Ambiguity of using Let’s Play Videos

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I discuss a bit the creation of Let’s Play videos from the point of view from the copyright and from the perspective of a marketeer. Both areas have an impact on the creation process of videos and need to be handled by video game publishers the same time.

I already discussed „Let’s Play“ videos[1] (LP) and the possibility to use them as a marketing strategy[2]. However, the entertainment of watching the gameplay of other players and enjoying the additional story arc induced by the narration of the player has also some complex parts because creating and using these videos is connected with different areas of the media economy.

Most computer games are produced to generate revenue and they’re protected by the copyright. Creating a video of gameplay footage thus can be seen as making a copy of copyright protected content and this would result in a copyright infringement. On the other hand, creating a narrated LP can be also seen as a „fair use“[3] of the copyrighted work because the additional narrated story arc could be also defined as commentary and criticism. However, fair use isn’t a strict measurement and often needs to be investigated for each use of copyrighted content. In this case, having a clear permission from the copyright holder to use copyrighted content would be the safest way to prohibit any copyright infringement.

Apart from the point of view of the copyright, LPs can be also seen from the point of view of a marketeer. Video game publishers and especially indie game developers are aware of the huge potential of LPs as a marketing strategy. The narrated gameplay videos often demonstrate the entertaining gameplay of the played computer games. Viewers of these videos can become interested in the game and finally buy it to experience the gameplay on their own. In general LPs can raise the awareness of the products.
Game developers are often thankful for the gameplay coverage, because they’ve realized that these videos are a great marketing strategy and they even have not to pay for it. Often developers share these videos over their own communication platforms to raise even more the awareness for their products. By doing so, they also help the video creators to reach more potential viewers. In the end, video creator and game developer benefit from this cooperation.

Unfortunately, this can also demonstrate the ambiguity of the system. On the one hand, game developers want to make money and thus they’re thankful for the copyright that protects their product. However, to make money, they need to convince potential players to buy their products. Small game developers often can’t afford a huge marketing campaign and are thankful for LPs that demonstrate their product and thus are raising the awareness for it.
At this point the ambiguity comes into play: the video creator needs to make a copy of copyrighted content to create the videos. The game publisher encourages the video creator to make videos by sharing them over their own communication platforms. However, seen from the point of view from the copyright, the publisher also encourages the video creator to commit a copyright infringement. Fortunately, game developers are aware of this problem and often give a general permission to allow the use of their copyrighted content in order to create LPs[4].

Finally, there’s one thing left to be discussed: what about monetization? Video platforms like YouTube allow video creators to monetize their videos by displaying advertizements[5]. However, this isn’t legal if the user tries to monetize copyrighted content without a permission. Currently publishers often give the permission to monetize the LPs, which is a good thing, because they greatly benefit from the free advertizement. Additionally, by doing so, they’re also helping the video creators to develop and to produce videos with a higher quality because they might be able to afford new hard- and software with the revenue from the monetization.

To wrap things up, publishers are in charge to align their marketing actions with their copyright interests. As soon as they’re taking adventage of user generated content (UGC) like LPs, they should make sure that these content creators don’t run into problems because of the copyright. Additionally, by taking advantage of the UGC, publishers should start to think about the content as a form of protected content. They increase their own revenue by sharing the UGC, but they aren’t paying for it. Of course, giving the permission to use copyrighted content is a great offer, but the content creators are adding their own intellectual wealth to the new content. Allowing the UGC creators to monetize their creation is a good way to let them also make some money out of their own content like the narrated story arc, especially when the publisher benefits from the intellectual wealth of the content creator.

Buying games and supporting charity organizations

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I give a short overview about the development and the concept behind humblebundle.com. A computer game store that sells special game bundles without a price tag.

Humblebundle.com is a special video game shop. They sell special bundles of video games with a completely different approach compared to normal stores: the bundles come without a clear price tag. Consumers are allowed to pay what they want for the bundle and thus can receive several games for a tiny amount of money. On the other hand, they can also pay a very high amount of money for the same bundle. Sounds strange? Maybe not.

The main idead behind these deals is charity. Humblebundle creates these packages together with the developers of the games. Furthermore, humblebundle chooses charity organizations consumers can support by buying these game bundles. If a consumer buys such a game, she gets ask how she wants to devide her contribution among three main options: charity, developers and humblebundle.

