Intrinsic motivators
Our general topic here is to understand what makes the experience of doing something instrinsically rewarding, and how we can make the activities that we want to encourage in online communities more intrinsically rewarding.
There are three things to look at in this regard:
- The short Wikipedia article on Csíkszentmihályi's notion of flow.
- Tom Malone's classic paper on what makes computer games fun and how we can apply those principles to user interface design. (See attachment). Malone, Tom (1982). Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces: Lessons from Computer Games. In Proceedings for the 1982 conference on Human factors in computing systems.
- Luis Von Ahn's presentation on the ESP Game (try playing it!) and some related games. Focus especially on his anecdotes about why people like the game, in about minutes 20-25 of the presentation. I think there are some additional (social) characteristics that are not capture in the other readings and that we'll want to pull out in our discussion.
Same platform, different goals
These were three incredibly interesting readings made especially interesting by the fact that they don't directly address ecommunities. This seems like an excellent opportunity to connect ideas in ways that perhaps people haven't explicitly challenged yet.
In particular Malone's piece spends a lot of time differentiating between toys (done for their own sake, no external goals) and tools (used as means to achieve external goals) (65). Table 2 on page 65 does a great job outlining his three main components of enjoyable interfaces: challenge, fantasy, and curiosity. He spend the majority of his paper discussing the details of each, as well as outlining what differentiates toys from tools. What's interesting to note is that Von Ahn's ESP Game seems to transcend nearly all of the components and potential differences labeled here. The designer constantly returns to the appeal of a sense of connection/intimacy that players of ESP feel, which is easily relatable to Malone's component of fantasy, which relies on emotion. Likewise, Von Mahn notes that people feel a sense of achievement (Malone's challenge) and enjoy the ability to guess and to temporarily think "outside of themselves" (very similiar to Malone's idea of curiosity.) What Van Ahn seems to be doing that Malone overlooks is the discguising of a tool as a game, where they can covertly achieve the same goal.
This brought me back to the wikipedia article on flow, which lists as one of its components as "clear goals" along with several other necessary components. What's interesting is that the rest of the components (concentrating, focusing, loss of self-consciousness, feedback, etc.) are all satisfied in the ESP game as well as most tools one would use in a normal environment. However, the clear goals potion can be used in this dual fashion in order to on one hand 1) motivate people to score as many points as possible to achieve feeling of accomplishment, while on the other 2) successfully label photos in order to populate web searches. Same format, different goals. This all leads me to question (and to ponder future design claims) about misdirecting purposes not as a way to deceive, but as a way to satisfy different audiences, where the user is an obvious one, but some greater "other" is the other. In some ways I'm already doing this in my Facebook page: I want my students to be successful and enjoy themselves, but I'm also trying to manipulate things to see what can be done differently in the future. Same plaform, but different goals that aren't mutually exclusive.
Gender Difference, Long-term intrinsic interest
The significant difference between boys and grils in
Malone’s first experiment illuminates the importance of gender difference in
including individuals’ intrinsic interest. If we want to implement some
heuristics features in entertainment/game community, it is better for us to
notice this point.
As the author discusses the curiosity, I am wondering about
the longevity of curiosity, how to keep users’ internal passion in the long
run?
Long-Term Interest
I think a prime contributor to longevity in online communities is the social aspect... the consensus among developers within my community seems to be that these bonds are responsible for much of the long-term participation. However, socialization isn't the topic this week.
I recall a relevant statement from an old MUD-DEV discussion: To be put into a game, each action required of a player should require genuine choice. Perhaps this may seem obvious to some of you, but for anyone who has ever played a MUD/MMORPG, the inconsistency with which this advice is applied should be readily apparent. This idea is what differentiates raids and quests from "grinding".
Malone touches on this concept, I think, when he discusses goals with uncertain outcomes. That is, community members should not be required to take actions with foregone conclusions. I think that intrinsic interest can be maintained as long as users are offered genuine, meaningful choices, which implies some uncertainty in outcomes.
agree, and just to add some thoughts
I agree with Dustin about the social aspect. Personally, I find both "raids & quests" and "grinding" (which can generally mean the act of repeatedly doing the same or similar things over and over again in order to "level-up", acheive a certain "goal" or obtain a specific item) to be quite similar actually. While "raids & quests" might seem new and refreshing once in awhile, many regular players end up seeing "raids & quests" as "grinding" as well. Therefore, the social aspect is definitely an important chracteristic of an MMORPG, because people are often willing to do repeated things as long as they are interacting with friends and others.
