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As said before, UniCon is a small event organised by people
who do their work voluntarily. It even takes place in a school
building and the number of visitors, although its growing, is
limited by the space and staff capacity of the current place used.
It doesn’t have an ambition to become one of the prominently
large events, but that also means that financially, it is limited
partially to school funding and to occasional sponsor gifts.
First year, when the event was mostly about esport tournaments
(which is still a huge part of the festival), one (and only) sponsor
of the event was willing to provide donation under the condition
of using it to buy a few luxurious prizes. So a fancy gaming
computer was bought as a prize, among other things, but there
was not enough of them to reward all the winners in all the
categories; so a new system was designed, in which these prizes
were winnable in the final lottery. Lottery tickets were
accordingly distributed among visitors and contestants in
tournaments; winners got more of them, guests only one. These
lottery tickets meant only a chance to win; the more effort you
put in, the bigger chance you got.
This system was obviously very flawed; winning the prestigious
prizes depended more or less on randomness. It could have had
happened that even the biggest prize would had been won by a
random visitor, who spent half an hour at the event. Although
that did not (fortunately) happen, it was clear that this model
needed to be changed.
And it was. Next year, this model was temporarily abandoned
(prize pools consisted of cash only) but on the third year of the
festival, we adopted a new model; similarly, people (visitors as
well as tournament players) were supposed to collect currency,
but this time, currency was not a chance to win (represented by
lottery tickets), but so-called unicoins, made-up currency in form
of small gold-ish beads with small U on them. Instead of lottery,
prizes were sold at an auction. Meanwhile, esport tournaments
developed to more prestigious events with its own sponsors and
disattached from this game of coins. Hunt for unicoins became
separate.
Winnable prizes serve as a motivation, but also as a tool to
“reconcile the tension points between the norms of the real world
and those of the virtual world”, (Kim, Werbach, 2016) although
this tension materializes more in other gamifications fields (for
example, when virtual coins are partly used as a substitute for
actual pay for employee’s work – that being an ethical dilemma
in gamification forced upon workers).
2.3 Proved model
Auction in this model is a very appropriate tool to serve as a
distributor of these prizes. It eliminates the risk of disappointing
people who were given unwanted reward for their effort (since
even with pricey objects such as gaming equipment, there is a
possibility that the winner already possesses it; and selling prize
at the bazaars is a truly undesired outcome). Auction in this form
is also a great way to indulge individuality of peoples wishes; it
lets them decide the attractiveness and value of presented items
and even though they are on a display during the festival, there is
still room for suspense left, since items are sorted randomly (that
is, of course, not the case in serious auctions).
For most of the items, there is no clear link to their actual value
(in euros for example). How much does a Witcher puzzle cost?
And how much would you pay for it?
Of course, besides the fact that these items are not something
that people buy regularly, which means that they lack the ability
to estimate their price, there is also an individual approach to
“buying” them as we mentioned before. That increases the
importance of another question; it is not only about putting a
price tag on stuff, but it’s also about how much you are willing
to pay. It brings out a fictive value / real value ratio, and the
relation of the two also changes with various facts. For example,
one of the aspect that affects the amount of (fictional) money
people want to spend on particular item is the time passed; when
they are given a choice of either leave with coins that cannot be
used anywhere else, or to spend them on one of the last prize
presented, they of course choose to spend them (and eventually
to spend all of them).
That is actually the reason why having an experienced/good
broker at your auction is the key for your guests’ will to spend
money; timing and order of the sold items is an important aspect
and it has some rules (no two same items in a row and so on).
The auction is (so far) an ideal solution, but we are also
registering some undesirable aspects that it brings. For example,
at high prices, it can be unpopular for sponsors who obviously
do not want their prizes to be auctioned for a few coins. The
same problem arises when there are two items of similar value
from competing brands in the auction. For example, if we were
to bid PS and Xbox, it would not be desirable for one to be
auctioned significantly more expensive than the other. As we
have explained, this also depends on several conditions and may
not be informative, but it is understandable that sponsors are
reluctant to see such a result.
2.4 Coins unspent
During the making of this festival, there was even an idea of this
virtual money, these unicoins, to have a form of chocolate coins
– candy money. In that case coins not spent could have been
taken and eaten and even people that did not participate in the
final auction would actually get some pleasure out of them.
That brings us to another part of what it means to use virtual
money in coin collecting game. When the game is voluntary and
it ends with giving out gifts through auction at the end of the
festival, what happens to coins given to the people who are not
staying that long? Or with coins within a larger group of friends?
Coins of course circulated on their own.
It is the same debate about individual value; coins are much
more valuable for the people who are collecting them
determinedly. Transfer of these coins from one person to another
should not be prohibited, since it is a regular part of the game.
Every year, this kind of behaviour occurs; a group of friends
combine their coins onto one person, therefore have a better
chance to bid on bigger items, some players are convincing
leaving guests (therefore visitors that are not staying to the end)
to yield their unspent coins in their favor and so on.
Guests staying to the end, and therefore spending more time at
the festival, is one of the wished outcomes of this additional
content, but that is, naturally, not going to happen to everyone.
This currency flow is permitted – even if forbidden, there would
be really no way to control it when using physical coins as in
previous years. This year, these physical coins, beads, were
replaced with digital currency in the app created specially for
UniCon, so making coins not transferable between players was
possible, but we choose not to, so it created some sort of free
market, where players may use their creativity to gain extra
coins.
3 LARPing your way through the festival – second half of the
model
LARP, live action role playing, is one of the ways to slightly
shift the way of looking at gamification. Gaming conventions –
such as UniCon – are obviously an easier subject to test this
approach (and as explained below, appropriate trial when trying
gamification in higher education). As we explained, a partial
reason for this additional element in the festival is the effort to
motivate guests and to better distribute prizes from sponsors and
to provide playful experience on more than one level.
In this case, one of the students designed and wrote a short
cyberpunk themed backstory about training for uprising that
quests/players needed to undergo while collecting coins for the
quests (or training on various stages; they needed to score in a
shooting game, “prove physical strength” in Just Dance or other
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