopez from Initium Studios, Italy introducing the area of sustainability games - something I also know my OU friend Stefan Kreitmayer who I went to the conference with was very interested in (since he is working on creating collaborative games that deal with climate change issues). The presenters provided a good rationale for how games are able to support problem solving and systems thinking, and a review of some of the existing games you can find online. The review revealed that there is definitely room for improvement as there aren't a lot of games out there that consider sustainability in terms of environmental, economic and social issues, or that actually allow for emergent complexity. Further, a lot of these games seem to be directed at children so there it would be interesting to see more of them aimed at adults. While it wasn't the focus of the presentation, it also made me wonder how you might be able to evaluate this sort of systems thinking within a formal educational context.

Another talk I enjoyed, came from Matthew Jewell, a game designer from Rosetta Stone which produces language learning tools. He presented a game called Prospero which includes speech recognition software so players can practice their grammar (see below). This was pretty interesting because the game is part of a portal of flash games that are directed at different levels of language learning and it made me think a lot about intrinsic/extrinsic motivation and integrating game mechanics with learning. Prospero is a neat little game that gives players points for pronouncing the correct sentences and utilising a treasure hunting mechanic to allow players to choose a task, which also provides further reward to the player. I think you can also compete with other players if you want. On the surface, this seems to go against a lot of what is discussed in the literature (the importance of intrinsic motivators etc) but in reality I can see how it's a really effective way to get players to practice what is a essentially a dull task (learning correct grammar) in order to become proficient at it. Further, the only way to progress in the game is to pronounce phrases accurately and I can see how variable reward (in the form of finding treasure) can provide help provide the sort of "stickiness" that Matthew was aiming to achieve. And at this level of learning at least, it does seem like it will help make the player more likely to practice. I'm not entirely sure how Rosetta Stone evaluate their products (or if they want to share that info!) while I'd be curious to see some of the other games in the portal and how they work, especially since the Rosetta blog suggests: "once you gain a little more confidence, you can progress to one of our conversational games, like Identi or Chatonium." I guess I'm curious about whether the gaming mechanisms evolve along with the learning complexity. In general, I really enjoyed talking with Matthew about games as he pointed out things like how casual games can be ignored by game-based learning research in favour of more complex solutions and he made me think about how maybe the lines between the extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are more blurred than we sometimes like to think!

My own session on breakdowns and breakthroughs experienced during game-play went ok too, and seemed to generate some interest. I'm actually going to do a seperate blog post on this as I'd like to introduce my research a bit more as I'm realising that it's not something I've been too explicit about on this blog. I've recently taken up some part time work on a project about digital scholarship which has made me think more about openess and what that might mean so I think it will be interesting to be actually put some of my work out there, especially in relation to what I have presented at recent conferences. In general though, the questions I got were interesting and gave me plenty to think about in terms of writing up my thesis.

There were a couple of other interesting talks, such as Lorenzo Romeo's talk on reflective flow, which got me thinking about whether games really do support experiential learning or whether we tend to use the term to describe active learning i.e. learning by doing - can learning in the context of game-play really be seen as a "direct encounter with the phenomenon being studied"? (this relates a little to conversations I've had with Rob Farrow about how embodiment relates to games); and Colin Lemmon giving a really interesting insight into all the problems designers face when trying to develop and get funding for serious game applications. The keynotes also provided food for thought with Nikolaos Avouris providing an useful introduction into the use of games in museum contexts (and how their is really a lot of improvement here in terms of the educational value they actually provide and tapping into more social  and mobile experiences - e.g. contrast Play with the Frieze, where you have to match pairs of pictures of the frieze at the new Acropolis Museum; with Ghost of a Chance at the Smithsonian American Art Museum). Sara de Freitas also gave a talk on the Gamification of Life which provided an interesting overview into the work the Serious Games Insitute is doing and the challenges of doing work in this area. Unfortunately, the conference was a bit pressed for time at this point so it was a bit of whirlwind tour but I would have liked to have heard more about the evaluations carried out. Also, I'm a little confused about her use of the term gamification as it seemed to be used as way of referring to anything involving games (as opposed to the DiGRA gamification session definition of using game-elements in non-game contexts i.e. not whole games) so it would have been interesting to find out why she applied the term to the work that she discussed.

All in all, it was an interesting couple of days and I really benefitted from the chance to talk to other researchers about games and games research. I think I did see a bit more of the questioning I felt wasn't there at ECGBL 2008, though it was a shame there were quite a few people that couldn't make it so - depsite the fantastic efforts of the organisers, it wasn't quite the experience it could have been. I also think that the conference would benefit from tightening up the review process a little (perhaps by adding an additional reviewer?) as there were a couple of things that surprised me a little in the presentations e.g. the use of the somewhat outdated and unpopular term "edutainment" (though as in any international conference, translation might be an issue here). I'm also very glad I got to see Athens after the protests as the lively and historically amazing city that it is so will leave with a photo of the Acropolis from my hotel room :-)

DiGRA 2011: Hilversum (Part 2)

The next day started just as well as the first with a keynote from Suzanne de Castell and Jen Jenson titled "Playing with fire: Libertarian ludolgies" (see below). They have done a lot of work over the years investigating technology and gender issues in terms of access, equity and design, with their latest research indicating that many of the "facts" we take for granted about gender e.g. girls dislike competitive play, are actually artefacts of novice play. In fact they were able to alter play styles by setting up conditions for girls to become experts and replicate these across different sites. Suzanne and Jen went on to highlight issues such as neoliberal tolerance for misogyny and violence (e.g. where expert female player try to hide their gender instead of having to deal with a barrage of abuse from other players - see Fat, Ugly or Slutty for examples and an attempt to deal with this sort of thing), the need for researchers to go beyond describing how things are and think about how to change them for the better and considering games within a wider media landscape. They suggested that we need better theories of ludic epistemology that recognise the intrinsic value of games and play; to develop innovative methods and interventions by also considering the role of the researcher plays in the process of investigation; to engage in more accountable design so we're not just producing better goods and reflecting society but using games to persuade and foster identity building; and finally they stressed the importance of critical intellectual discussion within the area. I think they said a lot of things that needed to be said, and I particularly liked the point made about shoddy research which claims to make predictions but really just describes the status quo, hence the need for critical debate and more rigorous research. Also, their perspective is hugely important in an area which often sees games and technology as "boys' toys" and I'm pretty sure their plea for researchers to think about change was at least one of the fires they wanted to set. 

