Rage-Quit - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 76

Cheat Sheet
Here is the cheat sheet of important items from this chapter; their
definitions are given as they apply to games.
Arousal: One half of a method used to plot emotions in 2D space.
Essentially, arousal illustrates how actively you are involved in
something, or how much energy you are spending performing it.
Boredom: There is more to boredom than meets the eye.
Psychologically, boredom occurs in a task when skill level
greatly outweighs challenge, and valence and arousal are both
low. In this case, players disengage because nothing is hold-
ing their attention. Occurs when high skill players are forced
through tutorial levels, when no options to employ skills are
present, or when players are simply not having fun.
Cognitive Apprenticeship: A theory of instruction that allows for
“borrowing” of schema from an expert using modeling and
scaffolding. It is modeled after traditional apprenticeship rela-
tionships. In games, this often takes the form of an expert AI
that players are expected to emulate.
Flow: A state of “optimal experience” in which the player is learning
and verifying that learning through performance objectives in
near perfect harmony. An enjoyable experience, flow is char-
acterized by loss of time perception, near perfect concentra-
tion, and exemplary performance on in-game objectives.
Frustration: An (often) undesirable emotional state resulting from
an excess of arousal and low valence. Csikszentmihayli also
believed that skill level played a part, in that a person with
high arousal, low valence, and low skill level would be frus-
trated. Often occurs when players are not clearly conveyed
goals and outcomes, controls are bungled, and so on. This is
the result of a disconnect between the cognitively desired out-
come and what is happening on screen.
Instructional Scaffolding: A method of instruction whereby sup-
port is offered at first, and then slowly removed as mastery is
gained. An example might be helping students through prob-
lems until they get the gist, and then removing that support
to verify that learning has occurred.