On a side note, I am more familiar with graphics-based mmorpgs, as opposed to text-based ones like Dustin's community. I guess people like me take the whole "interface" for granted. When I think of Malone's heuristics for designing enjoyable user interfaces, I get a little confused because in 3-D games, I think of the HUD, the hotkey bars, the "pause menu", and etc to be the "user-interface", but not the 3-D environment, the "quests", the characters, or more generally, the "contents" of the game. In the meantime, the three categories raised in the reading (challenge, fantasy, and curiosity) seem to be very much applicable to the "contents" of graphics-based games.
socializating newcomers
since early adopters are much more likely to stay than late adopters, does your community have rituals or something to encourage bond formation between old-timers and newcomers?
Gender
I agree with Tracy on not overlooking the differences between the genders in what creates intrinsic interest. I can vouch for this personally after playing video games with some friends last night - we played Rock Band for awhile, which is a game I enjoy for its social aspect. But, then all the guys wanted to play some violent video games like Call of Duty, which they love but I find unappealing. I found it interesting to observe their intense focus and addictive behavior of playing the game repeatedly...but felt no interest whatsoever in the game myself. It was obviously eliciting some masculine emotion in them that I did not feel.
As Malone said, "There are large differences among people in what fantasies they find appealing" (p.67) He recommends for designers to carefully consider which fantasies they use so that they appeal to their target audience, or to allow a user to select from different fantasies. I think this applies to online communities in that they obviously want to satisfy their target audience (which in some cases may be mostly male, like PerlMonks I would guess), but at the same time, if you design for only a male or female audience you will alienate those in the minority. An interesting quandary to ponder...
CoD
Well, we did play Smash Bros. before that, and it has cute characters! Though I guess the premise of violence was still the same. Would you have played Call of Duty if you could play as Princess Peach?
Violence
Haha, no - even cute characters make no difference to me. It's definitely still a game biased toward a male audience.
Correlations to week 9 and 11
John Blair
Clearly the three readings align quite well with previous material on getting people to stay (week 9) as well as goals and incentives (week 11). Many of the items Csíkszentmihályi identifies as comprising flow are consistent with getting people to stay – have clear goals, timely feeback, sense of personal control I see as the major connections. A similar correlation appears with Malone, establish a goal (built in or created), provide feedback, be difficult but not too difficult, get people interesting or committed being some of the highlghts. The ESP game by Von Ahn combines these attributes into a online game. Obviously many of the players of ESP got into the flow if they played for more than 15 hours in a row!!! The number of hours played by some of the players was really quite amazing (over 20 hours a week if I remember correctly).
What would be the motivation to spend such a huge amount of time on a game? The only thing I can think of is that people are deriving some sort of purpose out of it, knowing that they are helping to build something through their contributions (playing). Much like wikipedia builds in information repository through free contributions. I’m still not sure I understand how so many people could spend so much time playing this type of game (it’s not like some of the more sophisticated immersion games out there – guitar hero, grand theft auto, etc.). The data obviously proves that they do, but I have a difficult time not applying the equally as true fact that the number one reason people visit social sites is to waste time. I think a more interesting question given this fact (as told to us in SI500) is, why do people choose to spend/waste their time in this manner?
time scales
While goals and timely feedback are important to keep people motivated over a long time period, I think there's something different going on with "guess the label" as a goal, with immediate feedback. The time scale is much shorter, and itenables the immersive feeling of "flow".
I think the long play times for ESP have very little to do with commitment to the larger task of labeling images to enable search. I think it's almost all to do with the task itself and the desire, when you're not playing, to "get that feeling back".
What's fun?
Just finished watching Luis Von Ahn's presentation, and spent another half hour playing the ESP game. His talk covered a lot of the benefits of "games with a purpose" - fast and cheap, putting those "wasted cycles" of human computation to productive use, and how to prevent cheating with test images and repetition. He cited "fun" a few times as the reason why this approach works, but he didn't go too deeply into what makes an activity fun.