Humble Bundle contribution selection

This concept is brilliant. Every consumer has the option to receive several computer games and help charity organizations at once. Consumers with only a tiny amount of budget for computer games can still buy good games and donate some money to charity organizations. Consumers with a higher budget available can even donate more money, if they really want to help these organizations.
Allowing the consumers decide how much they want to pay is also a good strategy to convince a lot of consumers to buy the product. They feel free about their donations and they don’t feel that humblebundle has persuaded them to pay a certain amount of money. The freedom makes it more likely that consumers spend more money. Furthermore, this strategy allows to receive the maximum amount of money. If there’re only some fixed prices, consumers would tend to take only the cheapest package instead of giving a little bit more money.
Humblebundle has also a good concept to rise a little bit the amount of money the consumers pay: every humblebundle receives some additional games, if the consumer pays more than the avarage.

Over time, humblebundle has increased their offers. At first, humblebundle only offered these special bundles over a period of 2 weeks after they’ve packed a new package with the game developers. The next step was the „Humble Weekly Sale„, a special offer that is changing every week. The Humble Weekly Sale works almost the same as the Humble Bundle, but is different in a little detail. The bonus games received for paying a certain amount of money now require a fixed amount of donation to be obtained.
Finally, some weeks ago, humblebundle launched the „Humble Store„. This store has fixed prices for the games like an ordinary game store and the sortiment of games never expires. In contrast to normal game stores, 10% of the money goes to charity. Consumers now have the option to buy their games in the Humble Store and support charity organizations. Additionally, the store often offers special deals, making it interesting to visit the store on regular basis.

To wrap things up, buying new video games over the humblebundle website adds a good feeling to the shopping, because every consumer gets the feeling that they contribute to charity and thus helping others. Additionally, the „pay what you want“ allows every one to participate in this project, regardless of the available budget. Furthermore, game developers can increase their reputation in the gaming comunity by selling their games over The Humble Store and use it as a good marketing strategy and also increase the awareness for their products.

Improving your development with the aid of gamers!

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I discuss the idea to improve the development of new control interfaces with the aid of gamers. Gamers provide a completely different approach to the usability of interfaces and thus might provide good suggestions to make the interface more intuitive.

I’ve presented the concept of early access games in a previous article[1]. One of the main advantages of this concept is the early contact to interested players, who can suggest good improvements and give useful feedback to the game while it’s still in the development process. The developers then can implement these suggestions and release a game with a higher quality, that matches the interests of the players. Additionally, these early access players do all have a different background and a different playstyle. Furthermore, these early access players aren’t involved in the development as internal Q/A teams. They might provide a completely different point of view, which is completely new to the developers and helps them to come up with a new idea.

One of the most important feedbacks the developers can receive are suggestions towards the usability of the game interface and control options. They can rate, if all features have a good mechanic and if they feel comfortable while playing the game.

At this point, I think about the question, if it would be possible for other developers who work in a completely different area, to take advantage of this early access concept. I know, this is a complex idea, because in most cases, these developments are top secret and new features will be only revealed on a huge presentation of the new product.

However, let’s imagine a company that is currently developing a new aircraft. The new plane should take advantage of an improved glass cockpit[2] with several new interface options. Of course, the company will brainstorm about the usability and do several test flight sessions with test pilots. On the other hand, this involves only „few“ employees who mostly share the same point of view.

In todays gaming community, simulation games are still quite popular and gamers are interested in playing around with these simulations. Gamers are also used to learn new interfaces from scratch without reading a manual at first. These video game players would just start the flight simulation game and start to experience it right away. They would fly the simulated plane at its limits and thus they would rely on the interfaces provided by the game.

If a player in an early access game would have some issues with the usability with an option or with the structure of the menu of the interface, he would report this to the developers and they could adjust the interface. The same process can be applied to the development of a new glass cockpit. If gamers aren’t happy with the usability, they could report this issue and the developers can adjust this. Apart from this, gamers are used to learn from scratch and thus they like to have all important options visible. This approach is also important if something has to be operated under stressful situations like a landing under bad weather conditions. The design has to be intuitive and lead the user through the menus without requiring too much background information. Additionally, if the interface is intuitive, it won’t distract the user from the main task.

As a conclusion, gamers don’t need to hold a pilots license to rate the usability of an interface. They will just play the simulation and try out different things. They provide a completely different point of view and require an intuitive interface design. The interface design is one of the key features, when it comes to reducing risks while operating a plane.