After that I went along to an interesting match on identity in massively multiplier games which reflected some of the issues mentioned in the earlier keynote. Arne Schröder talked about how game spaces tended to be predominantly white, straight and male, and while there was some experimentation with gender and sexuality it was more a kind of "identity tourism" than a genuine attempt at role-playing. He also gave examples of female and gay players who had left guilds due to sexist and homophobic remarks. Nick Taylor echoed some of this when he talked about "sex-swapping" as opposed to real attempts to "gender-swap" within games. He also made some interesting points about how identity shouldn't be seen as a singular construct with a one-to-one mapping between player and avatar, especially given the fact that players often have more than one avatar they use. Further, it seems that adopting different genders and/or sexualities tended not to be seen as transgressive play but as part of expert behaviour where the player was seeking to explore as much of the game as possible.

I also went to a match on values between Rilla Khaled and Jonathan Belman. Rilla talked about work carried out with Pippin Barr, where they examined the cultural values expressed in the Sims 3 and Fallout 3. They wanted to see whether these games embodied individualistic or collectivist value systems and found that while they expressed a mix of both, they tended to be more individualistic. I thought this might have something to do with the culture the designers came from, and would be quite interested to see how it would differ if looking at games directed and non-western audiences. Jonathan is doing his PhD on empathy in games and he spoke specifically about the http://www.valuesatplay.org/ project which developed a card system to guide the design process. Students were asked to pick different Grow-a-game cards (link also leads to free online version) consisting of a game verb (e.g. singing), a value (e.g. liberty), and a social issue (e.g. homelessness) and given the task of creating a game within these constraints. I hadn't realised it but one of the games to come from this project was Hush, where you play a Tutsi mother who must try and calm her baby during a Hutu raid. Apart from introducing an approach to value conscious design, the match also indicated how games are not value neutral, regardless of whether designers realise it or not.

During the day there was a also keynote from Antanas Mockus Šivickas, who is served as mayor of Bogota, Columbia. Now this seems pretty random, and it is because he's carried out all sorts of wacky and wonderful stunts whilst elected in order to promote change and improve the lives of day to day people. For instance, he hired hundreds of mimes in order to reduce traffic violations, dressed up as "Supercivico" to serve as a role model for civic behaviour and using a symbolic vaccine to reduce intra-familial violence. His talk highlighted the importance of considering legal, moral and social concerns when it comes to improving citizenship and harmonising the law (see below) and indicated how playful activities really can make a difference. All very inspiring!

After this I attended a roundtable on gamification, which was helpful in part as it provided an overview of the CHI gamification workshop. Despite the fact that many of the applications seemed directed at promoting "good" behaviours e.g. reducing environmental impact, gamification worries me because it reminds of badly designed edutainment - as it seems to involve slapping on a game-layer in order to get you to do something. Surely we've been trying to get away from this sort of extrinsic motivation? Also, as was raised during the session, some of these things might change behaviour in the short term but what about long term impact? The panel were pretty good and pointed out that there are HCI researchers who are interested in intrinsic motivation and a more phenomenological perspective. Plus, Dan Dixon suggested that we should move away from the term gamification (and its negative connotations) and use gameful design as an alternative (see pic below). It's clear this is a growing area of interest so it's something worth keeping an eye on, as I have a feeling we're going to have to sift through a lot of bad examples before finding out how to successfully use "game design elements in non-gaming contexts" in a way that doesn't feel like manipulation. Also, when it comes to things we have real trouble with, maybe we need all the help we can get, whatever form it's in. 

My match was on learning was next, with Pilar Lacasa who was speaking about the use of machinima based on Spore that students produced in biology classrooms. It seems the curriculum is more flexible in Spain so teachers could focus on supporting the development of digital literacies rather than having to assess whether playing Spore and creating machinima led to a greater understanding of biology. It was interesting to see some how different students approached the project, especially when they blended game-play footage with that of the real world. My talk seemed to go ok, though I had an awful lot to explain in about 10 minutes. The paper I submitted was more concerned with introducing the method I developed for my main case study approach, rather than on presenting findings, so most of the questions were about the set-up. Though I did like the fact that when I mentioned Sharples work on breakdowns and breakthroughs a lot of people seemed to write it down! So what games did I use? (I allowed participants to choose during the first session, but then asked them to play something they usually didn't in the second). I seemed to adopt quite an experimental setup, didn't that conflict with trying to tap into the wider context of game-play? (While I did use a lab - because I couldn't sit around people's houses! - I did not carry out a controlled experiment and tried to make sure it was as comfortable as possible). Were there any differences between what I observed in the lab and what was recorded in the diaries? (The diary reports on game-play were much less detailed, and the lab sessions probably did "prompt" game-play). I also got asked about my research questions (which revolve around the role of breakdowns and breakthroughs and identifying learning beyond learning how to play) and about how I identified involvement and did I try to measure it? Short answer, no I didn't try and measure involvement. Though we did try and use physiological data in order to do identify it, this turned out to be much harder than we originally thought and not something that could be done during observation, as originally hoped. So most of the breaks were identified from the post-play interview transcript and now we're trying to figure out how to triangulate that with the physiological data.

