From ancient times to the present, human

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1 Explore the theories the games And Using theories in Games to make working and studying more naturally Yide Xie University of Birmingham March 9, 2017 Abstract This paper conclude the 6 main rules in designing games.by going through these rules, I found several basic theories used widely in games. Flow theory and malsow?s human need model was illustrated then. Showing two researcher s work, one is using gamer s abilities for solving problems to make contributions to the real world, another is the core drives that influence our behavior. By Combining two researchers work, put forward some simple ways to change the way we studying or working. Key words: games, design, flow theory, Maslow human need model, gamification, playing I. Introduction From ancient times to the present, human beings play games. A running contest or a virtual reality game can been known as games. Due to the technological development, a simple fact currently is that productivity is liberated. So people have more time for entertainment. And nowadays some games are very popular and has been developed and changed into electronic sports. But why we like playing games rather than working or studying? There are many elements in a game are designed to make us have a good experience when playing games. So the purpose of this article is to investigate how these elements influent players behavior and discover the theories in games that interact with players. The structure of the paper is as follows. In the second section there is a introduction about games and game design.then I introduced the theories applied in games including psychology such as Csikszentmihalyi s Flow theory [3], anthropology, game theory and fun theory. Then comes the literature review that conclude others experiments about human interaction with games and list the weakness and strength of others work. And at the fourth section the I will show how we can combine our work or study with games in three aspects: Start on work, Motivation Concentrate on work, Generate heart flow Add some fun, Working environment Then comes the discussion and conclusion.and the last part is the references. II. Game and game design Basically, a game (including the outdoor games such as hide-and-seek) is a large system that contains anthropology, psychology, design science, game theory, and fun theory. And for video games or VR games which are very 1

2 popular today the system can be much larger. Animation, Architecture, Brainstorming, economics, business, Cinematography, Creative writing, history, music, visual arts, engineering, Public speaking, Mathmatics etc. [13] all these subject has been applied in games. i. The Definition of Game In order to investigate the theories behind games, we need to be clear about what is a game.there are many people has defined what is a game. Intuitively we can define the game like this: things that we can play. But this definition is not informative. When we are playing games there are many factors can influence the way we interact with games. said by J. Barnard Gilmore [13]. These definitions has illustrate part of the games. Figure 1 shows a screen shot of an typical video game and this picture can show the features about a game. We can see that although the interface of these two games are totally different, there still be something similar abstractly. The features can be summarized as follows. feature1: They all have a goal(or goals) to achieve.(the required score of this level and the boss) feature2: They all have conflicts feature3: There will be an end of each game(you lose or you win) feature4: Players all have rules to obey feature5: The progress is a kind of challenge.(from easy to hard) feature6: They all give feedbacks immediately feature7: They are all closed and formal systems and players need to interact with the system. feature8: players are willing to play them And there is a really clear definition made by Jesse Schell, he said "A game is a problemsolving activity." [13]. I love this definition, here are some reasons. figure1:two different types of game Friedrich Schiller said that, "Play is the aimless expenditure of exuberant energy." And "Play refers to those activities which are accompanied by a state of comparative pleasure, exhilaration, power, and the feeling of self-initiative." This definition illustrate the core of every game. No matter what kind of game we are playing, we all have problems designed by the game designer. Take tetris as an instance, the problem we are solving in this game is organizing the blocks in different shapes to make them fit each other perfectly. Even a simple game has a specific problem to solve, no matter those games who has clear levels. This definition shows a possibility to regard working as a game. There are different types of works or occupations, and the works which is a process of solving problems is similar to games in some aspects. By detecting the theories behind 2

