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/lp/de-gruyter/perfunctory-gamification-in-the-world-of-second-language-learning-AAiTJTIg8J
- Publisher
- de Gruyter
- Copyright
- © 2022 Marcin Opacki, published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston
- eISSN
- 2748-3479
- DOI
- 10.1515/jccall-2021-0005
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
1IntroductionThe present work examines certain problems that are likely to emerge when several popular gamification methods are used in computer assisted language learning, as well as second language acquisition/learning in general. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 discusses the significance of video games as a social phenomenon, justifying why their relevance should be acknowledged. Section 3 is dedicated to the concept of gamification in a general sense. It overviews the effectiveness of the mechanisms involved and introduces certain crucial concepts such as the core game loop. Building on Section 3, Section 4 examines examines gamification in the context of second language learning, building up to the conclusion that the choice of gamification mechanics implemented in a given app needs to match the preferences of the app’s user if the app is to engage said user. Section 5 evaluates a series of gamification implementations in language learning app design, introducing the concept of ineffective gamification (Helf & Hlavacs, 2016; Tu et al., 2015) and gamification failure (Berkling & Thomas, 2013). Section 6 discusses the issue of individual variation in both gaming and language learning app design, and propounds the notion that gamer profiles might correlate in some way with a learner profiles. Crucially, this section identifies a new potential challenge for language learning app design: the fact that a subset of the potential users of CALL, classified as hardcore gamers, is likely to be unsusceptible to the most common subset of gamification techniques. In response to the issues raised in Section 6, Section 7 provides some examples of solutions to the problem of hard-core gamer involvement, most notably proposing a paradigm shift from gamified apps towards game-based learning. Section 8 concludes the paper by restating and reemphasizing its main point and central theme.2The social relevance of video gamesVideo games have become a fixture in the global media structure. Notably, their impact seems inversely proportional to the age of a given generation, with the so-called millennials, or generation Y, growing up with constant exposure to such media, and generation Z, those born between 1990 and 2010, practically being raised on them. It is undeniable, therefore, that the medium under consideration here is truly formative for millions of young people around the world, impacting – to a greater or lesser extent – most children or teens. At estimates ranging as high as $ 159.3 billion, the video gaming industry itself is enormous both in terms of sales and revenue generated (Reuters, 2020). What is of note, it continues to grow year-by-year. Given the social and economic relevance of video games, it is warranted to consider the impact that the medium has on its users. As with everything, there are pros and cons to consider.On the positive side, a subset of videogames is tied to certain cognitive benefits including visual processing and general problem solving (Achtman et al., 2008; Clemenson & Stark, 2015; Gray, 2015; Green & Bavelier, 2007, 2015), as well as improved categorization performance under conditions of strong uncertainty (Schenk et al., 2017). These findings seem to apply to all gamers regardless of age (Boot 2015; Zielinski & Reyes, 2009), which may be particularly significant in the context of increased population aging and fertility decline, an outcome that appears to be inevitable once a particular country reaches a certain state of development (Kirk, 1996; Roser et al., 2013). In this context, video games can serve as a beneficial rehabilitation tool that trains brain plasticity (Anderson & Grossberg, 2014; Anguera et al., 2013; Bavelier et al., 2012). This training is in many ways similar to the unique brain training provided by bilingualism (Opacki, 2017; Bialystok 2009; Bialystok et al., 2004). In this respect, one can envisage the medium used to stimulate the cognitive skills of senior citizens keeping them active and involved (Anderson & Grossberg, 2014; Anguera et al., 2013), and thus producing added value to society at large.On the negative side, another subset of video games is associated with addiction (Griffiths et al., 2012). These are primarily products that are designed using so-called ”black hat” gamification methods (Chou, 2019), which at their core use motivational techniques similar to gambling and result in neuroadaptations in those brain areas that associated with addiction (Kuss & Griffiths, 2012). Despite the commonality of these practices, their impact has gone unnoticed by government agencies around the world, who typically introduce laws that make publishers flag games for violence, explicit content, and portrayals of substance abuse, but not by design techniques; and yet, it would seem only reasonable that any potential user should be given an informed choice with respect to the potential negative impact of a product when considering said product. While depictions of violence have been found not to correlate with actual violent tendencies in teenagers (Dominick, 1984; Wei, 2007) – though admittedly the situation is different in the case of young children (Schutte et al., 1988) who are more prone to imitation – black hat gamification techniques have been shown to be detrimental to the mental health of persons with conditions such as ADHD (Matthews et al., 2019). It is thus not out of place to reason that a game which merely portrays violence but otherwise uses white hat techniques in its design is a safer option for an individual with an attention deficit. The question now becomes: is gaming always a double edged sword? Or is it the dose that makes the poison? The answer seems to lie not in whether people play games, but in what games they play. Factors such as goal-orientation versus a pure role playing component are argued to play a role in determining a game’s addictive potential (Kuss & Griffiths, 2012). This means that, as is the case with all media, one should be selective and that some games will be beneficial to users while others will not.3GamificationTo gamify something means simply to apply game-design elements and principles, most notably mechanics and dynamics, in