This is the fifth iteration of my project idea. Wow. Previous version: The potential for emergent games to foster curiosity
The quote “What we play is life” is attributed to Louis Armstrong, and suggests that the way we approach and engage with activities, whether they are games, hobbies, or even daily tasks, reflects our attitude towards life itself.
Awesomeness alert: Ricardo Henriques Correia
Starting at the beginning of this new iteration is Ricardo Henriques Correia at the Biodiversity Unit of the University of Turku, Finland. In a nutshell, what he really gets is the human-nature-digital troika (any word-of-three would do but I like the horse connection.) His group BISON is about contributing toward finding solutions for sustainable futures that can benefit people and nature. I was busy bulk emailing people a paragraph of what I want to do, using the emergent games to foster curiosity project description. I was at the point of just sending out dandelion seeds into the world, as I call it, not expecting a reply. He replied, asked for more info, which lead to me dumping a super long email, not knowing what to include or not, trying to make it more legible by adding headings but feeling super embarrassed, and the man read it all! And asked for more!
He was not the first to say that the Marie Curie fellowships may not be the best route for this, because they are interested in funding research, not building games. But he was the first to suggest specific alternative funding routes. He was also the first to read everything I wrote without his eyes glazing over. I said I do want to try for the Marie Curie fellowships, because I do want a rigorous academic grounding for the game, and the money’s good. He said he’ll support it, and man has he stepped up to do that. Constructive critique to the max! I will forever be grateful for his guidance, whatever happens.
The big why: Building levers towards societal transformation
The first thing Ricardo shared was an article by Kai M. A. Chan et al, who he respects a lot. The article is called “Levers and leverage points for pathways to sustainability” and Ricardo explained that this is the Big Why for why I want to do this – if I agree? I didn’t immediately get it, took me about two more emails before I read the thing, to be honest, because I thought it was going to be more blah blah. I was wrong. Chan is a BIG thinker; his work is about understanding how social-ecological systems can be transformed to be both better and wilder. The levers article makes the connection between people’s insides and what they do, for example “Consumption patterns are a fundamental driver of material extraction, production and flows, but they are in turn driven by worldviews and notions of good quality of life.”Overall the article argues that we cannot look at things in isolation. It provides the basis for the project; the big why, but it’s not my favourite kind of article because it leaves the “ok, then what?” out, but it looks like Chan shared that frustration because later articles directly address that.
Understanding Why People Do What They Do so we can influence their behaviour
Then Chan went further, in an article co-authored by Harold Eyster and Terre Satterfield, titled “Why People Do What They Do: An Interdisciplinary Synthesis of Human Action Theories”. Here they unpack the theories that influence people’s worldviews and values. They integrated 86 human action theories into eight metatheories: Independent Self, Independent Structure, Cognitive Needs, Psychological Needs, Communal Needs, Economic Needs, Interdependent, and Top-Down. Figures 3 and 4 explain this concisely, and it is the Interdependent theory I want to focus on in this project. While other metatheories assume that input/independent variables cause (but are not in turn caused by) changes in a dependent/response/outcome variable, the interdependent metatheory investigates interactions among multiple drivers. In my context, I think the other metatheories link to gamification, while the interdependent one goes deeper into (emergent) game design itself.
Influencing people’s behaviour through games; investigating player motivations
Ricardo found another article that more explicitly links the need to look at player types in “games for good”. Authored by Blake et al, “How commercial video games engage with biodiversity and conservation: a systematic map of literature” concludes with a strong recommendation that “researchers investigate player differences, observed behaviours and how these change, and long term effects for future work.” However, recent research in Games Culture studies suggests that study into player motivation should shift focus from establishing player types and instead investigate the reasons why people pursue particular gameplay experiences over others. McKechnie-Martin et al does this in a paper titled “A Meta-Ethnography of Player Motivation in Digital Games: The 28 Dimensions of Play”. It’s a huge piece of work that ends up in a gorgeous Table 1, and updates Nick Yee‘s work.
Building bridges beyond games: metagaming and convergence culture
Then, if the dimensions of play is on the one side, looking inside a game (or sustainability initiative), and the interdependent metatheory is on the other side, looking at the big picture of why we do what we do, Kahila et al’s paper is the connecting link. “A Typology of Metagamers: Identifying Player Types Based on Beyond the Game Activities” looks at what happens beyond the game, and this links strongly to Henry Jenkins’ convergence culture. Kahila talks about three distinct profiles of players, versatile metagamers, strategizers, and casual metagamers, and maps their metagame activities in another very useful Table 1 that I think could map very well to contributor initiatives.
I’m currently trying to work all this into an infographic. I’m stuck in the weeds at the moment.
Applying all this to collaboration between initiatives … or something
I think, then, what I am trying to do is improve collaboration within and between initiatives, which is needed because of the complexity of environmental challenges.
I need some literature link here on what collaboration has to do with anything, and ideally a focus on bottom-up, grassroots, laypeople, civic society something something. The levers article touches on it, but there’s some stuff from the AquaSavvy proposal that’s worth relooking, and can build the link between the larger ecosystem (nature) and the urban (human), which is I think where I want to position this work and works well with Ricardo’s human-nature-digital troika (the digital being the games angle). It would also be good to have some literature on the health of (meta) game communities, and contributor communities, but I would be surprised if good work has been done there.
Inspired by, and beyond games
Considering the game metaphor, this can be achieved by considering all the different dimensions that motivates people to participate. Clearly it is not possible to cater to all the dimensions within any single initiative (or game), and even improving existing initiatives is hard. Therefore, considering participation in the context of metagaming can be useful to improve these collaborations. It then becomes about the spaces between, the links between games or initiatives. This includes reflection, or building people’s metaskills (ala Mitsea et al) to be better collaborators, in the same way that good game design can influence player behaviour. Ideally, actual games can help too, sothat it does not become serious or playful, but both, working together. Hence, the metaverse. But that is a story for a different funding application 🙂
So this project is not about a single game, but about how to facilitate movement and contributions between game clusters, where I equate contributor initiatives as games, on par with social games.
This then lead to this monstrous working title: Applying interdependent metatheory through a game thinking lens to strengthen transformative capacities in interdisciplinary contributor groups.
Asking my AI to explain that back to me in more sensible language gave: A complex approach to collaboration and capacity-building within diverse groups, possibly using game design principles to facilitate transformative change and foster stronger connections among contributors from different disciplines.
On a more personal level, what this project is about is creating spaces that cater to multifaceted individuals who don’t fit neatly into one category. Creating a sense of belonging for people who are used to feeling like outsiders, like me.
All this doesn’t bring in the curiosity aspect yet, and maybe there won’t be space for it, so, stuck in the weeds, but that’s where I am so far. I am also more than stuck on how to test this, the methodology of the project. I did just see that Chan has an article out on the “Use of theories of human action in recent conservation research” and the CoSphere initiative, and I need to revisit the great group Community Data Science Collective and ask for help there.
One Reply to “What we play is life”