The ESP game is really satisfying because when two players match a word, it confirms their instinct and creates a social connection. Reaching a consensus on an image label increases certainty - which as SI500 will tell you, feels nice. The taboo words are challenging constraints - but not too challenging. When the game ends, the statistics about how well you did vs. other games let you make social comparisons. So if above average, you'll probably feel superior and want to play again to reclaim the feeling, while if below average, you may feel motivated to boost your score. Instant feedback also helps.
one more thing
Luis said he didn't consider match frequency. Why not? Wouldn't this show what people thought was most important?
Its especially cool when you
Its especially cool when you and your partner instantly put the same word. I also found the "pass" option interesting because I definitely feel the pressure to pass whenever I see the message saying that the other person wants to pass. What I don't understand is at the end of the session, what is the rationale behind showing just 1 of the words the other player guessed. Does it just serve as a "teaser" that gets people excited?
hmm
Yeah, good question. Maybe it's to have players think "oh, I should and could have thought of that". Then they'll want to try again or something.
In the talk given by Von Ahn
In the talk given by Von Ahn at SI, he said that sometimes people found "soulmates" who always came up with the same words.
Isn't that exciting? :)
one last thing
I wish I read the Malone article before posting this.
different effect of points accumulation
I think the points accumulation creates a challenge at a slightly different timescale. Playing again to "reclaim the feeling" is different than playing again to get more points than you got last time, or to reach a cumulative point goal. Different people seem to be differently motivated by the in-the-moment challenges vs. the longer time-scale challenges. Good games seem to have both things going for them.
User-Contributed Content and Incentives - STIET Talk Takeaways
Problem: How can designers use incentives to encourage high-quality, high-volume, and desirable user-contributed content? (while keeping out bad things)
Different types of quality: Vertical - good, better, best | Horizontal - different types of quality
Social comparisons - use downward designs to encourage people to achieve more. Example: the stat given at the end of a ESP game which shows the percentage of higher or lower scoring games. Use upward designs like leaderboards to spotlight desirable behavior. (espgame has this too, top scoring users per day)
Most UCC information systems are open-access, which attracts spam. Set up a discriminatory entry price to contribute content, because designers don't know at entry who may or may not be a polluter. Set some fee at entry and have users do post-discrimination to moderate. Return the fee to users that contribute valuable content, retain the fee for users that pollute. (all of the equations presented were lost on me - for other people who were there, did I get this right?)
Early adopters are much more likely to stay than late adopters. The example given was Wikipedia - 86% of people who signed up in 2001 contributed again one year later, compared to 10% of people who signed up in 2005.
Benefits for del.icio.us include: bookmark management, mobile access, and peer recognition. The common thread: private incentives with public side-effects. Users were much more likely to choose information based on who contributed and how many people saved the same bookmark - compared to browsing by tags, searching del.icio.us, and subscribing to tags. (who contributes matters more than what the contribution is)
Prof. MacKie Mason's takeaway point: "people are smart devices, but not programmable"
Some points from the ESP Game
This is one of my favourite talks at Google Tech Talks and each time I watch it I learn something new I missed the first time! I think Prof. Von Ahn's research is remarkable! I took down some notes while watching the presentatio- which might be of use to some of you.
Summary (Human Computation)
1. There are lots of things that humans can do that computers cannot do yet.
2. We can use the human mind as a highly complex problem solving machine that can solve problems that even the best supercomputers cannot solve.
3. More interesting we can use the human population as a massively distributed processing unit to solve large scale complex problems that computers cannot solve.
4. In fact by using micro contributions from these we can aggregate them to create powerful solutions.
5. Panama canal took 20 million human hours to build (1 day of solitaire played by people around the world)
6. Can we use these “human cycles” cleverly?
7. To solve a problem requires lots of human labor you will have to:
a. Pay some money
b. To solve a large problem pay lots of money
c. Even if you have the money find the people who are ready to do it.
d. Then co-ordinate those human resources – co-ordination costs.
8. So we get them to do something that they will enjoy doing – perhaps even pay to do! While the important work they do is abstracter in a lower level layer.
9. The output provided should be accurate even though people don’t necessarily want it to be so - design right mechanisms.
10. So that resources are not wasted and experience is consistent single player plays against the computer. This can be used to generate test images.
11. Test images can be used to check for accuracy of players motives.
12. For an arbitrary input-output behavior we could define a game as follows:
a. Give input to player 1 and have them provide an output.
b. Given only the output, player 1 has to guess what the input the player 1 got.
13. The above is a generalized form that is fun for a lot of input output behaviors. An additional property is that we get verified answers.
