6 ms·

Much of life would be improved if it were more video-game-like. Work, school, and daily chores could all benefit from a structure that reliably rewards sustain

by istjohn 16y ago

Much of life would be improved if it were more video-game-like. Work, school, and daily chores could all benefit from a structure that reliably rewards sustained effort in the way a video game does. On the other hand, I don't think video games can provide a useful solution to existential angst.

thwarted 16y ago
Merely rewarding "effort" is never failing anyone just because they tried. Sustained effort is even worse to reward because it doesn't indicate any progress. Sisyphean tasks are unfulfilling because they have no end, no matter how much effort, sustained or otherwise, you put into them. The way video games reward sustained effort is through the ability to completely retry, from almost any random point, without penalty. I wonder if there's a certain amount of reward inherent in the fact that the video game accomplishment is meaningless other than the amount of time and effort put into it. When you're done doing daily chores, the chores are done. Making that more rewarding might actually get more chores done, but you're still playing the chores game because it needs to be done, not because it's entertainment.
andolanra 16y ago
My school rewarded sustained effort on a letter scale, A through F, which I guess they must have borrowed from Dance Dance Revolution. I never did get the AA grade, myself. Richard Feynman once wrote a great article called Cargo Cult Science[1], where he defined cargo cult science to be something that takes up the trappings of science (journals, jargon, lab-coats, &c) without taking up the thing that makes science what it is (the scientific method.) In a lot of these "videogamification" ideas, I feel like there's a kind of "cargo cult gaming" going on, where people focus more on the trappings of video games (levels, points, reward structures, &c) without getting at the real meat of what makes video games fun (which I would argue can be enhanced by the reward structure but broadly speaking is something apart from the rewards structure.) You can hand out points all you want, but my experience is that points won't make schools or chores into a game any more than adding big black spots will turn a sheep into a cow. [1] http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
- xiaoma 16y ago
  Recently there have been a number of experimental programs that actually do use experience points and leveling in lieu of normal grading procedures for younger students, with good results for all I've heard of so far. There was a TED talk that mentioned this last year, but I don't remember which one. There's also at least one college prof doing this, Lee Sheldon at Bloomington's Indiana University. His course is related to computer games, though.
  - andolanra 16y ago
    I would hypothesize wildly that younger students might respond well to this for the same reason that young children prefer the Kraft macaroni in the shapes of cartoon characters—it's a kind of association, "This is fun because it is like the video games I play!" I suspect both that a. it would become less effective as the students aged, especially towards the end of primary/elementary school, where students might see it as a kind of trick, and b. it would become far less effective if it became the standard way of running a school, because it's no longer "like a video game," it is "like a school." Which all is to say that it's not the experience points that are improving the experiences, it's the mental association with video games. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, though, and I don't think that the experiments with this shouldn't be done—I'm just skeptical.

by istjohn 16y ago

thwarted 16y ago

Merely rewarding "effort" is never failing anyone just because they tried. Sustained effort is even worse to reward because it doesn't indicate any progress. Sisyphean tasks are unfulfilling because they have no end, no matter how much effort, sustained or otherwise, you put into them. The way video games reward sustained effort is through the ability to completely retry, from almost any random point, without penalty. I wonder if there's a certain amount of reward inherent in the fact that the video game accomplishment is meaningless other than the amount of time and effort put into it. When you're done doing daily chores, the chores are done. Making that more rewarding might actually get more chores done, but you're still playing the chores game because it needs to be done, not because it's entertainment.

andolanra 16y ago

My school rewarded sustained effort on a letter scale, A through F, which I guess they must have borrowed from Dance Dance Revolution. I never did get the AA grade, myself. Richard Feynman once wrote a great article called Cargo Cult Science[1], where he defined cargo cult science to be something that takes up the trappings of science (journals, jargon, lab-coats, &c) without taking up the thing that makes science what it is (the scientific method.) In a lot of these "videogamification" ideas, I feel like there's a kind of "cargo cult gaming" going on, where people focus more on the trappings of video games (levels, points, reward structures, &c) without getting at the real meat of what makes video games fun (which I would argue can be enhanced by the reward structure but broadly speaking is something apart from the rewards structure.) You can hand out points all you want, but my experience is that points won't make schools or chores into a game any more than adding big black spots will turn a sheep into a cow. [1] http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

xiaoma 16y ago
Recently there have been a number of experimental programs that actually do use experience points and leveling in lieu of normal grading procedures for younger students, with good results for all I've heard of so far. There was a TED talk that mentioned this last year, but I don't remember which one. There's also at least one college prof doing this, Lee Sheldon at Bloomington's Indiana University. His course is related to computer games, though.
- andolanra 16y ago
  I would hypothesize wildly that younger students might respond well to this for the same reason that young children prefer the Kraft macaroni in the shapes of cartoon characters—it's a kind of association, "This is fun because it is like the video games I play!" I suspect both that a. it would become less effective as the students aged, especially towards the end of primary/elementary school, where students might see it as a kind of trick, and b. it would become far less effective if it became the standard way of running a school, because it's no longer "like a video game," it is "like a school." Which all is to say that it's not the experience points that are improving the experiences, it's the mental association with video games. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, though, and I don't think that the experiments with this shouldn't be done—I'm just skeptical.