The Development of a Passive Gaming Environment

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2017 Annual Meeting

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Psycognia: The Development of a Passive Gaming Environment for Use in Undergraduate Psychology Classes Daniela E. Vazquez Klisans and Nicholas J. Kelling University of Houston – Clear Lake Research has shown that games are able to engender educational settings that better the process of learning and enhance the execution and achievement of tasks. These studies, however, have only used games with automatic, responsive interfaces, or active games. Although effective, these video games necessitate the expenditure of human, physical, and monetary resources, and are, therefore, not inclusive of all populations. Alternatively, passive games are structured around the same principles as active games, but do not require programmed platforms. This study presents the theoretical design, development and implications of a passive game that is to be used in undergraduate psychology classes. INTRODUCTION The application of game-design principles to non-gaming contexts has been spreading steadily across schools and workplaces (Kim, 2015; Zamyatina, Yurutkina, Mozgaleva, & Gulyaeva, 2014) due to the vast and encouraging results that it has yielded within education and training settings (e.g. Barata, Gama, Jorge, & Gonçalves, 2013; Faghihi et al., 2014; Howard-Jones, Jay, Mason, & Jones, 2016). Previous research has identified several advantages of video game play, including the improvement of learning and an increase in motivation. This study focuses on the review and use of such benefits as foundations for the development of a new type of video game.

Copyright 2017 by Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. DOI 10.1177/1541931213601585

Enhancing Learning Video games provide a framework for experiences that might not be available to players in real life. They offer players opportunities to exercise skills without real threats of failing. These practical advantages of video games make them excellent resources in educative settings. Yet, one often overlooked reason to implement video games in the classroom is their ability to enhance learning. Squire (2005, 2008) asserts that games lead players to employ complex forms of thinking, including system understanding, intricate pattern recognition, creativity, strategic planning, and problem-solving. Similarly, Malone and Lepper (1987) hypothesize that well-designed games encourage an intrinsic and natural tendency to optimize cognitive processes. Digital games cause players to revisit prior knowledge and mental strategies in order to shape and apply them to new contexts (Squire, 2013). As a consequence, players improve their problem-solving skills, and avoid functional fixedness (Howard-Jones et al., 2016), both processes being necessary to academic performance. Buelow, Okdie, and Cooper (2015) found that after only 30 minutes of video game play, undergraduate students showed improved performance in decision making and problem solving (measured by the Iowa Gambling Task and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, respectively). Additionally, Adachi and Willoughby (2013) conducted a longitudinal study to investigate the relationship between self-reported problemsolving skills, strategic games (e.g. World of Warcraft, RuneScape, Splinter Cell, etc.), and academic performance. The authors surveyed 1,492 students from a school district in

Ontario, Canada, for four consecutive years. They found that participants who sustained strategic video game play across the four years showed an upward slope in their self-reported problem-solving skills. In addition, an increase in self-reported problem-solving skills predicted higher academic grades (Adachi and Willoughby, 2013). Motivation Research has established a strong connection between motivation and academic performance (e.g. Kusurkar, Ten Cate, Van Asperen, & Croiset, 2011; Shores & Shannon, 2007), with engagement being the main mediator. Most contemporary teaching approaches, therefore, utilize motivational strategies to increase engagement with the content to be learned. Research on gamification has identified, among others, competition, fantasy, control, and challenge (Malone & Lepper, 1987) as motivating attributes of games. Competition. Sherry, Lucas, Greenberg, and Lachlan (2006) assert that competition is a principal motivator of gameplay, for it provides a healthy and continual dynamic in the establishment of relative positions within a social group. In competitive gaming, players contemplate their individual, past, and present performances, and how they compare to those of other players. Thus, competition stems from both personal and social comparisons, making the inclusion of an isolated computer-generated rival insufficient (e.g.Vandercruysse, Vandewaetere, Cornillie & Clarebout, 2013). The creation of an engaging competitive environment within a game should then provide fair social means of comparison through equal sets of rules, quantifiable varying outcomes, autonomy to affect outcomes, and identifiable player-outcome display (Juul, 2005). Congruent with these premises, Cagiltay, Ozcelik and Ozcelik (2015) added a leaderboard, with elements such as ranking, score, and nickname to the competitive variant of their two gamified versions of an undergraduate database course. They found that students in the competitive group were significantly more motivated than students in the control group. Motivation translated into more time spent responding questions and, ultimately, into a higher performance (Cagiltay et al., 2015). In the study by Rose, O’Meara, Gerhardt, and Williams (2016), individual display of scores on a leaderboard was optional, but student performance on quizzes was still projected through a three-star system. The quizzes required


