Gaming Culture - one

Gaming culture has become a thing. However it is not necessarily a new thing. Games have been around for centuries. The Olympics themselves are thousands of years old, being dated back to 776 BC in Olympia of Ancient Greece in honour of the God Zeus. This is one of the oldest gaming traditions that we have. 'However, 'gaming' nowadays doesn't typically relate to the Olympic, or in fact any other physical form of gaming such as sport and athletics like it used to. It usually relates to childhood, in that we play games with our friends or on our own when we are children, such as fancy dress or role play or with toys. They can also relate to things like board games and card games which anyone can play.

Now, if you told someone you were a gamer, they would presume you meant video games, and they'd probably be right. The evolution and popularisation of video gaming have encouraged the increase of 'gamification'. 

Video games themselves started with the concept of  'pong' in the early 50's. 'XOXO' was next in 1952, followed by other computer games in the 60's/70's including 'The Magnavox Odyssey' the first video game console which was battery powered with no sound. In 1972 the Atari company was founded and officially released 'Pong'. The popularity of the Atari grew and grew until competitors emerged  and the Atari company went down because of a few reasons, such as selling too cheaply and the bad quality of gaming. Other companies and competitors emerged with more to offer consumers such as Sony, Sega and Nintendo.

Space Invaders on the Atari. 

Old school Mario which started out on the Nintendo 64 but has branched out to be one of the most iconic gaming characters in the world, with games on new consoles such as the Wii and the Gameboy DS.

The task for this particular blog post was to think of a way to solve University attendance by using gamification, to make it more fun and enjoyable to increase the number of people coming to their seminars and workshops. 

We discussed methods such as giving out balloons when you walk into the lecture to encourage people to enjoy their time. More encouraging methods however outrageous could be letting people bring their duvets into the lecture, as sleeping in is one of the main reasons students miss their assigned lectures and workshops. From personal experience, they don't want to get out of their warm cosy beds to sit in hard desks and not listen for an hour. Bringing their beds with them may encourage attendance as they have no excuse. Another method could be to make the lectures and workshops more interactive, in that talking much louder perhaps into a microphone or structuring the room differently, for example in a circle may be effective as it wouldn't have the usual classroom effect. 

Tea and biscuits could be a way to make students more interested. A hot drink and something to eat could make you engage more with the lesson as you have something to enjoy and focus upon rather than thinking about how much you really want a cup of tea and a biscuit. 

Without using the threat of expulsion or exclusion from the course, you could use the threat of taking away the privileges of bringing your duvet or having a cup of tea, for example to get to bring your duvet or get a cup of tea you had to of been present the previous week. Maybe your old MySpace or Bebo pictures will be put on every single slide of that Power point? That would definitely make me have 100% attendance. 

Other methods of increasing and securing attendance in Universities could be for the lecturer to do some sort of quiz which meant the winning team didn't have to do the assignment that week, which would encourage students to not only attend, but also to do a bit of self study without realising it to win the quiz. Reverse psychology in a way. 

Overall, many of these ideas and others given in discussion are quite unrealistic and far-fetched as things like classroom rules and budgets come into context when thinking of these ideas. Students won't always have perfect attendance and it's predictable they won't turn up all the time or even on time. It's hard to think of a method to secure attendance every time as there are so many issues and problems which arise.