Household Gaming Pt2: Mouth Health

I know in modern life games have a reputation when it comes to kids.  They are entertainment and distraction.  They’re good at it because they are often well designed to offer two very important things. The first is gratification.  The second is presentation.  You grab a kid with presentation.  You hook him with gratification.  It’s easy to do, because kids will eat up whatever input you put in front of them.  They are hungry for stimulation, and it’s a shame that we only let our corporate overlords profit from that.   The scope of the games is limited only to the participant’s willingness to operate within the bounds of the rules they determine.  Let’s be specific though.

Every game needs an ultimate goal.  Usually it is simply the continued entertainment of the participants, but in our case the goal can be more poignant to the health of the household and the participants.  For our example, let’s create a game that speaks specifically to health.  This is the trickiest of parts, because it’s easy to get myopic when it comes to setting our overall objective.  I think most of us would think that setting a very general objective would be a mistake, but to me the best games are the ones where you don’t necessarily know everything going in.  Discovering the rules and boundaries of the game are sometimes the most exciting and memorable.  For our game we will set the overall objective as being simply: Maintaining a healthy household. 

I can hear you saying that this goal is too big, too ambiguous, and too undefined.  How can you hold a child, or an adult for that matter, responsible for their own health?  Disease and defect are often things that happen with no forewarning or prescience.  I really can’t think of any bigger nightmare in a parent’s life then telling your child they have cancer, except maybe telling them that and that they lost the health game.  If you are asking yourselves these questions then pat yourself on the back, because these are just the kind of things we need to define in order to lay down the guidelines of our game.

I say guidelines, because we really don’t want to set concrete rules.  The best part of our extremely vague objective is that it allows us a lot of leeway in defining how we complete our vague objective.  Our initial level of guidelines should loosely define the nature of our objective.  How do we define health in our household?  I’m sure that immediately some of you jump right to numbers to define health.  It’s how our society tends to define it.  Cholesterol, weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, and even neural activity are thrown at us in these big diagnostic descriptions, but these are things that peripheral to our objective.  We don’t want to use these very firm realities to define our game objectives, but instead focus on more household activities that will lead to the completion of our objective.  We specifically want to look for things that are already happening in our house that meet our objective.  An easy one is brushing teeth.  Even that’s probably to specific, cause we’ve immediately left out flossing and other kinds of dental care I’m omitting because I’m bad at dental care.  So let’s just call it mouth health.

I’m sure some of you have immediately started sketching out poster board and sparkles to make charts and I’m sure for some, these kinds of displays will be crucial to making the whole thing come together.  It’s not required to make it work though.  If you feel like you can keep the objectives and the goals ambiguous enough you can also keep the progress along the goal to completion as ambiguous.  For the most part I’m assuming that this approach is something that parents can use with their children.  The participants don’t necessarily need the direct feedback or firm information on their progress.  I think probably as the age of the participant increases the more information they are going to be interested in.  A game like this can exist as a simple agreement between the participants with one or more of the participants being the score keeper for the game.  Someone does need to be able to tell everyone how they are doing as they progress through the game.  That person can also be a participant.  It’s probably important that if you are a parent trying to engage your family with games that you also participate in the game.  Remember the rules don’t need to be limited to your children and don’t need to be constrained by predetermine ideas.  You can constantly innovate and expand the concept of the game. 

The thing to remember is that your goal is so ambiguous that you never can really declare victory.  Gamers will tell you that the best games are the ones that never end.  World of Warcraft is a great example.  The game is constantly evolving so that the same actions are always resulting in new objectives and rewards.  In our example we’ve determined that one of our objectives will be mouth health.  We can track this simply by taking the time to speak to the participants and offer them some kind of indication of how they are doing toward completing their current objective.  The overall objective is the health of their mouths, but that’s obviously more the goal of the moderator of the game, and not something that’s really going to motivate the players.  To get them involved we want to be both engaged by the completion of the goal and the reward for that completion. 