After this there was a bit of rant from game scholars about various things - Mary Flanagan spoke about how few women there are in the games industry (see below); Frans Mäyrä complained about the media constantly asking about the detrimental effects of games (suggesting games are actually not dangerous enough!); Maggie Greene had a go at established academics for not using the power they have to improve the situation for grad students (e.g. by getting involved as public intellectuals to promote the area), especially in a climate of reduced employment funding; Espen Aarseth stressed the importance of rigorous reviews and constructive criticism; which was echoed by Suzanne de Castell who also ranted about the fact that we tend to think of gender as a binary construct and we should be careful to avoid "hostile research" which makes assumptions based on bad theory and backs them up with bad methods e.g. all RPG players are depressed and anti-social. Mary Flanagan then followed this up with a keynote on critical play and designing games from a social justice perspective (see below). She was PI of the Values@Play project so there was mention of using games to promote specific values and with respect the holy grail of educational research - transfer. I really liked that she mentioned that a lot of game design produces extrinsic motivation and referenced a study where children were found to spend less time drawing when they were given rewards for the activity. She also suggested systems thinking reveals that big shifts come from small incremental ones, and concluded with a quote from Jane Goodall: "The greatest danger to our future is apathy".

I think that just about covers it! I did also catch the last half of the session on Minecraft where some children were being interviewed on stage whilst they showed us round the game they had set up along with one of their parents (who I think also taught at the University). It was really interesting to hear them talk about the game and what they had built - an impressive replica of Helm's Deep. At one point they were asked whether they thought they could "win" the game, to which one of them responded that perhaps you could if you mined everything! Given all the talk about values of the conference I couldn't help but wonder what that meant about in terms of what they were taking from the game... There was also some talk about how they would often look at YouTube videos for inspiration about what to create in the game, but I think only one of the older ones posted videos himself. They definitely seemed to get a lot of of the experience and their own Minecraft community too.  

So all in all it was quite an inspiring couple of days and I'm very glad I went. Thanks to the organisers for putting on a great conference and to everyone else who took part; including the students of the Utrecht School of Arts who had their exhibits on display during the event. Below is a photo of me and Jantina playing a student developed game called Fingle - if you have an iPad I recommend you check it out!

Oh and for further impressions of the conference, check out those videos:

Opening Party

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

DiGRA 2011: Hilversum (Part 1)

I recently got back from the 5th DiGRA conference - it was held at the Utrecht School of Arts in Hilversum, and has seriously given me a lot to think about! So much so that I think I'm going to have to split the post into two parts.

The conference opened on the Wednesday night at club De Vorstin setting up a playful atmosphere with Chick n' Run races (where you have to rock back and forth on adult-sized play garden chickens against an opponent), B.U.T.T.O.N. (encouraging Brutally Unfair Tactics are Totally OK Now as you physically do all you can to win or stop your opponents from winning - one of many there from the Copehagen Game Collective), and a Do It Yourself DJ installation (with which you can mix audio samples using old school cassette tapes) to name just a few of the attractions on offer. Plus Kid Koala performed the opening "keynote" - gotta love a conference that's opened by a guy in a koala suit!

The next day, Eric Zimmerman's keynote gave the audience plenty of food for thought when he used quotes from Art in Theory and replacing the word art with games to show how there really are quite a few parallels between the two. Further, no one seems to feel the need to justify art or discusses how to make it "educational"! He stressed that games are an important cultural and aesthetic form in their own right and had a go at educators who see games as instruments for transmitting content efficiently (or not, as the case may be). He argued that though developing gaming literacies such as problem solving, systems thinking and community building we should be able to understand and fix the systemic problems that affect the world we live, in what he termed the "ludic century". This wasn't suggesting that we should gamify everything but that we should recognise the value games have in their own right, with game researchers leading the way!

All the presentation sessions took places in cabins outside (see below), where speakers were matched together on topics in order to promote discussion. This worked well when the topics were similar enough but sometimes it felt like a bit of a stretch, and though powerpoint was technically banned, it didn't stop most people from presenting slides in some form or another. Most of the presentations were short though, which did allow for more interaction, especially with plenty of time planned between matches.

 It was clear the presenters of the first session I went to afterwards were still thinking about the opening keynote. Marcelo de Vasconcellos started the match (each presenter was matched on topics for the conference sessions) with a discussion of how games might be used for promoting public health communication in Brazil, while Mary Flanagan and Jonathan Belman introduced their Save the People! Pox boardgame which was developed as part of the Science literacy curriculum in order to teach how immunisation and viruses work. The session also led to an interesting discussion on transfer and how you might test for it. I think there was a concern that this was the sort of thing Eric Zimmerman was attacking but I think that the problem lies with this idea of using games to deliver course content. If we do use art as a parallel, while you might not make art to be educational in the formal sense, there is often a desire to use it as a way to change thinking and broaden perspectives. Education should be more than about whether you can transmit information efficiently, but it doesn't mean you games can't be designed in order to foster understanding and the development of different skills. Going back to the talks though, it was interesting to hear that players of the iPad version of Pox tended to play the game a lot faster - it would seem that a physical board (or mat) and hand held game pieces encourage people to take their time, which seems like something worth investigating.

Speaking of board games, they aren't something I've ever really thought to much about before to be honest. But one of the keynotes was by Reiner Knizia a board game designer who is responsible for selling over 15 million games - I really had no idea how big the industry was! He spoke about the design of games in terms of how games relate to real life, considering intuitive input/outputs, creating an appealing game system, using highly visible hooks and engaging game communities. There was a panel afterwards (below) which also included Andrew Sheerin and James Wallis which discussed board games trends, academic perspectives, and subversion in games. Turns out James was at the Hide & Seek session I went to introducing the special edition of his "not-quite" role-play game The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but it was great to meet him at the conference and talk about games of all sorts. I also met Andrew after the panel, whose company Terror Bull games developed "War on Terror: The Boardgame". It's not a game I had heard of before but hearing about it, and the fact that it comes with a balaclava, made me think it's something I'm curious to try out. It was interesting to talk to him later on about the potential educational uses of such games, especially in terms of how they might act as catalysts for discussion. 