With that being said, why not trying to improve the development of new products with a simulation gamers can play?
However, there might be a problem because things are normally kept secret while they’re under development. A new version of a car is tested in the wilderness and new features are only revealed during glamorous presentations. On the one hand, this is a good practice to keep the curiosity high. On the other hand, how long does it take until a shiny presentation is forgotten? A good, realistic and still enjoyable simulation of the own product lasts longer. New consumers can start experiencing the product even if it’s still under development. They can share their experiences with others and the new product might be better known when it’s released than when it’s released after one single presentation.

Improving your gameplay!

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I discuss the way how World of Warcraft players are monitoring their performance and how these tools can encourage players to try to improve their gameplay.

World of Warcraft (WoW) players who are participating in raids often need to play their role in a perfect way. They have to master their class and know everything about it. This also includes the practice of the best skill rotation and the enhancement of the own equipment. These informations are mostly available in various guides published on well known community web pages. However, these guides can’t provide a guidance to every boss fight in the game. Players do have to adapt their gameplay by learning the fight. This allows them to time the use of skills with a long cooldown and thus taking the most benefit out of them. Furthermore, the performance can be also improved by doing some minor changes to the gameplay that are unique to the playstyle of each player. The constant change of the own gameplay is often a difficult task for players because they need to monitor their improvement over a long period of time.

There’re many ways of monitoring the own performance, but I want to talk about one website in particular: worldoflogs.com. Users can take advantage of this website by uploading combat logs created by the game. After the upload is finished, the website creates a statistical evaluation of the combat log. Players then can analyze their gameplay in detail, compare their own performance with the performance of their teammates and also compare their statistics over a longer period of time by comparing different logs. However, players have to keep in mind, if they’ve done some major changes to their equipment. After equpping a new weapon, the performance of the player can be increased by a high degree. On ther other hand, players can track the changes they’ve made to their gear and decide whether an itemstat is useful or not.

The motivation to improve the own gameplay by analyzing the statistics can have two origins. On the one hand, players like to master their class and thus they want to achieve a perfect gameplay. If a player has made a great performance increase over several game sessions, the player might get motivated to try even harder to beat the best performance. It can result in the same motivation as in sports, when a runner tries to beat the own personal record for a specific distance.
On the other hand, many WoW players are interested in comparing their own achievements with the achievements of other players. Comparing the performances can lead to a competition between the players: players want to outperform the teammates and thus are comparing the gameplay analysis.

Analyzing the own gameplay adds another dimension to the gameplay of WoW. Players are now able to track their performance and compare it. They can see their own contribution to the overall goal of beating the raid instance boss. It also enhances the idea, that players are participating in something big. They need to form a group, because they can’t beat the evil monster without other players. Everyone has the same goal and now they can also trace their own contribution to the great goal. This makes the own performance even more meaningful, because it can be connected with the overall goal of the group.

I like to end this weeks article with an idea: what if we can analyze some other parts of our daily life as well? Would it be more motivating, if I can track my writing skills by having an analysis about the words I wrote in a certain amount of time? Doing sports greatly benefits from comparing the own performances and trying to beat the personal records. Does this also applies to other things, like beating my personal time record in vacuum cleaning my room or washing the dishes?

Make it flexible!

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I discuss the announcement of social gameplay changes in the upcoming expansion pack for World of Warcraft. The developers will focus on gameplay that makes it more simple and also more meaningful to play with friend.

Blizzard Entertainment’s own convention „Blizzcon“ took place last weekend in Anaheim. During these two days, Blizzard announced the next addon for World of Warcraft (WoW) and shared a lot of new information and updates about all their other games. Furthermore, Blizzcon also featured the world championship in StarCraft 2 and other tournaments.

The next WoW addon will implement several new features to the game and also make some long desired improvements to the gameplay. WoW will finally receive a housing feature, allowing its players to build a whole garrison and recruit followers. Players then can give these followers some work orders or send them on a mission to return with some loot. Additionally, WoW will finally receive some improvements concerning inventory space and the stats of items will change according to the current role specialization of the player, making it more flexible to change roles.

