text:
- Gary Riccio
- Boston, MA
- United States
This conversation is closed.
Community Organization and Impact in Online Games
We would like to have a conversation about interpersonal interactions and relationships within the communities that organize around online games. Our intent is to create a "natural laboratory" for this TED conversation by grounding the conversation in contemporaneous experiences of gamers that both reflect and influence the attendant community experiences. We are exploring this as a form of "participatory journalism" (see e.g., http://bit.ly/MgDdwA)
Use your browser (not the search utility in the panel at the upper left of this page) to find key words that will direct you to important topics in this conversation to date. Visitors can then reply to the relevant post or write an "original post" (OP).
* raw person or raw individual
* identity or persona or self
* self efficacy
* leadership
* engagement
* communication
* second-person standpoint
* communities or commitment
* respawn or one-life or lobbies
* mental health and wellness
* hard conversations
* civic hacking or civil hacking
* friends
* teach or learn
* civilized
* the long tail
Community interactions also can be interesting and consequential outside the context of the gameplay around which the community organizes. We believe this potential for games is poorly understood by the general public. Yet there is an intense and general curiosity about what occurs in the interactions among gamers and in the impact of gameplay in society.
Our claim is that there is "no neutral" in the effects of significant interpersonal interactions that occur in online games. Games have prosocial effects or antisocial effects irrespective of genre (e.g., first-person shooter games).
We are exploring this topic in a variety of forums such as:
http://griccio2103b.wordpress.com (e.g., tags: prosocial, violence),
Closing Statement from Gary Riccio
Our stated intent for this TED Conversation was "to create a natural laboratory for this TED conversation by grounding the conversation in contemporaneous experiences of gamers that both reflect and influence the attendant community experiences."
We refer to this kind of conversation as "diaβlogue." This is distinguished from a web-Based LOG of one's own ephemeral opinions. A diaβlogue utilizes multiple communication platforms to create a distributed and decentralized collaboratory for systematic development of capabilities. It thus is a synthesis of best practices in "continuous beta" and "open innovation" (see http://tinyurl.com/Riccio-diaBlogue).
A diaβlogue removes walls between insiders and outsiders, it tends to eliminate the distance between presence and remoteness, and it blurs the distinction between first-hand and second-hand experience insofar as it provides all networked participants with inescapable accountability for their impact on each other and on their respective situations.
This TED Conversation built on what had been mostly oral communication between behavioral/social scientists and informants in and around a particular online game community over a two-year period. It has created a collaborative journal that is open to the public and, to the extent it is edifying, for the public good.
The TED Conversation did, in fact, both reflect and influence the contemporaneous experiences of gamers in the Division IGR. This collateral impact is documented at www.thedivisionigr.com as well as https://twitter.com/D_IGR and https://www.facebook.com/THEDIVISIONIGR?ref=hl. We believe we thus have made some progress in developing or at least promulgating a new form of participatory science journalism (http://bit.ly/MgDdwA).
While our intent was to build bridges between communities of practice rather than to draw a large audience, we are pleased that the open conversation has drawn outside interest ranging from "Linked Wellness" to "Blended Learning."
Luke Ward
Feb 25 2014: I, as a gamer for literally my entire life, and a firm believer in gaming's potential benefits in research, study, mental health care and awareness, and a variety of other fields can say, without a doubt say that under the right circumstances, gaming has a profound prosocial effect on those who would like to capitalize on it. About three to four years ago aI was a very introverted person, rarely socializing with anybody outside of family and close friends. Gaming was my main pastime, still is, and I experienced firsthand the ardupus task of breaking through the thick exterior of gaming communities to find friends. It's true, a lot of the time, a multiplayer game's community can be hostile, unforgiving, exclusive, and even offensive, and I think that's why such a stigma around online gaming exists as it does today. But there are gold nuggets tucked away in that monolithic wall of sediment and nothingness that are collaborative, cohesive, competent communities, and the one I, and hundreds of thousands more, happened to find, was the community surrounding SOCOM.
- +6
SOCOM came about in the infancy of console multiplayer gaming, and it shows that the dissasociation with others related to online anonymity hadn't quite set in yet. People who were respectful, courteous, amicable, and good to chat with were in the majority; plentiful. The people I met on SOCOM, online, who frequently lived countries and continents away from me were the people who unknowingly taught me to socialize, got me out of my own shell, and for that I'm thankful. I want to show my thanks by saying that online gaming has potential to be a valuable tool in judging and furthering people's character development. It uncovers persona, for better or worse, it can test personality under pressure, introduce people to challenge, build character. Just needs to be in the right circumstances, and in that regard, SOCOM was a lightning bolt that struck a nail directly on the head.
Feb 25 2014: "It uncovers persona, for better or worse, it can test personality under pressure, introduce people to challenge, and build character."
Not only do you provide testimony as an example, but that description is the perfect way to describe the backbone behind the effort. You can always develop something incorrectly, hence the "hostile, unforgiving... and offensive" communities you explained. But if used correctly, the impact can be real. I couldn't have said it better.
Everyone wants to win, and therefore whenever you play a game to win, a lot of your actions, down to the smallest detail, have significance. This is a little different from reality, where individuals don't see every single minute detail of their activities with too much pressure or stress. In a video game, all of your actions in real-time are meaningful, based on how badly you want to win. Because you invest value, you naturally analyze your actions more, and improvements are made (at least, that's the typical way people respond to a negative outcome within gameplay). This dynamic can apply to not hitting your target in a shooter game, using a poor strategy in any RTS, or being a jerk to your teammates, which might keep you from winning the game.
In short, because you care about the game, you care more about your actions. You realize things about yourself, and as a result you improve (hopefully). This is my belief on what gets people out of their shell, what influences people to become more social, and what can make people feel more empowered in every day life.Feb 26 2014: Thank you, Luke and Daniel! These posts today are amazing. Online game communities may be the best kept secret of our time. And these posts also are helping us understand a little better why game design matters.
Require gamers to work together, reflexively, to achieve objectives that they "care about." Games can be designed to challenge gamers psychologically if not morally (see my post about David Sears below). These are not tests that one passes or fails. This kind of test informs to the extent it "uncovers persona, for better or for worse" (i.e., they are formative assessments rather than summative assessments). The choices to do something with this information, for better, are what "build character" (see e.g., Outcomes-Based Training & Education at http://www.scribd.com/doc/123640515)
And that is where community is instrumental as the comments of Jay and Luke powerfully provide witness.
Mar 12 2014: Burnt wrote: "Not only do you provide testimony as an example, but that description is the perfect way to describe the backbone behind the effort. You can always develop something incorrectly, hence the "hostile, unforgiving... and offensive" communities you explained. But if used correctly, the impact can be real. I couldn't have said it better."
+1Mar 7 2014: I came to the realization the other day as to why Socom and the community that it created was far better than what has replaced it. The game rewarded teamwork, and strategy definitely helped but that alone didn't solidify the community and bond it. Many people believe it was the lobby system and the deadbox, but to really get to the heart of it we need to understand what the world outside the game was like. When Socom 1 and 2 came out it was in a way the age of innocence for the online gaming community. It wouldn't be for at least 5 years before words like; cyberbully, troll, internet gangster, try-hard, or even youtube, would become house hold words. The first one was released nearly 1 year after 9/11, there was still internet chivalry. People were too busy being fascinated by the fact they could talk to people all over the world, to succumb to the intoxicating powers of anonymity. People put themselves out there and invited people into their lives; there was more concern with sharing things about themselves and making their existence known, than spreading hate and discontent. People were honest and friendly, helpful and kind; there are not many left online that have those qualities in today's online community. Now it seems just about every person you run into online is working some sort of angle, there is so much falsity people are content to hide behind a façade then be genuine for fear of backlash. People reinvent themselves as a coping mechanism to prevent being vulnerable. It doesn't matter how terrible you have it in the real world, you can be whomever you want to be online.
Mar 12 2014: Thanks Troy! So it sounds like online community *places* such as "the lobby system and the deadbox" might be necessary but not sufficient to generate the more prosocial behavior that the vast majority of gamers apparently want. My guess is that online communities also need long-term relationships among the members, even if not among all the members.
If one doesn't consider the historical context of another person playing the game, and especially if one doesn't consider the future impact of the shared experience, then one might as well be interacting with an algorithm or AI. In the razor's edge of the present, humanity is infinitesimally thin or almost nonexistent.
So the questions become: What are the social structures that bring humanity and commitment to the communities that play online games together? What are the online tools or business offerings that enable the formation and use of such social structures? If we can being to answer these questions, we might find "the long tail" of the market for experiences in online game communities.Mar 7 2014: Especially in gaming unless you want to, no one will ever know the real you, you can hide behind your avatar and a cool user name. Being real and showing emotions is a good way to get picked apart and marked as a target for trolling or other nastiness. Online all you have is your reputation; KDR, awards, unlocks, hours played, rank. This is all fake stuff someone made up, it has nothing to do with real life. Truth is people get lost in all the fake and forget there is another human being on the other end.
Sometimes I wonder if Socom came out now instead, what the community might have been like. I can guarantee it would have been very different than the memories that people have about the community. Luckily it came out when it did.
On a side note being a leader can have similar issues as being in an online community. Not showing emotions and invulnerable. Being too real/ human can result in lost respect and people challenging your status, as well as subordinates questioning your authority.
Mar 12 2014: The key being "unless you want to."