contexts that are typically non-gaming (Robson et al., 2016). Almost universally, the goal of this process is to enhance a system, service, organization, or activity in a way that replicates what can be defined as the video game experience (Hamari, 2022). In terms of learning, it can be said that gamification is the process of motivating students by using video elements derived from game design to make the learning environment more appealing (Kapp, 2012). If a student lacks intrinsic motivation, gamifying the learning process might provide a much needed source of extrinsic motivation. Gamification has been shown to offer benefits in several aspects of learning (Barna & Fodor, 2017; Bovermann & Bastiaens, 2018; Bovermann & Bastiaens, 2018; Chan et al., 2017; Cózar-Gutiérrez & Sáez-López, 2016; Ding et al., 2017; Ding et al., 2017; Hew et al., 2016; Hew et al., 2016; Pesare et al., 2016). This restriction of only using game elements is the feature that distinguishes gamification from game-based learning, and the two concepts are often conflated in the literature, despite being both formally and ideologically distinct. Game-based learning (also known as Games-based learning) can be defined as any act of learning that is facilitated through the use of a game (Whitton, 2012). Whereas gamification seeks to incorporate game mechanics into a set of learning tasks that the student would typically find unappealing, game-based learning involves turning the set of tasks into an actual game, one such that includes a conflict and rule component (Plass, Homer, & Kinzer, 2015; Plass, Perlin, & Nordlinger, 2010). This means that in gamified learning, a satisfactory learning outcome is always the end-goal. In game-based learning, however, it may or may not be, depending on how the game is designed; the end goal – or the satisfactory learning outcome in this case – might align with the game’s objective fully, or it might be incidental, in which case the game is to serve as a supplementary tool that increases self-efficacy (Maddux & Gosselin, 2012). To simplify, in the context of gamification, one can envision the recipient as a learner, whereas in game-based learning, the recipient is essentially a player. To make an analogy to teaching methods, gamification can be likened to LSP (language for specific purposes), which treats language as the object of study, but uses content towards that goal. Conversely, game-based learning would correspond to CLIL (content and language integrated learning), which regards content as the object of study, but uses a foreign language to enable incidental learning of said language (Gozdawa-Gołębiowski & Opacki, 2020).Irrespective of whether one is dealing with a gamified system or game-based learning, there is a lot to be spoken for in terms of what game mechanics can offer in terms of learning, and language learning in particular. Games can fundamentally be reduced to so-called regular core game loops (Böhm et al., 2021; Sicart, 2015). In the simplest of terms, these loops are the things the player regularly does in the game, or the cycles of player actions. This is dubbed a loop, since the player always eventually cycles to the initial action. For instance, the simplest classic action RPG loop is kill monsters, earn gold, buy better equipment, kill monsters. This is a cycle of action and feedback with the feedback typically showing the player what kind of behaviors demonstrate value in a given game setting (and are encouraged), and which do not (and should be discouraged). There are various types of gaming loops in existence, but regardless of the specifics, in each case the set of activities that comprises the loop must be somehow meaningful to the player. If this meaningfulness is achieved, the player will become involved in the game. However, if the actions in the loop are irrelevant to the player, they will lose interest, often simply moving on to a different game. A player who dislikes violence will not be interested in a game centered on it, while a player who enjoys reflex-based tasks might not be interested in story or exploration driven games. One must thus be aware that just as gamer profiles exist, and must be taken into consideration in regular, commercial game design (Chou, 2019), so do student profiles; and if a system is to be gamified, these different profiles need to be considered when learning apps are created (cf. Freitas et al., 2017).Core game loops (hence CGLs) are an important concept in gaming since it is through their application that a player becomes committed to playing a particular game for an extended period of time. The term itself is neutral in the field of game design, where it is typically used to simply mean a fundamental schematic that underlies a particular game’s mechanics. That said, one need not reach far to note a similarity between CGLs and a term from the field of psychology and neuroscience that carries negative connotations, namely that of the compulsion loop (Deibert, 2019; Dubbels, 2017; Heaven, 2014; Nothhaft & Seiffert, 2015; Wang et al., 2019).Empirically speaking, several studies report that gamification can result in an enrichment of several aspects of the learning experience, including motivation (Bovermann & Bastiaens, 2018; Ding et al., 2017), enjoyment (Chan et al., 2017; Cózar-Gutiérrez & Sáez-López, 2016), engagement (Bovermann & Bastiaens, 2018; Ding et al., 2017; Hew et al., 2016), satisfaction (Barna & Fodor, 2017; Chan et al., 2017), achievement (Chan et al., 2017) and raw test results (Chan et al., 2017; Hew et al., 2016; Pesare et al., 2016). It should be noted at this point that achievement, a subjective learner experience, is distinct from test results, which are an objective operationalization of proficiency. Achievement is determined by what the learner considers meaningful. Results might overlap with achievement for some learners, but not for others (e.g. someone might find the ability to communicate with a foreigner a greater achievement than a test result). The fact that different gamification strategies influence different parts of learning is interesting in itself. It is not entirely out of the realm of possibility that it might not be possible to create a CALL system that directly influences results for everyone, but it might be possible to create a system that satisfies the need for achievement, increasing self-efficacy for all learners across the board. At the end of the day, this would motivate the learners to become more engaged in the learning process and this could eventually lead to a desired outcome in the