1. An examination of the “lifespan” of play
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Presentation to the International Communication Association
Game Studies Interest Group
2.
3.
4. The goal of this project is to understand the
drive (i.e., the motivation) to continually
engage in video game play over time,
particularly when continued play is in an
academic setting, and the role that teachers
or facilitators could play in that experience.
5. Intrinsic
Motivation
• Doing something
because it is inherently
fun, and not as a result of
external input or stimuli.
Extrinsic
Motivation
• Doing something
because it has some
external or separable
outcome.
9.
RQ1: How does Self Determination Theory (SDT), specifically Cognitive
Evaluation Theory (CET), apply in the context of a virtual learning
environment?
RQ2: When video game play is embedded in a classroom setting, how
can a teacher or facilitator (a source of extrinsic motivation) have an
impact intrinsic motivation to engage in the game, and if so, how?
RQ3: What is the nature of the relationship between presence,
motivation, and learning, and how might it be complicated by the age of
an individual?
10. 18 (3 female) participants (11-12 year olds) in a
large urban (public) school district located
Northeastern/Mid-Atlantic United States.
Met for 1.5 hours every Iek for 12Ieks; afterschool.
Participant Observation and Semi-structured
Interview: (taking cues from ethnographic
methods) (see Boellstorf , et al., 2012)
11.
No “griefing”; or willfully destroying others’
creations.
Creative mode only.
School- appropriate language in chat.
No modification capabilities or server rights.
The data presented here was collected during a twelve week afterschool program in which I examined participants’ motivation to play the video game, Minecraft in a school-based context. Minecraft is a sandbox style game environment that has proven wildly popular among all audiences, and as a result a whole culture of modifying and creating new layers to the game have ensued. The goal of the game is to thrive and survive inside the game world, either as a single player, or *much more popularly* on servers with multiple players. The game’s intrigue is based on the creative drives of it’s players—who have build entire worlds (such as the landscape of the Hunger games orWesterosfrom Game of Thrones). What is unprecedented for most video games is that educators are embracing the game almost at the same pace as gamers. In 2011, an “edu” version of the game was released to add specific instructor tools so that the game can be more easily utilized as an instructor tool—which evidences a growing desire to incorporate Minecraft into the physical learning environment. This project will focus on engagement with Minecraftbecause (a) the game world contains an open structure that make it unique and flexible enough for use as virtual learning environment; (b) its incredible popularity (Duncan, 2011) suggests that the environment is intrinsically motivating; and (c) many schools and youth organizations are already utilizing Minecraft as a learning space in order to harness these motivational aspects (Dolasia, 2013; “About”, n.d.), thus it is important to understand what this virtual learning environment may offer students and instructors.Here are some clips of the participants work inside the game.
In prior years, games that are dedicated to explicit educational ends such as Math Blaster, or Carmen Sandiego,have been said to be ineffective in achieving learning outcomes because they rely on extrinsic motivation, or activities for which rewards are external (e.g., pleasing your teacher)and poor game design, which failed to integrate the more complex game play that characterizes popular video games (such as World of Warcraft, or even Minecraft). In 1999, Bruckman railed against these games, calling them “chocolate-covered broccoli”.In contrast, Rigby and Ryan (2011) claim that players engage in more complex tasks when playing commercially popular video games (e.g., Halo or World of Warcraft) not just because they are Ill-designed games, but because they recruit the player's intrinsic motivation, or activities for which the activity itself is a reward.
The inspiration and drive to accomplish incredibly difficult tasks is where this project begins. If video game players are continually engaged in game play—what is the drive behind that game play? And what factors contribute to that drive?What’s most important: if I bring that game play into the physical learning environment for learning purposes, how long will that experience drive skill and knowledge acquisition? Aside from just being “fun” or “novel”, for how long does the drive to “learn” from video games last? And what is the teacher or facilitators’ role in that experience?
Intrinsic motivation, as defined by Deci and Ryan, is operationalized in experimental research as the “free choice measure”. In an experimental setting, a researcher would measure intrinsic motivation in the following classic way: The researcher has the participant do a task for a reward, and then ends the experiment. The participant is left in the room with the initial experimental task as Ill as other “detractor” tasks. If the individual chooses the target task, even when having the choice of other tasks, and no extrinsic motivation to complete it, then the task is seen as intrinsically motivating. Extrinsic motivation can be self-regulated, but the outcome is normally externalized from the individual. For example, a student may do his or her homework to avoid penalty from a parent or teacher. Or, they may see the completion of their work as related to professional goals. Although the goals may be related to the person themselves, if the locus of drive is external, then it is intrinsically motivating. Researchers are aware that fostering intrinsic motivation leads to high achievement and interest among students, and in many ways, is a crucial component to deep and long-lasting learning outcomes, where extrinsic motivation (which most classrooms rely on), can often result in a failure to internalize or be psychologically satiated by the learning experience.