It is difficult for me to imagine what it means to be a leader if "no one ever will ever know the real you." The difference between a leader and a manager (or perhaps a "boss") is that a leader is a role model, and this requires a persistent identity over time. One can't be a role model if one is inauthentic, impenetrable, or inconsistent.
No leader serves subordinates well by hiding emotions or vulnerability. Demonstrating how to utilize emotion and share it in overcoming obstacles is a valuable contribution to subordinates. This doesn't mean that one has to talk about emotions, although that can be of value if practiced judiciously. One can and should become attuned to nonverbal manifestations of emotion. Turning down the gain, so to speak, on this valuable channel of information can be dangerous.
Utilizing and sharing emotion experience as information about a situation increases one's ability to control the situation. The key is not to let emotions force one inside of oneself. If one comes to understand emotions as informative about self in relation to the social or physical surroundings, they can play a valuable role in maintaining the outward orientation that is critical in ambiguous or changing situations. They can help one adapt.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/40322347/Passion-and-Reason-in-Values-Based-Learning-DevelopmentMar 13 2014: A more provocative claim is that online games allow one to manifest an identify that is more authentic, more true to oneself, than the identity that one is forced to have in the physical world. Other people reinforce one's identity, for better or for worse.
In the physical world, one is more limited in the groups of people in one's life (e.g., co-workers, neighbors), and this limited interpersonal context can be dissonant with one's true self. In other words, one may have to spend significant amounts of time with people who can't relate to or even recognized one's true self, especially if one has unusual likes and dislikes or ways of thinking.
In "the third space," social mobility is increased dramatically because it is unconstrained by distance and superficial characteristics of appearance. For better or for worse, one can find other people with similar idiosyncrasies or at least who understand and appreciate them in the context of shared values. For prosocial experiences, the key is finding a community in which one can have habitual relationships with others. In such enduring relationships, one can display the persistent idiosyncrasies that define one as an individual as such.
None of this means that one cannot and should not play games in which one can momentarily experience a fantasy identity. This does not preclude also engaging more continuously in online game communities that are primarily about getting to know oneself and others and enjoying the opportunity to influence and develop each other.Mar 12 2014: "On a side note being a leader can have similar issues as being in an online community. Not showing emotions and invulnerable. Being too real/ human can result in lost respect and people challenging your status, as well as subordinates questioning your authority."
I've found the key to effective community leadership to be the opposite Troy. The ultimate challenge for many gamers is to operate as a true persona, to shatter the notion that your actual identity places you at a disadvantage or diminishes your ability to be taken serious.
For some, the true persona pursuit takes real courage and presses on a real fears. What better place to practice ones self-awareness than a virtual world with "no real consequences." What's to loose?
What a better gym to work out interpersonal weaknesses and build core strengths than in the multiplayer games we play. Sure, mistakes will be made and vulnerability exposed. Until it fades out all together, embarrassment can be a reoccurring bi-product. One might even look like an asshat from time to time. That's life.
Over and over, I've witnessed the persona pursuit transform lives.
Everything to gain.
Mar 12 2014: Opportunities for safe and frequent practice of any skill are enormously valuable. This is well established in simulation-based training for all sorts of skills in all sorts of professions or in the activities of daily living.
So the question become: What are the characteristics of a "safe" simulation or environment for practicing such things as leadership, judgment, authentic confidence, initiative, and accountability? Are there safe ways for one to experience "lost respect and people challenging your status" in a game?Feb 15 2014: I think this is a great topic, and would like to suggest the importance of grounding it in larger conversations about communities, rather than implicitly treating games as so exceptional that they need to be addressed from scratch.
We already have plenty of research about the generic qualities of many successful communities, in terms of human capital, cohesion and mutual acceptance; and plenty of research about what facilitates these virtues in different kinds of digital environments (how trolling is handled; how shared standards and aspirations are developed and enshrined, or not; how 'virtue' is rewarded).
I suspect that the important business of addressing precisely what happens within player communities will be best-rooted in these general principles - and in not simply treating games as implacable engines determining certain behaviors.
As to how far these virtues may be detachable from the context of a game - and enforceable or enhanceable by external framing - I don't know. But I do think it's interesting to compare, for example, efforts to reward positive community-enhancing behavior (and penalize trolling) in the "meta" aspects of games like League of Legends - and how far such efforts come up against limitations embodied in game mechanics themselves.
It depends in part how you define community, of course. Some of the most enhancing gaming experiences I've had have been courtesy of the small "communities" of four or five close friends playing a great game at the same time as me, and the way in which we've dissected its mechanics, bonded, and used play as a bridge to other interactions. Perhaps we need to categorize communities as well as games - by size, by scope and cohesion - if we want to have the best possible conversation here?
Gary Riccio
Feb 15 2014: Thank you, Tom. I love your idea. In fact, I think it is central to the question we are asking. I would love to hear more about your personal experiences in this regard. So far, I have been writing in generalities. I will try to get into a bit more detail about personal experience. I think some of my colleagues in the world of games are planning to write about their experiences that are unfolding as we have this TED conversation over the next month.
- +3
Your idea is important to me because, based on my personal experience and the psychological literature (e.g, work in the 1980s and 1990s by one of my mentors, Ulric Neisser, on the self), I believe we have multiple identities associated with the nested communities to which we all belong (e.g., significant other, nuclear family, extended family, friends, colleagues). Experiences in growth with one of these identities certainly can influence our other identities (see also the more recent work of Herminia Ibarra on identify at work).
In my work with Army training and education for example, we frequently heard stories about how someone had been changed by significant emotional events and developmental experiences within a formal setting for learning in ways that changed their behavior and manifestation of values outside that context, in the person's life more broadly. I have been hearing the same thing from the gaming community with which I have been interacting over the last couple of years. We will try to have some of the gamers comment here about such experiences.
I don't pretend that this is a great insight. We hear stories all the time about these sorts of cross-fertilizing influences in other aspects of life outside of games or education. I think what will be interesting is to see if we can elicit stories at the level of detail of a good novel so we can understand what specific things people do in interactions that one would characterize as prosocial or otherwise existentially influential.
Fritzie -
Feb 15 2014: I agree with you that the idea that we bring experiences from one interactive setting to another is not novel. What interests me in the discussion is that people very quickly make assumptions about interactive or learning settings of which they are not a current part, in fact dismissing environments that may have positive potential.
- +3
I will follow your thread with interest even as my inexperience with gaming leaves me little to add. I think that we will increasingly interact with and work with those engaged in gaming, and so it is useful from that perspective to have a picture of the most common cultures in those communities.
Feb 15 2014: We are interested in hearing from people who are "inexperienced with gaming" as well. Why? If you have a gamer in your life whose online experiences you are curious about, we are interested in hearing about your third-party questions and conjectures.
Fritzie -
Feb 15 2014: I don't have a gamer in my life in the sense of a child, parent, or friend involved in gaming, but any teacher is likely involved every day with many students who are.
- +3
Further, there is another thread on TED Conversations about the effect of game-playing on aging, and in that thread there is some discussion of whether games are "artificial" and therefore not conducive to cognitive health.
I hope some of the participants in that thread will notice yours here and that you will take a look at that parallel thread.
Feb 15 2014: The TED conversation that Fritzie mentioned can be found at http://www.ted.com/conversations/22866/are_cognitive_games_such_as_r.htmlFeb 16 2014: In my reply to you (Tom Chatfield), I emphasized the importance of nested communities, identity, and notions of self (see e.g., www.scribd.com/doc/40321956). Here are references to some of the work of Neisser and Ibarra to which I referred.
Ibarra, H. (2004). Working identity: Unconventional strategies for reinventing your career. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Ibarra, H., & Hunter, M. (2007). How leaders create and use networks. Harvard Business Review, 85(1), 40–7.
Neisser, U. (Ed.) (1996). The perceived self: ecological and interpersonal sources of self knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Neisser, U., & Fivush, R. (Ed.) (1994). The remembering self: construction and accuracy in the self narrative. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Neisser, U., & Jopling, D.A. (Eds.) (1997). The conceptual self in context. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Other relevant research is that of Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer on "small wins" at work.
Amabile, T. M., and Kramer, S. J. (2011). Meeting the challenges of a person-centric work psychology. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 4, 116-121.
Amabile, T. M., and Kramer, S. J. (2011). The power of small wins. Harvard Business Review, 89 (5), 70-80.
This corresponds to what my colleagues and I refer to as developmentally influential "micro-experiences." It also connects with essential aspects of the gaming experience to which Jane McGonigal and others refer, such as "blissful productivity" and its relation to "urgent optimism, epic meaning, and weaving a tight social fabric," or what you (Tom Chatfield) discuss in terms of dynamic reward schedules both as a reflection of and impact on engagement.Feb 17 2014: Tom, I believe you bring up a valuable assertion that this conversation would be better suited as a discussion about community interaction as opposed to meandering through the differences in each genre. While that is inherently the focus of this discussion, what is not widely understood is that within each game category (e.g., MMORPG, FPS, Simulation) varying levels of community engagement will either be encouraged or deterred through the functions of the game, regardless of category. Such that the classification of game type actually has less impact on the community than the tools or strategies applied in a given game. I do believe it has an underlying influence on this discussion, however I do agree it should not be a main point of conjecture as we should assume in the broader sense that we are more concerned with how these functioning communities impact it's collective and individual members, not how the games impact the community.
Feb 17 2014: Thanks Matthew for this emphasis. From my perspective, I think "how these functioning communities impact it's collective and individual member" should include some details about the interactions as much as the outcomes of the interactions so that our audience can come to understand both the realities and the possibilities for online gamer communities.
