Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
From a creativity-relevant skills perspective our analysis indicates that overall
frequency of players engaging in these types of activities were quite low. Areas
identified as important in facilitating creativity-relevant skills included providing
greater opportunities for players to take a wide focus when engaging in gameplay.
This may be achieved through allowing activity that is future-oriented, letting players
work through problems that require more than one step and facilitating interactions
that enable players to develop their own goals. Problem solving needs to involve a
player striving to achieve an outcome through overcoming challenging obstacles.
A tension has been identified between providing an experience that encourages
striving (creativity-relevant skills) and producing gameplay where the player finds it
straight-forward to understand what they are required to do and how they might go
about doing it (domain-relevant skills). It appears that the ideal conditions for
creativity are achieved within challenging environments where objectives are clear
and consequences for exploration are positive. Given the focus within puzzle games
on logical and conceptual challenges, experiences where players are able to develop
their own goals or sub-goals is limited. Design for creativity involves opening up
rule-sets, broadening the ways goals might be achieved and providing opportunities
for non-goal directed behavior.
3.2
Analysis of Gameplay
The player's experience of the game derives directly from their interaction with the
game environment and it is this environment that we analyze to determine where
differences in creative activity occur. We apply the Seven Stages of Action [10],
which details the process of executing and evaluating actions to achieve a particular
goal, to moment-to-moment gameplay activity. Gameplay consists of the challenges
and actions that a game offers the player and central to the experience is how the
player addresses these challenges to achieve game objectives [1]. The three key
components of game activity - goals and challenges, action and interaction, and
interpretation -can be mapped to Norman's seven stages of action. Expert analysis of
Portal 2, I-Fluid and Braid provides insight into how each game provides challenges
that players must address to achieve goals, the effectiveness of the actions and
interactivity available, and the quality the feedback presented so that players can
assess their progress [8].
To determine how the components of game activity influence creative potential we
firstly examined the expert review of Portal 2. Given that Portal 2 performed well in
the task motivation and domain-relevant skills categories for creative potential, it is
useful to identify the game activity components in which it performed better than
Braid and I-Fluid. Analysis demonstrated that Portal 2 most effectively provided
mechanisms that allow the player to succeed at particular challenges. Expert review
found that the game challenges effectively allowed for cognitive and logical thinking
and strategic planning, that there were multiple types of challenges available that
players could approach in their own way and at their own pace, the level of challenge
was well matched to player skill level, and that narrative mechanisms guided
challenges and supported progress towards goals. Portal 2 did well at offering players