In 1985,Deci and Ryan posited a sub theory to the macro theory of human motivation known as Self-determination theory. Their sub theory, cognitive evaluation theory, states that a task can be seen as intrinsically motivated if it satisfies ones needs for competence, coupled with a degree of autonomy, and the opportunity for social praise via connectedness and relationships. An experience facilitates intrinsic motivation if it provides “optimal challenges, effectively promoting feedback, and freedom from demeaning evaluations”.
So, the point made here is that video games offer an incredibly intrinsically motivating task. They are an educational dream in so far as they inspire hours of dedication, and if it can be said that people learn important skills from video games, Ill then I’ve solved an educational crisis. While some scholars (Bartle, Yee) have looked at the design of games, or player personality to understand their intrinsically motivating qualities, others, such as Przybylski (SHEBELSKEE), Rigby, Ryan and Deci, have used the framework of CET to understand how good video games offer a complex balance of autonomy, social connectedness, and opportunities for competence. These authors challenge the idea that content delivery or just plain old FUN drives interest in video games, but rather that video games fulfill complex psychological needs that enhance the intrinsic motivation to play them.
Shebelskee, Rigby and Ryan have also suggested that the concept of telepresence (hereafter; ‘presence’) may play a role the motivation to play video games.In their analyses they found that as intrinsic motivation levels rose, so too did reported levels of presence-based experience. Although their research utilizes the concepts put forth by Lombard and Ditton in 1997, they redefined presence for their own scale development, which seemed to gloss over a great deal of research about the concept itself. Also, we were interested in the development of presence during childhood/adolescence. There has been little understanding, to date, about the experience of presence as it relates to age.
Taking into account the wealth of research on video games as learning stimuli, optimal classroom design, intrinsic motivation and presence, this project looks at the role of video games in the physical learning environment.Again, I’d like to stress that this research project is ONLY THE beginning. This is a pilot study that just BEGINS to get at the complex elements of motivation, learning and presence in the context of video games in the classroom.
The study was conducted in an afterschool program at a K-8 school in a large urban district in the Mid-Atlantic portion of the United States. There Ire 18 participants, ages 11 to 13 years old (males; n=15 and females; n=3). The participant population reflected the school's population in terms of racial and ethnic diversity (a relatively diverse population), but I did not officially tabulate these demographic variables. The participants Ire recruited on the basis of forming a Minecraftafterschool club, where students in 5 through 8th grade Ire invited to play the game on a communal server (monitored and maintained remotely by the research team). There Ire no official curricular goals for the club, rather, I Ire interested in offering a space where students could both physically and virtually collaborate on a project inside the game world. I did, hoIver, dedicate our club's playtime to building structures inside the game, rather than surviving inside the game. The rationale for this choice was to make the club more akin to the way Minecraft might be used during the official school day.
On the very first day of the club, I had a discussion with the participants about the rules that would govern the club. Part of our research interest was to see whether these rules had any affect on the intrinsic motivation to remain a part of the club (membership was completely voluntary). GRIEIFING: I asked that club members to refrain from participating in "griefing", or the active destruction of others' creative works in the game. When an individual participates in "griefing" in Minecraft, he or she uses lava or TNT materials to destroy what another has built in the game. Many times, players will grief other players out of sheer boredom or trouble making, but sometimes, in survival mode, griefing can be a vital part of “winning” where a player will grief another’s supplies or protective structure so that person will die.CREATIVE MODE: As stated earlier, Minecraft can be played in different modes, namely, creative and survival mode. In creative mode, individuals cannot perish, but in survival mode, they can be killed by other players or devoured by creatures at night (e.g., zombies, or "creepers"). I asked club members to only play in creative mode so that there would be no threat to their creations or their game avatars. While this may seem reasonable, it represented certain restrictions on their preferred mode of playing.Again, I rationalized this choice because I wanted game play to be dedicated to creation, not destruction. I assumed this choice would make the results more akin to the way an educator might use Minecraft in the classroom. CHAT: One of the major components of group play in Minecraft is the ability to "talk" or chat with other players (via text) in the game world. The chat is displayed on the loIr left corner of the screen. Every ten to tIlve lines are displayed, and then the chat clears. One of the members of the research team (who remotely maintained the server) monitored the language/behavior used on the chat.I didn't permit any of the club members to have advanced server rights. This restricted them from downloading modifications to the game that give them more options in the game. In particular, many students asked if I could give them "world edit" rights, which is a type of editor that allows the player to control the landscape. On a positive note, world edit would allow the club members to quickly manipulate the landscape for their needs (e.g., build the Thames river in one command rather than mining the water). However, allowing them "world edit" rights would also give them the ability to massively destroy others' creations. As I've reiterated, these capabilities are available to the participants when they play on their own time. I restricted their capabilities because I wanted to create a quasi-classroom culture, and I also wanted to see what these restrictions on their game play would do to their intrinsic motivation to remain in the club. THE FOLLOWING SLIDES DESCRIBE SOME OF THE RELEVANT THEMES THAT EMERGED AS A RESULT OF THE STUDY