Commenters are beginning to describe the places (e.g., forums) where the interactions occur and where the back stories of relationships develop. Without giving up privacy, it would be nice to have some examples such as... "in this particular situation, I talked with... about... because..." and "the intent and tone of the conversation was..." and "I learned... and taught..." and "together, we came to know..."
Fritzie -
Feb 17 2014: I think if most of what you are studying is relarionship-building in forums, it is important to articulate why relationship-building in forums attached to games would be different than those not attached to games. The demographic is surely different. But what else?
- +1
There are forums that are basically about chat in which people may see a forum as support for reflections on their lives or the world around them. There are DIY forums in which people use the forum for technical support on individual projects. There are forums that are more wiki-like in which people who are working together exchange ideas and information pertinent to their common undertaking, like a wiki for docents at a particular museum. There are venues like Wetcanvas for artists, which are a hybrid of supporting individuals in individual projects, loosely connected group projects, chat about ideas, and discourse about matters of the day, with participants participating in some aspects but not others.
Why would a gamers forum offer different opportunity to develop the skills that interest you than these other types?Feb 17 2014: Fritzie asks more great questions here. I will be interested in reading what the gamers have to say. For me, as I indicated before, it is the split-second decision making that is required in some game genres, especially one-lifers versus respawners. It would be good to read more from gamers on this distinction.
Another important driver for me is the sheer amount of time that gamers spend playing games together, in this form of collective endeavor, and the arguably unprecedented size of the population of people involved in online social games. Even if there were nothing special about the relationship-building in games, these numbers would be enough to warrant special attention to online social games.
Feb 17 2014: I should have mentioned too, then, the parallel to, or contrast with, relationship-building in the context of sports played physically, where one also makes split-second decisions with consequences.
I imagine there is a significant literature about the building of leadership and collaborative skills through participation in team sports and communities attached to team sports.Feb 22 2014: After the first week of conversation, I think I can provide an answer to Tom's question about community size. I believe we are talking about gameplay that, at any one time, involves fewer than ten teammates but within a much larger community from which this team can be drawn and, to some extent, to which the team's behavior and performance in accountable. In addition, we seem to be focusing on games that require something like real-time decision-making and action. Much of this discussion has been around first-person shooter games but these criteria are much broader.
Feb 22 2014: In our world, team sizes are 4, 8 or 16 gamers. We prefer 8 man teams. It limits gameplay lag and still allows us to break down into various units as needed in game such as two teams of 4, four teams of 2 or two teams of three and one rover (usually a sniper).
I too would love to see other gamers from other game genres that support community comment here. I feel like there is a lot I could learn from it.Feb 22 2014: Tom wrote: "As to how far these virtues may be detachable from the context of a game - and enforceable or enhanceable by external framing - I don't know."
Very far. We practice our virtues in all that we do in, around and outside of gameplay. Even though being a member of our gaming community is a lot of fun, becoming a ranked member is more a right of passage than a recreational activity. Earning rank (external from the games we play) in our community requires a player to focus both on the quality of their gameplay and the quality of their persona, or the development of. To become a leader in our community most gamers we encounter will have to engage in various degrees of "hurt work" to earn and then move up in rank. Our experience has been that this process changes people for the better and in all that they do.
Tom wrote: "Some of the most enhancing gaming experiences I've had have been courtesy of the small "communities" of four or five close friends playing a great game at the same time as me..."
You said "great game." So, one of the motivations in creating our gaming clan 10 years ago was so that we could experience great games all the time. To us, a great game is when all the players on your team work together successfully to complete the objective(s) of a match. Without a clan, you might go weeks without experiencing a good game. With a clan, you have great games on tap.
Tom Wrote: "Perhaps we need to categorize communities as well as games - by size, by scope and cohesion - if we want to have the best possible conversation here?"
Here is a general frame:
★ Global gaming community: All games and gaming communities
★ At-large gaming community: All gaming communities within a specific game genre
★ Game community: All gaming communities within a specific game
★ Clan/Guild/Tournament community: Organized gaming communities that play games together
★ A Team: A small number of organized gamers
★ A Gamer/Player: Me
Hope that helps Tom. Thanks for engaging!Feb 23 2014: I approach this topic as a psychiatrist who believes gaming holds huge untapped potential for good in my profession. The online game SPARX has been shown to help depressed adolescents achieve remission at a higher rate than standard, evidence-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). The remission rate for the game was 43% versus 26% for face to face CBT. However, we are not yet to the point where there is widespread community acceptance or discussion about the SPARX phenomenon.
For the purpose of this discussion about community interactions around online games, I will share some thoughts arising from the SPARX experience.
For games like SPARX to have a major societal impact, people must be aware of its existence and benefits. It needs to be part of the therapeutic culture. Up to now, gaming has been denigrated by many who believe kids and many adults spend too much time on games. In many camps, there is a knee-jerk assumption that gaming may be fun but must be bad for the brain and for society. Some academics are working to stand this assumption on its head -- see American Psychologist article on brain benefits of gaming: http://bit.ly/1k2tBVi
As more research on gaming becomes available, we could see a "tipping point" toward widespread community discussion on the benefits of well-designed games. Mental health professionals will have to move past old assumptions, professional "ego", and financial/guild concerns to embrace the fact that gaming may serve a role in clinical treatment. Parents and teachers will need to discuss which games kids should be encouraged to play -- not whether they should be playing at all (what a waste of time when gaming is already enshrined as part of their everyday experience"). Kids will talk with their friends about how cool SPARX is and how to win it. Maybe they'll play it together. When community discussion on "therapeutic gaming" is lit on fire, we could see SPARX and other games transform our world and promote mental health.
Feb 23 2014: Has the game SPARX been evaluated as yet by anyone who is not one of the game's developers or connected to them? I went to the site and found published research only from researchers personally connected to the game. Is it a multiplayer game in which depressive kids are protected from trolling and so forth, or is it controlled from the start in terms of who can play with whom and what they can do?
It is quite believable to me that various sorts of games might help young people deal with a challenge like depression. If therapies like psychodrama help some people, and if kids are so drawn to fantasy novels, why not games with imaginary quests in which they can participate?
Feb 24 2014: SPARX has been studied primarily by its developers in New Zealand, spearheaded by Sally Merry. It was their impressive results that were published in the British Medical Journal. Part of the core mission of LinkedWellness is to further study and develop SPARX and similar games. There are ongoing studies of SPARX at this time, including a U.S.-based study of the effects of SPARX on functional MRI scans of the brain. We hope that this and future studies like it will enhance the evidence base for SPARX and suggest new directions for developing the game. SPARX will be strictly controlled from the start to avoid trolling and other problems. We believe it will be best for there to be some monitoring of how players are doing clinically, so that they can be referred to other forms of treatment and care if necessary. The efficacy of SPARX has been validated in adolescents with mild to moderate depression, and we need to be cautious in the approach to individuals with severe illness like suicidality and psychosis. It is quite likely, however, that SPARX and other well-designed online games could be a component of the care of people even with more severe depression or other psychiatric conditions.Feb 24 2014: Thank you, David, for revealing this exciting extrapolation of our interest in prosocial gaming! We have some colleagues who are pursuing game-based interventions to help veterans with post-traumatic stress, both rehabilitation and growth, and other colleagues who are developing games for rehabilitation of veterans with Traumatic Brain Injury (see links below). We believe online games can begin to erase the problematic boundaries between self help and managed care, especially though a broader definition of community and collective endeavor (e.g., overcoming the false dichotomy of talking and doing, together).
To be sure, we have different motivations and breadth of agendas. More importantly, there is a common commitment to developing and promulgating broader approaches to wellness and, with existential sensibilities, to help consumers and providers have greater choice and responsibility both individually and together. We agree with your optimism about transforming the world through collective endeavors at the level of socio-technical ecosystems instead of compartmentalized supply and demand, for example through community, disintermediation, open innovation, brand activation, engagement marketing, or the delight in collaborative play.
We are thrown into the world together, and together we must make meaning of it.
Feb 24 2014: Gary, Thanks so much for sharing these thoughts about games to help with PTSD and TBI, both of which often don't respond adequately to the conventional medical treatments involving psychotropic medications. The medication approach is so passive in many ways -- take a pill and wait to see if it will make things better. Even when the medications help to reduce the severity and intensity of symptoms, something more is necessary. Here is where I find your remarks about "existential sensibilities" and "choice and responsibility" so important and enlightening. The community of clinicians (and many others) serve people with PTSD and TBI best when we engage with them as active co-participants in recovery and wellness, rather than simply treat "patients" was bundles of neurons waiting to be passively modulated by drugs (even though the drugs may be helpful in settling the nervous system enough so that people can assert themselves as individuals with choice and responsibility). The right kind of games invite people to proactively take control of and shape their mental lives. We are in rudimentary phases of developing optimal games for people with neuropsychiatric challenges, but the existential and choice-based philosophy you articulate will help to drive the field forward toward novel, unforeseen options for human community and wellness.
Feb 24 2014: Our existential sensibilities were invigorated recently in our work on leadership, education, training, and service "in extremis" (actually in "trans-extremis" conditions) outside of online games but the relevance has been obvious to us throughout our participatory journalism with online game communities.
See the links below to our prior work in which we had to develop a transdisciplinary meta-theory, that was empirically viable, to cross boundaries between theory and praxis.
