Reading 03

                                    Reflection

An image of the notes I wrote while reading the Articles.

Hi everyone! For this week's reading task, we were instructed to set up our research about the topic we chose for our Writing project. We will also have to create annotated bibliographies for the first three articles, books, or documents that we have discovered as well as writing a short summary. At first, I found it challenging to start doing my research as I do not have enough effective keywords that I could use. Therefore, I only found few books that I thought would be useful for my chosen topic. 

Before starting this project, I was confident that I had enough knowledge about the Hierarchy of challenges in gameplay. However, I was wrong as this topic is very broad and it was difficult for me to find the specific articles and documents that I needed. I decided to do everything again from the start where I look up useful keywords that would work for the topic and I also tried to watch some videos discussing the effects of challenges in games which I think really helped me to learn and collect useful words.

The first document that I have read is called "Exploring Online Game Players' Flow Experiences and Positive Affect". This document is around 9 pages long and I have only read up to the second page. I think that this document will be useful for my topic as the whole experiment is about the effects of a violent and nonviolent on online game players. They also based their research on the Four types of Flow conditions which I will be talking about more in the next paragraphs. The second document that I have read is called "Challenging games helps students learn: An empirical study on engagement, flow, and immersion in game-based learning". The article is substantially long thus have only read the first two pages. Lastly, I read a sample pdf of a chapter from the book called "A Gameplay Model for Understanding and Designing Games". Even though I could not read the whole chapter of this book, I was able to learn a few things about the adaptive difficulty in video games.

Annotated Bibliographies

Yu-Tzu, C., Sunny, S.J.L, Chao Yang, C. and Eric Zhi-Feng, L. (2011) 'Exploring Online Game Players' Flow Experiences and Positive Affect'.TOJET the Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 10 (1).

In this article, the authors Yu-Tzu Chiang, Dr. Sunny S.J. Lin, Chao-Yang Cheng, and Dr. Eric Zhi-Feng LIU conducted two studies examining online game player's flow experiences and their positive affect. They also based their studies on the four types of Flow conditions as flow, boredom, anxiety, and apathy, as it will be also determined by the level of challenges and skills. The results of the path analysis proposed that violent online games may have a significant but indirect effect on positive affect overflow experience mediation. From the introduction of the article, they stated that online game playing has expanded rapidly. 

They were also talking about the Flow theory in which referring to someone who is in the state of focus on an activity, with individuals perceiving a balance between skills and challenges. In the first study that they organized to test these hypotheses, they compared the effects of two games given by the authors, on violent and nonviolent games. They then collected the data of the participants' flow experiences. For the second part of their study, they conducted a survey from a group of college game players about their flow experiences and positive affect in a violent and nonviolent game.

Hamari, J., Shernoff, D.J., Rowe, E., Coller, B., Asbell-Clarke, J., and Edwards, T. (2016) 'Challenging Games Help Students Learn: An Empirical Study on Engagement, Flow and Immersion in Game-Based Learning'. Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 54 170-179.

In this article, the authors investigated the impact of flow focusing on challenges, skill, engagement, and immersion in studying learning game-based learning environments. They also stated that being skilled in a game did not affect learning directly instead of by increasing their engagement in the game. For the design of educational games, they found the results stating that the challenge of the game should be able to keep up with the learners improving their skills and learning continuously in game-based learning environments. As I was reading the article, I found this very useful citation about McGonigal (2011) observation:

" In a good computer or video game, you're always playing on the very edge of your skill level, always on the brink of falling off, you feel the urge to climb back on. That's because there is virtually nothing as engaging as this state of working at the very limits of your ability. (p.24)"

Kumar, A., Etheredge, J. and Boudreaux, A. (2012) 'Understanding and Implementing Adaptive Difficulty Adjustment in Video Games' In Algorithmic and Architectural Gaming Design: Implementation and Development, Anonymous: IGI Global, 82-106.

This sample pdf document of a chapter from the book introduces the different types of ideas evolving around the adaptive difficulty in video games. They also talked about that in order to make the game interesting for a wider range of players, they must provide the right amount of challenge for their skill level because if the game became too hard/too easy to accomplish will become frustrating for them. 

The authors also declared that one of the main challenges in regard to the difficulty is the subjective factor that interacts between the players and the challenges. The distinguished difficulty is not also a static property: as it changes with time when the players learn the game skills.