14. For symmetric verification games you can give both players the same input and ask them to guess what output the other player inputs.
15. So symmetric verification game puts a constraint on the number of inputs that should be possible per output.
16. So if a given input has too many outputs the symmetric verification is never going to work because there can be numerous number of outputs for that and getting people to converge on that is difficult.
17. Asymmetric game : Constraint is the number of inputs that yield the same output. If there are too many inputs that yield the same output then given only the output you will never be able to guess what the input was.
18. Using collaborative filtering to get more nuanced information because you give people images to label about the subject they are good at.
19. Doing these kind of games is more like an art. There will never be a method where you provide the input and you get the human computation game as the output. It takes skill and an art!
how far can the game take us
VonAhn's work is great. As a matter of fact I want to build the "Captcha" game in the ESP
vein and give people points for solving captchas so I can register
millions of user accounts, game ratings systems, and crapflood forums. We have a human computation threshold to use as a human-detection tool on the cheap, why couldn't we create a game to provide a central clearinghouse for that work?
A couple of years ago, I read a book called Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever. The basic premise was that video games have trained a whole new generation to "flow", allowing them to focus on tasks much longer, master more complicated cognitive models, and has affected their risk-tolerance and competitive natures. Think of this as a bit more starchy treatment of Steve Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You". The central proposal in the book is that games are really just "work" in a thin veneer, and we just need to unlock the secret of making work more game-like, and productivity will go thru the roof.
When we talk about harnessing peoples discressionary online effort in communities, I think it does help to think of things like a game. People are playing for enjoyment, they can come and go as they like, they may be able to accrue point and levels or get zombie bites and other signals that other people like them. As the continum shifts from "play" to "work" we see some incentive differences. People feel obliged to engage, they have definitlve patterns of behavior, and their effort expended no longer is paid back in enjoyment and discovery. This is ultimately the reason why I stopped playing WoW and why a lot of people left communities like Everything2 and PerlMonks -- "It just started to feel like a job"
I think game principles will continue to be a great tool for online community designers. PerlMonks owes a lot to the "Monestary" fantasy, as well as the levels and points. However, I think this is definitely a design space with a horizon. The places where game and work overlap are really promising, but once a task becomes more "work" than "play", despite all the points and fantasy those play tools may get really annoying really quick -- and people are going to want to know how to minimize costs and get things done as quickly as possible.
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oostendo@umich.edu
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slavery!
I disapprove of your malevolent intentions for a captcha game. (Not sure if you're serious.)
You could instead use the captchas (or even non captcha-cized text) to help digitize scanned documents, as the reCAPTCHA folks do:
http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html
Response
I agree with you that video games probably have trained people of our generation to 'flow'. I don't play traditional video games, but sometimes play casual online games like TextTwist, which is definitely addictive. The market for casual games, ones of limited scope which you play in short bursts, seems to be the big thing right now. I would classify Luis von Ahn's games as casual games, very similar to those like Bejeweled or TextTwist in their complexity, only used for a purpose.
While games like these are certainly able to create flow, I think that the non-game part of the Internet has a much harder time doing so. Web browsing inherently seems to break flow, with users likely to stray from their task or goal by finding an interesting link and going off-course. In the time it takes for new pages to load, it's also likely for a user to lose interest and focus their attention elsewhere - how many times have you opened up a new tab while waiting for another one to load?
My point is that for online communities which may not naturally lend themselves to incorporating casual games, there seems to be a need to find other ways to capture a users' intrinsic interest to generate flow. This is where I think some of the other lessons from Malone may apply: use sound and graphics in useful ways to create interest, use humor and the unexpected to increase curiousity, have random information or introduce new infomation, etc. These all would help the community be more enjoyable to use which would increase its use and a users' likelihood to stay.
Or, perhaps the lesson could also be, just add a game to your community. :)
They are already doing this
Luis von Ahn came last semester to visit SI for the STIET seminar. He actually gave pretty much the same presentation he gave on the Google video (which incidentally was practically the same thing he gave when he came for a job talk 2 years ago).
One thing he did mention though, is that people are using human labor to solve CAPTCHAs by relaying it to people on other sites. Porn and gambling sites actually "forward" the CAPTCHA to their own sites and have their visitors solve the CAPTCHA in order to gain access to more content.
CAPTCHAs are meant to reduce the incentives for people to do do nefarious things (e.g. bulk register on websites, try to crack passwords, etc.). As long as there is an incentive to crack the system, people will find ways around it, as the porn and gambling web site owners are now doing.