3 a game and apply them into our work is may make work more enjoyable. in this article, the area of games I am considering is limited in the games that operating on some interactable devices such as smartphone games, video games and VR games. ii. Game Design Knowing how to design an attractive game will be helpful for us to discover the factors that make a problem-solving activity interesting. By reading other s works I find that there are some important principals for game designing. They are listed as follow and I will do explain for each rule. But design a successful game is a very complex thing and need a lot experience. There also will be many conflicts waiting for balance. There is no golden rules to design a good game. The audience also need to be clear. Abstractly the main audience of smartphone games is designed for those who has a device, has some dominance of money and the time they play games is fragmented. If designer know who are going to play and like the game, the game can be designed more targeted. And by satisfying their needs, better game can be created. According to Andrzej Marczewski?s player type framework, players in game can be divided into 6 groups. Figure 2 shows this 6 group and the characters of these classifications of players. ii.1 Rule No.1: Be clear and simple Every good game has their intrinsic value. For example, Super Mario, which is one of the most famous game in the world, has a very positive intrinsic value. The story is very simple, an ordinary plumber for love overcome the difficulties and defeat the monster. The value here is heroism and love. The excitations is very simple but strong. The game should also have a clear main theme. In Super Mario, we need to play Mario to break through the obstacles and save the princess caught by the monster. This main theme runs through the whole process of the game. And we can see nearly all the other elements are designed to strengthen the main theme. The environment changed from outside to the inner of the monster?s castle, the shortcuts? and so on. And we need to have a specific goal to achieve. For each level the final goal is get to the end of this map and going to the next level. It is very clear and easy to understand. figure2: Marczewski s Player and User Types Hexad [14] This model was developed from Bartle s player types classification. There are killers, achievers, socializers and explorers. the types can be more detailed if we consider more things. For different types of players we need to have different strategies to design or organize the game. The Fugure 2 illustrate what kind of fun should the designers set for players. Also we can classify the players by there age or gender. The age scale can be "0-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-14, 15-18, 19-24, 25-35, 35-50, 50+ ". Each level has its own preference to games. While playing video games males prefer violence while females pre- 3

4 fer social. [12] So be clear about the audience is important. The world in a game should also be simple and clear. We prefer a simple world and in the world we have strong abilities. Take famous basketball game 2K as an example. Why some people prefer play basketball on a TV instead of playing outside? I thing the reasons can be : 1.the world is simple, they don t need to pay attention on other things such as weather or conflict with others. 2.They have strong ability in the game world, they can do slam dunk or 3-points shoot. Finally the rules should be clear. ii.2 Rule No.2: Be fun The game must be interesting and people can get fun from the game.according to Leblanc, the pleasure in games can be classify into eight types. They are sensation-game as sense pleasure, fantasy-game as make believe, narrative-game as drama, challenge-game as obstacle course, fellowship-game as social framework, discovery-game as uncharted territory, expression-game as self discovery and submission-game as pastime. [5] We can discover the pleasure from these aspects. Human brain is complex and we don t know what is the trigger to make us feel pleasure. But there are some specific scenes and activities can make human enjoyable. Here are some instance: Looking forward to something and be satisfied. Give gifts to others and receive gifts from others and surprise The right to choose freely Be proud of our own?s achievement Clean something or clear an area Victory in adversity Conquer and vent... So a successful game can think about what will make player feel pleasure and keeping attract player s attention. ii.3 Rule No.3: Be fair and balanced Once a game is unfair or un balanced, the player will leave quickly. And there are many aspects should be designed balanced. Meantime there will be paradoxes in games, for example the difficulty and A the sense of accomplishment, harder the game is, more accomplishment the player will get after success. One game can?t consider all the things perfectly. We can consider the balance from these aspects. 1.Fairness. It is easy to understand, as a player I will the game will be fair. Mora is a good example to illustrate this point. Scissors can cut paper, rock can break scissors and paper can "swallow" rock. No one is the best or the worst. By the way, this game is still popular today. 2.Challenge. The challenge should be achievable, if the enemy is too strong to defeat, I think no one will continue playing this game unless the player is masocherism. So the challenge should be designed proper. And it depends on the game style. There is a successful action adventure game in 2016 called "Dark Soul 3." In this game the enemies is very powerful and can kill the player at one second, and if the player died they will lose the soul the gathered before. It is very unfriendly especially for novice. But the is still very good. Table 1 shows the score of Dark Soul 3 given by the mainstream game media. The reason is although the game is hard but when the player defeat a boss or finish a map successfully, they will get a great sense of accomplishment. So the challenge should be balanced but not unachievable. 3.Choices During a game.players will face many choices. So what the designer should do is to make the choices meaningful. If the player are trying to buy a car in game, one type is better than any other types and the price is similar, the game will be boring. According to Game 4

