Tom Chatfield
"7 ways games reward the brain"
In this talk, Tom Chatfield starts with talking about the rise in popularity in video games that create a virtual world, such as "Second Life" and "World of Warcraft". This is accented by the fact he brings up that 8 billion dollars worldwide are spent on virtual items that only exist in these games. He then goes into how game designers make the games engaging by taking tasks, such as collecting 15 of something, and manipulating them so they prove to be not too easy and not too frustrating. This is done by adjusting probability of items appearing by how far the player is in the game, adding additional items to keep the gamer engaged, and so on. Chatfield then lists seven ways that games engage their players; experience bars measuring progress, multiple long and short-term goals, rewards for effort, rapid and frequent feedback, an element of uncertainty, windows of enhanced attention, and interactions with other people. He then goes on to say that many fields in the world, such as business and education, could fix some of the problems they have by integrating some of these ways that video games engage their players.
I got a lot out of this talk. I am a huge game player myself, and agree with him on how these games can be very engaging. And I also think a lot of real-world fields could learn from video games on how to be more engaging. As a specific example, I have found computer technology classes that were completely based on lecture to be very difficult to learn from, as they lost my attention fast. I feel I get more out of a class when I'm able to explore the subject hands-on. It's much more engaging than listening to a lecture. I think people could definitely learn something from how reward systems in games work.
Amazon listing for Tom Chatfield's book
A description of a book by Chatfield about how gaming is becoming pervasive in many other areas of media and life.
The official blog of Tom Chatfield, with entries on various topics including speculation on gaming and technology.
An organization exploring games that make learning engaging.
Is this a class in video game creation?
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