32 | 33
Many readers of a certain generation will remember playing Tetris on the Game Boy until their thumbs ached. Today’s children laugh and are amazed at the basic consoles we used to play on. Amazing 3D lifelike worlds of Call of Duty and Minecraft may be the popular choice nowadays but there are more similarities across both generations than we may realise. There are some consistent themes with popular games that keep the players thirsty, desperate and coming back for more action. I think we can learn from these principles to help us to design more engaging football practices that keep the players coming back and asking for just one more turn.
The reason I and 143 million others were hooked to the likes of Tetris is that the game offered subtle and varied repetition. The games get progressively harder which builds up the tension to a frustrating, infuriating crescendo. But all that frustration just made the joy of completing the levels and progressing onwards even more intense. Each player could find their own level to play at. It was never too easy and there was always a top score to beat.
This meant that players could measure themselves against each other and, just as importantly, against themselves – an aspect of game design which is a stable motivating factor. You wear your personal best like your badge of honour.
Then came the likes of Super Mario. A character that we adopted the persona of in almost a role play type event. This was more than just jumping over boxes and dropping down drain pipes, there was the challenge of solving ever more complex problems. We could now save our games and pick up from where we left off, enabling us to practise repeatedly in a zone just beyond our current ability without having to completely start again all the time.
Fast forward to current games and those principles still exist. Just on a turbo scale. Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto keep players hooked even more intensely now because they have also added in a social and collaborative element and mixed it in with a huge dose of freedom, ownership and informal play. Now you can just as easily join up with a team from the other side of the world to make friends and do battle as you can play on your own and wander and explore.
Psychologists will tell us that there are a lot of subtle things going on that add to this addictive experience. Constant feedback loops are present in any successful game. Be it ranking, score, lives left or time. The game tells us how we’re doing and we like that. We experience ‘The Gambler’s Fallacy’. The belief that the game is beatable and that success is inevitable at some point. We get small pockets of success which adds to the dopamine effect that acts upon us and it’s those small bursts of pleasure that keep us playing. That’s why some people invest so much of their income into fruit machines. It’s not because they never win they do regularly, albeit often small amounts. But the game keeps them coming back for more. Instead of money, what if the football practices we design had our players investing time, effort, persistence and practice in a bid to ‘beat the game’?
Nowadays it is more than just games manufacturers who have embraced these principles. Companies such as Nike have us constantly running further, faster and for longer in a bid to unlock the next challenge whilst encouraging people to be more active. If we can use our imagination (or the players) and bear some of these ideas in mind when we are designing practice for our players, whilst not forgetting that it is the game of football that we’re trying to help them learn as the end product, then we might just have them spending more time in the penalty box than on the XBox.
Over the next couple of pages Jack looks in more detail at the ingredients of the best computer games, what the recipe is for designing effective practices and also offers a practical football example.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92