Apart from new features and improvements, the developers will also focus on the social gameplay. They want to make playing with friends more meaningful. In todays version of the game, it makes almost no difference for players, if they’re in a random group or queueing with friends for an instance. Apart from the communication aspect, the gameplay makes no difference between both approaches of clearing an instance. However, in the next expansion „Warlords of Draenor“ (WoD) players will receive a buff granting a higher amount of a game currency reward on completion of an instance. According to the developers, this feature should also reward social gameplay from the gameplay perspective and encourage players to form groups with friends instead of using the dungeon finder and playing with random players.

Furthermore, raids, a key feature of the endgame in WoW, will also recieve a similiar treatment. In the next addon, almost every raid difficulty will be flexible in the amount of players per raid group. Currently most raid difficulty levels require either 10 or 25 players. However, the latest content patch implemented also the flex-difficulty allowing raid groups to scale from 10 to 25 players. This scalable content will by applied to all of the different difficulties in WoD. Only the highest difficulty level will require 20 players as a fixed amount.

Giving players scalable content should help raid groups to play with their friends. If more than 10 players signed on for a raid, all of them can participate. No one has to be benched anymore, because there’re only 10 spots available. On the other hand 25 player groups will still be allowed to go on a raid even if there’s missing one member. Currently a raid with only 24 players online won’t be able to raid. This improvement should make it more easy for groups to actual play the game instead of managing players. Additionally, this feature adresses the issue that WoW loses players and groups are struggling with member losses.

The aforementioned „hardcore“ difficulty level however is a little bit problematic for current „hardcore“ raids. Today, „hardcore“ raid groups focus either on 10 or 25 player raids and thus have the appropriate amount of players. However, with the upcoming expansion, 25 player raids have to say farewell to some of their core players and 10 player raids have to mass recruit new players to be able to raid in the highest difficulty of the game. This is a bit contradictory because „hardcore“ raid groups do also have a close friendship among their members and now they’re facing such a change in the group size.

With WoD Blizzard tries to focus again on the social gameplay. The announced improvements make it more easy for existing groups to play with friends and recruit new players. However, „hardcore“ raiders have to face a hard change towards their group composition, which is a bit hard to understand from the social gameplay perspective. On the other hand, it’s easier to balance the difficulty of the content and provide a good challenge for every „hardcore“ raider, if every group has 20 players.
Although the flexible amount of players is an improvement for most groups, it can also be seen as a measure to adapt to the constant loss of active players over the last year. Additionally, making it more easy and meaningful to play with friends can also be seen as a method to gain new subscribers again: active players should be encouraged to ask their friends to resubscribe to WoW or even become a new WoW player.

Computer games can predict outcomes of real world crisis

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I highlight another potential of huge virtual worlds: the potential to predict outcomes of a real world epidemic.

In „Finding of the week 32″[1] I highlighted how the huge dimensions of MMORPG worlds create a virtual environment that almost mirrors our real world. Scientists and in some cases learners can take advantage of these virtual environments and observe real world mechanisms. Additionally, these environments allow their observers to easily trace back the causes of the outcomes, because they are self-contained environments.

Another interesting fact these environments can be used for is to observe the dynamic of huge masses of people in a highly populated area. According to Lofgren and Fefferman[2] this can be useful to predict the spread of an epidemic. Back in the year 2005, a new World of Warcraft raid instance was released that caused due to a bug the death of many players.

During the fight against the final boss of this particular instance, players could get infected by a disease that spreads over to nearby players or player’s companions. Although the disease should remain in the instance, players infected with it were able to zone out of the instance and enter hugely populated areas like the capitals of Azeroth. The boss fight mechanic suddenly became an epidemic causing the death of many players being in these areas and won’t stop to spread until the developers of the game did a server reset.

This unexpected event had shown the potential of virtual environments to predict the dynamic of masses under such conditions. Although the World of Warcraft epidemic wasn’t planned and the developers never gave out data to analyze the spread of the disease, the potential for simulations of epidemics in such virtual worlds was obvious. The disease had infected most of the inhabitants of highly populated areas within a short amount of time.

The spread of a disease could also be observed during the pre-launch event of Wrath of the Lich King, the third World of Warcraft addon. During the event suspicious crates and infected roaches appeared in the capitals of World of Warcraft. Players who got too close to these crates were infected with a disease causing them to become a zombie after a certain amount of time. Apart from attacking other players, zombies could explode and cause nearby players to get infected, too. Players in highly populated areas were more in danger being infected than players in area with a low density of population.