5 Table 1: Score of Dark Soul 3 game media score IGN 9.5/10 GameSpot 8/10 Pc Gamer UK 94/100 Game Informer 1 9.3/10 theory, this is called advantage strategy which should be avoided. Figure 3 shows a common strategy for choice design. It is also related to the sense of freedom and control in game. How many choice we can make? Or just go with the fixed scenes. 4.Probability. This means that the probabilities in games should be balanced. If I want to find a treasure under the sea. The treasure appear randomly. The probability become important, too easy or too hard will break the experience of the game. 5.Thinking and opreating. In a game sometimes the player need to think(read the map or make a plan)and some times they need to operate the device(move the character or waving sword). The balance between these two factors is also important. 6.Vs and cooperation. Competition and cooperation are basic, animal urges. All higher animals are driven to compete against others partly for survival, and partly to establish their status in the community. Opposite of that, there is also a basic instinct to cooperate with others, since a team, with its many eyes and hands, and its diverse abilities, is always more powerful than an individual. [13] 7. Details and imagination. In the game world people can t build anything. Many parts are high-level abstract. And it need us to imagine. But there is some thing need to be designed in details, especially related to the core experience. If we are playing a fighting game, the background is abstract, the trees may be just a fixed picture. But the rivals or enemies must be designed in detail. ii.4 Rule No.4: Feedback It is important to give players feedback directly. People like to see something is changing, getting feedback quickly can enhance the selfawareness and motivate player keep on doing something. Feedback include reward and punishment. Reward can be single or multiple, and basically they are: figure 3: Choice design reward and risk [13] Praise. Such as some hints "Cool!", "Well done!", "Congratulations!" Scores. Extension of game time. For example in Super Mario when you collect 100 coins, you can be rewarded an extra life. The entrance to somewhere new. Wonders. Chance to show themselves. In some versus based games the winner can show on the screen at the end. Development of abilities. Level up, strength things like this Resources Achievement 5

6 And we can infer the punishment from reward. III. Foundation theories flow. This can tell us an important information that we can generate flow if our ability can match the task. From the analysis of principles in game designing, we can be informed something important. Here is a question: we like playing games or we just like the feeling when we playing a game. Game is the carrier of feeling. And in this section I am going to discover the theories about what makes the games attractive and why. i. Flow in Games The flow theory which is nearly used in all the video games. It was discovered by Csikszentmihalyi. In positive psychology, flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. [15] figure 4: Csikszentmihaly s flow theory. [4] Figure 4 show the main concept of flow theory. So we can see the main point of maintain a flow state is to keep a balance between challenges and abilities. and Figure 5 shows the channel of figure 5: Flow channel [1] The phenomenology of Flow has eight major components. A challenge activity that requires skills The merging of action and awareness Clear goals Direct feedback Concentration on the task at hand The sense of control The loss of self-consciousness The transformation of time [1] By playing games people can get flow state easily, And flow is one of the reasons people playing games, it brings happiness. [11] Game is the carrier of feeling, so in order to get the delightful feeling, we play games through intrinsic motivation. This motivation is the condition of create flow. [6] In games especial video games, it is much easier to build an world that can help players know the level of abilities and tasks. And the balance between challenge level and skill level can be adjusted closer to anxiety zone or relaxation zone. In this way the game will be divided to hardcore game and relaxation game. Designer using flow principles into their project to create enjoyable experience for players. [1] 6

7 And now the flow in games has been linked to education. There is a game call "Dragon Egg", it is a math learning game. Only the surrounding is clear, the egg will hatch. And the way to clear the weed or something is solve equations. ii. Hierarchy of needs Maslow s hierarchy of needs is a model that conclude the human s need in an 6-layer pyramid. Figure 6 show the structure of human s need. But there are individual differences and in different culture, for example individualism and collectivism may have different sprite needs. Anyway consider the way these two theories applied in games, we can go deeper about how to make change to our life. IV. What has people done with this? With the development of video games, the research in this area gain more and more attention. In this part I will show some researcher?s work and analysis the strength and weakness in their work. And there are two people has made impressive achievement about game and our life. They are Jane McGonigal and Yu-kai Chou. i. Using games to solve problems figure 6: Maslow s hierarchy of needs. [7] The picture shows clear about what the levels are. iii. Stage summary There are still many theories or studies used in games and I can t listed them all here. These two theories I mentioned above is classic. For flow theory, the strength is we can be informed about the relation between human s feeling and the level of challenges and skills. But the weakness is this model shows a little about human s internal motivation. And for Maslow s hierarchy of needs model, the strength is this model provide a clear structure of human needs and in games we can find these needs has been used as mechanism of some games. This thought was put forward by Jane McGonigal, an American game designer. She is trying to let people solve problems in real life as easy as player solve problems in games. The way to approach this idea is to design the games puzzles based on the real problem in our life. People all over the world play spend 3 billion hours on playing games. By an investigation from Carnegie Mellon University, in a country with strong atmosphere such as Japan, people spend nearly hours on gaming before 21 years old.the time is equal to the hours that they learn everything from school. And I believe most of us know the "10000 hours to success" theory, so what have the gamers learn or what are they good at? Jane think there are four main aspect that the gamers developed while playing games. 1 Urgent optimism. Gamers have strong willing to success, and are optimism. They challenge and fail again and again but hardly feel frustrated. 2 Social fabric. Gamers trust each other, and are willing to cooperation. They have same goal and the division of labor is clear. 7

