Game Based Lifelong Learning - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 344

as players of the same team compare their stats,
forming a sub-game out of the overall game.
A third and very crucial factor is the challeng-
ing role of being in charge . Game worlds have a
high potential to simulate the notion of control and
ownership to the player. This is especially notable
in role play scenarios, where the identification
with the game character is fostered. However,
consequences remain in-game and have no ef-
fect on the player in terms of real risks, which
therefore gives players more freedom to try out
different tactics and develop their own ways to
solve problems.
Finally and most obviously the “game con-
tent” itself is an important factor. If a certain
innovativeness and aestheticism is warranted,
the gaming experience becomes more attractive
and the player enjoys exploration (Kiili, 2005).
These simple additions to any activity are
powerful ways to motivate participants in exciting
new ways. However, in an organisational context,
these factors may introduce additional challenges
for many medium to large enterprises that pos-
sess a varied workforce in terms of age, gender,
originating cultures and professional abilities.
There are definitely those within each workforce
who are threatened by the idea of competing with
their co-workers, especially in a learning scenario.
Maddock, (1999) states that mostly males under
the age of 50 enjoy pure competition, while other
groups either prefer competing with their own
performances, or, as we theorize, working and
competing in teams. In a team scenario those who
do not necessarily believe they are the best, may
still play an important role.
Game-based learning has the potential of in-
troducing fun and engaging ways for improving
personal performance. Facilitators of game-based
learning activities in a lifelong learning scenario
should take care that the patterns they introduce
to their learning scenarios to embed them with
gaming properties, do not cause participants to feel
pressured or intimidated, rather mildly stimulated.

In the text above we briefly mentioned indica-
tors and the important role they play in providing
one of the basic elements required for gaming: a
scoring system. Scoring systems may however be
constructed in a variety of ways, ranging from a
simple dichotomy, where a participant is either
successful or not, to the more common “points”
system, where a linear number denotes perfor-
mance, to the most complex scoring systems,
where a score is given in any number of differ-
ent areas of game-play. Examples of these more
elaborate scoring systems are, for instance, the
ones encountered in many strategy games, where
players are awarded a number of points in areas
such as resources owed, resources exploited
appropriately, unit production, unit destruction,
building production, and destruction. A very
elaborate system of scoring each match is being
deployed in many multiplayer action games, such
as Halo 3 (Piggyback, 2007). In Halo 3 different
scoring systems apply depending on the type of
game being played, but as well as each player
receiving a general score for performance based
on the number of times a player destroyed another
player, there are many rewards to be achieved,
and after a match is completed players are able
to review and reflect upon their “kills/deaths”
ratio, their accuracy or favoured weapons, and
even which opponents they most often clashed
with successfully or unsuccessfully.
It is a fact that humans give objects value based
on their scarcity, so a reward for an “excellent”
performance should be hard enough to achieve
for it to be valuable, while not being unattainable
and thus demotivating. A prime example of the
relationship between scarcity and value is that
of a gemstone: its value is directly linked to its
scarcity, to the fact that not everyone can obtain
it. The same is true for virtually anything, points
or rewards in a gaming scenario are only worth
the effort involved with acquiring them: the lesson
we learn is that even if a reward has no real value,
it will be valued simply due to its scarcity. In fact
it may be argued that when turning real-world te-