area of results. We can clearly see that the relationship of all of the aforementioned learning aspects is complicated. It might not be possible to influence all of them directly (e.g. results can be influenced by engagement and engagement by enjoyment, etc.) and it seems only warranted to conclude that subjective indices (e.g. satisfaction or enjoyment) are much easier to influence than objective ones (e.g. engagement or results). This raises the question of whether a gamification protocol that enriches every aspect of learning is possible in terms of design. Following game design principles, such a protocol would need to provide meaningful content to every type of learner or user. However, since every learner or user possesses a distinct set of personality traits, generalization in this area seems difficult. What is more, again if one were to follow good practice in game design, the activity that has the most value in one’s game (something demonstrated through player feedback) should be the same activity that is the most rewarding one, or simply the one that is most fun. Here, if we once again entertain the idea of a universal gamification protocol, we can easily notice that it is a stretch of the imagination to reconcile the most valuable activity, which is the goal of the gamified app (e.g. language learning), with the most fun activity the app can deliver.4Gamification in language learningSeveral frameworks and theories provide models of how an additional language is either learned or acquired (Jarvis & Krashen, 2014; Savignon, 1988). Theoretically speaking, this is a question of domain specificity, and the issue of whether a unique neuro-cognitive faculty dedicated to language acquisition exists and is accessible to the foreign language learner (Dekydtspotter, Sprouse, & Thyre, 2000). While this question is of major importance to cognitive science, from a strictly pragmatic standpoint – the one typically adopted by the practitioner, such as the teacher, engineer, or systems designer – the discussion between acquisition and learning boils down to course design and the nature of the materials provided in the classroom (Littlewood & William, 1984). The present work will remain agnostic with respect to these theories and aim to argue for the implementation of good practices in the area of gamification regardless of the paradigm chosen.Language learning is a painstakingly difficult endeavor in which motivation is extremely hard to come by for most people. The gaming industry has a long history of motivating players by constructing effective systems of incentive (again, typically based on the core loops mentioned previously). From a social standpoint, given the social impact of the medium, it can be assumed that younger generations will be inclined to play video games for better or worse. Therefore, it seems reasonable to combine the best of both worlds (i.e. learning and gaming) and motivate learners through gamified systems, turning a predisposition to a certain leisure behavior into a productive experience.Indeed, there are a lot of commercial success stories when it comes to language learning apps, with apps such as Duolingo, Memrise, Rosetta Stone (Karjo & Andreani, 2018) leading the fore. And yet, commercial success does not necessarily translate to desirable outcomes for every interested user. Even a cursory inspection of each of these apps will reveal that they are designed around a variety of gamification mechanics, such as leaderboards, progression and levelling, skill trees, freemium micro transactions as well as completion and streak tracking. All of these are powerful motivational tools common to game design, though it should be stressed that some of the mechanics are considered so-called Black Hat design techniques (which will be covered in detail in a later Section 6). For example, streak tracking derives its motivational potential from a behavior known as avoidance (Chou, 2015, 2019) which is predicated upon the phenomenon of loss aversion (Engelstein, 2020; Kahneman & Tversky, 2013), while leaderboards (Landers et al., 2017) are based on the desire to maintain social influence (Chou, 2015, 2019). Both techniques have the potential to elicit anxiety and compulsive behaviors in a subset of susceptible individuals (Chou, 2015; Lazar & Kvarforth, 2020).Still, the choice of gamification mechanisms is always a tradeoff and relying on popular mechanics cannot guarantee either pedagogical or commercial success. The same Black Hat (Chou, 2015) mechanisms that influence some learners might, at best, be met with indifference from others. Some users will not be susceptible to these methods or, in a worst case scenario, they might respond with varying degrees of antipathy. As stated in Section 3, because every learner or user possesses an individual set of personality traits and because gamification strategies influence different parts of learning, it follows naturally that a subset of learners will be immune to several of the aforementioned black hat techniques. Some may not be susceptible to them at all. What is crucial to the app designer is that this applies, unfortunately, to several of the so called White Hat (Chou, 2015) techniques as well. Of these we have so far enumerated badges (also known as trophies or achievements). While some learners (users) will be motivated by the prospect of being awarded a unique badge, others will be indifferent to this. Thus, it is only reasonable to conclude that the efficacy of particular gamification mechanisms is not tied to ethics per se; rather, it is a net sum of a given set of learner personality traits and the mechanisms used. The pairing is either compatible or not.5What makes language learning apps successful?In Section 4, we argued that the choice of gamification mechanics implemented in a given app needs to match the preferences of the app’s user if the app is to engage said user. Engaging the user (Darejeh & Salim, 2016) is the naturally considered the first step towards the app’s eventual success, assuming that subsequent stages will result in one of the many learning improvements mentioned in Section 3 (i.e. motivation, enjoyment, engagement, satisfaction, achievement, and proficiency measured through test results). Assuming that we are dealing with a set of gamified apps or game-based systems that are all methodologically sound, with equally intuitive systems, and clearly presented affordances (in the sense of e.g. Awad et al., 2014), and do not exhibit any evident technical design flaws, the question that one must ask is which users will respond