Educational / Environmental Game Enjoyment Research - FotW

[Motsaenggin]

Hello, everyone!

My name is Kristoffer Fjællingsdal, and I am currently studying environmental communication in games as the main subject of my PhD in environmental psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway.

My current project seeks to examine the various elements and factors influencing player enjoyment in educational / environmental games, and I intend to use Fate of the World as a case study. The ideal result of my study will be a psychological model explaining how game enjoyment can facilitate learning outcomes from environmental games, and will hopefully serve as a useful tool for a wide variety of game designers hoping to create solid educational games in the future!

In order to understand what works and what could be better about Fate of the World as an educational game focused on the environment, I wish to use data from the Steam platform as a foundation for my analysis and subsequent game enjoyment model. I have noticed many of you are highly skilled at writing reviews, and that you have chosen to make your opinion on the game known to the public. I hope to be able to use your collective reviews in order to form the foundation for my analysis, and to structure an initial case study to validate the model I am working on.

Should you have any questions about the project, please do not hesitate to contact me through my e-mail (kristoffer(dot)fjallingsdal(at)ntnu.no). This also applies if you do not want your review to become part of the analysis. And worry not! No users will be mentioned individually; I am only analyzing the reviews as a group opinion rather than a set of individual opinions. This means that your data will be completely anonymized!
Lastly, the project has been reported to and approved by the NSD (Norsk senter for forskningsdata / Norwegian Centre for Research Data), and will follow general ethical guidelines for proper scientific conduct.

Kind regards,

Kristoffer S. Fjællingsdal
PhD Candidate, Environmental Psychology
http://www.ntnu.edu/employees/kristoffer.fjallingsdal

Department of Psychology
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
7491 Trondheim, Norway

[Delnar_Ersike]

An interesting project, but do note that the methodology could be flawed. First, much like with most online stores, the people who write reviews tend to be ones who either have had a really good experience or a really bad experience. If Steam reviews are you only source of data (as opposed to e.g. also using median playtime and/or achievement statistics to look at how players are spending their time), any conclusions you derive from your data could be highly skewed as a result. Second, Fate of the World has had quite a few copies sold outside of Steam, some even for educational purposes. By only taking data from users who bought the game on Steam, you are skewing any results you obtain to model the average Steam user more than the average player (e.g. Steam users may be more forgiving towards steep learning curves), or even the average student (e.g. this game might have a player base skewed highly towards middle-aged male of European descent). Finally, since the game's subject is held as a major political issue, and the game itself very much appears to take a certain political stand by having the player act as a large, centralized government taking action against climate change, people who buy this game might be of a skewed political demographic. This can even affect the player's enjoyment: people who see their own political opinions reflected in the game might be more willing to buy the game in the first place and see past its flaws, while people who do not may not even buy the game and if they do, they may be much more critical of the game purely because they feel their political identity violated.

What I'm trying to say is that it behooves you to also use other sources of data to construct your model. For example, conducting case studies on students with a variety of backgrounds (note: gaming background is also hugely important) who you sit down in front of a copy of the game they are not paying for could be a useful thing to do. In these case studies, you may also want to test students with modded versions of the game where you have made changes specifically to make the game more or less enjoyable, and you'll be testing whether this is actually the case + whether what the students are saying about what makes the game more or less enjoyable lines up with your ideas.

[Motsaenggin]

Hello, Delnar!

All of your points are highly valid and important for consideration. However, the methodology has been accounted for, and issues such as these will be dealt with on that basis. Due to the relative newness of the topic of player enjoyment in environmental games, what is most important in the initial structure of the model is to find hypothetical ground to stand on, which I believe can indeed be found on sites such as this.

You are perfectly correct also in saying that other data are needed for validation. This, too, will be the source of future projects I am considering for my PhD course. Additionally, most academic journals today allow for the author to include a section of their article dedicated to project limitations, and I will be sure to include some of the issues you bring up here.

Thank you very much for your feedback and interest! :)

Kind regards,

K.S.F.