Other highlights of the first day include Valentina Rao who discussed how we might be able to interpret games as a form of experiential discourse, and considering the design of serious games with specific communicative purposes. During this match on critical thinking Daniel Joseph spoke about ludotopian and ludocapitalist rhetoric surrounding games, in terms of how people see games in terms of "the sublime" e.g. recreating the Starship Enterprise in Minecraft and Jane McGonigal talking about how games can save the world, and in terms gamification and making money from it e.g. Gabe Zickermann. Dan suggested that the truth is probably somewhere in between and we won't really know it until games have become prosaic, commonplace and cheap i.e. until we don't notice them so much! 

I also went to a match on engagement, where I met Gordon Calleja, who was talking about incorporation and the framework on player involvement I have been using within my research, and Henrik Schoenau-Fog who is looking at the continuation desires of players with respect to creating a player engagement framework. The fact that incorporation is not an experience that all games lead too was discussed, since it combines a feeling of intense involvement with a sense of inhabiting a virtual world. So you'd have to control an avatar, most likely in 3D space in order to achieve it. However, I do think Calleja's model and the frames within it can still be applied to most games, and that learning occurs when player's internalise each of the relevant frames. I did like the fact that Henrik distinguished between motivation (the carrot) and engagement (the hook) when he talked about continuation desires, as I don't think it's something that a lot of research considers. I was also intrigued by his introduction of First Person Victim (see below) in terms of thinking about how you can engage people to go through certain experiences which may not be that pleasant, in order to help them consider the plight of others and take part in discussion. 

Earlier in the day, I went along to a live book review on Garry Crawford's book Video Gamers where Frans Mäyrä interviewed him about it on stage (below). Coming from a cultural sociological background, Garry was interested in how games fit into wider cultures and gamers lives. It's a book about players rather than games that aims to provide a fresh perspective to the area through including ideas about Bourdieu's notion of habitus, Goffman's frame analysis and through questioning concepts such as the magic circle. It was an interesting session and I think I'm going to have to get hold of the book to find out more. Specifically, I'd like to find out whether he makes any distinction between different types of gamers and players (or are just all people who play games gamers) and while I appreciate he was focusing on people rather than games, I'd like to know if there was a consideration of how different games might relate to different gaming cultures and practices. 

Ok, I think that's enough for now - more later! 

Jane McGonigal's sermon on Productivity

On Sunday I went to a talk organised by the School of Life. They called it a sermon, it also took place in a what I think what used to be a church hall, and there were hymns. One of the hymns was Video killed the Radio Star, but we did actually have to stand up and sing along. It was all a bit random really in quite an enjoyable way and the reason I went was so I could hear Jane McGonigal talk about Productivity and games. 

She started off by talking about how a lot of our ideas about what it means to be a productive member of society are based on a combination of protestant work ethic (God wants us to be busy) and the rise of capitalism. Which seems to ultilmately lead to a lot of guilt when we end up doing things that don't seem to produce anything. So in this light, playing games for hours on end is really just a colossal waste of time, right?

Well, maybe not. After getting to write down a to-do list and then make it into a paper plane to throw into the audience, she went on to talk about the research she's done and how four things seemed to keep coming up in relation to question what do games produce; whole hearted engagement, hope for success, opportunities to develop social bonds and a sense we can be part of something bigger than ourselves. But if that's not enough for you, her findings actual map on quite well to research being carried out that focuses on positive psychology - the sort of psychology that focuses on how we can be happy rather than on all the things that can go wrong. According to research that will be published next spring (in Dr.Seligman's new book Flourish) we need the following:

1) Positive emotion (Pe)

2) Relationships (R)

3) Meaning (M)

4) Achievement  (A)

And just to make it easier for us to remember, Jane got some audiences members to spell out that acronym for us (thanks to GrahamBM for the Twitpic):

We all then engaged in a round of massively-multiplayer thumb wrestling to illustrate how playing games can achieve all four of those things. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of playing massively-multiplayer thumb wrestling, you're missing out ;-) Basically, though her argument is that by games can actually help solve wider social problems by increasing PeRMA. Through productive engagement in activities we find meaningful and that make us feel good, we can cement our social ties and feel part of something bigger. For those interested in these ideas more and about games how you could designe games that explictly address social issues keep an eye out for her book "Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World" which is out early next year.

There was a short Q&A session after the sermon, where one person asked how games were different to drugs. I thought this was a pretty good question as you do hear about how games are "addictive" and I guess, like drug taking, the activity is often be seen as completely unproductive. Jane responded by pointing out that drugs tend to be quick fixes, that take a toll on our bodies and end up leaving people feeling lower than before. In contrast, research has shown that the positive emotions received from playing games tend to spill over into other parts of our lives. Also, apparently there is some sort of gamer tipping point, where after 21 hours of play a week, most players realise that they aren't getting any more from the activity. (Note to self: I really should find what research she is referring to). Somebody also asked something about using games in education and Jane was keen to point out that she wasn't trying to gamify every activity but that even so, understanding how and why games appeal could influence certain underlying educational principles - which effectively sums up my own research. All in all it was a really enjoyable morning, and what better way to end than by drinking tea and eating space invader biscuits :-) (thanks to Katy Lindemann for the putting up the Flickr photo)

how much do I agree with all this? Well, quite a lot really but maybe not entirely. I really do think Jane McGonigal is doing an awesome job getting inspiring games out there and in talking positively about games. I think that games can definitely increase PeRMA and like that there is actual research backing this up. I'm not sure how much that will convince people who don't play games though, and I don't think it will convince them to play games. Especially, for those who start talking about how they heard about players in China or Korea who died because they didn't leave their computer for days, and about how it would still be much better for children to go outside and play. I'm not denying that for some people at least, games can become a problem, but like any activity you enjoy doing, surely there's nothing wrong with them being part of a balanced well-rounded life? I also think that for a lot of people who take games seriously, probably for a lot of people who call themselves gamers and see games as a social activity to share with friends, gaming is a major source of PeRMA and that's why they like it. I think what people don't realise is that even when you're playing something on your own, this can still feed into your social relationships if you have friends who are interested in what you're doing.