Suspicious crates

But how can a game event share similarities with possible real world epidemics? On the one hand, players live a parallel life in these worlds. MMORPGs simulate an ongoing world that even goes on when the player isn’t online. In this endless world, players have a daily life, they buy and trade goods and meet with their ingame friends. Most of these activities require players to visit highly populated areas where, in case of an epidemic, the danger is high to be infected by the disease and to increase the spread of the disease.
This virtual daily life has some similiarities to our real world daily life: we need to go to highly populated areas. Shopping at a grocery story, going to the movies, going to work and traveling by plane or train require us to visit highly populated areas like the auction house in World of Warcraft.

Empty market place in Stormwind during the Zombie-Invasion

Apart from the daily business, players also do have a high attachment to their avatars. Over time, the avatars aren’t a tool to explore the world anymore. Instead, the player becomes the avatar and starts to feel like the avatar. This attachment increases the immersion of the game world and the zombie plague becomes a major threat to the player himself. The epidemic of the zombie plague becomes a global crisis in the game, because players start to avoid highly populated areas to protect themselves the same way, as we wouldn’t leave a safe spot in case of a real crisis. This however starts to highly influence the trading and results in a shortage of goods.

The combination of a high attachment to the own avatar and the resulting immersive role-playing causes even a game epidemic to reach possible real world dimensions and results of real world epidemic. The immersive gameplay becomes a simulation of our daily life and allows scientists to predict a possible outcome of such a crisis.
However, this isn’t as easy to achieve as it sounds. The deep immersion of the role-playing needs such huge virtual worlds as they exist in World of Warcraft and has to grow over time. Creating a meaningless virtual world wouldn’t create the same results during a virtual epidemic, because players wouldn’t be as attached to their avatars as in World of Warcraft. Additionally, games like World of Warcraft should be played because they make fun and because they provide an authentic environment. Tossing in a virtual epidemic without any connection to the game world could possible destroy the immersion.
Furthermore, the game industry makes their money by providing this immersive environment. Creating a virtual epidemic for real world research and giving out sensible data about the own players would be a high risk for these companies to lose the trust of their consumers.

To wrap things up, immersive virtual worlds do have a high potential to provide critical data to predict the outcome of real world dynamics. Unfortunately accessing the data is very difficult, because game companies can’t give access to sensitive data about their own players and won’t risk to destroy their game world by adding features just for science. However, if an in-game event as the above-mentioned pre-launch event takes place, scientists can do some sample observations just by playing the game.

References

[2] Lofgren, Eric T.; Fefferman, Nina H. (2007): The untapped potential of virtual game worlds to shed light on real world epidemics, in: The Lancet infectious diseases, 7 (9), pp. 625 – 629.

Teacher Gaming: Computer games as educational tools

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I present the concept of the company Teacher Gaming to take good use of computer games to use them as educational tools in classrooms. The company had its first success with MinecraftEdu and is now working on its second project: KerbalEdu.

Teacher Gaming[1], a company based in Tampere, Finland, has recently started a new project: KerbalEdu[2]. The company’s first project is MinecraftEdu[3], a project to enhance education with the engaging environment of Minecraft.
MinecraftEdu is a collaboration of educators and programmers from United States and Finland to make the game an educational tool in schools everywhere. The team is also working together with the creators of Minecraft: Mojang AB[4].

Browsing the MinecraftEdu Wiki[5] gives a good overview about possible use cases of the Minecraft projects in classrooms[6]. Pupils can discover the history of ancient civilizations, doing experiments to measure gravity or get their hands on creating topographic maps.

Minecraft is an open-world sandbox game, that allows its players to shape the world as they like. Players can explore the randomly generated world, dig deep into the earth to mine different kinds of ore or create huge buildings using all kinds of ressources of the game world. The combination of activities is vast and every kind of player can find a way to play the game that suits them best. The aspect of randomness and open-world makes every game and every experience unique to Minecraft players[7].
The above described gameplay is also very addictive to players, because they always discover a new thing they want to do. The desired break after a ore vein is mined out is postponed because an opening of a cave was discovered behind the ore vein. The exploration of a valley suddenly reveals an awesome looking mountain that needs to be explored …

Combining this engaging environment with real world educative tasks can enhance in a great way the motivation of pupils to use the freshly learned facts to proceed in the game. Additionally, pupils can ask „what if…“ questions and do their experiments without the danger of being harmed.