Interesting
Very interesting observation. I agree that the work-place has changed significantly in the past 20 years. And it will continue to change in the future also. Maybe the work environment of today might not have created the same level of productivity as it does today. And same might apply for future also.
Can Captcha solving be fun?
A humorous idea to get people to solve captchas as a game, so you can defeat captchas elsewhere.
But can you make Captcha-solving into a fun game? It seems to me you could follow some of the heuristic rules outlined by Malone-- instant feedback; make them progressively harder to keep up the challenge. And you could have social comparisons to engage competitive instincts (compete over how fast you can do it?)
Despite that, my instinct is that you basically can't make Captcha-solving into a fun game. It lacks the social element that Von Ahn's games have. And making it a paired game doesn't seem like it would help, because the task has an objective answer, unlike ESP or Family Feud where empathy is critical.
CaptchaBattle - a Tournament to find the one true CaptchaMaster
Players play a bracketed tournament in pairs. Each round is a maximum 30 seconds, and each player receives 10 captchas (conveniently differently sized and shaped). Players receive:
1 point for successfully solving a captcha
1 point for each second left on the clock when they finish their 10 captchas
-2 points for typing a captcha incorrectly
-1 point for each captcha left when the timer runs out or the other player finishes
If a captcha is too obscure, players can mark it as "unsolvable", and receive another captcha in its place, *but* if the other player can solve the captcha they automatically win the round and receive no penalty for their own unsolved captchas.
3 rounds are played in each game with the same pair, and the winner of 2/3 rounds rises and the loser falls in bracketed play. If a player does not log in for one day, they go down to the next bracket. Players are automatically paired with a random player in their bracket or the closest available bracket. Aggregate scores are kept between games.
Bonus round: at the end of each game there is a chance to get a bonus of 20 points by successfuly transcribing an audio captcha faster than the opponent.
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oostendo@umich.edu
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ESP Game and flow
1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).
Expectations/Skill Set - Players use their own vocabulary to label an image. Rules - can't use taboo words. Goals - match one label with another player, without communicating
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
Concentrating - the countdown clock and awareness of another player depending on your actions to advance motivates people to focus.
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
Self-consciousness - not so sure about this one. perhaps the objective to reach a consensus reduces self-consciousness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.
Immersion - need to concentrate on the immediate task focuses attention. The countdown clock probably facilitates this.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
Players know instantly when their words match. Statistics at the end of the game let players know how well they did compared to others.
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
Taboo words pose a manageable challenge. Players are more likely to match common words, which helps keep the ability level low.
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
If players are having a tough time matching words, they can opt to pass.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
Each new image introduces uncertainty - "what label could I give this image that would likely match what someone else would label this image?" Reaching a consensus is satisfying because it increases certainty. The social connection helps too.
9. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.
This item feels really similar to items 2 and 3. Nothing more to add here... need to go play ESP game again...
Hooked!
I hope I can manage to pull myself away from the ESP game to add just a little to Jon's post. Like the ESP game, all fun video games have some of the 9 characteristics of a flow experience, and they're all pretty addictive. I'm sure we've all been, or at least known someone who has been hooked on a particular game (Tetris, anyone?). Luis von Ahn talks about people playing the ESP game for marathon sessions and the need to regulate dosage by limiting players to 12 hours at a time.
I think the two main reasons certain games become so addictive are clear goals and a balance between ability and challenge. Luis von Ahn's "games with a purpose" work so well because they all have a really simple premise and balance people's ability to do something pretty easy (e.g. describe pictures) with the challenge of "thinking" like another person. The limits of vocabulary perfectly constrain players of the ESP game so that it's not too hard for 2 people to come up with the same word, but not so easy that it's boring. Players are left saying "just one more game..." for hours on end.
thinking like another person
I think the key element of social connection in this game is the challenge of "thinking like another person". When you match quickly with an obscure word, it feels like you have made a direct connection to another's soul. To know and be known by another person creates a strong bond.
Flow - standing and moving online
One point on the Csikszentmihalyi reading - he gave a list of things to do to create flow in groups. The first was to have "creative spatial arrangements: Chairs, pin walls, charts, but no tables; thus work primarily standing and moving." So according to his notion of flow, one important part of it is standing and moving in groups. Tables are too constraining.