The reward for any given objective needs to be equivalent to the engagement of the player necessary for them to complete the tasks of the objective.  If your players don’t like brushing their teeth, then you’re going to need a pretty big carrot to motivate them to do it.  Of course like most of the things in this method those rewards don’t necessarily need to be real.  There is a lot of success with offering rewards that are just evidence of achievement.  Creating a blog for your players and posting their completed activities toward a specific goal, which is reinforced with positive response from other participants in the game are sometimes enough to keep player interested.  For example if you player brushes their teeth every day that week then they can earn an “achievement” that can be posted onto the family Facebook page or blog that allows them to track their accomplishments and show them to other participants and gauge their progression against those same participants.  Of course we don’t really want these to be about competition, but when dealing with siblings and family-members things will tend to evolve in that direction any way.  Eventually though these more insubstantial rewards will only get you so far.  Some kind of physical reward is probably necessary, but the level of the objectives that you enter that final reward into is up to you.  If you take a look at the video at the bottom of the post you can see that creating short term goals in the face of immediate reward is counterproductive.  You can set it at a level where the completion of multiple objectives is the only physical reward so that at the end of the game, there is a prize to be gained.  In our example though the overall health of the family is objective for the participants as a group, but there should still be some individual rewards for the participants.  These rewards can take many forms but should maintain the point of the game in them.  Don’t have a game about health with a reward that takes everyone out for greasy pizza at the end.  For example the video below also demonstrates the problems of the immediate want versus the long term need.  It’s incredibly difficult for our minds to put focus on the long term in the face of the short term gratification.  Do your best to not use the ultimate goal as a deterrent against immediate gratification.  The short term rewards need to be used to counteract the immediate gratification of going against the rules.  Don’t use a family vacation to prevent your kids from eating to much candy.  You need to offer them something immediate and equivalent within the confines of the game to match the gratification offered by the consumption of sweets.

The last idea we want to talk about is failure.  What do you do when things start to go sideways?  The key to our game is that we don’t actually want anyone to fail. We may delay the receipt of a reward, but if our participants fail we need to take a long look at our game and remove the opportunities within it for our players to fail.  If we do reach a fail state, a quick reevaluation and changing of objectives might be necessary but should be done transparent to the player.  Negative reinforcement just doesn’t work.  Failing at something is no real way to learn good habits.  Better to work through the failures and reach the end of the game.  If your children can’t seem to maintain brushing their teeth, it’s not necessarily a character fault of your child.  You just need to find the right conditions to motivate them to complete the task.

That’s the real point of all of this.  You can’t expect a person to do something that’s good for them just because it’s good for them.  Human beings just don’t work that way.  We need systems in our lives that reinforce the positive activities of our lives and make the bad ones less advantageous and immediately gratifying.  I’ve put a lot of ideas and thoughts into this one, but our example is still pretty weak.  Next post I’ll work on specifically creating a game that fits “mouth health”. 

Less thought and more pictures. 

Remember, I’m not trying to convince you.  Just get you thinking.

Deferred gratification:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment

Household Gaming Pt1: Childhood

This post blew up on me.  A big part of this blog is me not only presenting some ideas about how we can improve our lives, but I also felt the need to document a bit of my own background, in an attempt to explain where all this stuff come from.  Hopefully there's something of value here.  Part 1 of this post is mostly background and explanation.  Part 2 will be a practicle example of how the ideas presented here can be used wherever you are.

Today I want to go back to the beginning.  All the way back.  I want to discuss childhood.  This topic is something I’m sure a lot of people spend their whole lives thinking about.  Cursing their parents, or blessing them.  Talking about should of been or could of been.  None of that is going to be addressed in the next few paragraphs.  I like to think more about systems.  Specifically, the systems that exist in the common everyday childhood environment that I remember as a kid are occasionally on my mind.  To put the systems into context I will need to give you some insight into the environment that I grew up in.

Let’s stick to the first ten or so years of existence.  I grew up in the south; the deep south.  What few memories I have of the time are rather idyllic.  I recall hot summers and moderate winters, existing mostly in the times between school terms of my first few years of education.  The south is a place of big lots and small dreams.  The yards were huge, but the families were contained.  The population was small but the town was smaller.  Even so there are rules to any society and ours was no exception.  Every household had its chores and responsibilities.  Being the local minister my father was not one to work out in the field, but his days were kept busy dealing with the everyday dramas of small town life.  My mother kept herself mostly close to the house dealing with two mad rugrats loose in the wilds of southern Mississippi.  I remember being home schooled for my kindergarten education along with my brother.  Almost immediately I had an intense dislike of lecturing and sitting for too long in one spot.  Mind you video games eventually cured me of that, probably not to my benefit.  I’ll take the time here to apologize to my mom and all the teachers that followed.  I’m sure some of you took my in attention and surly attitude as a personal attack.  The truth being that if I’m sitting for too long my mind starts to wander.  I don’t have ADHD or anything so clinical, but its taken some hard lessons to learn to pay attention when something is important.  I’m still trying to figure out how to stay awake during any extended lecture (they call them meetings now).  I guess I’ll apologize to my Dad now to.  I know I missed more than a few sermons asleep at the back of the sanctuary.  I do a little better in the corporate world but probably only because the speaker is close enough to nudge me back awake when I start to drift.  It’s with this mix of pleasant memories and lack of attention that I attempt now to describe the systems of a child’s world.