Thank you, David!Mar 12 2014: It's amazing to have discovered SPARX and your games initiative David. Thank you for joining us! Because we share a similar purpose and as I read your post, I read the following quote (paraphrased) like this:
"As more research on gaming becomes available, we will see a "tipping point" toward widespread community discussion on the benefits of well-designed games and the communities they orchestrate. Games professionals will have to move past old assumptions, professional "ego", and financial/guild concerns to embrace the fact that gaming can serve a transformative role in our world. Parents and teachers will need to discuss which games and communities kids should be encouraged to engage -- not whether they should be playing at all."
If a persistent game of sheep's knuckles was able to save the Kingdom of Lydia, video games and organized communities might be our best approach to a number of significant problems in our society.
Keep fighting the good fight sir!
Mar 12 2014: Dr. Brendel was interviewed on Science in the Wild yesterday. The interviews will be posted by the end of the week at http://urbusinessnetwork.com/category/science-in-the-wild-radio-show-and-podcast-with-host-gary-riccio/
In the interviews, David made several references to the prior interview with Justin. http://urbusinessnetwork.com/unleashing-power-community-play-civil-hacking-online-games/
It appears that there are very deep connections between "Linked Wellness" and online game communities with respect to the transformative power of prosocial behavior and communication about it.
Mike Legacy
Feb 18 2014: An entire book could be written about gaming communities and the effects they have on human interpersonal interactions. Overall, I think Tom Chatfield hits the nail on the head in his comment about how we need to look at the general effect that ANY group has on the human psyche and the implications of that group/community on the individual involved.
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On a large scale, community-driven engagement in the digital realm has essentially turned normal human conversation and perception on its axis. Human conversation has been altered in obvious ways. The internet blossomed, and with that came less personal interaction, and more in the digital space. Today, it's gotten to the point where a lot of companies are opting to install social platforms for workflow within their corporate structures (Jive, Yammer, etc.). This has obvious advantages, such as creating a searchable index of all internal conversation for quick and easy review, but the disadvantages include less personal interaction.
I work at a company with 80 people. We use Jive for workflow and indexing, and it works quite well. At the same time, out of 80 people, I've probably PERSONALLY worked face-to-face with only 20 or so. That is a 100% shift from previous generations, whose only line of efficient communication came through personal interaction. Before social platforms and the digital revolution, you didn't post a job-related article/material on a social site for the client to review, you PRESENTED the item to them. This is only one small case, but sheds a huge light on the darkness that social platforms have created in the realm of actual personal interaction today....
This is continued at the link below, because of the character limit.....
Feb 18 2014: One can as a research problem pursue the question either way or both ways. Some aspects of group interaction may be the same across a variety of settings, including online gaming communities and their forums, and some may be unique to online games and their forums.
I interpret the question as looking to do a case study of the issues of developing leadership and so forth specifically in online gaming communities, even if the same dynamics and results are typical of other sorts of online communities. From there one might ask whether there are some features unique to gaming communities and what about the fact that the focus is a multi-player game creates the difference.
Feb 18 2014: The unique aspect of using games in this fashion is the mask given by the separation of identity. That separation allows players to have more choice with his/her persona, since there are less punitive repercussions of his/her behavior. As a result, that sort of mask gives what I'm going to term a more "raw" individual, since the player's free-will has a stronger impact on his choices, whether he chooses to be a jerk when playing or he chooses to be a jolly fun guy.
How that "raw individual" is managed is where you will find the specialty of community-development within gaming. If you ask me, I believe this dynamic gives the unique opportunity for players in gaming to address the more "raw person" and as a result tackle more deeply ingrained characteristics, for better or for worse.
Feb 18 2014: But people use pseudonyms in online forums unrelated to gaming as well. I think most people on the TED forum, for example use pseudonyms.Feb 19 2014: Sure, and I'm very sure that forums provide the same mask through those pseudonyms. To a point, I think a similar effect can be made within forums also. However, gaming includes not only the collaboration but a challenge, done in real time communication. I believe that environment provides features that better facilitate the "raw person".
Fritzie -
Feb 19 2014: I think that you are right that having an ongoing collaborative project/challenge binds people in a way that is not a feature on most forums. Where there is not a community undertaking that is itself compelling to participants, people often leave when too many people get too annoying rather than trying to work through whatever the obstacles are to productive discourse.
- +1
Another scenario is that people can ignore problems when they do not need to rely on each other for anything.
In project teams, live or virtual, one has to figure out how to collaborate to make things happen that need to happen.Feb 19 2014: There is an important distinction here, I think, between talking and doing, even in a virtual environment. In this regard, I think the this notion of the "raw individual" is fascinating. It is the difference perhaps between the healthy and adaptive multiple identities we all can have concurrently in our interactions with different communities versus the pathological manifestations of multiple personality in neurotic disorders.
So one question here is whether the "split second decision making" required in some game genres, such as first-person shooter games, is more difficult to fake or contrive than the more deliberative personas that one might craft in a slowly evolving text dialog or slowly evolving game.Feb 19 2014: That's an easy question to answer, i think. The more time you are able to invest in something, the more you have the opportunity to shape it, which means you can spin the idea into more of what you want it to look it. The events that require instant, knee-jerk reactions reveal something more "raw", as I have put it. The idea is, if you can improve the raw person, you're improving something that is more real to the player, even if they aren't fully aware of what it is that is being improved.
Here's a very basic scenario. In gaming, there is a typical issue of players that care more about their individual statistics than actually playing to win. This means that, when you're in the game, their main objective is to get a high score in the game, instead of actually working with their teammates in order to complete the objective. This can make the player's knee-jerk reaction to hide from in-game conflict to survive, and as a result leave your teammates hanging.
If this person was within our community, our ideal response would be to work with the player to put more value in the overall success of the team, which would solve the issue. Other communities might simply condition the player to not run away from conflict, which would also solve the issue, but wouldn't address the raw characteristic.
I may be leading the discussion in an inappropriate direction, but that aspect is very translatable to people in general. There are "root causes" to actions, and the better you are at addressing those root causes, the better you can be at dealing with people.
Feb 19 2014: I appreciate your explanation. I would not have known there are individual scores independent of the team's score or progress toward an objective. For me this characteristic of the task/arena is essential in understanding what is being negotiated within gaming communities.
Thank you for explaining.Feb 19 2014: This is a perfectly appropriate direction and, again, it provides enough detail for the reader to imagine being in the situation. That's what I am looking for. And...
"Other communities might simply condition the player to not run away from conflict, which would also solve the issue, but wouldn't address the raw characteristic."
This is a deeply insightful observation about practices of true leadership. My colleagues and I observed the ways the military came to understand more deeply and educate leaders about "something more raw" (see e.g., http://www.scribd.com/doc/40649283). Conflicts in the 21st century cannot be addressed with conditioning. It requires self awareness and collective understanding, essentially knowing one's capabilities to adapt to the unknown with critical thinking.
Now corporations are trying to figure out these new lessons learned from the military which require that they unlearn old lessons learned from the military.
Thanks Daniel!!!Feb 18 2014: That's an inspiring viewpoint: Taking the adventure of the digital age and capitalizing on it with the video gaming industry. We can work really hard to talk about the science reinforcing gaming into the bigger-picture of community-development, but with that take on it the power behind gaming is almost obvious, at least the way you described it.
That transitions very well into what I think Tom was interested in poking at, which is taking the power of an "online community" and referring it to a bigger-picture, being community building in general. Specifically within The Division IGR, the programs set in place may be game-specific, but require skill sets that can easily translate into any form of community building.
For example, lets talk about The Division IGR's development of it's Constitution, a complex system of policies, rights, and systems set in place to logically push the community 'toward effective levels of continued success'. Building that style of document is very useful for a community, and figuring out how to write something like that requires different levels of problem evaluation, technical writing, idea development, segmentation and targeting (what I mean by that is defining and refining your community's audience), system development, and plenty of other things.
Being a part of that process is a great exercise for working on those 'skill sets', and is just one of many examples, some more tangible, some less so. But regardless, these are the sort of things that apply to community development as a whole, where gaming communities are included.
Feb 19 2014: It would be fascinating to read some stories about the deliberations involved in the "development of it's Constitution." Even just little vignettes would help link meaningful values-based debate and conversation to gameplay in groups. It would help us understand the jusxtaposition of personal and the persona.
Feb 19 2014: Well here's an example, then.
Our community was originally functioning on one game: SOCOM. With this, our Constitution has systems and processes that only applied to SOCOM, which meant, when our community started playing game like Call of Duty and Battlefield, there were parts of our Constitution that were not applicable. For instance, in our Constitution we had established Domains, modes of operations (like recruiting members, building in-game strategies, recording team statistics) that were built around specific features provided in SOCOM. When we started playing other games, the way those domains functioned were unusable, which made the Constitution less valuable. We worked with the document, and redesigned the structure of our "Domain" so it was more abstract, and more applicable to all gaming titles. We had to redesign the idea, put the idea into words, and write it in a professional format that was readable to our audience.
That's just one example of many, but it's a long and involved thought process, and knowing that intricacies of that thought process is invaluable to anyone who wants to be able to develop ideas.Feb 19 2014: "What mass social networks lack in actually creating organic personal relationships, gaming communities make up for. I understand that not everyone is into gaming, and that's okay. I actually believe new-age gaming communities are setting the stage for a second digital revolution that reintegrates the old with the new. In doing so, we could create a digital world that inspires personal interactions that feel authentic, rather than counterfeit." (Mr. Legacy)
Fascinating post, Mr. Legacy! Thank you. I believe you may be right about a second digital revolution. In business, for example, the conversation is changing to things like "engagement marketing" and "brand activation" in which producers and consumers have shared awareness and opportunities for influence with accountability for new developments in products and services even including their impact on an ecosystem of people and businesses who don't use them. Business are struggling to get to the details of the "experience economy" and finding that experience is inescapably social, collaborative, and proactive. This may be a bit different from where you were headed in your post but I believe it reflects the broader changes to which you referred.