8 HCI Topics 3 Blissful productivity. Gamer will generate flow while playing. 4 epic meaning. Gamers believe they can make the change to the world(obviously, the virtual world). [10] So game is an ideal platform for people to solve problem together. And gamer are superempowered hopeful individuals with huge potential to change the real world. [8] Jane designed some interesting games. One of them is a game called "world without oil"(see figure 7) that people in a virtual world, and the oil is almost run out. So players need to do many things without oil. And save oil in various ways. By tracing the players they found that most of the players bring the oilsaving-habit into the real life. This is the way how we can change the world by game. Because gamers has spending so much time on solving problems. They are good at it. [9] figure 7: Game: world without oil. The strength is obvious. By this way gamers are no longer the guy who has pizza on their T-shirt and wearing a glass and sitting in front of the screen whole day. They become an huge productive forces. The large amount of people, experts on solving different kinds of problem actually, plus good cooperation environment, I can hardly imagine there are some problems can not be solved. 8 Although it is a powerful and idea, but we can not ignore it s weakness. The weakness is highly concentrated. It is how can the designer transfer the real problem into games successfully. It is very hard because we can not contain all the factors. What s more, if a game?s goal is eliminate obesity I don t know it is attractive or not. Player may not interested in and leave. So transfer the problem is so hard. It is the main weakness of Jane s work. ii. Gamification Yu-kai Chou is an Author and International Keynote Speaker on Gamification and Behavioral Design. He is the Original Creator of the Behavior Framework: Octalysis. Chou combine life and game in another way which is contrary to Janes. Chou using gamification to make life more like a game. In other words, we are playing life. Gamification is design that places the most emphasis on human motivation in the process. In essence, it is Human-Focused Design (as opposed to?function-focused design?). [2] Chou build a behavior framework: Octalysis. Figure 8 shows the Octalysis. I think the Octalysis is based on the Maslow s human need model. It shows what are the core drives in games will motivate us to do something. The most famous online game is World of Warcraft(WOW). Blizzard(An entertainment company) operate this game and by their calculation, up to 2010 people on the earth have spent 5.93 million years on WOW. And 5.93 years ago we human just start walking upright. So I will use WOW as an example to illustrate chou s model. The first one is Epic Meaning and Calling. In the WOW, we create a character, the character has some intrinsic labels. We need to decide to be a Horde or an Alliance. And they are antagonistic. So once the character has been build we will have a epic meaning: defeat the rivals. And when we defeat a boss, which is a epic win, the game will tell you that you have

9 figure 8: Octalysis. [2] saved the world. Accomplishment and Development is easy to understand. Once we finish a task(the task match the character s level perfectly), we will get experience, reward, items... And by accumulating enough experience, the character will level up. Not only the character, the level of skills, the equipment will develop with the character. Considering Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback with Development, every little progress players has made will be seen clearly and the system make feedback immediately. And in this virtual world players will have virtual equipment and items. Some of them is precious and very hard to get and. This is also a drive for players called Ownership and Possession. For example, the only way to get one powerful sword is to kill the boss so many times until the sword appear. This lead to next point, Curiosity and Unpredictability. The thing about character s development is certain, but the outside environment is unpredictable. People in WOW also establish unions to help each other. The core drive here is Social Influence and Relatedness. Scarcity and Impatience and Loss and Avoidance is also obvious, we will try our best to avoid death due to the punishment. There are close connection between this core drives and players are drived to login in to this virtual world once and once again. Back to the framework, the left 3 drives is extrinsic tendency. These factors motivate or influence our behavior from outside. Accomplishment and Development Ownership and Possession Scarcity and Impatience The right 3 elements is intrinsic tendency. 9