favorably to which apps and why will they do so?To address this question, let us first consider what might make an app undesirable for a potential user. One possibility that emerges here is that gamification as a trend is the design equivalent of a cargo cult. This is a reference to Richard Feynman’s (1974) lecture given at CalTech in which he described an indigenous people in the Pacific who attempted to mimic the behaviors of landing field ground crew in an effort to summon airplanes stocked with supplies. The tribe mimicked a behavioral pattern without any actual understanding of what made the planes come. On a similar vein, one can similarly wonder whether app designers are not simply mimicking the strategies successfully implemented in commercial triple A game design without a deeper understanding of what makes these strategies effective. Such a state of affairs would imply that the makers of apps do not fully understand the contexts in which certain game mechanics work, and those in which they do not. The end result of such a state of affairs would be persistently propagated ineffective gamification (cf. Helf & Hlavacs, 2016; Tu et al., 2015) or in a broader sense gamification failure (Berkling & Thomas, 2013) which can lead to detrimental behavior effects (Helf & Hlavacs, 2016; Sigala, 2015). This would be one hypothetical way of explaining why only the same gamification strategies are constantly recycled, even in cases when results are mixed or unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, this explanation is not likely, if only due to the fact that the developers that work on gamified apps and videogames come from the same industry pool.Another account of potential app failure can be pinpointed in SLA/FLL itself. If, as stated previously, we assume that the same developers work on games and gamified apps, and that these developers are capable of delivering successful products, then a problem area might be found in the limitations imposed by the very state of language learning task design. In a commercial entertainment setting, a designer or developer is free to pursue any creative choice they wish, being limited only by technology itself. However, when designing a language learning app, the same designer or developer will technically be forced to adhere to the task design practices and standards prescribed by the current state of the art in SLA/FLL methodology. In other words, it might be the case that the tasks that tried and tested in the language classroom simply do not translate well to an app. It also might be the case that if they do translate well (i.e. can be properly represented in the gamified system), then they do not work in conjunction with the assortment of gamification mechanics implemented in the app. While this is a tempting explanation of why gamification might sometimes fail, here we will argue that this is as unlikely as the cargo cult account described in the previous paragraph. This is because even though the state of the art provides us with certain knowledge about language is (or is not) learned or acquired (again, depending on the paradigm and approach to domain specificity), it ultimately does little in the way of constraining actual task design. Therefore, the choices available to the designer still remain an open set, limited – de facto – only by the creativity of the consulting language specialist that collaborates with the developer during the design process.6Different gamers, different learnersThe previous sections have so far been building up to the next concept that needs to be considered in the context of gamification, namely that of gamer (or player) profiles, how these profiles might relate to learner profiles, and what are the implications for gamified language learning app design as well as computer assisted language learning that relies on game-based learning. In layman terms, because we are dealing with different types of games that appeal to particular gamers (or users of games), we must consider the notion of different gamification techniques that appeal to particular learners (or users of gamified learning environments).A study by Scharkow, Festl, Vogelgesang, and Quandt (2015) examined the relationship between gratification levels in games and the genre preferences of players. What is of note for the purpose of this paper is that, the study found that different groups of gamers experienced vastly dissimilar gratification loops. Just as different gamers are receptive to different design choices, if any attempt at creating a gamified language learning app is to be successful, one must essentially determine what kind of gamer the target learner is. Recognizing a user profile and making an app at least adaptable or ideally adaptive to this profile has been recognized as an important research goal in previous works (e.g. Halifax et al., 2019; Lavoué, 2020; Monterrat et al., 2020). This is by no means as simple task. As stated previously in Section 3, the prospective app designer must contend with an abundant array of user personality profiles, and research into this area is an entire field unto itself (Peever et al., 2012; Scharkow et al., 2015). No single user will be one and the same. No framework exemplifies this diversity of gamer motivation than Chou’s (2015, 2019 Octanalysis model. The framework proposes to group gamers by their respective sources of motivation, of which there are eight: accomplishment, meaning, empowerment, social influence, unpredictability, avoidance, scarcity, ownership. What is important to our analysis is the subdivision of these eight sources into Black Hat and White Hat mechanics.White Hat (Chou, 2015) mechanics are considered to be a form of positive motivation, being typically associated with desirable feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction achieved by supporting existing motivational factors and enhancing the perception of accomplishment (Kessing & Löwer, 2020). In a philosophical sense, one might call these techniques ethical, as they offer undeniable enrichment of the gamified experience. On the other side of the spectrum lie Black Hat mechanics (Chou, 2015). As stated in Section 3, these are unequivocally more negative in their outlook. The motivation they provide is powerful, but this comes at a cost that should make any designer question their ethics. Specifically, Black Hats rely on making players fall into a loop of compulsion (Chou, 2015) by balancing enforced constraints while imposing a feeling of urgency (Kessing & Löwer, 2020). In susceptive individuals, this might result in