Rage-Quit - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 62

to further and further experience something as we are more and more
able to see it to its end. This is easy to rationalize with common sense;
the more marathons a runner does, it seems like, the more he or she
tends to keep doing. To borrow directly from Dewey on this point:
The gist of the psychology of interest may, accordingly, be stated as
follows: An interest is primarily a form of self-expressive activity—that
is, of growth that comes through acting upon nascent tendencies. *
This means that in order to foster interest, we must personally see
growth from nascent activities. The “nascent” activity here in game
design is of course picking up the controller and seeing something
interesting happen on the device, on the screen, on the game board,
or whatever you like. Once we see a personal trajectory of growth,
increasing skill, and ability to perform more outcomes, interest is
naturally developed. It is therefore the job of the tutorial to make
certain that we are always learning, always growing, in order to foster
continued interest in the game. This is not dissimilar from Aristotle,
who told us that it is the object of appetite which originates movement, †
which is to say that our desires (to play and learn, in this case) guide us
to continue moving, presumably in-game. It is well documented that
Aristotle was an active Angry Birds player.
Dewey also realized that artificially invoking motivation was likely
impossible or, at the very least, extremely difficult. The concept of
“making something interesting” was a difficult one for Dewey to
understand. I'll relate this to my own teaching for a moment—my
students often eventually stumble onto the topic of serious games;
that is, games intended for a primary purpose other than amuse-
ment. Inevitably, my students attempt to create a serious game for an
assignment or two, and often they do terribly. Why? Because students
attempt to take subject matter first, and then apply interest second.
I know of no more demoralizing doctrine—when taken literally—than
the assertion […] that after subject matter has been selected, then the
teacher should make it interesting. ‡
* Interest and effort in education, Chapter 2.
† De Anima , III (10). Classical literature of Aristotle, mmm, mmm game design!
‡ Interest and effort in education , Chapter 2. Your print version may vary in page
number.