The sweet sugary taste of Gamification for six year-olds
Making maths fun for children is a good thing. Is it worth exposing them to Gamification tactics at such a young age?
“Dad, I’m level 24 on Platinum now!”
My seven year-old is approaching a level of obsessed with NumBots at the moment. It’s an app for 5-7 year olds to help teach them early stage maths. To quote from Math Circle’s website, “NumBots is all about every child achieving the “triple win” of understanding, recall and fluency in mental addition and subtraction, so that they move from counting to calculating.”.
There’s another key phrase in play that always triggers my Gamification spider-sense: “a highly engaging platform”.
In NumBots, children create their very own robots. They start off at the ‘Rusty’ level and then complete the maths-based challenges to progress. They gain stars depending on how well they do, and this allows them to level-up. Progression results in more robot parts and progressing through the Tiers, e.g. Bronze and Silver. The stars also act as a form of currency for more customisation options.
All of the above are elements in full-on Gamification for games such as Fortnite and Apex Legends: Playing yields points. You can spend those points on things. It gets harder to obtain the points over time, so you have to play a bit more to get your dopamine fix. “Games make our dopamine levels spike because our brain releases it in response to the challenge of the game and the achievement of the goal. This is the reason why playing is so attractive.”, say PlayMotiv.1
NumBots touts, “Child progresses at their own pace”. However, as soon as an element of Gamification and competition appears, there is only one pace available to some children: AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.
Our school have rolled out NumBots throughout (This seems remarkably good value at £105.85 for an entire school for a year). They have been careful to disable the Leaderboards feature, knowing that it could promote competition levels that go a bit too far. But children talk! A lot. We have been getting regular updates from our son on exactly which levels his peers are on, and how he is just so close on getting to Diamond!
Like many parents, we restrict screen time. In terms of tablets, the Amazon Fire series feature parental controls that make it very easy to do this, complete with a pop-up warning before the time is up. Although this has been successful in keeping NumBots time in balance with everything else, it hasn’t stopped a certain amount of obsession creeping in. That has typically manifested in our son wanting NumBots as soon as he gets up, or as soon as he gets back from school: just…one…more…level!
Gamified learning has clear positives. It has clearly energised our son into enjoying maths even more than he originally did. He has got stuck on levels (complete with the frustration that you would expect) but has learned to persevere and keep trying until he has been successful. He has been discussing the whole experience a lot with his friends: the best games have a social dynamic. If we fast forward to the teenage years, more than half of teens have made new friends online, and a third of them (36%) say they met their new friend or friends while playing video games.2
Despite this, I feel uncomfortable with these techniques being deployed to children in their formative years. The same techniques that are being used here to make maths fun are the same ones used to keep older players playing Live Service games. The concept NumBots uses of coins being redeemable for upgrades is a stepping stone towards Gacha Games: With Gacha (originally spawned from Japanese mobile game culture), hitting the reward button does indeed give a reward but it’s random. This naturally crosses the divide into gambling and a reason why ‘Loot boxes’ are banned in some countries or at the very least subject to strong regulatory intervention.
As always, children’s exposure to such things needs careful parent and teacher monitoring. It’s timely that it was Safer Internet Day on 6th February, with many schools including its materials as part of their curriculum. It is imperative to set clear boundaries to children and to be ever watchful of games and apps that are designed to ‘encourage’ children to play more. NumBots has pure intentions and no ‘skin in the game’ (i.e. no micro-transactions) but this is not true everywhere.
The reality is that games can be addictive. The World Health Organization now recognises ‘Gaming disorder’: “… characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences”. I am a big fan of gaming: I grew up starting with Star Raiders on the Atari 400 in the 1980s (just!) and now have the pleasure of working within the industry. Despite this, everyone involved has a responsibility in keeping the playing field safe for all, including children.
Let the children play. But always be mindful of the techniques being deployed to keep them playing more than they should.
“Gamification and dopamine: why games motivate us” - Playmotiv, 19/07/2019.
Lenhart, A., Smith, A.., Anderson, M., Duggan, M., Perrin, A., “Teens, Technology and Friendships.” Pew Research Center, August, 2015. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/06/teens-technology-and-friendships