The Royal Society of Edinburgh Part of the Edinburgh International Festival 2013 Supported by the Turing Festival The

Leisure Revolution Jesse Schell Distinguished Professor of Entertainment Technology, Carnegie Mellon University and Dr Chris van der Kuyl FRSE Technology Entrepreneur
Sunday 11 August 2013 Report by Matthew Shelley

Professor of Entertainment Technology Jesse Schell, of Carnegie Mellon University, and technology entrepreneur Chris van der Kuyl FRSE, each presented a short lecture on gamification in business and society and the future of gaming. They then joined writer Ben Hammersley to discuss the immense influence of video games on the contemporary world and to answer questions from the audience.

Professor Jesse Schell Many companies believe the route to success is through making their products and services more like games. According to Professor Schell, the reality is more subtle and they need to learn how to build pleasure into the customer experience. Some of the big successes of the video games industry have been unexpected such as Club Penguin or Guitar Hero. What they have in common is that they reach out to the real world, perhaps by involving social networks, toys or physical activity. At the same time, many companies have developed reward systems that are similar to games. The two worlds are getting closer. The growing sophistication and plummeting price of electronic sensors already allows computers to respond to many human actions. It is possible to imagine a world in which they are in every drink can or cereal box, where all activities are monitored and win points. Life itself becomes a game, with companies boosting sales by prompting behaviour with rewards. But this underestimates the complexity of human motivations. According to Professor Schell, the seeming logic of taking something people like, adding something else they like, and expecting them to buy more does not always work. Indeed this type of gamification can backfire. He cited a study in which two groups of children were asked to draw pictures one was paid the other unpaid. The former produced lots of poor quality drawings, while the others took time to enjoy the activity. Once the session was over, the researchers left the children to their own devices for a while. The unpaid group carried on drawing because it was fun, the paid group did nothing as it now seemed only worth doing for cash. Rewards debased rather than promoted the activity. It is often suggested that fun is a big motivator in games. But Professor Schell pointed to how often players become frustrated and annoyed with games, yet carry on. Self-determination theory says this is because they are satisfying deep-seated mental needs. These are: Competence the desire to be good at something Autonomy freedom to do things as you wish Relatedness a desire to connect with others

Video games are very good at making you feel competent, and certainly you have autonomy; you can play the game the way you want, and most games are about playing with other people and finding ways to connect, said the Professor. He added: Fun is a nice aspect of games, but its these three things that make games work so well. To fully understand why games work, and why some things dont work as games, it is helpful to recognise the difference between things you have to do and things you want to do. In the one case, we optimise for speed and efficiency; in the other, we take our time because it is for pleasure. Professor Schell said: You never hear someone say hey, you remember I was talking about taking a two-week holiday? Well, I have figured out how to get it down to just six days. Avoiding pain and seeking pleasure can both be strong motivators but they are very different and are even handled by separate parts of the brain. As society becomes more affluent, the opportunity to seek positives becomes increasingly influential. We eat foods we like rather than seeking nutrition to survive; we want jobs that are fulfilling rather than just to pay the bills. Consumer items such as cars now tend to be sold on the basis of how they make you feel rather than whether they are efficient. A fundamental shift has taken place between the 20th and 21st centuries as we gear the world to be more pleasurable. As a consequence, many businesses are turning to games designers to find out how to make products or services more pleasurable. This can be highly effective, but it has to be remembered that most products and services have a practical function, whereas games are entirely about pleasure. Pleasure is complex and depends on context, so business has to be careful to adopt only those aspects of games that resonate with their market. Frequent flier miles are great for business travellers because the rewards make them feel important because they travel so much. In some shops, people might feel bad if a reward system highlighted how much money they spent there. Rather than turn things into games, the key for business is to improve the motivational design of what they offer. Pleasure seeking and pain avoidance are the motivation for everything we do, and pleasure seeking is the key to motivational design in the 21st Century. The future, according to Professor Schell, does not belong to businesses that gamify, but to those asking why a consumer will get pleasure from the experience they offer, and finding out how they can make it feel even better.

Chris van der Kuyl FRSE While Dr van der Kuyl still regards computer games as a niche industry, he pointed to statistics that underline how deeply now it now permeates society. These include that it is the worlds highest-grossing entertainment medium. The audience is maturing, with the average player being 34, and is broadening, with up to 40% of players being female. Im 43 now and have been playing computer games since I was eight or nine. None of my compatriots who grew up as gamers have really given up, he said. We still love games, its part of our culture. Turning to what makes computer games appealing, Dr van der Kuyl described five fundamental dynamics: Challenge: the promise offered by the designer is of a challenge to be overcome. Tasks: Players normally have to perform tasks of increasing difficulty. A good designer will be like a sports coach, taking the player forward in increments until they can achieve feats that would have initially been impossible. Reward: People like accolades, but it is not why they play. Co-operation: Many of the biggest phenomena are online multi-player games that are all about the individuals role within a team. Competition: Winning can be a major motivator, but for most players its about progress rather than being the best.