students to earn a certain number of points in order to receive full credit, but only perfect performances were rewarded with three stars. Results indicated that even after receiving full credit, students retook the quizzes until their performance had yielded three stars (Rose et al., 2016). Such results show that student engagement, as a consequence of a competitive environment, is consistent with Elliot and Dweck’s (1988) definition of performance goals. That is, the need to draw positive judgements and to avoid shame are stressed through the public display of individual performances, and at last results in the increase of engagement. Fantasy. Fantasy refers to the ability of games to transport players into an imaginary context. It should not, however, be understood as a reality-unconstrained process. Instead, fantasy here embraces Johnson’s (1987) theory of imagination, in which human reasoning and fancy could perform independently, or intertwine to make sense of novel stimuli in the physical and social world. The latter operation, called reasoned imagination, utilizes logical and physical laws, and simultaneously permits their creative manipulation (Johnson, 1987). As a consequence, individuals have the capacity to, for example, feel empathy, and to play the function or character of others. Fantasy thus provides players the opportunity to experience situations that are not probable or possible (Squire, 2008), and enjoyment is likely the result of these experiences and a motivation for engagement (Picciuto, 2009). If learning is desired, fantasy should set boundaries that inhibit imagination from acting in isolation and diverting cognition from the acquisition of new knowledge (Pavlas, Bedwell, Wooten II, Heyne and Salas, 2009). Islas Sedano, Leendertz, Vinni, Sutinen, and Ellis’ (2013) hypercontextualized game accomplished an effective fantasy by introducing a virtual host and its own story. The context created by the host was related to each historical object in a museum’s exhibition. Moreover, each host encouraged the player to discover what displayed object was needed to accomplish a task. Once the player had made the right selection, the host would continue developing the story. For the player to be successful, he or she had to imagine what it was like to live in the historical period of the host. Hence, the host did not only act as a teacher, but it also guided the fantasy, which was found on a final survey to be significantly related to players’ affective and cognitive engagement (Islas Sedano et al., 2013). Control. Within gamified contexts, control denotes the ability of players to affect the game environment (Pavlas et al., 2009). It is created by the establishment of an explicit relation between players’ actions and game outcomes so that results of gameplay cannot be attributed to the automatic progression of the story. Ryan, Rigby, and Przybylski (2006) found that being able to control the outcomes of a challenging game heightened feelings of competence, and resulted in the desire of future play. Their findings, however, are not unprecedented. By 1987, the gain of a sense of control was already one of the most cited reasons for playing video games (Malone & Lepper, 1987). These and similar replications have given theorists the basis to believe that video game play serves as a means to satisfy certain psychological needs, including the need for autonomy (Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan, 2010).