Recently, Teacher Gaming has started the new KerbalEdu project with the intention of bringing Kerbal Space Program[8] as a new educational tool into classrooms everywhere as, too. Apart from a special lower school price, Squad [9], the developers of KSP, will offer additional technical support.

As I’ve already discussed in previous articles, KSP is teaching its players knowledge about physics and space travel in a very fun and engaging way[10][11]. By bringing the game into classrooms, pupils can even better understand how basic principles of physics work out. They can get their own first hand impressions on how a plane stays in the air or how Newton’s laws of motion work out.

I’m really looking forward to see the results of the first implemention of KerbalEdu.

The economy of small eggs

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I highlight the fact that the economy in massively multiplayer online role-playing games works the same way as the economy in the real world. Observing these virtual environments can result in a better understanding of economy in the real world.

Due to lack of time to prepare this finding of the week, this article is a very short one. I just want to highlight an already well known fact: massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft and Runes of Magic do have dynamics that are almost analog to real world dynamics.

These game worlds do have the same economical principles as our real world. The factors of rarity and demand for a good are dictating the price for it. This becomes very obvious by observing the price development of certain goods under the aspect of being influenced by special events in the game world. Most of these goods are materials needed for crafting new items.

One good example for the event-driven price development is the price of small eggs in World of Warcraft. Small eggs are ingredients for several cooking recipes, that are mostly interesting while training the cooking skill. The resulting meals don’t have a good use for players at the highest character level. Eating food is mostly used for regaining health, mana or getting a buff of usefull stats. Small egg based food doesn’t provide high level players with a noticeable buff and even doesn’t restore much health anymore. Considering this, small eggs can be seen as useless in the current game and thus the price of them is pretty low.
However, during the christmas event in World of Warcraft, players are able to cook gingerbread cookies. These cookies are also needed to solve a quest during this event. One of the two ingredients of gingerbread cookies are small eggs. At this point, almost every player has a need for these small eggs. Around this event the price of the eggs rises significantly. Suddenly small eggs are a rare good and the demand is very high. However this high price period only lasts as long as the event is available in the game. As soon as the christmas event is over, the price of small eggs drops again until the next christmas season begins.

Another example is the price development of materials gathered in the hardest raid instances of the game. Almost every new content patch adds new crafting recipes to the game that require a special material mostly obtained in the freshly released instance. The new craftable equipment is in most cases an upgrade for the majority of the players and thus the demand for the new good is very high.
However, as soon as a new content is released, the price for the good drops because the new equipment is suddenly out-of-date. The event of a new content patch has changed the demand for the trading good and thus has a noticeable impact on the price development.

Observing the economy of MMORPGs is a good way to understand the basic principles of economy. The market reacts strongly to new events and thus becomes predictable.

Creative thinking with space goo!

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I cover the new gameplay elements of Kerbal Space Program added to the game this week. Now players are able to do science and unlock new technologies.

As I was writing this week’s article, Squad, the developers of Kerbal Space Program[1] (KSP), announced the release of a huge game update on october 16th. Version 0.22 added one major feature to the gameplay of KSP: science! I’ve already mentioned a lot how educative the space simulation is[2], so I decided to postpone my planned article this week and do a short coverage over the newest version of the game instead.

Kerbal Space Program isn’t just a sandbox game anymore. The new version of the game added the option to decide between two modes: sandbox and career. The sandbox mode works as before and is mostly unchanged. The career mode however relies mainly on the second new feature I’ve already mentioned: science!

In career mode, the player starts with only a few rocket parts available and thus can only assemble simple space crafts. To unlock all the other parts, the player has to do some science, earn science points and finally spend these points in a tech-tree. This is also helpful for new players of the game, because they aren’t overwhelmed by the huge amount of different rocket parts anymore. Now, new players gain new parts as their skill level, experience and knowledge rise.

Tech-tree

Doing science is pretty simple compared to Take on Mars[3][4]. At the beginning, the player can only give some orders to their astronauts to do some reports. This can be done while sitting in the capsule or during an extra-vehicular activity (EVA). These reports are rewarded with some science points when they are transmitted back to the space center or when the astronaut returns back home to the planets surface. Over time, the player unlocks additional science tools that allow to do different experiments. The results are also rewarded with science points when they’re transmitted to the space center or brought back to the planets surface.

EVA – Doing science!