Our participants see playing Minecraft as a fulfillment of their psychological need for autonomy.I assumed that the rules I put on game play would result in the waning of intrinsic motivation to play because I put restrictions on that autonomy. In particular, I assumed that the restriction of TNT and lava would have an adverse affect on their intrinsic motivation to play the game, because it limited the participant's autonomy. However, the rules of our club didn't seem impinge upon the participants' desire to return to the club. One of the ways this was evidenced by our membership. Of the initial 20 students who came to the club, 18 returned every week. The only students who didn't return were two eighth grade males. In our interviews, I asked students about the reasons why they returned to club, even though I put restrictions on their options in the game world. A reoccurring theme that I saw was that although the school-based game environment contained restriction, it also offered protection. Participants expressed that the club offered them to opportunity to play the game with their friends without being subjected to the wild world of internet servers, where any maligned player could destroy their creations. So here, we see sort of a shift—there is still intrinsic motivation to play, but the definition of autonomy shifts in the context of the learning environment. It becomes less about the autonomy to make meaningful choices about what to create, but more so autonomy to make those choices, without the threat of others’ destroying those creations.
CET posits that an activity will inspire intrinsic motivation if it fulfills the psychological need for competence, and represents what the individual views as “an optimal challenge” (or something that is just familiar and foreign enough to be intriguing). In our club, many participants told us that playing Minecraft in survival mode was one of the ways that that they felt competent. For example, they repeatedly asked us: "Can I play PVP?" This meant that they wanted to battle to the death by fighting one another (i.e. player versus player), or stealing resources from each other so that they could starve out their opponents. Another way that our participants demonstrated their competence in survival mode was to tell us stories of how they created buildings or found resources all while being under the threat of death (from creepers or zombies).One participant said basically said that when he found a diamond in survival mode, he felt like he had earned it because he found it while facing the threat of death, darkness or starvation. He explained that when in creative mode, these threats aren't present, so it isn't as much of a challenge. A female participant came to the club with her iPad in tow, showing us a building she built in survival mode the night before, "I built this by myself in survival mode" she said, "as you can see, I'm very good at Minecraft".The constraints on our participants did two major things: (1) Because they didn’t have the “short cuts” of modifications to the game, they felt more competent in their creations because they had to build them “brick by brick” So, in other words, I forced them into a new type of competence.(2) They began to see the researchers as a source of extrinsic motivation. They liked to show us their creation and skills. This was demonstrative of competence but for more external purposes.
There did seem to be differing experiences between younger students (e.g., 11 year olds) and slightly older students (e.g. 13 year olds). I think this example from one of the older participants evidences the difference. Isought out one of the eighth graders who decided that the club wasn’t for him, and I asked him why. He suggested something that I did witness, since most participants in the group Ire younger, they had more limitations placed on gameplay. Our club offered them the bonus of an extra hour of gameplay. But he suggested something even more interesting that I intend to investigate further, and that had to do with the concept of presence AND a developing sense of presence. This participant suggested that younger participants “don’t see themselves in their skins”. When prompted to further explain, the participant explained that he feels connected to his “”skin” in Minecraft more than younger kids. He often plays in creative mode because he doesn’t like to destroy or have his creations destroyed by others. He and his friends play together remotely because it is a way for them to be “with each other”. I found evidence of his thoughts with our younger participants. While many play with their friends, they play with them physically in the room. When I asked them, do you like being with your friends in Minecraft? They seemed to interpret that as one’s physical presence in the room (not a sense of telepresence), and they seemed to be less concerned about creating continuity in the game. Many of them just liked to be in the same room together playing around in the Minecraft environment, or killing each other in player versus player mode. While other scholars have suggested that motivation is a predictor of presence based experiences, we found evidence that childhood development complicates one’s sense of presence. This student suggests something that is intriguing: do younger participants experience presence in the same way that older ones do? And if they do not, what is their experience of presence? And how does it motivate them?
This pilot project demonstrated that even when placed in the context of the school culture, the game remains intrinsically and extrinsically motivating for different reasons. This could be because of the incredibly open nature of the game. Or, it could be because our afterschool program didn’t impose enough constraints.I’ll continue to investigate that further in my dissertation project, where I’ll explore the use of Minecraft during the school day for curricular purposes.In future study, I’ll look at presence from a multi-faceted approach, and consider the age variable. Does one develop a sense of presence over their childhood—and how does that influenced by the motivation to play?