feelings of obsession, anxiety, and even addiction (Kuss & Griffiths, 2012). Methods of this kind stimulate a sense of urgency in users and, as stated in Section 3, are particularly harmful to individuals with an attention deficit (Matthews et al., 2019). The question that surely comes to one’s mind at this juncture is what does this have to do with language learning, especially in the context of CALL? The answer is as informative as it is disturbing.If one were to survey the language learning apps available on the market, one would surely conclude without much effort that most of these apps use, to a greater of lesser extent, Black Hat gamification mechanics. The culprits are the previously mentioned avoidance (Chou, 2015 p. 309), which makes the player want to avoid losing something, an evident exploitation of loss aversion (Engelstein, 2020; Kahneman & Tversky, 2013), unpredictability, which – like gambling – engages users by through games of chance (Chou, 2015, p. 271) such as the widely popular gacha mechanic and its associated psychological consequences (Koeder & Tanaka, 2017; Shibuya, Teramoto, Shoun, & Akiyama, 2019), and scarcity, which motivates the player to obtain something because that particular something is rare or difficult to obtain (Chou, 2015, p. 231).The Black Hat mechanics mentioned above are surely to be effective in motivating a considerable share of potential and actual app users. However, one must ask the question, will they motivate users who mostly play games for the sake of empowerment, meaning, or accomplishment, so the White Hats. I believe this question to be the crux of the issue of making language learning apps interesting to a wide variety of user profiles which – I believe – are non-inclusive with respect to the hardcore gamer (Juul, 2010).It is my firm conviction that the division of gamers into hardcore and casual provides a workable framework for exploring the effectiveness of gamification strategies. While these two terms have existed ever since gaming became mainstream, Juul (2010) has operationalized the term for the purpose of academic discourse. If one inspects the types of games that hardcore gamers are interested in, and specifically if one inspects the mechanics that these games are founded upon, then one is surely to find that nearly all of them will be White Hat. It is, thereby, highly unlikely that a hardcore gamer will be motivated by any Black Hat gamification mechanic. To give an example, a player who mostly seeks actual accomplishment will not be motivated by avoidance-based mechanics. Thus, they should not be expected to be susceptible to the compulsion loop of daily logins in order not to lose a streak. Similarly, this player profile will be unlikely to farm a game area for a rare item drop. Another important point that I would argue for is that the archetypical hardcore gamer fundamentally seeks to attain a feeling of accomplishment that must be earned. This is to say that content that does not present a sufficient degree of challenge is meaningless to this profile. Games can at their core be distilled into two formative axes of experience: the goals, or the objective of a game, and the frictional components, thus all of the constraints that stem from the rules, narrative, or technology that the player experiences. A game that lacks friction would theoretically result in instant completion. The concept is important in the current discussion as it would appear that hardcore gamers require an increased frictional component in order to enjoy a game. Indeed, work on exploring friction in video games would suggest that it results in productive outcomes given proper design. These outcomes include mindful interactions (Cox et al., 2016) and immersion (Cairns et al. 2014). As a relevant example in this context, let us examine a scenario in which a hardcore gamer uses a gamified language learning app and unlocks a new badge with a new icon. Will this trophy be meaningful to this player? I would argue that it would not. The reason for this is that the badge is itself not part of the game; and since it is not part of the game, it does not carry what I would define as ludological weight (by analogy to narrative weight). The friction involved in obtaining the badge came from language learning, and as such was external to the perceived game system. It is this ludological weight that is meaningful to the hardcore gamer (in the sense of Juul, 2010) and the White Hat enjoyer (defined by Chow, 2015, 2019), who I believe to be functionally represent if not the same profile, then at least two highly overlapping profiles, both as gamers, and more crucially from the point of view of CALL, as learners and app users. I will further argue that hardcore gamers have a much higher anxiety (which applies to high stakes settings) and frustration (which applies to low stakes settings) threshold in comparison to casual gamers. This is naturally a reference to the Flow Hypothesis (Csikszentmihalyi & Csikszentmihalyi, 1992), which states the challenge level of a task should be appropriately adjusted to skill in order to optimize the user experience. The core of this assumption is that casual gamers can be expected to experience flow under the high skill level + high challenge level condition, becoming anxious or frustrated in direct proportion to the lowering of the skill value variable. Conversely, hardcore gamers are likely to experience flow under the condition of lowered skill (e.g. moderate instead of high) + high challenge level, provided that appropriate scaffolding and feedback is provided throughout. It is possible that a sizable group of the hardcore player population needs this increased challenge level (relative to skill) in order to stay engaged.To sum up this section, I propose that since we are dealing with (at least) two fundamental profiles of gamers, the casual and the hardcore. Both profiles are engendered by distinct sets of personality traits that make each group susceptible to different gamification mechanics. Therefore, the field of language learning app design must acknowledge that there will be at least two distinct sets of gamification mechanics, one for each profile. Casual gamers are likely to respond to the Black Hat gamification techniques that are currently widespread in CALL app design; however, hardcore gamers will most likely be unresponsive to the Black Hats. This implies that hardcore gamers, as a group, are essentially excluded from the pool of potential CALL app users. Overcoming this problem is made all the more difficult by the fact that several