Public Science Literacy Through Entertainment Games

In this video, game designer Sande Chen discusses how public science literacy is cultivated through game-based learning, simulations, citizen science games, and game creation.

Last year, I was honored to speak at the 2018 World Conference on Science Literacy in Beijing, China.  It was an amazing day to hear from colleagues and analysts about their work in serious games, game-based learning, or gamification. Many thanks to TenCent Technology, who hosted and organized the forum.

You can view the video online here:  https://v.qq.com/x/page/j0930tmm9c5.html

A summary of the day (in Chinese) is posted here.   


About Me:   

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer with over 15 years of experience in the game industry.  Her writing credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus, MMO Hall of Fame inductee Wizard101, and the 2007 PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award in Videogame Writing.  She is the co-author of the book, Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform, and was a contributor to Secrets of the Game Business, Writing For Video Game Genres, and Professional Techniques for Videogame Writing.

Statistics vs. Stories

In this article, game designer Sande Chen looks at why social impact game designers should consider emotion-based appeals rather than statistics-filled logic.

You've likely seen the appeals before.  They usually come at the end of year.  Help us cure cancer, give to your alumni fund, donate to needy students, etc.  What motivates us to care, and care enough to do something?

As Chip Heath & Dan Heath state in their book, Made to Stick, charities have long grasped that the emotional appeal of a story does a better job of opening checkbooks than the logical stance of statistics.  That's why you "adopt" a wild horse or help a young girl in Africa named Rukia. The charity allows you to imagine how the money from giving up your morning Starbucks for 2 months would drastically change Rukia's life.  Her family would have access to running water!  Perhaps you'll even receive progress reports on Rukia telling you how much your contribution has meant to her life.  So why do some social impact game designers still rely on cold and impersonal statistical pop-ups scattered about in the game?

In fact, the Heaths relate a research study in which researchers had one group calculate a math problem and another group think about babies before being asked to donate to a cause.  Even without telling the story about Rukia, the "babies" group was primed to give more money.

So why is this so?

If I were to tell you, "In February 2018, there were 63,343 homeless people in New York City," you may or may not believe me.  Statistics can be fudged.  But also, 63,343 is a rather large amount.  Would my $3.50 a day really help?  How could it help?

In addition, people often have a hard time contextualizing numbers.  If I am told that one small bag of movie popcorn has 60 grams of saturated fat, what does that mean to me?  Is that good or bad?  Is movie popcorn alright?  If I'm shown all the artery-clogging foods I can think of and told that one small bag of movie popcorn is equivalent to 2 days of eating artery cloggers, then, yeah, I might think again.

As I wrote in "Great Narrative Stories Are the Answer,"  the way to changing attitudes and actions may lie in emotion and the great narrative stories that support that emotion.  Let's find a way to tap into that emotion.


Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

The Search for Meaningful Work

In this article, game designer Sande Chen discusses research on work-related motivation, in particular on "perceived meaning," to see how this research applies to the game industry.

The number of businesses using a sales bonus, merit bonus, or performance-based incentive to motivate employees keeps rising and yet, study after study indicates that pay for performance programs are barely effective.  In fact, the most recent study conducted by market research firm, Willis Towers Watson, published in February 2016, found that only 20% of senior managers at North American companies surveyed felt that merit-based pay made any difference.

On the surface, pay for performance makes perfect sense. Put up a leaderboard of sorts, get employees pumped up in friendly competition, and reward them for their efforts. Give the carrot and employees perform, right?  But, as we know from our understanding of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivators like a cash payout can actually lead to the opposite effect: demotivation.

Employees at Disneyland hotels resented their performance-measuring leaderboard, calling it "the electronic whip." According to a 2013 study by the Institute of Leadership and Management, only 13% of employees are motivated by bonuses.  Instead, intrinsic motivators like job enjoyment, getting along with co-workers, and fair treatment by management rank higher. Blindly adding leaderboards, badges, and bonuses without addressing job satisfaction may be a misguided approach.

Of particular concern to the game industry is the demotivation that occurs after a long-term project has been canceled.  Duke University Professor Dan Ariely began studying "perceived meaning" in work after noticing the apathy that sets in after a team works on a project for many years only to have it canceled.  He found that the affected employees felt that their work was meaningless, just like King Sisyphus of Greek mythology, who was sentenced to roll up an immense boulder up a hill and watch it roll back down for all of eternity.