Transmitting data isn’t as good as returning home from space with these scientific results. The player has to face a loss of data (and thus science points) if the results are just transmitted back home. However, this can be still useful, if the player needs the science points or the space craft is somewhere stuck and can’t return anymore.

Even if doing science isn’t more than just pressing a button, it still has educative and creative aspects. The solar system now consists of several different biomes. Each biome has different conditions and thus each experiment can have different results. After doing an experiment in low Kerbin orbit, the player can start to think about what will happen, if the experiment is done in a high Kerbin orbit. What if the experiment is done on another celestial body? What if … ?
Suddenly the player starts thinking creatively almost like a real researcher: „What will happen if I … ?“

Scientific results of a mission

To wrap things up, the science and tech-tree update has added some goals to the game. Each game is still unique because the approaches of building a spacecraft are endless, but new players now have some aims and can try to achieve them without feeling lost in the humongous world and vastness of space.
The combination of science and different biomes allows players to think in a creative way and to ask some „research questions“. This is also supported by the openess of the game. There aren’t missions like „Land on the Mun and bring a surface sample back home“. Instead, players have to define these missions themselves and finally try to achieve them (and thus learn about space exploration in this process).

Gaming and lifelong learning

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I present my idea of increasing the motivation for a lifelong learning by playing games that allow two different approaches the same time: a more casual and entertaining approach and a more efficient approach that requires in-depth knowledge about the presented topic.

This idea is mostly based on my own observations by playing games like Kerbal Space Program (KSP)[1]. One major goal in todays educational science is increasing the motivation for a lifelong learning. I think that by playing such simulation games, people can get interested in learning more about the presented topic. Of course, at this point of the idea, it only includes specific knowledge about a certain topic, but a more wider approach could work as well.

The game itself hasn’t to be designed to present a clear learning goal. The core part of the game should have an entertaining purpose. Playing the game still requires the player to learn the control functions and to interpret the information presented over the user interface. As I’ve already pointed out by explaining the gameplay of KSP[2], the user learns a lot important facts about the presented topic just by playing the game. If these facts are based on real world facts, then the user learns even more than just playing and understanding the game: the game-based knowledge can be directly transferred to the real world.

My own idea to increase the lifelong learning starts at the point when the player has learnt most of the game functions and feels free to explore the environment with great confident. At this point, the game should allow two different approaches. On the one side, the game has to remain entertaining. Players have to be able to complete their goals just by playing the game for fun. On the other side, the game should offer a more efficient and elegant approach, if the player has a deeper knowledge about the specific topic.

These both approaches can increase the motivation for a lifelong learning. The game at its own is entertaining and motivates users to play it. They can complete the whole game on their own by experimenting or doing things inefficiently. However, if the presented topic has enough parallels to the real world and the players are hooked up by the easy and entertaining approach, they can start to gather more knowledge about the presented topic. By accumulating more knowledge, new approaches to play the game come to their minds and they get excited by doing things in a more efficient way. Over time, users are motivated for a lifelong learning to increase their own skills in the particular game.

To make things more clear, I like to explain my idea using KSP. The space program simulation allows players to explore a solar system by executing interplanetary missions. In order to land on a different planet, the space craft has to change the sphere of influence (soi). To leave the soi of the home planet Kerbin, a certain amount of energy is needed.
At this point, two options are available. The inefficient but still entertaining way is doing the whole burn in one go. The space craft will need a bit more fuel, but be in most cases able to leave the soi of Kerbin.
The more scientific way, that on the other hand requires a deeper knowledge about rocket science, is getting advantage of the Oberth effect[3]. Players who are aware of this mechanic are able to do more efficient flights to different worlds. In order to benefit from real world parallels players are encouraged to engage oneself in learning new facts.

Obviously, this lifelong learning by gaming concept needs to be improved, but the idea can increase the motivation for a lifelong learning. The major disadvantage might be the need for real world parallels that are mostly common in simulation games. However, tycoon games could rely on real world business concepts, historical rts games could require additional knowledge about the time presented in the game.

To wrap things up, I think that games like KSP can increase the motivation for a lifelong learning by presenting a real world topic in an entertaining way. By allowing players on the one side to just have fun and on the other side to apply additional knowledge they can benefit from, players might get interested in learning new things about the topic to improve their gameplay. Due to the fact that the freshly gained insights are real world knowledge, players improve their general knowledge the same time just by playing a game.