How to Embarrass Yourself in Public Unashamedly

Play can open adults to novel experiences and behaviors, yet fear of embarrassment often keeps them from engaging in play, particularly when observed by others. This makes embarrassment a crucial design consideration for pervasive play

Alibis for Adult Play : A Goffmanian Account of Escaping Embarrassment in Adult Play

The social meanings of play sit at odds with norms of responsible and productive adult conduct. To be ‘caught’ playing as an adult therefore risks embarrassment. Still, many designers want to create enjoyable, non-embarrassing play experiences for adults. To address this need, this article reads instances of spontaneous adult play through the lens of Erving Goffman’s theory of the interaction order to unpack conditions and strategies for non-embarrassing adult play. It identifies established frames, segregated audiences, scripts supporting smooth performance, managing audience awareness, role distancing, and particularly, alibis for play: Adults routinely provide alternative, adult-appropriate motives to account for their play, like childcare, professional duties, creative expression, or health. Once legitimized, the norms and rules of play themselves then provide an alibi for behavior that would risk being embarrassingly inappropriate or exposing outside of play

Make-Believe in Gameful and Playful Design

Gameful and playful design aspire to make existing activities and systems more engaging by infusing them with the engaging qualities of games and toys. One such quality is make-believe, the constitution of fictional “as ifs”. While frequently evoked, actual work on make-believe in gameful and playful design has remained quite scarce and scattered. This chapter therefore draws on neighbouring fields to break out five major design aspects of make-believe: theming; storification; scripting, ruling, and framing; role-play; and their integration in unified experiences. For each, the chapter presents explanatory theories; psychological and behavioural effects; design elements and strategies used to evoke said effects; and existing empirical studies. The chapter closes in summarizing how and why playful make-believe design differs from current gamification in form (often artistic one-offs) and technology (often audio); and what limitations future research should try to overcome

How to Do Gameful Design

Gamification is an increasingly popular strategy for increasing user engagement. But how to design gamified systems? While there is an abundance of industry methods, they often remain elusive in essential steps and lack grounding in evidence. This course provides a hands-on introduction into a comprehensive, research-based method for designing gamified systems, the intrinsic skill atoms approach. The method has been successfully used in over 20 industry projects and validated in its effectiveness. In two 80 minute blocks, participants will learn the central challenges of gameful design and how to do it in practice, working through the method with a practical case study

The Joys of Absence : Emotion, Emotion Display, and Interaction Tension in Video Game Play

Few theories of gaming enjoyment have focused what is absent in gameplay. One exception is Erving Goffman’s sociological theory of “euphoric ease”. Because spontaneous and socially demanded emotional involvement often align in gameplay, Goffman holds, it lacks the effortful self-monitoring and self-regulation of conduct and emotion typical for everyday life. This paper presents an empirical grounding of Goffman’s theory, drawing on a qualitative interview study on social norms of emotion regulation in video game play. Data suggests that the absence of emotional selfcontrol may indeed be a hygiene factor of game enjoyment most strongly found in solitary gameplay, afforded by a socio-material setting that licenses gaming-typical emotions and shields from potentially disapproving onlookers

Gameplay : Map or Frame?

From the social sciences to biology and physics, gamified systems and games are increasingly being used as “petri dishes” for observing human behavior in presumably perfectly controlled (digital) environments. This practice rests on the assumption that in-game behavior maps onto out-of-game behavior. This paper argues that methodological research is needed to establish when and why game behavior maps (and when not), and that such research in addition provides insight into a crucial aspect of interacting with computers: the impact of usage frames and modes

Alibis for Adult Play : A Goffmanian Account of Escaping Embarrassment in Adult Play

The social meanings of play sit at odds with norms of responsible and productive adult conduct. To be ‘caught’ playing as an adult therefore risks embarrassment. Still, many designers want to create enjoyable, non-embarrassing play experiences for adults. To address this need, this article reads instances of spontaneous adult play through the lens of Erving Goffman’s theory of the interaction order to unpack conditions and strategies for non-embarrassing adult play. It identifies established frames, segregated audiences, scripts supporting smooth performance, managing audience awareness, role distancing, and particularly, alibis for play: Adults routinely provide alternative, adult-appropriate motives to account for their play, like childcare, professional duties, creative expression, or health. Once legitimized, the norms and rules of play themselves then provide an alibi for behavior that would risk being embarrassingly inappropriate or exposing outside of play

The Pyrrhic Victory of Game Studies : Assessing the Past, Present, and Future of Interdisciplinary Game Research

Although game studies are widely viewed as an interdisciplinary field, it is unclear how interdisciplinary they actually are. In response, this article reads scientometric data and game studies editorials, handbooks and introductions through the lens of interdisciplinarity studies to assess game studies’ status as an interdiscipline. It argues that game studies show drivers and hurdles typical for interdisciplines. Yet instead of establishing themselves as the broad umbrella interdiscipline of digital game research, they are becoming one narrow cultural studies multidiscipline within the growing and diversifying field of game research and education. Researchers from fields like human-computer interaction or communication are abandoning game studies venues in favor of disciplinary ones – ironically thanks to game studies legitimizing game research. The article suggests that a design orientation and cross-disciplinary boundary objects such as middle range theories could help to broaden, deepen, and secure future interdisciplinary game research

Cookie Clicker: Gamification

Incremental games like Cookie Clicker are a perfect exemplar of gamification, using progress mechanics and other game features to make the rote act of clicking compelling. Hence, this chapter reads the game Cookie Clicker for its motivating features to illustrate the logic and limits of gamification