It turns out that meaningful work is very important and doing meaningful work is a reward in itself.  In the study, Man's Search for Meaning: The Case of Legos," by Ariely, Kamenica, and Prelec, published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the researchers purposefully set up pointless Sisyphean situations in which test subjects watched their reports shredded upon completion or their projects smashed in front of their eyes.  Test subjects who were given "perceived meaning," such as how their work would impact underprivileged students, performed better and even were willing to accept less pay for their work.

The study also showed that even the slightest amount of acknowledgement of the effort it took to complete the task increased motivation in the test subjects.  What does this mean for managers?  Basically, small things like showing appreciation to employees and reminding employees how their individual efforts connect to a larger goal can make a big impact.  If the larger project never gets completed, maybe an interim goal has significance.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Educational Games: The Big Picture Part V

The final article in the educational game development series on Games + Learning, "The World According to Edu-Larps: The Analog Learning Games," explores meta-gaming, the activities and fandom surrounding a game that promote self-directed learning, and how meta-gaming is expressed in analog games and informal settings like museums. Analog games include card and board games, tabletop RPGs, and edu-larps.

Students participate in Mesopotamia Edu-larp

For schools with technological challenges, these types of games may be a more affordable option.  Moreover, analog games provide a social aspect that can't be replicated in digital games and allow educators to change parameters to suit the particular classroom.  Analog games have proven to be especially effective with struggling students and students with disabilities. 

Informal schooling in after-school programs, summer camps, and museums provide children with the opportunity to pursue learning at their own pace and according to their own interests.

In particular, check out the audio interview, which covers material not included in the article. 

Mega-gaming also happens with digital games and it begs the question:  Is the true essence of learning outside of the game rather than inside?  What do you think?  If so, then all those on-board assessment tools may not be uncovering the true state of a student's educational progress.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Reward Me, Demotivate Me

In this article, game designer Sande Chen reflects on the nature of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and how it relates to games.

I know extrinsic motivators can lead to surprisingly, the complete opposite effect, demotivation, but I have never experienced it myself until I became an avid player of the hidden object mobile game, Secret Passages.  Games, of course, have loads of extrinsic motivators like enthusiastic praise, achievement badges, and quest rewards.  Could it be that the very same mechanics used to hook initial players can lead to waning interest in the long run?

Psychologists know that extrinsic motivators can decrease intrinsic motivation, i.e. whatever held your interest in the first place.  Displaying intrinsic motivation, a student practices violin to get better at playing violin.  Some might call this doing something for the love of it.  It's also called DIY learning and self-directed learning.  Paying $10 to a student to practice violin would be an example of extrinsic motivation.  Soon, the student begins practicing for the $10 rather than for the joy of it and won't practice without that incentive.  Sure, extrinsic motivators have their uses, but you can bet that student won't make it to Carnegie Hall without a desire to excel at violin playing.

Likewise, players can have a burning desire to master a game and they don't need a bribe. Granted, that can be hard to do with a game that's more like a game service, incomplete and ongoing rather than a finite product, but a player can still race through all the content that does exist.  I've seen players finish in a day what took content developers a couple months to implement.  That's why some content may seem grindy because it's designed to keep players at bay, away from the finishing line.

Secret Passages did have its repetitive moments.  I like hidden object games, though I wouldn't say I love them.  Hidden object games supposedly do well because our short-term memory fades and we can redo the same puzzle over without it boring us to tears.  I played Secret Passages incessantly not only to explore the content and level up, but also to analyze its design.  Since Secret Passages was an ongoing work-in-progress, some things didn't make sense until the features arrived.  There was one feature, though, that had no gameplay advantage and thus, I ignored it.  This feature disappeared some time later, perhaps due to analytic data.  I never did level everything up completely, but I did unlock all the puzzles, at least the ones where I didn't have to gamble or pay. 

In fact, even when the quest told me to gamble, I had the strength to simply abandon the quest.  I think for some people, this is harder than you would think.  People have this innate desire for completion.  There's satisfaction in completing a quest and getting the rewards.  As game designers, the quest feature sounds good because it gives a reason for players to come back to the game. We're designing for retention.

Before, I was self-directed, pursuing my own goals, and even though I had to wait for my energy to replenish, I came back to the game.  With the daily quests, I did come back to the game, but I soon realized that I was only playing for about 15-20 minutes a day whereas before, I was playing for couple hours spread out throughout the day.  Each morning, I would look at the daily quests, complete them, and then never look at the game until the next day.  At first, I thought of those 15 minutes as my break time, but then I started to think of it as a waste of time.  There's other games to play, after all!  So, one day, despite my accumulation of various in-game currencies, badges, and so forth, I deleted the game.