Comment deleted
Feb 22 2014: "A union of diversity" ...Let that ring in your mind.
And this is why "At their technological limit, games will subsume all other media." - Jesse Schell
Business is spending many many many millions of dollars to figure out how to engage and delight consumers through various media, especially digital social media. Well...
Social + Engagement + Delight = Games (and it always has)Feb 22 2014: Legacy wrote: "To me, social gaming communities are the savior of this story, and are excelling at integrating classic personal interaction, with new-age digital communication. What mass social networks lack in actually creating organic personal relationships, gaming communities make up for. I understand that not everyone is into gaming, and that's okay. I actually believe new-age gaming communities are setting the stage for a second digital revolution that reintegrates the old with the new. In doing so, we could create a digital world that inspires personal interactions that feel authentic, rather than counterfeit."
So this is amazing to think about Mike.
Some from our community and affiliate communities, and our professional colleagues have only ever met each other through social technology such as PSN, Skype and FB and real relationships have developed. Real constructive collaboration is happening and it doesn't feel much like work at all. Actually, it feels more like blasting off on Starship Enterprise. The ability to connect with conscious personas from all over the world and from all walks of life, to organize successfully around missions, in and out of games, also sometimes with bedhead, is transformative. A union of diversity.
"I'm just one lion, Voltron needed five." - Jay Floyd
Also, I think you're right about the second digital revolution.
"At their technological limit, games will subsume all other media." - Jesse Schell
"Digital tribalism is the new order." - Andrew Melchior
Brady Rozens
Mar 12 2014: Technology has evolved in the last decade to help fascilitate pro-social outcomes never imagined by human kind. From Alpha Numerical pagers to VOIP headsets, this gave an individual the power to network. These types of prosocial tools were utilized in video games during SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals for the Sony Playstation 2. Utilizing both tools a pager and the games provided VOIP headset, bonds were formed on a worldwide scale. Myspace was founded in 2003 the same year SOCOM one of the more popular shooters of the era. This really networked a community of gamers and allowed them to utilize teamwork to complete skill based objectives. Now today this experience is shared on the internet in the form of Live streaming on services such as TwitchTV and you stream. And new social tools such as Twitter and Facebook have APIs that are integrated into the new Sony Playstation 4 operating system. Now the gamer can utilize better tools to stay connected and further promote prosocial gameplay on a level we have never seen before. How do we use it to solve bigger problems with fellow gamers and mental health? Many people are researching this, and are very close to a solution. Hang on to your seats.
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Mar 12 2014: Sphere of influence. Networking. Good fight Heroes. Games, social networking and mental health. World influence.
Hang on indeed!Mar 12 2014: There is much to be learned from the history of technology about what is similar and what is different about the emerging influence of new technology. The initial expectations and ultimate impact of telegraph and telephone are instructive in speculation about the evolving influence of the internet.
In an 1838 letter to Francis O.J. Smith in 1838, Morse wrote: "This mode of instantaneous communication must inevitably become an instrument of immense power, to be wielded for good or for evil, as it shall be properly or improperly directed." (extracted 12MAR2014 from http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/150/1830.xhtml)
Authors Charles F. Briggs and Augustus Maverick wrote in their 1858 book, The Story of the Telegraph: "The whole earth will be belted with the electric current, palpitating with human thoughts and emotions" (extracted 12MAR2014 from http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/150/1830.xhtml)
As reported in the book "Bell" by Robert V. Bruce, Kate Field, a British reporter who knew Bell, predicted in 1878 that eventually: "While two persons, hundreds of miles apart, are talking together, they will actually see each other." (extracted 12MAR2014 from http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/150/1830.xhtml)
See also:
If the most important similarities have to do with intentional communication between two parties, with the intent of edification and influence, it seems to me that the most important difference is in online games. The social media to which Brady refers augment game play by providing deeper and broader shared awareness of concurrent experience. More importantly, amid the fun, collective game play brings surprising (existential) gravitas to social media to the extent that communication is about behavior that is visible to others and that brings opportunities for influence on others.
Troy Mills
Mar 7 2014: Rockstar's latest Grand Theft Auto installation has taken a very interesting line on the war against party poopers. Certain actions while playing online are awarded either good sport or bad sport value. Blowing up other players cars or leaving games while they are still going are all considered bad sport behavior. Given enough bad sport "points", the player is "dunced" or removed from public servers and forced to play in a server only for bad sport players. I have often wondered if there is any order and civility in these servers. Rockstar made the choice to not ban people for being bad sports but to put them all together. If only other games would do the same thing. It raises the question if enough bad examples are purged will the community go into remission and start fixing itself? Would the bad sport servers be filled with people trying to get back into public and acting civilized, or would they just embrace their fate? I have to believe that there would be some people that I would never play with if other games adopted this system. I have to remain positive that remove enough bad eggs and we can get back to the wholesome and quality community of the past.
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Mar 9 2014: I've been involved in trying to direct or "steer" a community in a collaborative and positive direction that benefits the objective play mechanics in some of these games. The truth is it can only work where people share similar values and seek to gain a similar experience from the activity. The surprising part is there are those that share the same value for exploitation and what others consider "bad sport behaviour"
One example is the dedicated space on the SOCOM server Playstation set aside for the eSeals. This was a competitive initiative with structured events and tournament ladders. We had our own forums and Admins. The problem is the Admins had no control over the dedicated server space. These lobbies quickly became the home of exploiters and cheaters for the soul purpose of sharing, learning and practicing the exploits, glitches and cheats. These were commonly known as GNK rooms or "Glitch No Kill" which is an understood agreement to only share cheats and glitches and to not kill others on the opposing team. It was a collaborative effort to undermine the "rules" of the game to gain advantages over others. This became the shared objective and provided the entertainment for those involved.
Mar 10 2014: Thanks Troy and Scott for this kind of detail. The notion of community we all have been discussing in most of this TED Conversation suggests that we will have to consider many of the social structures that have been constructed in physical communities, included self governance and policing, that reflect and promote shared values. As in physical communities, it will be important to determine how to pay for, or otherwise motivate, the social structures to minimize the antisocial behavior that the vast majority of gamers who don't want in video games.Mar 9 2014: Another example is the Survival game DayZ which is both a PVP and PVE game type "Player verses Player and Player vs Environment" It's not a round based game with time limits like other shooters, you start with a character with only the basic cloths, no weapons or other supplies except a flashlight.The AI antagonists are zombies which predominantly occupy areas around towns and buildings where needed supplies are located. In addition there is an element of degradation for your character and your supplies. You have hunger, thirst, your cloths and weapons accumulate ware, damage and you can suffer from injuries. The end result is your death.
Many players when well equipped and healthy will turn on other survivors for sport, These players in the game are known as "bandits". Friends will form a group to pray on newly spawned players, or will single out individuals. There are handcuffs and rope in the game to capture players and there is rotten food and disinfectant with the mechanic to force feed a captured player.
This activity can create the element of distrust of a met player on a server and some will KOS or "Kill on Sight" any player they meet.
These stressors as part the game mechanic create the drama and reward for using your wits and skill. The reward is duration, the value is in your ability with the sparse equipment you can find or take from another. The end result is most everyone will eventually die and need to respawn to begin the process all over.
Mar 10 2014: Thanks again for more detail, Scott. The PVE aspect of an online game certainly will help to create more engagement. PVE in a multi-player (not purely PVP) can be a potent way to engage with others, even if the shared resource limitations are fictitious. How else would one explain the popularity of Farmville?Mar 10 2014: Wow, Troy, this is an amazing post. It introduces an element of impact and organization in online game communities that we haven't really addressed.
"Rockstar made the choice to not ban people for being bad sports but to put them all together. If only other games would do the same thing. It raises the question if enough bad examples are purged will the community go into remission and start fixing itself? Would the bad sport servers be filled with people trying to get back into public and acting civilized, or would they just embrace their fate?"
The parallels with physical communities are fascinating. What an interesting natural laboratory it would be to develop various models for this kind of penalization or Balkanization and observe the personal adaptations to it. This gets to the heart of what it means to be human, as a social being, and it is the kind of question that has spurred some of the deepest debates in philosophy and religion for all of recorded history. At the very least, one would think there are business models for this kind of market segmentation based on different experiences that different demographics want from online games, most notably the social experiences they desire.
It would be great if we can get more comments on this kind of segmentation in online games.Mar 12 2014: Troy, what a great point. I am a firm believer this is the future of in-game community management. Though, I challenge Scott a bit, I think that if you categorize gamers based on good gaming behavior, and tier access to things like downloads, weapons, giveaway codes, etc. and base access on their good gaming ranking, you can motivate even the most antisocial gamer. You can also begin to target the anti community with various content to incentivize the climb out of the gutter. There is a science to be applied there. Yes, there will always be those you can't help but if the relationship between the studio and community is strong, this I believe can lead most to higher ground. A thought just came to me, imagine, for instance, if in H-Hour, one week out of the month (always random) the good gaming clans were allowed to enter the antisocial servers with weapons and capabilities not available to the anti community. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Fun scrims for the good guys, incentive to get the hell out of that server for the bad.