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Having, or arguably, perceiving to have control is desired for several reasons (Zimbardo, 1969). Sense of control is tightly associated to the self, and impacts individuals’ selfconcept and self-esteem (Aronson, Wilson, Akert, & Sommers, 2016; Zimmerman, 1999). Thus, having control makes the experience of positive outcomes meaningful and rewarding. Nevertheless, as described by Przybylski, Rigby, and Ryan (2010), being able to effectively control the results in a game does not necessarily translate in the increase of motivation. In fact, obtaining only effortless positive outcomes does not yield feelings of competence and autonomy; instead, it deters motivation. The game should then provide players the opportunity to make selections in the digital world (e.g. what their avatar looks like, what skills to master, what goals to achieve, etc.), and balance game difficulty and player’s skill (Przybylski et al., 2010). Under these conditions, the engendered autonomy is not only an effective motivator, it also facilitates learning through the active selection of options and observation of outcomes (Squire, 2008). Challenge. Early theories of intrinsic motivation (e.g. effectance motivation, perceived competence, self-efficacy, and flow states) have introduced challenge as a central tenet of their explanations, with an optimal level of challenge being a shared principle for engagement (Malone & Lepper, 1987). Relying on the flow theory, Jin (2012) measured players’ perceived levels of skills, challenge, and flow after assigning them to a 20-minute session of video game play. She found that participants experienced the most flow when their levels of skills matched the level of challenge. For example, highly skilled participants felt the most flow when they perceived the challenge to be high, whereas moderately skilled participants had the same experience with moderate challenges. The experience of flow is important as it should predict enjoyment, and motivation for future play (Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005). Huang and Hsieh (2011) confirmed such statement when they found in a survey of 251 MMORPG players that game loyalty was significantly correlated to perceived entertainment, challenge, and control. Their study also highlights an analogy between control and challenge, as the latter, too, relates to feelings of competence (Barata et. al, 2013). Players will seek to maximize their self-efficacy through the attempt at objectives that seem achievable, and at their relative levels of skills (i.e. flow state; Rieber, 1996; and Malone & Lepper, 1987). According to Malone and Lepper (1987), in order to create a challenging game that engenders a flow state, designers should include goals, uncertainty, feedback, and self-esteem. Goals should be clear, and in place for both shortand long-term progresses. Moreover, players should not be able to predict the achievement of such goals, but they should not feel as if the goals are unreachable either. Finally, if increasing engagement is desired, the game should provide players with feedback about their performance, and promote self-efficacy (Malone & Lepper, 1987). Passive vs. Active Games Although research has placed its emphasis on the motivational attributes of games, little is known about the


extent to which player-game interaction influences engagement. Research about gamification has utilized only digital games that have direct, automatized interfaces, since content features have been the primary focus of attention. Playing these games, named here active games, requires that students click on icons, press buttons, hold and move joysticks, etc. They are characterized by an action-response relation that does not necessarily come about the progression of the game, but rather as a means to communicate activity. The present work introduces and describes the process of development of a passive digital game, which contains the traditional game attributes presented in the literature but lack the direct interaction between the player and the digital platforms of active games.

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Figure 2. Elements from the core areas of the city.

GAMIFYING THE COURSE The game is an open-ended, city-building platform embedded in a virtual course management system (e.g. Blackboard Learn), and is being tested in two types of undergraduate psychology classes, Behavioral Statistics and Cognitive Psychology. These courses were chosen as they represent two distinctly different content types. Each participant is assigned a virtual city made up of three core areas: a downtown, a market, and a farm (Figure 1). Set at a base level for all participants at the beginning, these components are affected by players’ performances in assignments that are directly related to the game. For example, in a cognitive psychology course, an assignment might ask players to identify a concept about memory (e.g. interference, mnemonics, encoding, retrieval, etc.) applied to a farm-related story. If the player provides the correct answer, farm elements, such as silos, barns, or crop fields, are added to his or her city. Contrarily, if the player errs in answering the question, elements are taken away. Thus, the game objective is to develop the city by gaining componential elements (Figure 2). However, as the assignments are provided weekly, cities are only updated after the assignment due date. After each update, the cities are uploaded to a virtual world map in the course management system, allowing players not only to see

Figure 3. World map displaying all players’ cities. their individual cities, but also those of other students in the course. In the world map, the displayed cities (Figure 3), are identified by either a unique code, or a player-determined name that still maintains anonymity. To ensure that students do not abandon their city due to poor performance, an artificial city (not assigned to a student, but maintained by the instructor) was added. This city consistently performs with maximum error assuring its place as the worse city on the world map. This passive game does not include an automatic interface between the player and the virtual environment. Instead, the platform acts as a visual representation of game performance, and gameplay occurs separately, and on a different medium (regular classroom assignments). Players approach the game as they would with any written assignment. They may, or may not, use the digital platform to observe their own and others’ performances. Nevertheless, the lack of an interactive virtual platform does not necessarily translate in the loss of the motivational attributes characteristic of active video games as the passive online platform, and written assignments are theoretically rooted to them. Integrating Motivational Attributes

Figure 1. Game environment.

