Abstract
This chapter will discuss Gamification and video games, analyzing their peculiarities. After a brief historical introduction to the disciplines that intertwine the design of Gamification applications, such as User interaction, User Interface, and Game Design, authors analyze the real areas in which Gamification can be applied with verifiable results, citing scientific studies and examples of applications. We will see then how from the video games Toca Boca for children, to the “tourist” version of Assassin's Creed Oringis presented at the British Museum, up to the latest interactive applications for business training, the techniques of the game are exceeding the playful areas to make more deep human interaction with the real surrounding it.
TopUser Interactivity As A Language To Understand
With the emergence of the gaming industry as an entertainment giant, which has undermined and transformed the concept of play that has always been linked to childhood and sports, expanding the concept of gaming to Experience also and often addressed only to adults, we see planting the first seeds for a new discipline that will be intertwined with the aforementioned: Gamification, which will be able to mix user interaction and user interface with the language and dynamics of the game, exploiting the new language used by video games together with the mechanics of the Game Design, combining the use of technological means and the learning of notions or procedures the entertainment of the game.
Here, we explore how Gamification can be useful in the pedagogical area.
Through Gamification, which can make use of different ways for the medium (based on, for example, the twelve intelligences theorized by Gardner), we can transmit a skill or a notion, so that the subject can experience learning in a more personalized way, allowing him to experiment several times and find different ways to solve an experience that could arise in the real world, with the benefit of the protected environment that the game experience creates, so as to put into practice solutions applicable later in the experience daily.
The educational apps of Toca Boca are an example of “learning by playing”, in fact, through the mechanics of the game, the child acquires knowledge through a pedagogical and engaging use of the technological medium, stimulating the imagination and bringing it closer to the world and its dynamics. Scratch is another exquisite example, a site that allows you to learn how to program by combining pieces of code as if they were pieces of a puzzle, where the child (or a novice programming student) understands how to connect programming blocks and how to structure a function thanks to the intuitive connections and colors that help in classifying the code according to its purpose.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Augmented Reality: It is a superposition of digital data in the real world, providing the user with real-time contextual information in the surrounding environment, creating, as explained in the previous chapter, a useful interaction in the analogic world.
Videogame Universe: It is not dictated by the laws of physics, but by the most important sphere of the rules of the game that determines both the approach between the player and the game, and the ability of the game itself to communicate through the actions that the player must (or try) to accomplish: the gameplay.
Cyberspace: A virtual environment in which people interact with each other. This is the place in which online games occur.
Gamification: Mix user interaction and user interface with the language and dynamics of the game, exploiting the new language used by video games together with the mechanics of the Game Design, combining the use of technological means and the learning of notions or procedures the entertainment of the game.
Mixed-Reality: It is the combination of Virtual Reality, Augmented Virtuality, Augmented Reality.
Virtual Reality: It is the one in which the user finds himself in a world completely simulated by the stranger from physical Reality, completely immersing him in a simulated environment that replaces the senses of sight and hearing with the real ones created in an exclusive interaction with cyberspace.