A few months later, I reflected upon this action and realized that playing the game for quest rewards had turned into my demotivation.  Had I simply been turned off because I had exhausted the content?  What do you think?  Is this an example of extrinsic motivation decreasing intrinsic motivation?



Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

Motivational Boosts to Fitness Behavior Modification

In this article, game designer Sande Chen discusses the use of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators in fitness apps.

As I mentioned previously in the article, Fitness Behavior Modification, January is the month for fitness goals, weight loss goals, and other behavior modification goals (e.g. smoking cessation).  Numerous smartphone tools, trackers, and devices such as FitBit exist to help people succeed.  Has technology helped boost motivation to change behaviors? 

In a 2014 study of approximately 1900 volunteers around the world, researchers at Imperial College London wrote that there was a "significant although modest" reduction in BMI of those dieters who used social media and smartphone apps compared to those who didn't use technology.  Another study at Arizona State University's School of Nutrition and Health Promotion noted that those who used smartphone calorie trackers were more likely to continue tracking food intake than those who used pencil and paper.

To me, it seems like the technological leap in the Arizona State University study seems to be more about convenience.  I have tried both calorie tracking methods -- smartphone and the more traditional pencil & paper -- and I can state that it is somewhat of a chore to accurately track calories.  I never bothered to weigh my food with a food scale and if I couldn't find the exact information I needed, I would put down whatever was approximate.  A smartphone app made it easier for me to track calories, but I confess that even with the app,  I stopped after a month or two.  This experience of mine isn't unique.  People often take to New Year's resolutions with eagerness, only to fall back into old habits by March.

Still, a monitor or tracker would seem to point to intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation. The information gained from the data tracking compels the individual to get better numbers and do better.  Intrinsic motivation is about a person's internal desire to engage in the activity without the fear of a negative event or the promise of a reward. Intrinsic motivation arises from within an individual whereas extrinsic motivation is from an outside source.

While I do not know the apps specified in the Imperial College London study, the researchers reasoned that the community forums provided support, advice, and approval to the dieters who used them.  While peer approval would appear to be an extrinsic motivator, it has been seen in research that praise in certain situations can improve intrinsic motivation.  Excessive praise for minimal work certainly does erode intrinsic motivation but if the praise isn't evaluative like "Great job!" and more a subjective expression of appreciation than a reward, then praise can lead to a boost in intrinsic motivation.

Let's take a look at other fitness apps: Here's the carrot or stick approach.

• Nexercise allows users to earn discounts and gift cards in a gamified environment of XP points, leveling and badges.  
• FIT ACC punishes users who fail to work out regularly with a monetary fine. 

Competition can be considered an extrinsic motivator, even if it's just about bragging rights.  But what about competing against yourself?

• Cardio Smackdown allows players to compete against friends.
• Ghost Race allows players to compete against friends but also a player's best time in the form of a "ghost" self.

Many people consider cut scenes in video games to be a story reward. Run and get some story?

•  Zombies, Run!  is a well-known exergame in which the runner player needs to avoid zombies
• Superhero Workout helps defenders of the Earth get in shape for the alien invasion.

So what's better, intrinsic or extrinsic motivation?  The danger to extrinsic rewards, as many researchers have observed, is that it tends to diminish performance.  Enthusiasm turns to boredom.  Now it's just work rather than fun.  Extrinsic motivation is useful for mechanical tasks, which I'm not sure if exercise would be considered one.  Extrinsic motivation can get previously uninterested individuals to start the process of behavior modification, but I think for a real life change to happen, intrinsic motivators need to take over.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned 10 years in the industry. Her credits include 1999 IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard 101. She is one of the founding members of the IGDA Game Design SIG.

September 2014: Motivation

Hi all!

For September, I'd like people to think about the psychology of games.  As game designers, we need to understand these motivational triggers in order to design better levels, better virtual goods, and a better overall gameplay experience.  Motivation is of particular interest to the topics of Game-Based Learning and Social Impact Games because these games go beyond mere entertainment and usually have a specific learning or social objective.

Questions for Thought:

•  As designers, what tools can we employ to keep players motivated and on track with our gameplay objectives? 
•  How does player motivation fit into the design of your levels? Or your games?
•  What motivates players to buy virtual currency or goods?  Are there specific tricks or tips to this?

Feel free to add more questions to the end of this post.

As always, submission guidelines along with submission procedure can be found on the right hand side of the blog.  Topic suggestions and articles are welcome!