Notes from Week 3 Readings

Both Malone papers provide excellent basic theories of Games Based Learning. Although written some thirty years ago, the principles remain the same for digital games today. This post is a summary of the mainpoints.

What Makes Things Fun to Learn? Heuristics for Designing Instructional Computer Games

Thomas Malone (1980)

• In order for a computer game to be challenging it must provide a goal whose attainment is uncertain
• In a sense, the very notion of “game” implies that there is an “object of the game”
• Uncertain outcome- A game is usually boring if the player is either certain to win or certain to loose.

Four ways to make the game uncertain:

1. Variable difficulty level

2. Multiple level goals (score keeping and speeded responses)

3. Hidden information

4. Randomness

• Extrinsic fantasies depend on whether or not the skill is used correctly (see diagram below)
• Intrinsic fantasies- not only does that fantasy depend on the skill, but the skill also depends on the fantasy(see diagram below)

Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces: Lessons from Computer Games

Thomas Malone (1981) 

This paper largely focusses on what makes computer games fun (intrinsic motivation) and the sysems behind the game.

• Game- Darts: diesigned to teach elementary students about fractions
• 8 differnet versions of the game to find out which features made the game enjoyable.

• Boys liked the fantasy of arrows popping ballons and girls appeared to dislike this fantasy
• Fantasies can be important in creating intrinsically motivating enviroments
• Implications for designing enjoyable user interface- the appeal of computer systems based on three categories: challenge, fantasy and curiosity (see below)