I'm not exactly sure why this would be so, but I've been thinking of how online communities can support standing and moving in order to increase flow in group activities.
A few ideas. If your community has a task for people to do together, make it easy to communicate in a free-flowing, back-and-forth way. Embedded chat, for example. Support movement between different pages within the community. Allow people to move around different tabs, but easily navigate back to their starting point. Create a non-permanent space for brainstorming and idea-creation. Discussion threads are permanent and bulky - like tables. Something more light-weight, flexible, transient. Maybe a "sticky note" board where people post quick statements that "fall off" the board with time.
PerlMonks chatterbox
Your idea reminded me of the chatterbox. I wonder if it effectively promotes flow?
It also made me think of my "stickies" on OS X. I usually have a generic to do one where I can offload ideas that pop into my head and threaten to distract me from my current activity.
Union of Gamers demands researchers to stop exploiting them
"We want pay!" "Stop game slavery!" Those were some slogans that were chanted at a recent public display of dissatifaction of the exploitation of gamers by researchers. The demonstration came about after a report brought to light that some researchers are using "intrinsic motivation" to drive gamers to play their simple games for hours on end without compensation, supposedly to do work that benefits the society, although the one really benefiting was the researcher who got the PhD and the professorship.
"The researchers know how we work - we are curious people. when we play, we play to win. We often immerse ourselves in the game to be "in the flow" so that we can achieve that ultimate goal of completing the mission or being in the Top 10. But then we have to submit to the rules of the game that researchers create - that is slavery. When they don't pay us, that is exploitation!" said one of the demonstrators who played the ESPGame for 20 hours nonstop.
"Worse, when we finished the game, the researchers keep exploiting us by releasing relabeled games that do the same things - same challenge, same fantasy. We should get paid!" said another gamer, who finished a game in 120 hours only to find another similar game being released.
One of the researchers in question, Lewis Vonan, said what he's doing is not wrong. "Nonsense! Why should we pay someone who already wants to do us work for free? That's stupid. Anyway, it's for the greater good."
A government spokesman, when asked on this issue said that the gamers have the right to freedom of expression, but said it is a private matter between the two parties.
underground movement
Anyone who wants to join the resistance, meet me for a protest after class outside Pinball Petes.
Visual designs for group problem solving
One idea that I found across all three materials is having a visual engaging feature that is used for group problem solving.
Csíkszentmihályi suggested group should:
* have a playground design - a place for craziness and charts, flow graphs, etc.
* increase in efficiency through visualization.
Luis Von Ahn implied that - by changing the problem representation to an enjoyable format more people can be engaged in solving the problem. Humans naturally enjoy visuals, we like to represent and process information as visuals.
Malone provided heuristics to deign enjoyable interfaces. It should have a clear goal, outcome should be uncertain, have elements of fantasy - emotional & metaphors, provide information complexity, and have an knowledge structure.
Fantastic presentation,
Fantastic presentation, interesting games and genius guy! That’s my first impression for the presentation. People like games and get easily indulged in it so the idea of using games for certain purposes is really powerful. However, the strategy of using games does not always seem applicable in different situations. But definitely community managers should borrow something from the popularity of computer games and apply to certain eCommunities. It’s just another type of incentive – games gives people fun and get them immersed.
how can we create flow in OC
Erin had one interesting idea about how we could create flow within a community. What other possibilities are there?
In a community that has a purpose involving content creation, Wikipedia, for instance, it would be in the interest of the community for it to be easy to achieve flow in writing or editing articles. I believe that many have experienced the "flow" of getting lost in wikipedia (see http://xkcd.com/214/), so this just needs to be taken one more level to make editing part of the flow. For the many active wikipedians, this is the case already.
One could claim, then, that captivating content can entertain or educate users and bring them into a state of "flow," and that it is the first step to inspiring them to contribute. Then, ideally there would be scaffolding or baby steps for increasing one's flow to include contributions of increasing magnitude to the community.
Using games to make menial tasks fun
One more point on ths Malone article - I like his idea of how to make menial tasks fun, with the example being to reframe a boring factory monitoring operation into a more captivating task like flying an airplane.
