Reading 03

 The first paper examined was How Feedback Boosts Motivation and Play in a Brain-Training Game. This paper shows the impact of positive and negative feedback in serious games. The paper states that positive feedback satisfies competence therefore boosting motivation and is more powerful in fostering long term motivation and play. Negative feedback motivates players to repair short-term performances and decreases players' feeling of competence but increases immediate gameplay.

A test was carried out as follows: 

"2 (feedback valence: positive vs negative) x 3 (feedback type: descriptive, comparative, evaluative) between-subjects experiment (N = 157, 69.4% female, Mage = 32.07)."

The aim of that test was used to understand the role of feedback in motivation to play an online brain-training game.

To sum up, in everything that has been stated so far, it was found that both positive and negative feedback can positively enhance the willingness to continue to play serious games. Gamers that received positive feedback felt more competent, desirous and autonomous of playing in the future so therefore positive feedback would be good for the exact purpose of a long-term play. 

Burgers, C. et al. (2015) ‘How feedback boosts motivation and play in a brain-training game’, Computers in Human Behavior, 48, pp. 94–103. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.038.

The second paper examined was The Research on MOOC with Introduction of Game Feedback System. MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) is a research field with high-speed development in education gamification. This paper mainly explores the game feedback system in the MOOC system. 

The game's feedback system is used in learning. Informational feedback is used for a reflection of whether the action was right or wrong in the game. This paper lists two different types of feedback mechanisms that games use and they are Quantitive Mechanism and Reward Mechanism. The paper also states: 

"So, as a kind of feedback, the author thinks the quantitative feedback is an appropriate form which introduces the concept of “experience point” in games and will embody in the MOOC platform design from top to bottom, and students will learn to regard “learn to explore a larger world” as the centre."

In conclusion, this study has introduced the MOOC game feedback system to develop the way of education gamification because gamification has achieved many successful cases in education, health, marketing and business management. It is also stated in the paper that the MOOC introduced an instant feedback system that will be more real-time and more personalized and socialized and will give guidance to learning and curriculum design. 

Fu, Q. Y., He, J. and Xu, Q. Q. (2019) ‘The Research on MOOC with Introduction of Game Feedback System’, 2019 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Knowledge Innovation and Invention (ICKII), Knowledge Innovation and Invention (ICKII), 2019 IEEE 2nd International Conference on, pp. 15–18. doi: 10.1109/ICKII46306.2019.9042723.

The third paper examined was Loops and Metagames: Understanding Game Design Structures. The author states "This paper introduces a formal model for game design analysis. This formal model is based on Sicart’s theory of play, his game mechanics definition, and Björk and Holopainen game design patterns."

A game loop is a mix of game mechanics, computing operations and feedback mechanisms. They are repeated until a break condition is met other in the computing operations or in the game mechanics. They are collected by game mechanics, feedback, system processing and player input. The author uses one game as an example of a loop and that is Minecraft. 

In the conclusion of the paper is it stated that using game loops as a level of abstraction, lets people think about the role of computer processing in the interaction process of playing a video game. 

Sicart, MA 2015, Loops and Metagames: Understanding Game Design Structures. in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2015), June 22-25, 2015, Pacific Grove, CA, USA.

The fourth and final paper examined was Testing Methods for Mobile Game Development. The paper discussed user feedback in different development stages. There were six development stages with six different methods. 

This image shows the collection of data over the six stages.

After the testing, the game developers were able to make game design ideas and decisions based on the feedback they were given and also using all those methods made they know which one was appropriate to use for the future. Receiving feedback in six different development stages before the release of a game is very good as you can make the game perfect and user-friendly from the feedback received before the release of the game. 

Annanpera, E. et al. (2018) ‘Testing methods for mobile game development a case study on user feedback in different development phases’, 2018 IEEE 6th International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH), Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH), 2018 IEEE 6th International Conference on, pp. 1–8. doi: 10.1109/SeGAH.2018.8401372.

Reflection

After writing about these four papers, I thought it didn't go quite well and I will tell you why. First of all most of the writing done in this blog are sentences taken from the paper. The sentences used I felt were most important in the paper. Second of all, each individual paper I wrote about was not 300 words as I found it difficult to write 300 words per paper and lastly finding what papers to use for my bibliography's as I found it difficult to find papers and when I did, some did not fit in with my topic.

One good thing I felt happen fir this task was the language I used while writing about the papers because this was my first time actually writing in an academic style/language so I feel my language towards this these papers turned out very good even though most of it is from the papers themselves. 

Next week we have six bibliography's instead of four and I hope I do better with them in turns of what to write and have longer paragraphs about each individual paper. 

Overall I did not quite enjoy doing this task as I found it quite difficult but I hope in the coming weeks I find it easier and start to enjoy them more.