For the most part a child is limited in its interactions within the global system of the household it’s brought up in.  It exists inside a system with what is hopefully a collective of individuals, whose goal it is to see not only the collective, in this case the family, but also the individuals within that collective thrive and succeed according to the values and goals of the collective.  Unfortunately, the rules of the households don’t always hold to the ultimate success of the collective but to the temporary and immediate needs of the individuals.  That is to say, the rules that shape a child’s life are often more about the convenience of the household then about the ultimate success of a child or to a particular goal for the collective.  This isn’t a judgment of the modern family, merely an admission that my dream for the efficient family can only exist inside the fantasy world of my system’s design.  Any good plan will only last up to the minute you actually implement it.  At some point the real world will intervene and show you all the variables you didn’t take into account.  When I talk about the designs of human interaction it has to be with the understanding that as soon as you introduce a human being to that system, it will no longer operate in the ideal you created for it.  There’s no planning for drug or alcohol addiction.  There’s no clever work around for a child with a cognitive or development disorder.  What I’m suggesting here can only be approached as the foundation for an experiment, and certainly not a blueprint for the perfect family. Certainly just the fact that my education was not in anything approaching child psychology or family development strips everything I’m going to say of any professional credibility.  This is only me taking some concepts I’ve learned about and extrapolating them into my own should have been and could have been moments.  That was a long and self-deprecating path to saying perhaps families could benefit from some clear cut goals and changes to their household specifically in order to achieve those goals.  My favorite way of doing that is through the introduction of games.

Games can make us better.

I want to begin with something that is very foundational to the rest of ideas that I’m going to be writing about in the immediate future.  I have spent a lot of time regretting what I have spent my time doing in my life.  Contrary to most people I put my professional life fairly high on that list.  The reason for that is simple emotional involvement.  When I’m at work I am never emotionally involved in the activities going on and have a lot of difficulty determining the value of that work.  This difficulty, some would say weakness, leads to trouble trying to put energy into something that I have no interest or emotional connection to.  What that translates into is loss of productivity, distraction, and bad performance reviews.  Now thanks to some awesome conversations I’ve had with people I’ve learned that huge part of that problem is on me.  As a person you have to take responsibility for living in the world that is around you.  It’s nice to think that you can change the world.  It’s a great ideal for someone to commit their life to change the world.  It’s the responsibility of a real adult person to do what it takes to exist in that world until you come up with idea to change the world, and then have the energy and money to do it.  A shorter way of saying that would be; Even Jesus needed a tax collector.  That’s a bit dark when I write it out.  What I mean is that Jesus had an ideal and a mission in that world, but to make it work part of his plan required funding, which was Judas’ responsibility.  In the end it was the love of money that destroyed Judas, and conversely brought about one of the most important “transitions” in the ministry/life of Jesus.  That means that with all the talk I’m about to commit to paper for you about games, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop working and commit myself to World of Warcraft.  That’s a pretty heavy handed way of getting to my point. (Also I’ve compared myself to Jesus there and what kind of ridiculous arrogant rant am I on here?  I assure you I will stop talking about myself eventually)

The majority of time that I truly value in my life that doesn’t involve either my Family (capitalizing family there so it covers more than just my blood relatives) or the activities that I participated in with my family come from time I’ve spent playing games.  This extends beyond the video games that dominate my current fascinations, to the group games like Tag, Hide and Seek, and board games like Pictionary and Boggle, which is fun to say and type.  I have always found it easier to operate inside the easy rules and guidelines that these games create.  My favorite part of games is that they offer very short clearly defined goals with no intrinsically undefined aspects to them.  You often don’t have very awkward social interactions and when you do they are short and easily shortened as you can just leave with little consequence.  I mean unless you are playing Pictionary with your Mom which I have found just doesn’t end well.  (Certainly not a consequence of my Mother’s involvement, merely an expression of our mutual love of games, specifically winning games)