I suppose what I'm not sure about, is whether everyone who plays games gets the same benefits? So the aunt you get to play Wii Sports at Christmas, I can see how she would enjoy having a go, how it's a shared family experience and how the activity makes sense in that context even but will she really feel like she's achieving anything? Maybe that has more to say about how we much we value our experiences but when Jane said something along the lines that she has never met a pessimistic gamer, who didn't think they could succeed, I'm not sure I'd agree they don't exist. I mean maybe they would call themselves a gamer, but I've seen plenty of people put off from even trying something because they don't think they are good enough. And, I have given up on games myself when it's just gotten too hard... I definitely haven't finished all the games I have - what does that say about my ability to achieve things? Jane mentioned signature strenghts, but what if I'm noticing weaknesses instead?!

Maybe I'm taking it a bit too far, I do finish some games at least, I suppose the ones I get the most pleasure out of, so perhaps that's enough. But I am still curious about different types of players and how often people actually finish their games. The two main things I want to take with me from the sermon though, are to rethink my ideas about productivity and the fact that there is research out there about the positive effects of game-playing. Plus, I don't have to feel guilty about not writing my thesis yet, as there are plenty of activties I need to do first, including (though obviously not limited to) playing games, cos they increase my PeRMA quotient and make me flourish ;-)

Update: I forgot to add a link to the Gameful site - after thanking her for the talk and telling her a bit about my research, Jane suggested that I check it out once it launches. It seems to be a resource for anyone interested in making and using games that have a positive impact on people's live. You can find out a bit more about it on her blog here.

Sam & Max and my research

Again, it's been a while. I have the excuse of spending the last few months running my main data collection study, though I have also been playing games throughout. Maybe I've been quite busy, but maybe I also haven't felt like I've had a lot to say. Recently though, I've been thinking more and more about one particular series I've been playing and how I got back into it after being convinced to give it another go as a result of one of my data collection sessions.

Over the past few months, I've been asking participants to keep a set of gaming diaries and to come into the lab we've set up in the department to play games. They had to keep the diary for three weeks and come in on three seperate occassions so I could hook them up to various physiological equipment (to measure changes in muscle tension, galvanic skin response and heart rate) and observe them playing games. The sessions lasted about 2-3hours so all in all it was quite an investement from them. Even when all I could offer was a Amazon voucher just to say thanks, 9 people actually agreed to take part and for that I am very grateful :-)

Anyway, during the first two sessions I would ask people to bring in a game of their choice, preferably something they'd been playing. But for the final session I would pick a game for them. For my first participant - who is also a friend of mine but for the purposes of anonymity, let's call him Matt - I chose Sam and Max: Save the World . It's a point and click type adventure, with lots of puzzle solving where you play Sam and Max who Wikipedia describes as "self-styled vigilante private investigators, the former an anthropomorphic dog and the latter a 'hyperkinetic rabbity thing'" as they set about uncovering a hypnotism conspiracy.



I picked the game up ages ago for the Wii and though I played for a bit, I got stuck at one point early on and just never went back to it. I'm going to be honest here, while I wanted to choose something Matt hadn't played before (and that contrasted in pace to his own choices - survival horror/FPS), I also chose it because I thought he would find it boring. And I wanted to see whether all that physiological data I've been collecting would reflect that. I'm still working on the data so I'm going to have to save the in depth analyses for later on (and hopefully publication...) but he didn't find it boring. He liked it. That didn't mean he wasn't frustrated by some aspects of it, but he seemed to enjoy it. What really surprised me was that him liking it made me want to try it again. So I did, and I finished it this time. And then I bought the next series, Beyond Time and Space on Steam (because it wasn't on the Wii) and finished that. And then I played the latest series The Devil's Playhouse, and had to wait for Telltale to complete the last two episodes so I could finish that too.

So what happened? Why did I write the game off only so soon? What made me go back to it? How many other games do I have that I never really gave a fair shot? Looking back, I remember wanting to like Save the World but getting a little annoyed by all the dialogue and getting impatient with some of the puzzles. Even though I did think it was funny, I guess I didn't think it was funny enough to keep playing. So when I got stuck, maybe it didn't feel like there was enough incentive to go back. It was a good couple of years ago now when I got the game so I can't say for sure, but I also imagine that I got distracted by other games that I had at the time. So I forgot about it, until I started my study and had to come up with games for other people to play. That's already going to put it back on my radar, but then Matt seemed to enjoy it and we talked about it afterwards, and it made me want to give it another go. I think the fact that we are also friends who talk about games has something to do with it too. Though I don't think he's played the game since, him playing it in the session made me feel more like a shared experience, and when I refer to the series he knows what I'm talking about. Could that alone have increased my involvement with the game? I think it might have. And I'm glad it did.

I'm not saying it's a perfect series. Like most point and click adventures, the puzzles are less about creative problem solving and more about trying to figure out how the designer wants you to solve it. The dialogue is funny, but there is a lot of it and the story doesn't always really make a whole lot of sense... It was ok playing it with the Wii controls but the later games weren only out on Steam so I had to switch. I think the second game, Beyond Time and Space was the weakest of the three I played - it felt rushed, shorter than the others, with puzzles that made even less sense than normal. But the more I played, the better I got at it (and yes I did sometimes resort to walkthroughs or increased the in-game hint level, but I noticed as time went on this happened less too). Maybe I learnt how to think like the designers, but the puzzles didn't feel as frustrating. So even if the narrative was a little out there, I kept progressing, and I still wanted to know what was going to happen next. But I needed a reason to get past the initital hurdle I came across and that seemed to come from sharing the experience with someone else. Without them even being in the same room! And now it's got me wondering what other games I would have enjoyed? Also, I'm wondering what I would have given up on if I hadn't had others to share the experience with?!

