Notes from the Sharing Knowledge conference organized by the Da Vinchi Institute in Amsterdam.

Lecture by Peter Vorderer

What attracts people to games or anything else for that matter?

The standard way of looking at this is the uses and gratification theory
But Vorderer advocates the use of entertainment research/theory: effect-dependent theory of stimulus arrangement.

1. excitatory homeostasis: optimal level of arousal.
2. intervention potential: level of absorption of the medium.
3. message-behavioral affinity: does it fit my mood?
4. hedonistic valence: is it uplifting or distressing, can it change my mood?

Problems of this approach:

1. entertainment is multifaceted and multidimensional.
2. interactive entertainment is completely different from classical media.

More recent approaches:

• evolutionary psychology: explaining our behavior from evolutionary principles.
• motivational theories: intrinsic and external motivations.
• self-determination theory: which states that people need 3 things for enjoyment or even mental health:
  1. need for competence: a challenge to overcome at just the right level of difficulty to not get frustrated.
  2. need for autonomy: the feeling of personal achievements.
  3. need for relatedness: being part of a group where there are not only rivals but also friends.

Competence:
In traditional media you almost always feel competent; you don't switch of the television because it's too challenging.
In interactive media the level can change so it delivers excitatory homeostasis.

Autonomy:
Users of any media underestimate the interdependence from outside influences. When asked they think media influences others a lot, but not so much themselves.
In interactive media, you are not part of a movie-audience, you are scoring points and exploring individually.

Relatedness:
PSI/PSR affective dispositions. This is of mayor importance. The success of a tv-show or game (MMOG) or a film depends very much on the popularity or unpopularity of show-hosts, avatars, movie-stars. Do we feel related, this is crucial to success.

PCST has to target these three needs just like entertainment has to and gaming meets them better than any other media.

• the popularity of destruction. We like things exploding, falling over, and crashing, especially old and expensive things. Vorderer speculates that this tapps into a deep longing for change and renewal and the liberation from existing structures. The collapsing of the World Trade Center has overtaken the Challenger-explosion as the most broadcast picture of all time.
• The budged for research into education in the USA is dominated by exploring the use of avatars as a learning tool.

Lecture by Ute Ritterfeld.

Games, if kids would only devote this kind of attention to their education.

1. motivation paradigm: making it more fun, and rewarding good results.
2. reenforcement paradigm: combining different ways to deliver the message, text, graphics.
3. blending paradigm: (as she calls it) enjoying the process of learning.

Ritterfeld looked into serious games in the English language.
In early 2007 they found some 650 of them:

My rough translation of her statistics:

In working with disadvantaged children in LA she found that it remains extremely difficult to engage children into a topic they are not already interested in, even with gaming-environments.

They did an experiment where they presented the exact same content in 4 different ways:

1. interactive game.
2. just action replay.
3. hypertext.
4. text.

(I will develop this further later.)

What holds the attention / increases engagement in educational games?

• aesthetics.
• challenge (at the optimal level).
• narrative, the power of which she feels, is only very recently acknowledged.
• personal relevance;
  • as a private laboratory for identity development.
  • developmental tasks such as dealing with competition, fear, joy, losing, winning.
  • mimic past experiences, for instance to deal with traumatic experiences.
  • enabling you to go beyond limitations, like a boy with muscular dystrophy who claims walking around a game environment are his happiest moments.
  • physiological arousal.
  • suspense / arousal due to the use of time and time-limits.

Virtual Cliff (Blascovich 2006)
Person enters a room then gets a VR-headset which presents a cliff. The rendering is just with simple lines, nothing very intricate, and the person is asked to walk forward. 50% refuse to go there and 40% of those still refuse with a guide.

Virtual Combat 1 (Rizzo et al. 2007)
War veterans are helped to overcome their Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Virtual Combat 2 (Henderlite 2005) War veterans with and without combat experience are allowed to play for as long as they like.

• without combat experience - 4 hours.
• with combat experience - 9 hours.

Temporary Suspension of Disbelief.
From neurological data gathered on gaming in a MRI-scanner, Ritterfeld speculates that subjects when gaming are constantly engaged in a balancing-act between accepting the fiction as real and sometimes letting it collapse into disbelief.

• scaffolding learning environment.
• encourages self regulated learning.
• is a safe and private environment.
• challenges you to go beyond impasses and problems.

• Games can be shallow entertainment, but they can also give very meaningful experiences to people.
• Games are excellent at keeping the attention of individuals.
• deliberate and sustained practice is the most important factor in learning, not just talent.
• future games will respond to the learner state more closely to give the optimal challenge level by monitoring physical behavior:
  • hart rate and other physiological measures.
  • keyboard speed and correctness.
  • monitor facial expression.
  • body posture.
  • monitor voice and language.

Lecture by Jaqueline Broerse.

Science communication and public health.

In the transaction model scientists and general public meet on equal terms and share their knowledge.

This leads to a win /win situation:

1. More contextualized science.
2. More societal legitimacy of science.
3. More implementation of research.

Anticipated problems:

• small impact on policy and science.
• little public interest.
• results are not representative in any general sense.
• expensive.
• how to deal with science-illiteracy among non-scientific participants.