Transformative Qualities

How does it address the challenge of a transformative game?

Based on Lazzaro’s “Four Keys to Fun,” this game meets Transformative Fun, People Fun, and Easy Fun.

The Transformative Fun aspect comes from the underlying problem the game is designed to address, which is misinformation on social media. The game mechanics aim to simulate the challenge of gaining attention on social media by giving the players a choice of whether or not to post misinformation, and also the impact of such choices on social media users. The game aims to transform players’ understanding of why people post information and feelings of the impact such posts may have.

Our game also involves the People Fun aspect of social interaction and personalization. The game creates bonding by allowing players to share their sense of humour and give “likes” to their favourite content posts. Personalization is achieved by allowing players to create their content based on the given captions. Therefore, players can share and personalize their experience with other players, leading to other kinds of People Fun.

The Easy Fun aspect is that the game has simple rules and mechanisms, and it doesn't take too much time for the players to understand the rules. Playing more times does not make the player more skilled than others. Some strategies are needed to decide what cards to put down each turn, but it is not the decisive factor of who becomes the winner of the game.

What’s the underlying challenge/problem your game aims to tackle, and how could addressing this help make this world a better place to live?

Social media is filled with information that can be used for good or bad. With more and more disinformation on the internet, it's hard for people to understand what is real and what is made up. The problem that our game is trying to tackle is the overwhelming information posted online and the difficulty to spot the real information. The convenience of social media has been used in some hurtful ways. In order to make the world a better place, social media needs to be used as a tool to spread positivity, unite communities, and support each other.

Background research on underlying problem/challenge that your game aims to tackle

Social media is the top concept of marketing, information spreading, and the future leading mainstream. The possibilities and future of it are tremendous, therefore the subordinate categories including content communities (misinformation), social networking, and blog sites (influencer and marketing) are the problem we want to talk about in this transformative game.

Social media is the fastest way to gain new information and freely interact with others. The misinformation aspect and how fast information could spread have been shown clearly during the COVID time, as known as the “infodemic” which brings lots of people into depression and anxiety, and misinformation about the disease and how to cue it (Cinelli, 2020). Blogs used to be text heavy at the beginning of Internet development. Nowadays, the various media formats give more reliability to the content, such as videos and images which makes the information hard to know real or fake. Not everything on social media is true and has already become common sense, however, the most challenging part is how to distinguish if the information is fake. The most effective way is to control the number of fake information posted online, so people using social media is the solution. Don’t post or repost information for likes and popularity merely (Kaplan, 2010). This fake information and unethical advertisement can change people from understanding how to use social media ethically and not satisfy one’s vanity by exaggerating untrue posts to spread anxiety.

People post and spread misinformation on social media in order to gain attention online, as eye-catching information is likely to attract attention and therefore users of social media platforms form habits of posting such information, even if it is false (Madrid, 2023). People may want attention online to gain popularity and more followers, or they may be paid based on how many people click on their website, and so the main motivations for spreading fake news are fame and money (Machado et al., n.d.). The reason why people believe this misinformation is not just because they are gullible, but because of their cognitive biases, and because when people remember information they’ve seen or heard, they may not remember whether it was true or false, just that they’ve encountered it (CITS, n.d.). Additionally, the context of social media may distract people from the accuracy of the content they are consuming or sharing, despite often being able to tell if the content is true or false (Ordway, 2021).

Resources

Baccarella, C. V., Wagner, T. F., Kietzmann, J. H., & McCarthy, I. P. (2018). Social media? It's serious! Understanding the dark side of social media. European Management Journal, 36(4), 431–438. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2018.07.002

Cao, D., Meadows, M., Wong, D., & Xia, S. (2021). Understanding consumers’ social media engagement behaviour: An examination of the moderation effect of social media context. Journal of Business Research, 122, 835–846. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.06.025

Cinelli, M., Quattrociocchi, W., Galeazzi, A., Valensise, C. M., Brugnoli, E., Schmidt, A. L., Zola, P., Zollo, F., & Scala, A. (2020, October 6). The COVID-19 social media infodemic. Nature News. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73510-5

CITS. (n.d.). Why We Fall for Fake News. https://www.cits.ucsb.edu/fake-news/why-we-fall

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003

Machado, N., Griffin, J., Smith, J., & Fielding, M. (n.d.). What Motivates People to Spread Fake News on Social Media?. In C. LeBlanc (Ed.), Fake News and What to do About It. Pressbooks. https://pressbooks.pub/fakenews/chapter/6-what-motivates-people-to-spread-fake-news-on-social-media/

Madrid, P. (2023, January 17). USC study reveals the key reason why fake news spreads on social media. USC News. https://news.usc.edu/204782/usc-study-reveals-the-key-reason-why-fake-news-spreads-on-social-media/

Ordway, D. (2021, March 17). Why do Americans share so much fake news? One big reason is they aren’t paying attention, new research suggests. The Journalist’s Resource. https://journalistsresource.org/media/share-fake-news-social-media/

Team Motivation

Social media is one of the biggest platforms for people to get information and interact with other people. However, the environment on social media is not ideal and sometimes causes more disadvantage than advantage.

Why would a game be a suitable approach to tackling this challenge/problem?

One reason that people post fake advertisements or spread nervousness and anxiety on social media is that the consequences can not be measured and evaluated when everything is data and online. The game gives us the opportunity to tell the players what the consequences might be when they post a fake advertisement, which may reduce the chance of posting something unethical and create a better environment on social media.

Desired “transformation” and impact of the game on players

The consequences of a certain decision (giving out a misinformation card in order to get higher points) will be visually represented to the players. When they need to make a decision whether to put a true information card to maintain their position on the board or put a misinformation card to move forward, players will think about what other events and consequences might be caused by such decisions.

How would you assess the game’s impact?

At first, lots of people will choose to post misinformation cards because no event card is provided to the players, and players do not know the consequences that will be caused by certain actions. After the players get the event and consequences card, the number of misinformation cards that people put down will decrease.

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