All of this ties in with my reseach because I'm not just interested in what happens when we play but why we choose to play anything in the first place. Like I said, the analysis is at a pretty early stage but if I can uncover at least part of that, and explain how it all might relate to learning, then I might just have something decent to put in my thesis ;-) Plus, it's something I need to consider when I am doing my analysis - if my participants had an impact on my game-playing, then how did I impact theirs?

Machinarium (PC)

Go and play Machinarium.

It not only looks good - it's set in a sort of rusty cute looking robot world - but manages to engage without a single word of dialogue being spoken (at least not as far I've played it). It's an independent point-and-click puzzle solving adventure without the tedious dialogue. Don't get me wrong, I love the narrative and humour of the Monkey Island games and I've even been playing the new episodic ones but it's the pretty much the same formula,though it is done well. But you can also get that wrong - like with A Vampyre Story. Czech designers Amanita Design have done something different here and have managed to communicate a storyline through the use of thought bubbles and (pretty cool) drawings alone.


Not only that but they've included a really clever little mechanism for getting help within the game. I think I've mentioned this before, but I do use walkthroughs when I get stuck. There are just points where I don't have the patience to keep trying something, and if the information is out there I don't see it being massively different to asking a friend for some help. But, in order to access these walkthroughs (or tips or whatever) I have to leave the game and go online to find out what I need. And once I've caved and started looking at the walkthrough I then run the risk of ruining the gameplay by reading ahead so I don't have to come back for the next puzzle... However, in Machinarium, I have two other options. The first is to click on the light bulb on the far right to give you a hint for how to solve the puzzle. If that's not enough then you click on what looks like a locked journal of some kind. Now this will give the solution but (and here's the bit I really like) you have to play a somewhat boring mini-game to get to that solution. The reason I love this so much is because it means it stops me from ruining the game by easily accessing the walkthrough whenever I want - I have to decide whether it's worth playing the game first. So while the mini-game isn't very interesting (or very long for that matter) it makes me think twice about looking up the solution. But if I really am stuck, then I have a way to fix it without ever having to leave the game! Genius :-)

So I finally posted something about a games again (and not conference related!). I've been playing a few different things lately so I'm hoping there will be more to follow soon.

Tangential Learning

You can also find the article the video blog is based on here.

"Tangential learning is not what you learn by being taught rather it's what you learn by being exposed to things in a context with which you're already engaged in". This seems to fit in with something I've been thinking about for a while, namely that games seem to engage people who like games, and if that's the case then we do need more ways to get people 'tangentially' involved in other things. I guess what I'd like to know is, what is it that motivates that 0.1% of Final Fantasy fans to look up what a sephiroth is? Are they just more motivated than the rest of the players? Why? And doesn't this seem a little, well, shallow, in terms of learning? I mean I've played a lot of Civilization in my time but unless I really get stuck, I tend to ignore the Civilopedia and when I have looked at it, I usually just feel like I'm just skimming the articles as quickly as possible so I can get back to playing. Much in the same way I skim wikipedia articles I look up after being curious about references in films or even songs. Yes, I'm motivated by curiosity to look things up but I'm just not sure how much of it sticks....

So there are two things I want to take from this. The first is to do with the fact there seems little distinction between 'surface' and 'deep' learning when it comes to learning from games (to borrow terms from research on approaches to study). And the second is that there appears to be two sides to motivation: getting people interested in the first place and then keeping them interested. Again, I'm not sure that's something much of the literature of gaming has taken into account, and it's looking increasingly likely that I'm going to make a point of this in my own work.

User-generated content

So, what is user generated content then? I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a while now I think I first mentioned it when I was writing about Spore. In relation to games, it means you not only get to play them but you get to have some input into the game, by designing your own levels, for instance. This is beyond being able to customise your avatar in an RPG, as it influences the gameplay itself. The concept is quite similar to modding, which has been around for ages, with whole communities built around it e.g. for Counter-Strike (which is itself a mod of Half -Life). But though modding tools are sometimes made available for certain games, the process was usually quite technical. There has been a more recent move though, towards encouraging this sort of user-generated content by making it easier to do, with games like Little Big Planet (LBP) allowing players to design, build and share their own levels. The video below is an example of a player created LBP level, based on Takeshi's Castle:



The reason I'm interested in all this, is because I think it says a lot about different player motivations. There seems to be a certain type of player who is not content with the experience of playing but wants to create as well. Things is, I'm just not sure I'm one of them. And as much as stuff like Sporn and my mate creating a phallic shaped rocket ship in Little Big Planet can amuse me, it's just not what I want to be spending my time doing. Don't get me wrong, I know people can come up with some pretty impressive creations (as the video above illustrates) and I actually really enjoy games like SimCity where you get to build your own city. I'm just not that fussed about being able to design the landscape I'm going to build the city on. In Spore, I felt like I had to push myself through the creature design stages in order to get to the good bit (and I was so relieved when I realised I could just use the games own designs and other peoples for stuff like planes and buildings in the later stages). In Little Big Planet, I watched my sister sit through boring tutorials to get to grips with the level editor controls so she could start producing her own - as an artist I think this really appealed to her, though I have a suspicion she was more interested in creating a novel visual experience, rather than in thinking about it in terms of 'good' game design. It's all really fascinating from a research perspective - I can ask what drives these players to create, something Bartle's 4 types of gamer categories do not account for (I guess it would need some sort of creator/designer category), or I could ask what sort of other skills they develop while they are creating whatever they are creating. But on a personal level, I think just want to play already!