of the design features that make games appealing to hardcore players, such as increased friction (Cox et al., 2016) are incompatible with the traits that appeal to the casual group (i.e. casual designs and hardcore designs are mutually exclusive).7Involving hardcore gamers in CALLIn Section 6, we have identified – and isolated – a new potential challenge for language learning app design; namely, how to make CALL more attractive to users who can be classified as hardcore gamers, a group within the potential user population that is unlikely to be susceptible to the most common subset of gamification techniques. This is a multifaceted problem whose complexity transcends various disciplines in terms of scope, among these computer science, game design, engineering, linguistics, and psychology. For this reason alone, an easily implementable solution is difficult to conceptualize, let alone offer. However, in what follows, I will propose a set of possible scenarios in order of (subjective) viability: one optimistic, one pessimistic, and one realistic. I will duly stress, however, that these should be treated as preliminary conjectures at this juncture. Also of note is the fact that I will assume that casual gamers will remain motivated regardless of the gamification strategy used.The optimistic scenario, and concurrently the one that I consider the least likely of the proposed outcomes, is that those learners who exhibit hardcore gamer personality traits, simply have no need for language learning apps. In this scenario, we will assume that their natural inclination towards challenge seeking behaviors makes them gifted language learners. However, any person who has been a spectator at a major international e-sports event will note that the ubiquitous presence of translators who help professional gamers communicate during interviews would suggest otherwise. Pro-gamers can be considered to reside at the highest echelon of skill, making them the quintessential hardcore gamer in the sense of Juul (2010). Yet, despite their great skill, language learning does not appear to be their foray. Accordingly, the optimistic variant is one of low probability and minuscule likelihood.The next potential scenario to explore is the pessimistic variant. In this variant, hardcore gamers will never be motivated by game design elements in CALL. They simply will not care. The techniques implemented – regardless of whether they are Black Hat or White Hat mechanics – will always ring false in their ears. Not only will they not care about avoiding losses or streaks – which is a given considering their profile – but they will also not be interested in empowerment or accomplishment mechanics. This grim scenario assumes that a CALL app that would be capable of delivering meaningful content cannot be designed. As far as viability is concerned, I would personally reject this variant simply based on its extreme assumption. The logical leap of declaring that something must not exist simply because of several layers of complexity is a predictive overgeneralization from a strictly rationalistic standpoint. Consequently, I see it fitting to propose a middle of the road solution.The scenario that I consider most likely – hence its designation as the realistic variant – is that a means of designing a gamified app that would interest learners that exhibit hardcore gamer traits does in fact exist but has simply not been discovered or conceptualized to date. I consider this variant most likely not only because it balances predictions, but it is my impression that it builds upon the current state of knowledge in the relevant fields that form CALL. The implication here is, on the one hand, that more research is needed, and, on the other hand, that the propagation of bad practices should be avoided. The subset of Black Hat gamification techniques that form the bulk of language learning app design mechanics implemented at present needs to stop being a trend. This is the core of what I understand as perfunctory gamification. In light of what was stated here, the question that should surface at this juncture is that of what new trends should replace the old ones. Let us explore the possible outcomes of the realistic variant.The first potential solution that I can offer is to shift from gamification towards game-based learning (Plass et al., 2015; Plas et al., 2010). I believe the main problem that gamification brings with it is the risk of evoking the feeling of “let us now pretend that this tedious learning experience is a game” in the user (learner/gamer). It is this feeling that, in my opinion, demotivates the hard-core gamer from a purely psychological standpoint. I propose that the natural solution to this motivational conundrum is to simply to invert the paradigm and deliver a new message, one that says “we know that an authentic, meaningful game is the experience you enjoy, we will not pretend that the learning grind is a game anymore, let us try to incorporate some learning into what you love.” To me, this seems to be the message that the player-turned-learner seeks to receive. And if that message can be made clear, the hard-core gamer will be won over. That is why I am putting forward the idea that, rather than gamifying language learning apps, language learning components should be incorporated into actual games (i.e. games that stand on their own even without the CALL layer). This can be done in two conceivable ways. The first is to design such games from scratch, an ambitious approach that might not be feasible due to budgetary constraints. The second is to offer mods or add-ons for existing games which already motivate players, a less elegant solution, but one that has been spontaneously attempted in the game modding community without any academic incentive. Modding culture (Sotamaa, 2010), which centers on the practice of modifying the core systems of existing commercially available games, has grown immensely in recent years. Not constrained by any kind of creative control, I would argue that modding communities are a very underappreciated source of inspiration in the area of engineering solutions that can be implemented not only in gamified and game-based systems. Community created mods can oftentimes change the look and feel (and thus the experience) of a game completely. A game can therefore be altered to facilitate language learning. One example of a community mod of this type is the Pillars of Eternity Bilingual Language Mod designed by Reddit user adr_p (2015). This add-on allows the user to include dialogue lines in another language