Efforts by business to gamify have enjoyed mixed fortunes. Some of it works really well and some of it is terrible and really contrived, said Dr van der Kuyl. Common approaches can include badge collecting, but this can lose its appeal quite quickly. Giving missions with clear steps through to an eventual goal can work, as people like to be part of something larger than themselves. SETI (the Search for Extra Terrestrial Life), for example, attracted huge support when it asked people to lend it the processing power of their own computer systems to help analyse data from deep space. One of the most impressive examples of how much people like to co-operate came from the games industry itself. Swedish developer Markus Alexej "Notch" Persson came up with a compelling idea for a sandbox game, in which a central character called Steve could craft his own world by day but faced a struggle to survive by night. With no money to develop it, he appealed online for small donations in return for a free copy once complete. Dr van der Kuyl, who has had a major role in the emergence of the game, said people loved being part of the project. Called Minecraft, it is now the single biggest piece of interactive entertainment in the world today. What people enjoy is that, just like being a child in a sandpit, they decide what they want to do. While there is a storyline, ultimately its a vehicle for the imagination. Intriguingly, Minecraft uses lego-like block characters and images rather than sharp realism and was largely the vision of one person. This ran counter to the general direction of the industry, where the wisdom was that success demanded budgets of $100 million and teams of 500. Looking to the future of the industry, Mr van der Kuyl identified the humangame interface as the key obstacle and opportunity. Right now, players need pads, keyboards or touch screens. These have intrinsic limitations and a leap forward is needed. He anticipates that this will initially come through voice command but, within decades, we are likely to develop ways to control games by thought perhaps via electronic sensors that interpret our movements and responses. And for businesses wanting to learn from the industry, Dr van der Kuyl suggested there is a need to make a fundamental distinction between explicit and implicit gaming. The former attempts to turn something into a game; the latter borrows techniques and ideas to make something more enjoyable. What is particularly exciting in terms of the influence that games have on society is that many of them nourish and foster creativity. Increasingly, games companies are collaborating with players and encouraging them to amend their products, because they have learned to value this creativity. Equally, there is vast potential in the interactivity offered by gaming. This is something that Dr van der Kuyl believes will become ubiquitous. It offers huge opportunities to engage new audiences in novel ways. Rather than displacing the real, the virtual offers enhancement. The celebration of the physical offered by something like the Edinburgh Festival can only gain from greater engagement. Indeed, content in the virtual world is so vast that people increasingly rely on trusted curators to guide them. This provides huge possibilities for people like festival organisers, who can offer both the visceral experience of being personally present at a performance, and the chance for people to come together online to share and discuss what they most enjoy. Through routes such as this, the world can become gamified in a positive way.

Questions and discussions During the discussion session, Ben Hammersley asked if there was a darker side to gamification, with companies using techniques to try to manipulate and compel. Professor Schell agreed that there could be, and pointed to the introduction of charges at vital points in online games. The game is initially free, but once players have been drawn in they suddenly find they are denied something, or risk losing all they have achieved, unless they pay. Asked about Curt R Bartols ideas on what motivates games users, Dr van der Kuyl said there can be a tendency to over-analyse the games concept. Attempting to develop a game according to prescribed principles tends to lead to something that feels manufactured, and the best approach is to make the sort of game youd want to play. On the issue of whether gaming techniques ought to be used in education, both speakers agreed that they should. Dr van der Kuyl distinguished between the idea of making education fun and pleasurable. Where education enables people to derive pleasure from a tough challenge, he said, learning accelerates dramatically. Professor Schell added that education and entertainment are highly compatible because both are about making memories. Discussing motivation, the speakers were asked if the banking crisis was partly because top earners started treating their jobs in a game-like fashion. Dr van der Kuyl said that if someone in a corporation decides that the only measure of success will be a high score with a dollar sign in front of it, they will get the type of behaviour they have asked for. Professor Schell said we have to be very careful in designing structures to push human behaviour in certain directions, as it may bring unintended consequences. Asked for the best gamification he had ever seen, Professor. Schell cited VW, which wanted to encourage good driving. Rather than using deterrents to bad driving, it turned the situation round by putting pictures of well-driven cars online and entering drivers into a prize draw.

Opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the RSE, nor of its Fellows The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotlands National Academy, is Scottish Charity No. SC000470