Competition. Players are able to examine their individual performances as well as those of other players by accessing the world map in the course management system. In the game, each player starts with a city that has two elements for each core area. They can gain or lose up to two elements per assignment. The better the player’s performance is, the greater the number of elements his or her city will have. Although the world map is similar to a leaderboard, it is not limited to the


public display of achievements. It also reflects players’ failures. Thus, this competitive environment is expected to motivate students performing at both ends of the spectrum. Whereas students performing poorly would seek to improve their cities to avoid shame, students performing highly would stay motivated to maintain their status within the game. Fantasy. Course assignments consist of short storylines that encourage players to use their imagination. They are asked to, for instance, role play as majors, and imagine themselves interacting with the environment and the characters introduced in the game. Through fancy, players are able to discover hints about the concept that they need to identify. The assignments are designed to prevent players from doing blatant concept-definition matchings. Alternatively, the stories promote systematic analyses by unifying concepts’ characteristics with corresponding events. Moreover, the stories also serve to guide and enclose the player’s fantasy as they begin at problem definition, and conclude when the players reach an answer or solution. Control. During game introduction players are explained the mechanics of the game, which should include stressing their role in the growth or shrinkage of their cities. The cities are identified so that individual performances are discernable. Inducing a sense of control in players of the present passive game might be, however, challenging to accomplish. The game does not provide direct and immediate feedback during gameplay, nor a means for players to determine what components to develop or what city resources to obtain. In other words, the player-outcome connection is not as readily explicit as that provided by active games. More research is necessary to determine whether the time between gameplay and outcome affects the sense of autonomy of players. Challenge. Although passive games are unable to adapt to individual skills, gameplay is tied directly to the course curriculum, and students are provided all resources necessary to achieve the game goals (i.e. to identify and apply the concepts learned in realistic situations, and ultimately develop their cities). Students are first taught a lesson about the concepts that they will later encounter in their assignments. Additionally, the course textbook and online resources serve as tools for on-demand information. Having such assets, it is anticipated that game challenge and players’ skills will be at an appropriate, balanced level. Evaluating the Game The passive game concept is being tested within two undergraduate psychology courses using slightly different procedures that were dependent on the number of students who enrolled for each class. Students in the online statistics course are randomly selected to either a control or experimental group. The control group cannot access the game, but lectures, assignments, and tests are identical to control for the presentation of applied material. After the fifth assignment of the course, students are presented with the opportunity to earn extra credit by completing an online questionnaire within a week. The survey is used to collect data on students’ opinion on the content of the class, engagement and motivation, perceived skills, and anticipated performance.

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At this time, the experimental group also gets access to the cities and world map. Student engagement is measured from the beginning to the end of the course by means of access rate to relevant course content such as videos, articles, and study guides. Such data is collected automatically via Blackboard. Assignment and test grades will constitute direct performance data. Lastly, during the final week of the semester, the same questionnaire used in the beginning (plus additional game-related items for the students in the experimental group) is administered. The methodology used in the cognitive psychology course is almost identical, with the primary difference being that students are not split into control and experimental groups due to smaller class sizes, and the face-to-face format of the class. It is also worth mentioning that the initial questionnaire is administered within the first two weeks of a regular semester, and game introduction occurs after the first exam. DISCUSSION Some measures used in previous gamification studies and reported here (e.g. self-reported problem-solving skills) only provide subjective data of actual performance. Regardless, they still speak positively of the acceptability of video games as teaching instruments. The improvement of such tools is therefore still valuable in the understanding of the application of game elements. In the case of passive gaming in particular, the student’s opinion of the effectiveness of the interaction may directly impact their motivation and level of engagement. However, future work will need to address the performance effectiveness of passive gaming as a learning intervention. The city-theme presents an advantage for subject applicability over other video games used in gamification. The game can be used for a wide variety of disciplines, including psychology, statistics, sociology, political science, math, physics, etc. Furthermore, the game implementation does not represent any extra work for players, which has been a concern during research (e.g. Barata, Gama, Jorge, & Gonçalves, 2013). Students in the gamified course are not expected to play for extra credit, practice before exams, or learning beyond the course curriculum. Instead, the gamerelated assignments are an organic representation of the content previously taught. That is, they promote real world learning through the application of theoretical concepts to real life events. Additionally, compared to active video games, the lack of an interactive electronic platform makes the virtual environment easier to develop, implement, and sustain. An expected reaction to the passive game concept is that of skepticism. It could be argued that using passive games in the classroom is comparable to having a class rank. There are, however, important differences between the two. Class ranking is often a unilinear depiction of performance. Once the first set of scores are provided, student relative positions are very unlikely to change, and, consequently, the desired competitive dynamic will not exist, especially for students with average performances. Differently, the grade-to-game conversion allows students, including performers at the lower end, to maintain a competitive profile, even if their performances fluctuate significantly throughout the semester.