Scott, on paper the way you described DayZ sounds like a terrible experience, but it isn't. Actually, I think due to DayZ's game design, the heightened sense of isolation over long periods of time in-game lends itself to a greater desire and appreciation for community in the long run. Just as it was in SOCOM 2, when not running with a clan meant you were probably going to loose the majority of games you played, no matter how good you played as an individual.
Mar 12 2014: The various forms of social stratification suggested in this thread could be coupled with educational offerings or resources that don't suffer from most of the inherent inequalities of traditional forms of education.
A more egalitarian meritocracy could be achieved if there was easy access to information about the norms, mores, and privileges about a social class into which one desires to move. For online games, social mobility across more-or-less exclusive "servers" could be facilitated by mentors, stakeholders, caregivers, and good Samaritans who may or may not be gamers themselves.
Social structures beget social social structures until some sort of sustainable equilibrium is achieved. Social equilibrium presumably would be characterized by consistency with shared values.
Gary Riccio
Mar 7 2014: This past week, the conversation pivoted on testimonials about the value of video games in personal development and wellness. This led to links with other TED Conversations and TED Talks ranging from social action to education. In this respect, it is useful to point out that my participatory scientific journalism in online game communities evolved out of the convergence of two lines of research.
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One line of research, to which Morgan Darwin and Scott Flanagan alluded in their interviews on Science in the Wild (see links in prior post), addressed leader development in ecosystems of training and education characterized by a loose weave of nested communities of practice. See http://www.scribd.com/doc/40321956
The other line of research addressed web-based instructional technology for blended learning that enabled outside experts to make expeditious and relevant contributions to a program of instruction, while from a distance, that approached the quality of guidance provided by a mentor with deep knowledge of the context for a learner as protege. See http://www.scribd.com/doc/41888356
The connection we see is that engagement with people at a distance can be as meaningful as when people are present in the same physical environment if there is visibility into the context that can both reflect and influence the interpersonal interactions and thus that provide inescapable accountability for the influence of participants on each other as well as their respective context. This blurs distinctions between first-hand and second-hand experience as well as between presence and remoteness. The more important characteristic is the second-person standpoint discussed in earlier posts.
Gareth Digby
Mar 8 2014: Building on your comment regarding "web-based instructional technology for blended learning" and Socrates Window: Being able to bring real life experiences into the classroom is important in showing the students how the techniques and procedures they are being taught can actually be implemented. The ability to _Leverage The Long Tail_ (as in Web 2.0) to reach those outside experts who can bring niche experiences to a teaching environment is very powerful. It seems counter intuitive as most of the time we see The Long Tail being used to push a product from a single location out to those niche consumers, where as here we are using the Web to reach niche producers in order to bring their experiences into a _single location_ - the classroom. (Of course, the classroom itself can be online reaching out to niche consumers of education.) These techniques allow the community to change from a simple one-to-many (teacher-to-students) relationship to a many-to-many relationship (mentors/teacher-to-students).
- +3
Mar 10 2014: Some background on Dr. Digby's insightful post:
While massive open online courses (MOOC) will get the most traffic and notoriety for an individual site, for example, most people on the web as such will be involved in extremely decentralized transactions between small numbers of producers and consumers of knowledge (and, more generally, any kind of product or service, and between all types of influencers and those influenced). This is the "long tail" (of a power law distribution), a term attributed to Clay Shirky.
"Power law distributions, the shape that has spawned a number of catch-phrases like the 80/20 Rule and the Winner-Take-All Society, are finally being understood clearly enough to be useful... we know that power law distributions tend to arise in social systems where many people express their preferences among many options... counter-intuitive aspect of power laws is that most elements in a power law system are below average, because the curve is so heavily weighted towards the top performers...
the long tail of weblogs with few readers will become conversational. In a world where most bloggers get below average traffic, audience size can't be the only metric for success... it can keep far better track of friend and group relationships... In between blogs-as-mainstream-media and blogs-as-dinner-conversation will be Blogging Classic, blogs published by one or a few people, for a moderately-sized audience, with whom the authors have a relatively engaged relationship...
Because of the continuing growth of the weblog world, more blogs in the future will follow this pattern than today. However, these blogs will be in the minority for both traffic (dwarfed by the mainstream media blogs) and overall number of blogs (outnumbered by the conversational blogs.)""
(extracted 10MAR2014 from: http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html, Clay Shirky, "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality," first published February 8, 2003).Mar 10 2014: See also Chris Anderson's article on "The Long Tail" in Wired (Issue 12.10 - October 2004) at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
"For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution...
What's really amazing about the Long Tail is the sheer size of it. Combine enough nonhits on the Long Tail and you've got a market bigger than the hits... most successful businesses on the Internet are about aggregating the Long Tail in one way or another. Google, for instance, makes most of its money off small advertisers (the long tail of advertising), and eBay is mostly tail as well - niche and one-off products. By overcoming the limitations of geography and scale, just as Rhapsody and Amazon have, Google and eBay have discovered new markets and expanded existing ones...
This is the power of the Long Tail."Mar 10 2014: I believe the concept of "aggregation" (e.g., to which Chris Anderson referred) is the key to understanding Gareth's insight. As the long tail extends to smaller and smaller niches, it becomes clear that we are not simply referring to markets comprised of individuals (e.g., demographics). In addition, we are considering markets that are needs even within individuals. Individuals, as consumers, bundle (aggregate) products or services to satisfy a variety of their individual needs. The internet gives consumers almost unlimited potential for such aggregation. Aggregation even can extend to connections with significant others in adjacent markets (e.g., friends and relatives who have a stake in the value provided by a variety of products and services).
The implication is that there is an unprecedented opportunity for intermediaries, as aggregators, to help consumers with this need of needs. Intermediaries can be people or technology, most likely both. They are "socio-technical." They are people with whom consumers (and providers) will have what Shirky prescribed as a "relatively engaged relationship." Intermediaries must understand context. It may be that the fast route to this intermediation is to be(come) intimately involved in a variety of the offerings in the "conversational" long tail.
The connection I am seeing between Gareth's insight and this TED conversation over the last week is that the interpersonal interactions and engaged relationships in online game communities can be an informative model for internet-mediated teacher-student interactions and for any business that seeks to utilize social media in an inspired approach to gamification and management of social context that has a powerful effect on the customer experience. For online game communities to become an "informative model," however, we must come to understand them more deeply. We must come to understand what kinds of conversation foster an engaged relationship mediated by the internet and how.Mar 12 2014: Gareth, wow, quite the conversation you've sparked. What amazing content. I will no doubt be revisiting this segment.
Gary wrote: "the interpersonal interactions and engaged relationships in online game communities can be an informative model for internet-mediated teacher-student interactions and for any business that seeks to utilize social media in an inspired approach to gamification and management of social context that has a powerful effect on the customer experience. For online game communities to become an "informative model," however, we must come to understand them more deeply. We must come to understand what kinds of conversation foster an engaged relationship mediated by the internet and how."
For us, the "conversation" revolves around persona development and the untapped potential of community play: http://www.thedivisionigr.com/citizenship.html
And, the "how" centers on a Gamer Bill of Rights, or a consensus of shared values and purpose: http://www.thedivisionigr.com/constitutions.html
Mar 12 2014: Thanks Justin. This brings us back to the collaborative inquiry of my colleagues and I with the U.S. Army that illuminated the relationship between shared values in a community and interpersonal behavior that can be observed in formal tasks, whether extraordinary or mundane, and in "extra-procedural activity" that is observable in all situations.
And, connecting with your comment about "Leadership, emotional intelligence and experience..." See also:
Jay Gransky
Feb 25 2014: Being a gamer for my entire life has helped me with issues and problems i have ran into through out my life. Let me tell you my story! I grew up in Tampa FL, with my two lovely parents. My mother always told me that i was going to be something great, Well teacher all through school didn't think that. Most teachers thought i was going to end up in jail with most of the kids i hung out with. this all started around 6th grade. After awhile i started to thinking the same way! I got into a lot of trouble through out middle school. after 8th grade summer i was going to become a freshmen in high school ! i was so pumped to get away from all those kids i hated and teachers. I was going to start a new life! But the thing was, the school i went to was right in the middle of the ghetto! So i started hanging with the wrong people. My freshmen year was tearable, I got into a lot fights and i didn't care what teachers said to me or thought about i just didn't care ! I ended getting kicked out of school and sent to another high school. now this school was all rich kids, so seeing all these kids pulling up in BMWs was kinda like a smack in the face. i ended getting kicked out of that school 6 months later. Now going into my sophomore year i went to a little HS kinda like a private school. the summer after my 9th grade year i didn't get into ANY trouble at all ! and the reason was, my Dad bought me a PlayStation and Socom ! i fell in love with online gaming. i played for a few months before i met THE DIVISION IGR. When i met them, they took me in as a brother! Even if i was a knuckle head, i guess they saw something in me , besides being a complete animal at Socom! I was 15 years when i join them ! I'm now 21 ! and i am proud to say that my community has taught me more then i have every learned all through out school! i'm now a SGT in DIVISION IGR and a Student at a night working to go to a College for Graphic Design! I don't know where i would be without them!
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Feb 25 2014: Wow... amazing post Josh. Watching you develop over the years as a gamer and a young man has been an amazing experience. From getting to know you and your parents, to your friends, to your visions of a higher ground, you have taught me so much about the possible in online games. Thank you.