As he said, "much of the motivation for using the system depends on the user's motivation to achieve the external goal. In cases where the external goal is not highly motivating (e.g. is routine and boring), the toy-like features...can be especially useful in making the activity enjoyable." (p.65)
I think Luis von Ahn's games are the perfect implementation of this - how many users would he have if it was framed not as a game, but simply as "help us label images". Not that many, I would think - it's a pretty repetitive, menial task, if you think about it. The external goal of labeling all the images on the web is not a motivating external goal for most. I think the reframing of the system as a game is what makes it successful - it attracts those that are bored and want a little distraction or stimulation. Maybe it's just me, but I think it's boredom or wanting to waste time to avoid doing something else that motivates people to play games like these. (i.e. playing solitaire at work, or checking Facebook repeatedly to put off writing a paper for class :) Boredom/wasting time could be just as much a factor in deciding to play a game as the factor of how enjoyable or fun a game is.
useful boredom
Nice point. When I'm bored, and if I could either play the ESP Game or something else just as fun, helping to label the web's images would sway me towards playing the ESP Game.
Whitewash my fence
I like your point. It reminds me of Tom Sawyer and the story of whitewashing the fence.
http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/learnmore/writings_tom.html
I think with a number of our sites it might be difficult to explain what motivation makes it actually work but they clearly do. I’m not sure that things need to be described as games to be perceived as fun or rewarding but it certainly seems to change people’s expectations when they are.
Table 2 rocks, rest of the Malone article not so much
Not so sure about this whole fantasy business. Let's say you fold cardboard in a box factory, an un-fun job. But your boss read the Malone paper and outfits the place with palm trees, sand, an ocean mural - a Hawaii decor. Might make your task more pleasant at first. Instead of associating Hawaii with box folding, would you start to associate box folding with Hawaii? The activity could eventually define the fantasy.
Emotions and metaphor might be an effective way to draw people into and teach them how to use an interface, or achieve a goal. However, I think the task itself is what ultimately defines whether an activity is enjoyable. Donning a wizard's cap can only go so far. But guessing what labels other people would give to an image - that's fun!
A fantasy can make a good game even better. But it can't make a game good.
Also, I'm not sure how valid the darts review is in the first place. The sample population was a group of fifth grade students. Adults and teenagers are different. Bing Gordon (Chief Creative Officer at Electronic Arts) divides up game-playing audiences into three age groups:
1) Kids - want to experiment with power and control their physical environment
2) Teenagers - want to explore identity and role play
3) Adults - want mental stimulation and self-improvement.
(from a video interview on the SI682 Ctools site)
How could we design interfaces or communities with these audiences in mind?
The context of this article is important
Perhaps I'm showing my age here, but I went to an experimental elementary school where they tested educational games and how they might be used in learning contexts. The Malone article came out around that time – before people had computers in their homes and before most people used computers directly at work. Being able to animate a balloon popping in the context of an math game was very novel. Nolan Bushnell, who started Atari, was a pioneer
This was very important work at the time and despite some of the nomenclature (fantasy), I think it is very relevant even today. It was this early work of trying to understand what made games work and not work which led to the modern industry we have now, which is now primarily focused on entertainment.
I like the article
Malone makes the whole distinction between toys and tools, and the point is to learn from games about designing good interfaces. I don't think that Malone is claiming that you can sprinkle fantasy, curiosity, etc. on any task or tool, or that his heuristics alone are sufficient for a hit product or something. I took it as useful heuristics from games that have applications beyond games.
Not all flow is good flow
I really enjoyed this set of readings immensely. In terms of flow, I think there is huge potential to harness people's "zones" towards positive aims. I particularly think improvisation techniques can be helpful in the management of online environments. I attended an "improvisation across fields" seminar last year that was put on by a jazz improvisation prof from the music school. The attendees were from a wide array of departments at U of M, from SI to Dentistry to Anthropology. We got into a very engaging conversation about "flow" wherein several professors stated that they felt best about their teaching when they felt like they were just a vehicle through which the information was flowing....the notion that at their finest moments some other force was sort of "taking the wheel"
Some attendees linked this to their spirituality.....others just to "being in the moment." In any event, I think there's something to this notion of flow can be put to good use to a certain extent.
After watching the ESP video, I was left a little aghast at the # of hours the highest rated players spent on the game, and shared the designer's sense that there was something a little sad about it. I'm not sure where the line is between being in the zone ends and being totally checked out and disconnected from reality in an unhealthy way begins....
Prior to coming to SI, I was a wilderness therapist at an outward bound program for at-risk youth, a handful of whom were there for hard core internet addiction...When off-line reality is frequently referred to as "meatworld" by second lifers, the warm fuzzy notion of "flow" is called into question to a certain degree.