This also relates to how games can be used within education. Teachers can get their students to play games (be they designed to be explicitly educational or not) and try an integrate this into some part of the curriculum or they could get them to build their own games. This isn't that new an approach, Llyod Rieber and colleagues carried out Project KidDesigner back in the late 90s, and you can probably trace it's constructivist roots back to Seymour Papert and LOGO in the 70s. The basic idea is that kids will learn more effectively and acquire a wider range of skills if they are actively constructing something. And with the development of free software tools such as GameMaker, that make designing your own game a relatively simple matter, its become a lot more common than it used to be. If anyone is interested in this sort of thing, Jake Habgood carried out some relatively recent research that looked at the kinds of games children made in after school clubs, while his website contains a whole host of information about the resources out there that teachers and children can use.

I'm doubt a specific approach is better than another, as usual it will depend on the context and how well integrated the approach and context are (if anyone from H809 is reading this post, what I just said definitely relates to the Laurillard (1994) paper from Week 3!). I do find it interesting though that in terms of learning theories you can label this approach as constructivist, while you could talk about massively multi-player online games tends under some sort of communities of practice heading. Plus, it's made me think about what I want from my gaming experiences - and it seems that I don't want to actively engage in an online community, I just want to get on with some actual game play when the mood strikes. But is something I want because it requires less effort? What does that mean for the learning that results from the experience? Is it somehow shallower or less likely to transfer? Maybe I'm just impatient, but I have to admit I don't want to design parts of a game myself as it feels like a lot of work (and even though I am studying games, I still see playing them as a break from 'proper' work). And also, if I've just spent x amount of money on a game, I definitely want to be rewarded by an experience that has been designed for me to play. But that's just me, and I'm beginning to realise that there is a whole range of reasons why people play, and create, games. If we're ever going to be able to truly tap into the educational potential, of using games, I think we're going to have to recognise that and understand these motivations a whole lot better than we do now.

H809: Week one roundup and reading reflections

Well it's been just over a week and things have definitely got going with H809. Students have been busy introducing themselves, and it seems there is quite a range of people on the course, with a variety of backgrounds and expertise (as was last year's group). There's also been a certain amount of becoming familiar with the VLE, I know I'm still getting used to the forums but I am starting to feel less confused about where everything is, and less overwhelmed by the number of posts! There are even a few blogs popping up - I've listed the public ones under H809 on the left hand side of this page, though there are also a couple that are just open to OU users. Not much is happening on these just yet but there have been a few posts e.g. Juliette Culver introducing her research background and her thoughts on educational research, and Mike Protts reflecting on the first course reading. Hopefully, we'll see a few more starting up and some further discussion as the course progresses. It does seem that some people are further ahead than others in their work, such as H809-jm thinking about a for technologies in education, but it is worth pointing out that one of the advantages of doing an online course is that you can go through the materials at your own pace so it's best not to use other people's progress as a marker for your own. Btw, in case anyone missed it, a glossary for key terms has been set up within the course wiki (if you are signed into the OU website, you can access this here).

In terms of the first paper,"Teaching sociology in a virtual classroom" (Hiltz & Meinke, 1989), most of the tutor groups have been getting on with the activities and sharing their thoughts and opinions about it. I think one of the first things that people noticed about the paper was the date that it was written - I mean we're talking pre-internet (something I have real trouble imagining as I've never had to do any academic work without it) so it's important to try and put this in context as there wouldn't have been much CMC related literature around at the time. However, the novelty value of the Virtual Classroom (VC) didn't really seem to be something the researchers considered but it is something I really should think about in relation to my own research, especially when dealing with novel game-play interaction techniques.

Some of the other things that seemed to come up in forum conversations more than once were the fact the study tried to cover an awful lot of ground, the colleges that took part in the study were very different (as were the modes of delivery) and that the institutions attitude towards having to use the virtual classroom was not always favourable. The latter point was quite interesting to me, as it reminded me of my work at the University of Bath where I was a research assistant on the Racing Academy project and one of the things we had to evaluate was the organisational impact of implementing the use of the game within different HE and FE institutions. We ended up using Activity Theory (I think this is coming up later on in H809 anyway) as a way of describing all the factors that seemed to have an impact, and I'm sure we would have missed some of the most interesting findings if we hadn't tried to take organisational issues into account. In the forum discussions, it was pointed out that while Hiltz & Meinke (1989) mention the fact that there was resistance to the use of the Virtual Classroom, we have no idea how the students were affected by this, or even why it occurred in the first place. I guess that to me at least, these seem like questions worth asking. It was also good to see how everyone is starting to consider the methods being used, and coming to terms with the distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods, something that I think the next reading will place more emphasis on.

My own research is beginning to take shape at the moment, and there are certain key words circling round my head as I try and formulate my research question. One of these terms is engagement, and I couldn't help pay attention when Hiltz and Meinke began to talk about interest and involvement. You see one of the key reasons for the academic interest in digital games is that they are seen to be engaging so researchers want to know how we can harness this motivational power (p. 4; Kirremuir & McFarlane, 2004). As such, I was especially interested in Hypothesis 2.4 which suggested the VC would be superior to traditional teaching in terms of "Increased level of interest in the subject matter, which may continue beyond the course" (p. 436; Hiltz & Menke, 1989). How were they going to evaluate this? Turns out through self-report questionnaires, and I'm not sure they even did ask about "beyond the course". So, the measure of interest was actually how interested the students thought they were, with no recognition of the possibility that the novelty of the VC might be a contributing factor. I guess I was hoping for something a bit more objective, though I'm not sure what exactly. In terms of methods, I know I won't be using some sort of pre-post test experimental design either as I will be focusing on much more informal learning. Still need to think about how I'm going to assess this though...