10 Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback Social Influence and Relatedness Curiosity and Unpredictability Or from another aspect, the 3 elements is white hat tendency. White hat means these factors are positive.they can bring joy and happiness. Accomplishment and Development Epic Meaning and Calling Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback And the 3 below is black hat tendency. Black hat means the dirves is negative, it will bring some bad emotion but we still be forced to do something. Scarcity and Impatience Loss and Avoidance Curiosity and Unpredictability Chou also provide an tool for people to analysis a project from this model. Chou s model illustrate the motivation clearly. And by knowing these core drives, we can analysis the things in life that we are not eager to do. Using chou s tool I analysis the study process. See figure 9. We can easily know the drive power of the thing we want to analysis. Based on that we can make improvements to raise the power of drive force. [?]This is an approach to make the world more closer to a game. V. proposal My aim is to make the work or study more attractive. And by the analysis of study using Octalysis tool, I know there are some aspect that we can improve. First step: We need to overcome the frustrations. Study is a process that we are get something new which means is hard and a challenge. So the abilities here is the ability to adjust our mood and keeping on study instead of the intelligence. Then we need to build the sense of achievement. Set a clear and meaningful goal is helpful. Short-term goal can feedback more frequency and raise the scores in the aspect of empowerment of creativity and feedback. Not only the inner side of our heart, due to the mechanism of our brain, we need reward physically. Once we have achieve something, reward ourself and there are many way to do this. We can design the reward system for ourselves using the ways designers using in games. Study things that can benefit you. The extrinsic stimulates are strong. Maintaince = M 2 + A 3 + C 4 + T 5 (1) Finally, find the epic meaning is important. Those who keep on working or studying has a epic meaning in their mind. They love what they are doing. Why someone can not keep working or study? Because many of us doing the job or study for money. It is a strong force but not the core of our life. But this is an another topic. figure 9: analysis study by Octalysis Tool 2 Motivation 3 Ability 4 appropriate challenges 5 trigger 10

11 In my opinion, we can combine two approaches together. Using the Octalysis to find out the aspects that need to be improved to give people a stronger driven force. And then design this problem as an game, using the intelligence from gamers to solve the problems. VI. Discussion The summaries about games and the rules of game designing shows the way to make a attractive game. Analysing these rules, I found that flow theory and Maslow s need model make a great contribution to game designing. Using these theories there are some talented researchers trying to use the power of games to change the way we live or solve the problems in our real life. It is hard to proof pf the concept of the studies like this. But we can do some further evaluations. Doing experiments or making questionnaires to survey the feeling after design there work or study like a game. The hardest thing is making such kind of game interesting. And the game is the carrier of feelings. For further research I think the find the instinct relation between games and players may be worthy. Making study and work conform to human?s nature can be potential References [1] Jenova Chen. Flow in games (and everything else). Communications of the ACM, 50(4):31 34, [2] Yu-Kai Chou. Octalysis: Complete gamification framework. Yu-Kai Chou & Gamification, [3] Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Beyond boredom and anxiety. Jossey-Bass, [4] Csikszentmihalyi Flow. The psychology of optimal experience. Harper&Row, New York, [5] Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek. Mda: A formal approach to game design and game research. Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI, 4(1), [6] Paul Benjamin Lowry, James Gaskin, Nathan Twyman, Bryan Hammer, and Tom Roberts. Taking fun and games seriously: Proposing the hedonic-motivation system adoption model (hmsam). Journal of the Association for Information Systems, [7] Abraham Harold Maslow. A theory of human motivation. Psychological review, 50(4):370, [8] Jane McGonigal. A real little game: The performance of belief in pervasive play. Proceedings of DiGRA 2003, [9] Jane McGonigal. Gaming can make a better world. TED: Ideas worth spreading, [10] Jane McGonigal. Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. Penguin, [11] Curtiss Murphy. Why games work and the science of learning. Alion Science and Technology, [12] MH Phan, JR Jardina, and WS Hoyle. Video games: Males prefer violence while females prefer social. Usability News, 14(1), [13] Jesse Schell. The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. CRC Press, [14] Gustavo F Tondello, Rina R Wehbe, Lisa Diamond, Marc Busch, Andrzej Marczewski, and Lennart E Nacke. The gamification user types hexad scale. In Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, pages ACM,

12 [15] Wikipedia. Flow-wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, [Online; accessed 28-Fed- 2017]. 12