AD ALTA
JOURNAL
OF
INTERDISCIPLINARY
RESEARCH
IS
LARP
THE
ANSWER
TO
THE
GAMIFICATION
OF
EVENTS
AND
EDUCATION?
A
CASE
STUDY
OF
THE
ONGOING
IMPLEMENTATION
OF
QUESTS
AND
COINS
TO
THE
CORE
OF
THE
FESTIVAL
a
ALEXANDRA
KUKUMBERGOVÁ,
b
MICHAL
KABÁT
University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava,
Nám. J. Herdu 2, 917 01 Trnava, Slovakia
email:
a
alexandrakukumbergova@gmail.com,
b
michal.kabat@gmail.com
The study is a partial outcome of the scientific project supported by Cultural and
Educational Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport
of the Slovak Republic (KEGA) No. 023UCM-4/2020, titled ‘The development of
digital game studies and design’.
Abstract: The paper aims to shift the discussion regarding gamification further from its
use in terms of gaining profit or customers with the PBL gamification triad (points,
badges and leaderboards) approach to the more “gamey” place. It describes ongoing
attempts to improve the gamified system on a community event hosted by the
university. We identified two core aspects of this system that are supposed to balance
each other out; quests as playful methods of gaining currency (coins) and motivation
to collect them (prize), with a goal to design a gamified system that is awarding in
more thoughtful way. Our main goal is to apply a similar system into the university
environment and use it as a way to achieve better engagement of the students in
education in general, but also in non curricular activities that take place in the campus.
Keywords: coins, game studies, gamification, LARP, motivation
1 The festival background
In spite of delay due to socialist era, the popularity of cons in our
country is persistent and currently growing. These conventions
usually take place in the main city and though they are mostly
profiled for the more or less same target group of young people
interested in fantasy and sci-fi, they differ slightly. Some are
more focused on anime and manga, mythology and fantasy, or
gaming culture.
UniCon is the example of the latest. Its mainly focused on
gaming experience; the idea to create another festival, although
first of this kind in this particular city, comes from a will to re-
create concept of LAN parties (gatherings of people playing the
same game at once, connected by Local Area Network, hence
the LAN abbreviation). Gaming experience is therefore
supposed to be the core of the festival itself.
Given festival takes place in a smaller city that is characteristic
(among other things) for its three universities and it is relatively
unique in some ways that are important to mention.
First of all, the name of the event originates in its background;
UniCon is a festival produced entirely by one university,
specially by one faculty. It is organized mostly by a small group
of faculty members, and its entire staff consists of students only.
This year, it was run almost entirely by only one PhD student
with help of one teacher/founder and few students representing
individual sections (such as esports, cosplay section, retro
gaming).
Being a student festival, UniCon carries some aspects worth of
observation. Since the main reason why this event even exist is
to provide some sort of practice for the students, UniCon serves
as a training tool, combined with its another main purpose; to
create space that concentrates gamers in a more traditional
meaning of that word; not only players of digital games, but
cosplayers, fans, hobbyist and enthusiasts, everyone that takes
some interest in gaming culture. It also aims to show this
subculture to the “outsiders”, parents, other students and
university staff. Such an event may even serve as an effective
means of promoting the faculty and university (Černá et al,
2015).
That being said, the festival is tightly connected to faculty itself
not only personally, but also by the idea of containing this
gaming-friendly space not only for the duration of the event, that
lasts only one weekend in a year (not including preparations that
take a much longer). As we have outlined above, the main
purpose of this paper is to present a case study conducted during
the 2020 UniCon. The data was recorded by the UniCon mobile
application, which was used by participants throughout the
festival to collect “coins” (i.e. to engage in various activities in
order to obtain them) and thus win various prizes. This rather
experimental method is based on participant observation
conducted during the festival. The given qualitative
(ethnographic) research method allows us to observe various
communication phenomena, as well as people (in our case the
festival participants) and their interactions (Trampota,
Vojtěchovská, 2010). According to Sedláková (2014),
participant observation offers us a rare opportunity to uncover
people’s values, social practices and true behaviour patterns. The
participant observation is complemented by a brief analysis of
data recorded by the festival’s mobile application. We believe
that some of these results and observations related to them may
help us to better understand how education-related gamification
works and which benefits it might offer us if applied creatively.
2 Festival currency as a form of coin collecting – first half of
the model
We incline that this festival doesn’t come from a drive to raise
profitability of the festival, however its background is partially
financial. So initiative may differ, but we believe that in the sake
of the wished outcome (in the form of playful experience), what
matters is the input. We do not want “the simplest, fastest route
to getting customer sign-off and billing for services” (Bogost,
2015).
2.1 Theoretical background
In early years of gamification (after its widespread adoption
around 2010) “marketing and consultancy sectors have been
promoting gamification as a potential source of revenue” (Fuchs
et al, 2014) and marketing sector has actually been using
gamification even before coining the term – for example in form
of advergames or guerilla marketing (Mago, 2015) which are
ways that still be used in the making of the event.
Since then, its understanding has significantly shifted and we
have a privilege to prefer these changes, as in this gaming
convention we are able to prioritize playful experience before
economic endorsement as a main goal of a gamified system.
That is partially the reason why this game of ours does not lead
to “danger to fall into a trap that leads to a conflicting situation
between selling and creating valuable experiences.” (Hamari,
Huotari, 2012) This is mostly an intentional decision that we
made over the years; even when “hunt for coins” (our game is
yet to receive proper name) is a significant part of the festival, it
is not a crucial part of the promotion or producing revenues.
Guests get to choose whether they are the participants of the
game within the festival, regular guests, or coin collectors –
“agents who can choose whether they are playing or using a
gamified application” (Foxman, 2020).
Gamification as we use it is probably best described by Ruud
Koorevaar’s statement: “Gamification entails the use of elements
of games to alter and add to our daily landscape of activities by
engaging us in non-game contexts” (2012), with the difference
that our landscape of activities is not happening daily and we try
to make the context as “gamey” as possible.
2.2 Development and current state
Implementing gaming elements onto this event is an ongoing
process, so happenings in the past years are quite important for
understanding of its current form.
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