Introduction and Preferred Research Area

My name is John Scerri and I am a student aiming to enter the gaming industry. Although I like animation and 3D modeling very much, I would like to explore further options and possibilities related to the subject.

Our first year was in Fine Arts where we learned different artistic useful skills and open our minds to new ideas. In Fine Arts, I manage to include gaming for my assignments. I designed a simulation for Visual communication and an Image Encrypting program for Digital Media. This helped me to learn and improve my skills and made me realized that games can take different forms.

In my opinion and experience of playing games, current games lack a lot of immersion. The majority of games is adapting to players so that everyone can play the game and not having a specific audience, this is making games very easy to play. At first I was going to explore how games can be more interesting and engaging and maybe aimed for specific type of players only, but then I realized that I was being biased and that the argument would lead me no were. Especially it would not contribute to society with the resources available.

The second option was to make the ultimate horror game. I was thinking of studying horror psychology and how you could make horror games more effective.

But then, one day I was talking to my girlfriend who happened to be a lecturer and she explained to me how effective games are in lectures. She added that it keeps the student focused, enjoying themselves and slack a bit from the usual routine. Apparently, she also noticed that it is much more effective when it becomes a completion, students would make an extra effort just to win the game.

At that moment, I thought why not make a game to help students learn, and I did a rough sketch/idea of a test game. Now the aim is to research and improve or change this game which will help students learn and lecturers teach. Oddly enough 1 week later our lecturer of Psychology of Play mentioned Gamification.

‘Gamification is the concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals’ (Badgeville, 2016)

Gamification is still being studied, so it would be a great way to use as research question. It is interesting, on subject, contributes to society, doesn’t require huge expanses and I could design a test game to experiment and find better ways of teaching trough games. The only down side is Time.

Since games take time to develop I will first talk to my lecturer and see how much time we have available and if the product must be finished.

At this point my research question is: Can we make engaging games that help students to practice or master key skills?

I highlighted ‘engaging’ because usually games such as crosswords, hangman, board race, two truths and a lie and other games do not keep you motivated even after the game ends. Instead I would like to create an engaging game as for example a role-playing game where you will level up get new items and attacks while still learning. The game will be ongoing all the time, when you are not competing with others you can still practice at home. This I think that will keep the motivation high.

To do so I would need to include more questions, and research:

• What age of students is this aimed for?

• What type of game/games genre?

• Would it make a difference in which part of the world the game is played?

• Are students gaming preferences different from students in other countries?

• Or because games are so much common, popular and easy to acquire, are there are similarities?

I think that this should be the start of the research. These questions will first help me to see if games are truly effective and how I can influence multiple personalities and age groups with games.

Whit this survey I might be able to establish a genre for the game that is more likely to attract multiple ages, or specify genres for curtain age groups. I can also search for existing statistics worldwide on the internet.

Badgeville, 2016. Gamification. [Online] Available at: https://badgeville.com/wiki/Gamification [Accessed 21 October 2016].