Lisa McLaughlin
Getting players stay longer
I like the reading, the talk, and especially the ESP game a lot. One thing that I am interested is that Luis mentioned he experimented how to make players stay longer. They added a short message: “your partner has entered a guess” to some players randomly. And then those who had this feature played 4% longer than those who didn’t.
.I can understand why players who have this feature are willing to play the game longer than those who didn’t, since it’s like a feedback to remind the player that she/he and her/his partner are trying to accomplish a goal together. The message is a feedback that makes me feel that there is another player sitting in front of the screen and looking the same picture at the same time. It also reminds me that we are trying to accomplish a task together, although he/she will be partner for only a few minutes. In addition, if I was stuck and can’t think of any words other than taboos, the message definitely makes me feel nervous that I should type something immediately.
Generation XBox
Csíkszentmihályi
Introduction to flow theory going back at least to 1975 with references to Pirsig and the elimination of the separation between subject and object.
"It is worth noting that only Csíkszentmihályi seems to have published suggestions for extrinsic applications of the Flow concept"
It's too bad that more people haven't thought recently about how to design spaces that promote flow, because the design of the world's religious spaces is an instructive example. A gothic cathedral or the Buddhist caves are designed as spaces that encourage meditative loss of subjectivity/objectivity.
Tom Malone
I was curious so I checked and this is the same Tom Malone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_W._Malone) who wrote The Future of Work (which I highly recommend) and who now runs the MIT Sloan School of Management .
Herein he discusses some studies that illuminate various reasons that people play (or continue to play) games. Observations like boys enjoy popping balloons and girls don't, result in a useful table of game-design heuristics (Table 2).
Luis Von Ahn
Interesting video on taking advantage of the intrinsic motivation of gaming to generate motivation for participation.
I particularly liked the section on wasted human hours and the world's brains as processors in a big network in which computers tackle tasks that computers are good at and humans tackle tasks that humans are good at.
My key political economic concern here is that GOOGLE is stealing the surplus value off of your free labor. Turning humans' labor-power into something they will freely donate -- by playing a game -- is without a doubt the worst form of human exploitation which Marx could never have foreseen. Imagine a world of drip-fed human zombies, endlessly playing games (and very very happy at that) to generate data that gets used to make the system even more efficient....
O, wait, Wii are already Generation XBox...
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PHartzog@umich.edu
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The Universe is made up of stories, not atoms.
--Muriel Rukeyser
care to say a bit more?
My key political economic concern here is that GOOGLE is stealing the surplus value off of your free labor. Turning humans' labor-power into something they will freely donate -- by playing a game -- is without a doubt the worst form of human exploitation which Marx could never have foreseen.
I can't really tell if you are being serious or just trolling here. People are voluntarily playing the game, so they are presumably getting something that is of value to them. Google is not being dishonest about how they're using the information. It really doesn't seem to be all that different from most user-contributed content sites, other than the task perhaps more directly benefits the site operator.
Malone
You've got the right guy. Professor at the Sloan School, though, not the Dean.
Tying Back to Last Week...
I had mentioned Lois Von Ahn's talk last week in the "invitations, privileges, incentives and rewards" section because I thought the ESP game and other stuff he talked about had much to do with the material we read.
Tying back to last week, the idea of immediate feedback for reinforcing behavior is pretty syonymous with game design. In games, you're doing something so that you get an instant reward and feedback. In the ESP game, it's knowing what the other person picked and getting points for it.
The really interesting part of the talk (I'm kind of disappointed that he gave a carbon copy of his talk at Google and here last year, btw) is where he talked about how players felt that connection to each other, not even knowing who they were playing with. They could fall in love with their partner, not even knowing anything about the other person but their choice of words.
I'm trying to think about how you could harness this kind of personal connection in an ecommunity, but so far I'm drawing up blanks. Maybe it's the anonymity that makes the game so intruiging. But that would be a bit difficult to apply in the context of an ecommunity.
My vote available to the winner of my game
Who can write something that makes it possible for me to pronounce Csíkszentmihályi?
I think you say it....
Chicks-cent-ma-hi.
At least, that is how Nathan Bos pronounced when I took his Serious Games class a number of years ago. He said he had it on good authority that was the correct pronunciation. I hope I'm not passing on bad information.