Music 256a hw6
Reading response
Principle 6.16. Games are perceived to be more accessible than instruments.
While reading Chapter 6 of Artful Design, I found myself reflecting a lot on why we might gamify certain things and why gamification might make those things seem more accessible.
It seems that we often tend to gamify things that appear inherently tedious, boring, or just not fun and that we often use games as a way to incentivize us to fulfill such goals. One example that the chapter pointed out included child raising, for earning gold stars is more fun than just doing chores, etc. I think similar trends can be noted in education at large, as seen through popular concepts in ed-tech like learning games and design for play. For example, the Duolingo Owl and point systems motivate users to keep up their daily language-learning streaks.
At the same time, though, I’m interested in this idea of how games reduce the barrier to trying new or otherwise arduous or time-consuming things. Perhaps it’s not just the Duolingo Owl that get people learning, but rather, the fact that playing a game on your phone seems less “serious” or like less commitment than getting out the notebooks and pencils and completing a course on Rosetta Stone. I think there’s validity in questioning the effectiveness of Duolingo as a pedagogical tool, but there is something about it that makes language-learning feel more accessible. Maybe the gamification of it puts less pressure on learners of a new language in an “academic” sense since “performing well” just means playing minigames with cute animations. Perhaps this boils down to Duolingo’s aesthetics.
In a way, gamifying these endeavors reminds me of goal-setting at the start of the year. For example, come New Year’s Day, so many people establish resolutions like, “This year, I’m going to run every day” or “I’m going to eat healthy.” However, oftentimes, these resolutions tend to be vague or ambitious — as if you’ll wake up an entirely new person between December 31st and January 1st. They aren’t without good intention. However, I just think this pressure to make this year the year overwhelms people and makes their goals seem impossible. On the other hand, trying to run day by day for a week or to remove candies from your grocery list — actions that less lofty and lower-stakes — remove the pressure from these goals at large.
Principle 6.1. Play is what we do when we are free; play is what we do to be free.
This ability to remove the “seriousness” from new endeavors is something that particularly excites me. Games are almost like a license to try new things and free yourself from the burden of being “good” at it. Being a beginner in a game can be one of the freest, most fun feelings in the world because you can just do it for the sake of itself! I feel this way about taking beginner tennis right now — it contributes nothing to my major / coterm and is entirely unnecessary since I’d be at the unit threshold without it. As a result, there’s no other reason I’m taking it than to try something new! I remember this was how I felt when I started dancing here at Stanford despite never having taken a class before college. This stripped away the insecurities and self-consciousness when I was missing move after move while dancing next to others because I hadn’t grown up taking ballet like they had, etc. It’s this freedom and this ability to take something seriously but not take yourself too seriously that I seek in a lot of what I take up.