I am very proud of who you have become and continue to grow into. You have a very bright future ahead of you sir. Keep up the great work.Feb 26 2014: Thank you, Jay, for the courage to write about this transition, and thank you for trusting us enough to share it in this open conversation.
I invite you to draw in some of your "brothers" in a back and forth about the details of how you interacted with each other inside and outside of game play so that we can come to a better understanding of the rich relationships that are possible in an online game community. I am sure you have some specific stories that demonstrate these possibilities.
Thanks again, Mr. Shamrock!
Feb 25 2014: As a lifelong gamer, it is refreshing to see an interest from the scientific community on this subject. Rather than write a long-winded opinion with my first post, I would rather just list some events I have witnessed over the years within the SOCOM franchise.
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-Two clanmates who played together nightly for years, married each other and are happily together to this day.
-Thousands of clanmates purchased consoles, games, and accessories for less privileged teammates to keep them a part of the team.
-Most longtime clans have been together for 5-10 years and talk on the phone between gaming. Countless stories have been shared of meetups in real-life, and people becoming real-life friends. In my case, I met a friend from this game who lived in the same city. Along with some other friends we met in-game, we started the largest community fansite for the gaming franchise that is still thriving today.
-I made a real life friend from the game. Watched him marry and serve a year long tour in Iraq. He came home to a discharge, a divorce, and no place to live. He lived on my couch for several months until he could get back on his feet.
-I was a clan leader of 100+ gamers that contained several high school and college students who I watched graduate, earn degrees, marry, and eventually have children over a period of seven years. I knew the names of their parents, wives, husbands, and kids who even chatted into the headsets at times. I was there to counsel them with advice as a friend. I was there to threaten to kick them off the team if they didn't logout and goto class or work. I was there to take their mind off the death of a loved one if they needed it.
Some of us spent thousands of hours each on these games, and we were "on the phone" with headsets with the same 8-100 people. I learned that my time spent with specific online games was just an extension of real life like my cell phone. Except we were doing something really fun together as a team while we talked.
Feb 25 2014: Thanks Luke! An entire book probably could be written about the deeply personal stories behind each one of these bullet points. It sounds like you have experienced a meaningful presence in this kind of community for a very long time. I would like to hear more of course but this testimonial already tells us a lot about outcomes and impact.
I look forward to hearing more from you about how your community formed. Your community is not the Division IGR with which I have been doing "participatory journalism," for the last two years, about prosocial behavior in online game communities. What is it about the particular games you all play that drew you together and sustained the relationships for so long?
Dan C
Feb 28 2014: " What is it about the particular games you all play that drew you together and sustained the relationships for so long?"
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I like some of the guys here found this sense of community they speak of also with the Socom Navy Seals franchise. The Socom community was a lot more tight knit then you see in the typical juggernaut online games like COD. While we always liked to fashion ourselves as this special community other games didn't have I think the game itself is what fostered that kind of community more then the people.
The games nowadays seem more geared towards personal rewards and accomplishments. Instead of playing with the team they are paying attention to what they need to do to get this virtual trophy or to unlock this item or gun. That winds up taking priority over the objective they are supposed to complete. The games nowadays have respawn so being social and forming strategies isn't as important when you have unlimited lives to compensate for mistakes or "lone wolfing it" without your team. Games nowadays use the quick match system instead of the traditional lobbies so you don't go back to the same rooms and run into all the regulars from that room to form those close relationships.
Socom had lobbies, friends and clans would all know exactly where to be to meet up each day. The objectives required team work if you wanted to be successful. You had one life per round so if you died you would chat amongst the other dead to form a gameplay or counter strategy for the next round. Or you might spend that time getting to know people on a more personal level. Since respawn is non stop action and less team oriented there's little incentive for people in those games to even be social with others in the game.
I really think a large part of what makes a very tight social community is a game design that fosters that kind of environment. I mean if you had matchmaking and respawn only in Socom I don't think the community aspect we know of now ever would have happened.
Feb 28 2014: "The games nowadays have respawn so being social and forming strategies isn't as important when you have unlimited lives to compensate for mistakes or "lone wolfing it" without your team. Games nowadays use the quick match system instead of the traditional lobbies so you don't go back to the same rooms and run into all the regulars from that room to form those close relationships."
Thanks Dan. This is very helpful. One-life and lobbies seem to be the key. So the question, I guess, is whether developer and publishers our out of touch with the market or sub-optimizing on one market segment no matter how large. Do you think these trends are market driven or do they have something do to with the cost of developing games are that are strategically interesting enough to make time in lobbies or strategic planning sufficiently interesting? Or does the new generation of game designers even know the art of the possible exemplified by earlier games?
Troy Mills
Mar 7 2014: I have always had my suspicions that Respawn is one of the main problems in Online Multiplayer Gaming. The number of behavioral changes that have resulted in the players being subjected to the spoils of respawn are numerous. I will only elaborate on my own observations as to the changes I went through, though I will bring to light an online article I found on the subject.
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Study: Too much TV, games for kids = shorter attention span by Sheryl Ubelacker http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/study-too-much-tv-games-for-kids-shorter-attention-span/article560503/
When I went from Socom Navy Seals, a mainly One-Life style game to Call of Duty Black Ops a mainly respawn style game, which was the first "COD" game that I purchased I underwent several changes. I spent approximately two years playing COD "BO and BO2" after which I returned to Socom. Some of these changes only came to light when I went back to playing Socom Confrontation on the PS3.
Respawn is basically non-stop playing, giving constant action with little to no waiting time between lives. The player loses feeling of significance in their character life, as well as any accountability in decision making at both mission critical and non-critical times. My Kill to Death ratio or KDR suffered drastically because I never had to "live/die" with the consequences of irresponsible or reckless behavior. I could always count on the next life.
Players that valued their lives and did everything that they could to not die, as well as camped or were not impetuous with their actions were called "try hards". This was meant as a derogatory statement, and such behavior should be discouraged. I can't imagine the affect a community fostering such values will have on future generations.
Abandoning my morals in the name of achievement hunting was another problem.
There are many other behaviors that have resulted not just from the Respawn but the sickening mindset the games like COD instill in players, some for life.Mar 12 2014: Dan, I whole hardheartedly agree with your position on SOCOM and the value of David's game design. In 2002, game design was really our only construct for rich online interaction.
Today, using interactive tools such as console networks, STEAM, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, etc. in, around and outside of gameplay to stay connected creates a continuous stream of engagement unlike anything we have experienced to date. And, it's only growing.
Our ecosystem has evolved. Now, I believe a game's community is as important as its design. I think Gary really nails this in his open letter explaining the relationship between games Dev, community and science >> http://www.thedivisionigr.com/triad.htmlMar 12 2014: Wow Troy. This is pretty powerful testimony about the distinction between one-life and respawning. I imagine there will always be a market for the simple thrills of respawning just as there always have been for arcade games or carnival games.
A big question that has emerged in this TED Conversation is not so whether existing online games will change or be replaced but whether new products and services will emerge in the online game space to fill needs that aren't being addressed adequately or at all by extant online games.
My assumption from my observations of gamers has been that community experiences are a relatively neglected need. It will be interesting to see if that assumption is validated by the development and success of offerings that provide deeper and more meaningful community experiencesMar 12 2014: What an awesome community snapshot Luke!
"I learned that my time spent with specific online games was just an extension of real life like my cell phone. Except we were doing something really fun together as a team while we talked."
Man, isn't that the truth. Even though our interactive ecosystem has exploded over the past decade, no other social platform ties it together quite like games.
Thank you for joining the conversation. Great share.
Mar 12 2014: "we were doing something really fun together as a team while we talked"
Talk is different and it becomes more meaningful when it refers to concurrent collaboration and shared experience because it connects us, together, with our respective personal histories and future personal consequences. It gives us visibility and opportunities for influence on each other and, eventually, inescapable accountability for it. Collaborative reflection on shared experience thus "weaves a tight social fabric" from individual threads.
Brad Keddy
Feb 17 2014: People I have never even seen face to face transferred perfectly into my sports and even my school work. Life is not something that is meant to be handled alone. the US NAVY SEALS call these teammates their swim buddy and their outlook on different objectives are brilliant! Im proud to be a gamer. Im proud to call my community my family! I know any issue I come by there are my brothers (who live in a different country entirely) will always stand by me and help me through anything. Community is the key to survival in this cruel world whether it be online or real life everybody needs it.
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Feb 17 2014: "I know any issue I come by there are my brothers (who live in a different country entirely) will always stand by me and help me through anything."
"Who live in a different country"!!! What was even remotely close to this in bygone times? The most elite and privileged of society, for example, from the 17th to 19th centuries, sent their children abroad to experience the world (i.e., individuals elsewhere in the world) and become leaders later in their adulthood. With the internet, the playing field is leveled.
By way of analogy, see also:
McCullough, D. (2012). The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Shorto, R. (2005). The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. New York: Vintage.Feb 22 2014: Brad wrote: "Life is not something that is meant to be handled alone."
Herein lies the power of multiplayer games and the digital tribes that inhabit them.
Awesome reply Brad!
Brad Keddy
Feb 17 2014: First I'd like to start out with a HUGE thank you. This conversation is greatly appreciated and long sought after by my gaming community.