Going back to the paper, I think (and this is something else that kind of came up in the forums) the references to procrastination and self-discipline are a little bit worrying as they seemed to come across like students were being blamed for not being interested enough in the first place. If the VC is supposed to raise interest in the course, but not all students feel the same way, then surely it's not doing it's job (in this respect at least)? Big surprise, but the students who participated the most in the VC were the ones with the highest levels of reported interested i.e. the students who described the experience as "fun" (p. 440) were probably already highly motivated to begin with. The authors even go on to conclude that students who have problems with motivation, verbal skills, and/or access to computers are more likely to drop out of an online course - which suggests to me that the VC really doesn't increase "level of interest in the subject matter". I have a suspicion as well that when it comes to games, a similar thing is going on. I mean, it seems likely that the people who would get the most out of game-based learning are the ones who are already motivated to play games which seems quite obvious now that I've written it down...

Hiltz and Meinke also tie motivation to the concept of cognitive maturity - the authors claim that students who have attained a specific "level of cognitive maturity or writing skill" are actually predisposed "to active and highly readable engagement with ideas and new skills" (p. 434). I guess this is an attempt to explain why the VC does not appeal to everyone, which is fine, except that there is no consideration for how the situation might be improved, apart from cutting out the VC entirely from the academically weakest course. The notion of cognitive maturity reminded me a little of some reading I did last year on approaches to learning (see here for brief introduction) where much research has focused on how to promote deeper approaches to learning within education. So maybe that's why I was expecting something about how to improve the situation, rather than the conclusion that the VC is just not suitable for less academically able students. As for my own project (and for where I'm going with the link to games-playing) I think this has reinforced my thinking in terms of how important it is to take student characteristics (or game player expectations and long term motivations) into account if we are ever going to come up with a clear understanding of how motivation, involvement and learning interrelate.

BETT exhibition, SGI workshop and my own research

There were a couple of things I went to last week that I thought were worth mentioning. One of them was BETT, which I went to with my supervisor James Aczel who has already blogged about it here. The picture on the right is me playing with Microsoft's surface, which was definitely pretty cool. So we saw a lot of cool bits of technology, but I think what I'd like to add to James' commentary was that we saw very little in terms of innovative gaming approaches.

There were a fair few simulations on offer, and a lot of interactive software but in very little in terms of actual games. There was a stall for Serious Games Interactive, who were promoting their Global conflict series where students take on the role of reporter in either Palestine or Latin America. I'd already heard about the company at ECGBL, when Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen did his keynote so it was nice to see they had a presence at the exhibition, albeit in a little stall in an upstairs corner. ConnectED had a stand with PSPs on it, but these mostly seemed to be used as portable recording devices more than anything else. We found out later though, that they are also being used as augmented reality viewers and while it will be interesting to see how this might be used in education, it's not exactly using the PSP as a gaming device either. Then we came across the Cyber Coach - Dance mat system. As far as I could figure out, this is essentially allows you to connect multiple dance mats to a single system, gives you access to virtual (i.e. taped) instructors and has thrown in a few extra games to get the kids moving. All for about £6000... I was told that most schools didn't buy dance mats for all the children, but that's ok because the ones who don't have them tend to try and copy the steps anyway, and also some places are making extra money by charging adults to use the system in the evening. Is it me or does this all seem a bit, well, gimmicky? I mean, apart from being able to connect several mats to one system (which the students don't seem to need anyway)... you seem to be paying for a set of really expensive aerobics videos. Perhaps I'm simplifying things a bit - there are several different types of classes you can access (Tai-Chi, Royal Marines training, Salsa to name a few), you can customise these clips, and if you buy more software you can create your own videos/classes etc. Who knows, maybe I would have liked P.E. more at school if we'd had a Cyber Coach. I mean it's got to beat running around a track right? And while I don't think it's particularly innovative, it's not like I have a better idea for how to use games to promote physical fitness. Still, I'm just not convinced this would be the best use of a school's budget.

I also went along to the Serious Games Institute (SGI) in Coventry for their Second Wednesday workshops, this one focusing on Education. Highlights include hearing about the Winning Game project in Scotland from Matt Seeney of Team Play Learning Dynamics, Martyn Ware from the Human League and Heaven 17, talk about Illustrious and their unique 3D Audioscape surround sound system, meeting people like Sara de Freitas, who is the Director of research at the SGI. It was quite an interesting experience and got me thinking. It seemed a lot of the people there were from industry, so had actually produced something (or were in the process of doing so), and wanted to know how to get funding, publicity etc. So there was less of an academic focus, and less on an interes in how this was all being evaluated. The emphasis was on getting these games, or supporting hardware, out there and in use. Which is great and entirely necessary in order to educate people about serious games and how they can be used but I guess that's not what I'm doing, and that's what it got me thinking about.

So what am I doing? Good question, and I'm not sure I have a suitable answer yet. I know that I want to look at commercial games, specifically the latest generation of console games as the initial question was to assess whether they can offer anything different in educational terms. I attempted to explore the link between engagement and learning during specific instances of play (through observation and interview) as part of my Master's and I think want to continue along similar lines. But I am looking at informal learning - i.e. what goes on as the player learns to progress through the game - not at what happens with games in formal educational environments. I have a feeling that the link between engagement and learning in games is taken for granted could do with further explanation. Maybe I'm not convinced a lot of serious games are as engaging as commercial games (even Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen seemed to recognise this at ECGBL) but is that because of how they are designed, or because of the context they are being used in? Perhaps just saying this game will help you learn reduces your desire to play it? Some games are obviously more engaging than others but how can you compare them, especially when it seems to depend on who's playing them and why? How can you even measure something like engagement anyway? After coming across Regan Mandryk's research, we've been considering using some sort of bio-sensors to measure stuff like heart rate and galvanic skin response to answer the last question but it might be quite a complex thing to do. So there is lot to be reading and thinking about, but at least it looks like I've got something to discuss at my next supervisor meeting!