Thankfully, scientists have been talking to people like me, or perhaps have had similar experiences to my own and have been looking at adding a layer of gaming to everyday human existence.  The idea being that the everyday human being has a lot of trouble operating in the world as it exists today.  The rules of the world that we operate in is not tailored to work for us.  The rules are created not to lead a person to a solution or a result; they are created to limit action and interaction.  We don’t approach the creation of HR rules and business tools with specific results in mind, only a task.  That is a difference between the way that games work, and the way that the world operates.  I don’t need to show you why the creation of rules and systems that don’t have results in mind don’t work.  Every time you go to the DMV you see a system that was constructed only to move people into the system and not with the purpose of getting you out.  Once you are in the system there is not reward system for getting you out in an efficient manner, in fact they spend much more time on crating the experience to be as non-confrontational as possible so that there are as few interactions with the people that will eventually try to carry out the task you want to complete.  It treats the experience as if you and the employees of the DMV aren’t trying to accomplish the same thing.  It actively dissuades you from communicating with them by offering a gate keeper at the front door who gives you a number based on your intended task.  There is no aspect that encourages the person on the other side of the desk to work with you, only process you.  A game, a good game mind you, will identify when players are competing and when they are operating on the same goal within the same system.  The idea being that all games are better experience when working cooperatively, or even better, when working cooperatively against another person.  Why not repurpose the DMV with a goal driven system that is not only pitting you against other people in the DMV, but teams you with your DMV employee against the other combinations of employee and customer.  The implications of that are rather huge and startling to contemplate but they lead to several key points that will guide this Thought as we try to apply it to the larger human systems.

1. What happens when you don’t operate inside the system?  Ie consequences to rule braking
2. What are the real tangible results that we can expect out of this system and how they apply to working within the first question?  Ie I want to earn something important enough that I don’t risk the consequences of question 1.
3. Where does competition exceed efficiency? Is there a point where competition is being had for competitions sake and not because it is enhancing the experience of the game?
4. How deep do/can these systems go? Does this become intrusive when it enters my home and dictates how I live and not just how I work?

These are the thoughts that are going to guide us into the next part of the Thought Experiment when I start to flesh out my own personal experience in the human systems our society has created for us, and how I think they can be improved.  Hopefully after this lengthy sum of text you’ll see some links to videos of really smart people talking about this topic so that it doesn’t just seem like I’m spouting a rant from lower quarters out into a wind storm. 

The goal here is not to convince you, just to get you thinking.

Videos:

Dave Perry in 2006 introducing me to this idea: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_perry_on_videogames.html

Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell talks about game design after Facebook, if you are as old or older then me it will likely blow your mind or make you dread the future.  http://www.g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-the-box-presentation/

Jane McGonigal talks about making a better future through game design at a recent TED conference: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Ali Carr-Chellman talks about engadging with boys in a new education environment at a different TED conference:  http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ali_carr_chellman_gaming_to_re_engage_boys_in_learning.html

At some point I'll figure out how to embed these videos but not tonight.

The first of many....I hope.

The purpose of this section is to provide an outlet for ideas.  I’m constantly immersing myself in the world of technology and my brain will run amuck.  Now it can run amuck all over the internet thanks to this website.  The last time I had a personal webpage it had angelfire in the url so I’ve got a bit of a backlog to get through.  The old web page from way back in the day of 2001, ancient I know, was a random collections of writings and pictures I made using Microsoft Paint.  Let’s hope this doesn’t get as bad as all that. 

I’ve been putting this off for months.  I’ve had the url since like February of 2011 and the square space design has been finished for like six weeks.  I’m notorious for having great ideas that go nowhere.  I’ve got like three chapters of four different books floating around various devices with no real impetus to complete them.  One of the things I’m hoping to accomplish here is to get some regular writing going on.  I’ve got a personal journal lying around somewhere for my day to day stuff, but I always feel like I’m wasting my own time writing to myself about whatever the new tech bug in my head is.  Now thanks to technology I can yell out into the electric void and see if anything comes back.  Let’s hope this isn’t just the opening to a Stephen King novel.

Ok, I’m starting to feel it.  Yay it’s a groove and we are in it.  There’s comments below if you would like to respond to any of these mad ramblings.