Moreover, class ranking provides limited feedback to students since it only depicts relative positions of general performance. The feedback provided by the game, on the other hand, is diversified. For example, a student may not develop his or her city entirely, but still manages to have the best component (farm, downtown, or market). In other words, the game is able to simultaneously show players’ masteries and areas for improvement, and thus informs their approach to future evaluations. Although gamifying classes is advantageous for learning, the availability of games is a social concern (Squire, 2008). Not all institutions and students count with the resources to access them, and many physically impaired students might not be able to play active games. Passive video games, such as the one presented here, might resolve these concerns. The virtual platform can be accessed through any computer, and does not necessitate the use of any particular hardware or accessory, ergo allowing players to benefit from it even outside the school. Furthermore, as mentioned before, the development of passive games is inexpensive, and requires little effort to apply in the classroom, for it relies on, but is not limited by, a course management system. Also, passive games do not require rapid, or precise locomotion, making them accessible to more populations. REFERENCES Adachi, P. J., & Willoughby, T. (2013). More than just fun and games: The longitudinal relationships between strategic video games, self-reported problem solving skills, and academic grades. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42(7), 1041-1052. doi:10.1007/s10964-013-9913-9 Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., Akert, R. M., & Sommers, S. R. (2016). Social Psychology. Boston: Pearson. Barata, G., Gama, S., Jorge, J., & Gonçalves, D. (2013, September). Engaging engineering students with gamification. Paper presented at the Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (VS-GAMES), 2013 5th International Conference, Poole, UK: IEEE. 10.1109/VSGAMES.2013.6624228 Buelow, M. T., Okdie, B. M., & Cooper, A. B. (2015). The influence of video games on executive functions in college students. Computers in Human Behavior, 45, 228-234. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.12.029 Cagiltay, N. E., Ozcelik, E., & Ozcelik, N. S. (2015). The effect of competition on learning in games. Computers & Education, 87, 35-41. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2015.04.001 Elliott, E. S., & Dweck, C. S. (1988). Goals: An approach to motivation and achievement. Journal of personality and social psychology, 54(1), 5. Faghihi, U., Brautigam, A., Jorgenson, K., Martin, D., Brown, A., Measures, E., & Maldonado-Bouchard, S. (2014). How gamification applies for educational purpose specially with college algebra. Procedia Computer Science, 41, 182-187. doi:10.1016/j.procs.2014.11.102 Howard-Jones, P. A., Jay, T., Mason, A., & Jones, H. (2016). Gamification of learning deactivates the default mode network. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01891 Huang, L. Y., & Hsieh, Y. J. (2011). Predicting online game loyalty based on need gratification and experiential motives. Internet Research, 21(5), 581-598. doi:10.1108/10662241111176380 Islas Sedano, C., Leendertz, V., Vinni, M., Sutinen, E., & Ellis, S. (2013). Hypercontextualized learning games: Fantasy, motivation, and engagement in reality. Simulation & Gaming, 44(6), 821-845. doi:10.1177/1046878113514807 Jin, S-A. (2012). “Toward integrative models of flow”: Effects of performance, skill, challenge, playfulness, and presence on flow in video games. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(2), 169-186. doi: 10.1080/08838151.2012.678516 Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and cognition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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