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I'm a young man only 21 years old so I'm pretty fresh out of school, with out my community (The Division IGR) I would've never turned into the young man I man today. I believe that online gameplay and online interaction with individuals that may not even so much as look at in what we call "RL" has a major impact on ones life. For instance walking down the street and you see a man wearing a long dark trench coat long dark hair and black makeup all over his face. Most people will do their very best to avoid this person. However this man might be the nicest person in the world, and just have different beliefs than you do. But nobody will give him the time of day.
In online gameplay you will talk to anybody that will communicate with you, we as gamers feed off that teamwork. In junior high school I was transferred into a new school, as the new kid rumours spread around and I was constantly bullied. Everyday I tried to come up with an excuse to avoid going back. When I got my first PS3 it was like an escape from reality for me until I met my brothers in The Division. My community helped me through the thick and thin, they helped me realize that education was important and to ignore the negativity. It was hard but it was my online community that got me through my teenage years. The teamwork the trust and the commitment I learned from
Feb 17 2014: Wow! Thank you for sharing this experience, Brad. Can you tell us about the forums where you really got to know your "brothers in the Division." To what extent was it in audio during the game, and to what extent was it through other social media related to the game or not? Wow!
Feb 23 2014: Honestly, during gameplay was not when you would talk to somebody about your day to day lives. We ran a pretty tight crew when the game started. However a vast majority of our community if not everyone connects on a whole other level via skype, facebook, twitter, phone calls etc.
To answrr your question I'm not oblivious to the fact that the shooters i play are virtual and not reality, I'm more concerned with how somebody and their family are doing. Even more interested in their new car then I am about how the last couple games went. These guys are amazing and I'd do anything for them! The game is just something for us to bond over at this point to me. Something to do in the background while we get caught up.
I think this is about to change seeing as the competitive nature is coming back. We might need to save the chit chat for skype boys!!!Feb 22 2014: Brad wrote: "In online gameplay you will talk to anybody that will communicate with you, we as gamers feed off that teamwork. In junior high school I was transferred into a new school, as the new kid rumours spread around and I was constantly bullied. Everyday I tried to come up with an excuse to avoid going back. When I got my first PS3 it was like an escape from reality for me until I met my brothers in The Division. My community helped me through the thick and thin, they helped me realize that education was important and to ignore the negativity. It was hard but it was my online community that got me through my teenage years. The teamwork the trust and the commitment I learned from."
This is deeply moving to read Brad. Thank you for sharing it.
At first, the game was an escape from reality. Then an organized community came along and transformed depth of meaning. Provided fellowship with peers and mentorship from adults. Supported persona development. Fostered leadership through accountability. Empowered personal drive to transcend.Feb 16 2014: The game medium is an engineered and structured environment so the intrinsic nature of the people who seek to get the most out of the experience can have similar personal traits and skills suited for the complex and organized structure required to build them.
The ones that stand out are the ones who have attracted the people with these common interests, skill sets and have formed the bonds to invest in and find value in the experience.
A relative example I feel that directly relates to these complex communities are the ones that formed from military experience, the bonds that were formed among the veterans and the organizations that were built from the participants. The AMVETS (American Veterans) and VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) are examples.
The aspect of community is the natural progression of sharing of experience and the desire to expand and grow. Gaming is simply the medium in relative context to the discussion.
Feb 17 2014: "natural progression of sharing of experience and the desire to expand and grow."
It seems to me that this is a pretty deep observation about the meaning of community.Mar 7 2014: In our dreams we experience true freedom, we are only shackled by what our imagination is capable of and our subconscious will allow. The next closest thing while awake to this euphoric state would be video games, that is unless you are a psychopath. In video games whatever the designers create is the only limitation. You can kill prostitutes or anyone for that matter, rob stores, swing around like Spider-man, and break laws without any repercussions. So why not develop an alter-ego to go along with playing online. This creation is not held by the same laws and possible afflictions as its real life maker. I have a friend from college that after graduating due to terrible circumstances is now bound to a wheelchair. This doesn't prevent him from raiding tombs, deep sea diving, battling through combat zones. He once told me now that his life is impaired; at least he still has his video games. Gaming has prevented him from slipping into depression. Many people game to escape the mediocrity of their lives, or to briefly escape the crushing truths of reality. As much as I appreciate the freedoms that multiplayer gaming can have, I am also sickened by how these freedoms can lead to tormenting others. Online people that are bullied can become the bullies, trolls, or emotional siphons that can ruin online gaming for people. Not everyone that has this freedom will use it responsibly, which can lead to more negativity, and ruining the experience for other people. Instead of an escape it becomes a prison, where you are surrounded by the things you are trying to escape. The only way to break the cycle is accountability. Hiding behind the anonymity of your avatar, there is very little that keeps you in check, and ensures that you are not ruining the gaming experience for other players. We sign behavioral agreements to play online, but there is very little that enforces that agreement. Reporting systems are only affective if the people receiving the report care.
Mar 10 2014: "I have a friend from college that after graduating due to terrible circumstances is now bound to a wheelchair. This doesn't prevent him from raiding tombs, deep sea diving, battling through combat zones. He once told me now that his life is impaired; at least he still has his video games. Gaming has prevented him from slipping into depression. Many people game to escape the mediocrity of their lives, or to briefly escape the crushing truths of reality."
Thank you, Troy, for commenting on this aspect of games. It connects nicely with the posts by David Brendel about video games that clinical trials have been show to be effective in treating depression. The implication is that these effects are not limited to the time people play video games; they spread to other aspects of life. I am interested in learning more about how these effects beyond video games involve more than mood or feeling of well being. To what extent do they influence behavior and performance in settings outside of video games? To what extent to they influence one's perception of oneself and one's own capabilities (e.g., "self efficacy") outside of video games?Mar 10 2014: "Not everyone that has this freedom will use it responsibly... The only way to break the cycle is accountability. Hiding behind the anonymity of your avatar, there is very little that keeps you in check, and ensures that you are not ruining the gaming experience for other players. We sign behavioral agreements to play online, but there is very little that enforces that agreement..."
This part of your post, Troy, gets to the heart of this conversation: community. How do interactions in an online game community provide the "accountability" that is so central to personal liberty and pursuit of happiness in this kind community, perhaps just as in other kinds of communities? Is it merely a community of practice, or is it a community of (shared) responsibility in which individuals can have an enduring impact on others because of a (shared) commitment to influence and be influenced?
Mar 12 2014: Troy, I think the problems you described are almost entirely manageable through both game design and the community's relationship with the studio. Unfortunately, most industry leaders look at that solution as a matter of risk and not a strategic investment of internal resources.
Great questions Gary. The answers are varying. In most cases, it is up to the individual players to determine these things for themselves. One gamer in a lobby is generally decent but has a terrible time communicating with others online, one uses the multiplayer experience to puke out all of his or her frustrations with life, one is a noob and has no idea what is going on, one is a wallflower and generally voyeurs the experience and another is a leader within an organized gaming community. If your on that team, how do you influence those gamers in-game and collaborate towards a win?
Leadership, emotional intelligence and experience.
When activated, these three things tend to yield, almost by default, a sense of accountability and shared purpose in most gamers. Even when the gamer has no idea its happening.
Mar 12 2014: I think the convergence of these three things is in "a climate of attention to micro-experiences" that may or may not be significant to different people and, if so, may be significant in different ways to different people.
The attention that may or may not involve verbal communication. Silence may be quite informative. Nonverbal behavior is enormously important, especially in emotional intelligence, but what does that look like in the online world?
Games provide a rich source of nonverbal behavior relative to other interpersonal interactions on the internet. Nonverbal communication in online games is another pervasive aspect of contemporary culture that is poorly understood by the scientific community and by the general public.Mar 3 2014: Listen to two conversations about analogous approaches to prosocial behavior in intentional communities, meaningful interpersonal influence, and ubiquitous teaching and learning. See also the concurrent TED conversations in my prior post.
Developing people and organizations: A new idea in healthcare (guest: Morgan Darwin)
Episode 6 of Science in the Wild at http://bit.ly/MCczib
Developing people and organizations: Expertise & knowledge translation (guest: Scott Flanagan)
Episode 7 of Science in the Wild at http://bit.ly/1eXAVK7
Mar 12 2014: These interviews were AMAZING!
As a 10-year veteran of the tactical gaming scene, I've come to learn that the similarities between leadership development in the actual special operations community and our shooter gaming environments is uncanny. Also, the convergence of science applies in almost the exact same ways. Certainly the benefits of the scientific relationship are the same.
I sure would like to hear Morgan and Scott again. I hope you have them back on Gary.
Mar 12 2014: "The teachers of this country, one must say, have its future in their hands. The earnestness which they at present show in striving to enlighten and strengthen themselves is an index of the nation's probabilities of advance in all ideal directions [p. 3]… You make a great, a very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programs and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate school-room use. Psychology is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves. An intermediate inventive mind must make that application, by using its originality [p. 7]… A science only lays down lines within which the rules of the art must fall, laws which the follower of the art must not transgress; but what particular thing he shall positively do within those lines is left exclusively to his own genius [p. 8]...many diverse methods of teaching may well agree with psychological laws [p.9]… To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teachers. To advance that result we must have an additional endowment altogether, a happy tact and ingenuity to tell us what definite things to say and do when that pupil is before us. That ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil,that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least [p. 9]…We know in advance, if we are psychologists, that certain methods will be wrong, so our psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us, moreover, more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe it has theory as well as practice at its back. [p. 11]" (James, 1899/1907).
James, W. (1907). Talks to teachers on psychology: and to students on some of life's ideals. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. (Original work published 1899)