in the already existing base game – Pillars of Eternity (Paradox Interactive, 2015). In-game dialogue, which is text-based and partially voiced, is presented side-by-side in a manner similar to that of a parallel language corpus (in the sense of Brown et al., 1991). Because the game had been translated into several language versions at the time of release, the relevant assets in the form of talk tables were readily available, making this a solution that was relatively easy in terms of implementation, but highly enriching in terms of user experience. It can be presumed that every time that a player becomes involved in the core ludology of the game, exploring the game world via questlines, dialogue, item descriptions, and scripted interactions, they are exposed to two languages. Because the player is already involved in the game, it can be posited that they will incidentally learn a certain number of foreign language expressions during this experience. Naturally, since no actual study has been conducted, we can only speculate as to how efficient this add-on is, but it is a good example of a seamless way of taking advantage of an activity that is already habitual to the player. However, one can speculate that this kind of add-on would have limited long term usefulness to the learner. The true advantage of this solution lies in its simplicity and seamless implementation, but learning outcomes are not likely to be its strong suit. The learner would most likely only see benefits similar to those experienced in an entry-level language learning course, meaning that basic A1 (or beginner) level skills would most likely be attained, but nothing beyond that. In terms of skills, vocabulary would most likely grow more than grammar. This is due to the fact that while a lot of content repetition would be involved (especially in the context of recurring mechanics, such as accessing a safe point or using the player character’s inventory), but the lack of interactivity would mean that grammatical constructions would not be actively practiced, especially since grammatical features are not as salient in a reception only setting when compared with vocabulary.My mentioning of involvement in the previous paragraph is a deliberate reference to the Involvement Load Hypothesis of Hulstijn and Laufer (2001), whose cardinal assumption is that unfamiliar words are retained proportionally to the involvement load of a task. Simply speaking, the more varied exposure to a lexical item that a learner receives, the better that lexical item will be retained in memory. What can be understood as varied exposure are activities such as needing and retrieving a particular word or phrase, searching for it, evaluating it, or comparing it with another item. It is my firm conviction that the superiority of game-based learning systems over their gamified counterparts lies in part due to the fact that the former offer inherently more involvement opportunities, not to mention doing so in a relatively stress-free entertainment setting, which in itself might serve to balance the set of the remaining known affective factors) that influence second language acquisition (Możejko, 2013), and that were not discussed in detail herein for the sake of brevity.While mods offer a simple way of incorporating a language learning component into an existing game, a step further would be to make the foreign language component an actual, or even crucial, part of the gaming experience. This can be done by making the foreign language part of the games frictional component (in the sense of Cox et al., 2016). The specifics would – of course – depend on the type of game. In a linear or branching narrative game, solving a set of language problems might be a so called gating puzzle, so the player would need to complete this task in order to progress the game’s storyline. In this context, the player would be motivated by curiosity. In a non-linear sandbox or open world game (in the sense of Alexander & Martens, 2017), the language component could be made into a relevant game mechanic or system, one that the player would have to use while exploring the world. In this scenario, the player would have to use the target language in order to unlock skills that are useful in the game world. Here, the player would presumably be motivated by such drives as accomplishment or empowerment (Chou, 2015, 2019). Just like in the modding solution, the designer is essentially smuggling in language learning into the game; however, in this context it will not be incidental, but intentional and deliberate. As far as specifics are concerned, there are various approaches to go about implementing this solution and various degrees to which it can be taken. One could – for instance – create a puzzle game that is centered entirely on this notion of deciphering an unknown language. A good example of a game that uses this approach is Heaven’s Vault (Ingold & Humfrey, 2018) in which the player character is an archaeologist searching for a missing roboticist. In order to find the missing colleague, however, the player has to decipher and learn the hieroglyphic language of a lost civilization. The language learning component therefore constitutes the bulk of the frictional component of the game, as the player must find and collect inscriptions from ancient artifacts, sites and ruins and translate and discuss texts with other characters. These interactions, interestingly, serve both as facilitators of involvement as well as brokers of scaffolding information. While the language in Heaven’s Vault is a constructed language, one can easily envision a game of this kind with a real world language as the frictional content. It can be surmised that a solution of this kind – were it used on an actual language rather than a conlang (constructed language) – would offer increased involvement (through repetition and reconfiguration of language input) and – unlike the mere language add-on mentioned previously – could foster the development of grammar to some degree. This would be due to the fact that language puzzles that recur and are part of the game’s content (in terms of friction or plot) would – in a manner of speaking – explicate the grammatical features of the language involved. This has the potential to draw the player’s attention to those grammatical features that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Naturally, this assumption is conjectural and more empirical research in this area is needed.But a FL component with relevant ludological and narrative weight does not have to be limited to puzzle games. For