Do you alieve?

There are numerous examples of successfully gamified systems and one doesn’t have to look for long to find proof of how gamification can change people’s behaviour. But what is it about this “game layer” that is so exciting and engaging?

A lot of research has been conducted in the subject of games, especially in the digital era with the upcoming of video- and computer games. Scientists have tried to explain the different feelings we experience while gaming. What is it that makes us never want to quit a really good game of tetris? Or what is it that makes us so keen to explore just one more cave in World of Warcraft? And why is it that we can get the same thrill from reaching the top of a high score list in a Donkey Kong arcade game as when we achieve something in real life? Several new concepts and terms have been defined to explain the psychological phenomenons of games. 

Because of their central role in game developing and gamification we aim to point out the most relevant of these terms starting here with alief.

In her article, Alief and Belief, Tamar Szabó Gendler describes a term that explains how non-reality situations, such as games, can have the same effect and trigger the same reactions as real-life situations. Imagine the feeling you get when you find that epic sword in World of Warcraft, grow more crops in Farm Ville or climb the ladder playing Xbox Live. The reward for these things is purely fictive and has very little connection to your situation in real life, and you know that. Still, they trigger the same emotions as if you would achieve something in your real life. Gendler uses horror movies as an example that most people can relate to. When you are watching a horror movie the logical part of your brain knows that you are completely safe sitting at home in your comfortable sofa. Then how come this small frame of moving pictures terrifies you, not just for the moment but shake you up for days? Another good example is the u-shaped glass walkway over the Grand Canyon. Even if the visitors know that it’s perfectly safe they are still hesitant and afraid of walking out on the transparent walkway. In these situations, the illogical and more primitive part of our brain takes over and overrides our common sense. The same thing happens while we’re playing games but in a positive way and that explains the question asked above. This is alief and Gendler gives the fallowing definition:

“A paradigmatic alief is a mental state with associatively linked content that is representational, affective and behavioral, and that is activated—consciously or nonconsciously—by features of the subject’s internal or ambient environment. Aliefs may be either occurrent or dispositional.” 

Creators of all types of media have known, and used, alief for a long time. But it’s only recently this mental state was named and defined. Emotions play a big role in human behaviour and alief has a great effect on human emotions. Thus are games, where alief plays a central role, a powerful tool when it comes to changing human behaviour.