instance, as previously mentioned, in regular cRPGs, the FL component can be part of the friction in questlines. To illustrate this point, let us draw upon another example from Pillars of Eternity (Paradox Interactive, 2015). In the game, an ancient undead character plays the role of gatekeeper to a new locked area. Crucially, a fight with this character – potentially tactically challenging to some players on higher difficulty levels – can be avoided if the player manages to learn his ancient language beforehand. In terms of effective portrayal, the fact of learning this language is naturally reduced to roleplay (i.e. the game acts as if the player character knows the language, but the dialogue is staged in the games installed language version). However, one can imagine a scenario in which this language would be an in-game skill centered around actual language problems and that the gating puzzle would only be solved if the skill would be sufficiently developed, i.e. the player could be made to talk to the gating character in a foreign language a context that demands a certain degree of accuracy (e.g. the quest will be failed if a certain error threshold is reached). The involvement potential is again considerable in this case, as it can be assumed that the player wants to gain access to a previously unexplored area and is highly motivated to unlock it.It is noteworthy that even mechanics that are considered tedious by players, such as experience or resource grinding, can be taken advantage of for the purpose of language learning. When a player needs to acquire in-game currency one common solution is to make the player engage in so-called mining, farming, or grinding activities, repetitive actions that are not enjoyable in themselves, but form necessary friction without which game progression would be imbalanced (King et al., 2011). An interesting example of how this system can be commandeered in the name of language education manifests itself in the game Nancy Drew: Sea of Darkness (Her Interactive, 2015). In that game, when the player character is in need of currency, they can earn it by learning (and getting tested on) sets of Icelandic vocabulary.To sum up this section, the above are merely some examples out of what is conceivably a plethora of solutions. Implementing game-based solutions in a language learning context is enticing since, as stated previously, games already use a variety of mechanics to incentivize the player and balance their experience. These include crafting, physics/vector-based environmental interaction, resource management, character statistic optimization, world state changed, levelling and progression systems, etc. An effective way to blend the best of both worlds of language learning and gaming is simply to make the language component one of the frictional systems (Cox et al., 2016) that constrain gameplay. Some examples can include: replacing experience or resource grinding with language-based exercises, making foreign language use necessary for interaction with key non-player characters, turning a the FL component into a skill from which the player stands to gain when exploring the game’s sandbox, or potentially even introducing an additional FL mode tied to additional accomplishment options. Whichever solution is implemented, it is certain that involvement is a crucial factor in making game-based language learning systems effective. Eliciting involvement, in turn, must be done through design choices that center on meaningful content.8ConclusionGamification can be defined as the process of enhancing a system, service, organization, or activity in a way that replicates video game experiences (Hamari, 2022). In the context of language learning, the incorporation of tried and tested game mechanics can be used to construct effective systems of incentive and ultimately enrich the FL learning experience in various ways, potentially resulting in improved outcomes. However, the prevailing trend in the gamification of language learning apps is to rely on a Black Hat gamification mechanics, such as avoidance, scarcity, or unpredictability (Chou, 2015 p. 309). These mechanics – while ethically questionable – are effective in motivating a subset of users susceptible to them. For this reason, they are propagated without much reflection in manner that can only be described as perfunctory gamification.Nevertheless, the subpopulation of so-called hardcore gamers (as defined by Juul, 2010) is not only unsusceptible to these techniques, but exhibits a strong aversion to them. As a result, hardcore gamers are for the most part functionally excluded from the pool of potential CALL app users. The very fact that the most common design choices target one group with a specific neuropsychological profile, while functionally alienating another is concerning from the perspective of the researcher and practitioner involved in designing gamified language learning apps and game-based (Plass et al. 2015; Plass et al., 2010) language learning systems. It is only reasonable to try and remedy this situation, still overcoming the problem is made particularly difficult by the fact that several of the design features that make games appealing to hardcore players, such as increased friction (Cox et al., 2016) are incompatible with the traits that appeal to the casual group.Following a literature review, an analysis of the state of the art of gamification and game-based solutions in the context of language learning app design, and a survey of relevant game design choices implemented in both commercial and non-commercial contexts, the present work outlines several potential solutions to the problem of perfunctory game design practices that alienate hardcore gamers. Chief among these is the proposal to actively work towards a paradigm shift from gamification towards game-based learning (Plass et al. 2015; Plass et al., 2010). In this way, language learning takes on the role of the regulatory frictional component of actual games rather (as opposed to a language task laced with random black hat gamification mechanics). Incorporating a language learning component into actual games is likely to ultimately form game-based learning systems that offer inherently more involvement (Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001) opportunities in comparison to its gamified counterparts in addition to a better balancing of affective factors.
Journal
Journal of China Computer-Assisted Language Learning – de Gruyter
Published: Dec 1, 2022
Keywords: CALL; foreign language learning; game-based system; gamification