Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Graduate Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2017 Mining Creativity: Video Game Creativity Learning Effects Jorge Alberto Blanco-Herrera Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.edu/etd Part of the Instructional Media Design Commons, and the Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Blanco-Herrera, Jorge Alberto, "Mining Creativity: Video Game Creativity Learning Effects" (2017). Graduate Theses and Dissertations.edu/etd/15263 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact digirep@iastate.
Mining creativity: Video game creativity learning effects by Jorge A. Blanco-Herrera A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE Major: Psychology Program of Study Committee: Douglas A. Gentile Major Professor Stephanie Madon Gary Phye The student author and the program of study committee are solely responsible for the content of this thesis. The Graduate College will ensure this thesis is globally accessible and will not permit alterations after the degree is conferred.
Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2017 Copyright © Jorge A. All rights reserved. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT. iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .1 The Growth of Video Games in Society and Research .3 Theories and Measures of Creativity .7 Video Game Effects as Learning Experiences.18 Previous Video Game Experience .19 Cross-sectional Hypotheses .22 Covariates and Manipulation Checks .25 Manipulation Check 1: Creative Feeling .26 Manipulation Check 2: Creative Effort.26 iii Alternative Uses Task .32 Remote Association Task .33 Alien Drawing Task .34 CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .56 iv ABSTRACT Most psychological studies concerning the learning effects of video games have focused on action video games.
These popular games emphasize quick-paced combat, narratives, player agency, and problem solving. Although many studies have focused on aggression or visual- spatial cognition effects from the quick-paced combat, the problem-solving aspects have been largely ignored. The present study seeks to expand the existing literature on video game effects by focusing on a rarely-tested outcome: creative production. As a game with few rules and a high amount of player freedom, Minecraft exemplifies a game that fosters players’ abilities for creative expression.
This experimental study compares the effect of playing Minecraft on creativity measures compared to watching a TV show (passive control), a driving game (game control), and playing Minecraft with specific instructions (an instructional control). A within-subjects analysis (n=350) found a significant correlation between trait creativity and game play habits. Between-groups analyses showed that players randomly assigned to play Minecraft without instruction demonstrated significantly higher scores on post-game creativity measures compared to those who played Minecraft with instructions to “be creative,”, those who played a driving game, or those who watched a television show. Results indicate that effects are not solely predicted by game mechanics, but also by the way the player plays.
1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The Growth of Video Games in Society and Research In 1999, the leading video game company had sold over a billion games across the previous 12 years, and more than 40% of American families owned a gaming console (Dill & Dill, 1999). This led to the average child in 1999 spending 26 minutes a day playing video games (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2002). By 2012, one research group estimated the average American adult spent 3 hours a day playing video games (Entertainment Software Association, 2015).
In 2014, the video game industry received over $22 billion in yearly revenue, and 80% of American households owned a gaming console (Entertainment Software Association, 2015). In the last couple of decades, video games have entrenched themselves as a popular medium. Concerns about the prominence of video games in children’s lives and its potential effects on children have driven much of the video game research to date. Research into several domains of media effects have illustrated that the behaviors players practice in games generalizes outside of the game.
Most of this research has focused on two aspects of popular video games: violence and visual-spatial cognition. On one hand, research on violence in video games has revealed that players of violent video games experience increased aggression compared to non-violent video game players (Gentile, Lynch, Linder, & Walsh, 2004; Anderson, Shibuya, Ihori, Swing, Bushman, Sakamoto, Rothstein, & Saleem, 2010). On the other hand, players of action video games, which require quick reactions to a variety of visual cues, benefit from faster reaction times and increased performance in a range of visual-spatial cognitive tasks (Green, & Bavelier, 2003; Dye, Green, & Bavelier, 2009; Achtman, Green, & Bavelier, 2008). These video game categories are not exclusive, and often refer to specific game dimensions that researchers are 2 interested in.
As such, a game can fit into multiple categories and have both beneficial and harmful effects. For example, the Call of Duty series of games is both a violent video game and an action video game. Its gameplay requires fast paced aggression and shows both aggression effects and visual-spatial benefits (Anderson et al., 2010; Achtman, Green, & Bavelier, 2008). Players of prosocial video games illustrated more prosocial thoughts and behaviors than non-prosocial video game players (Gentile, et al., 2009; Greitemeyer, Osswald, & Brauer, 2010; Prot, et.
Players of real-time strategy video games, which require storing and processing multiple short- and long-term goals while simultaneously attending to new cues, show gains in working memory (Basak, Boot, Voss, & Kramer, 2008; Basak, Voss, Erickson, Boot, & Kramer, 2011; Kühn, Gleich, Lorenz, Lindenberger, & Gallinat, 2014). Although the social behavioral and cognitive effects of video games are fruitful areas of research, the video game market has genres beyond shooting and helping others. Researchers have overlooked how games can foster creativity. Most game genres encourage players to practice some creativity.
For example, role- playing games encourage players to create a character, a backstory, and a long-term strategy for character development that fits into an imaginary world created in collaboration with other players and the game designers. Competitive games often reward creative strategies with victory against one’s opponents. Even the popular and seemingly-straightforward first-person shooter (FPS) games engender creative practice as players rethink strategies and pursue exploits that give them advantages in combat. Many computer games thrive on the creative practice of their “modding” community, in which users alter (modify) the game itself to add new levels, visuals, and modes.
3 Games like Minecraft (a game that has sold over 100 million copies) don’t revolve around helping others, shooting people, or fast-paced action. They revolve around open-world exploration of a virtual “sandbox,” player-created content, and manipulation of game rules to accomplish player created goals (Duncan, 2011). The game allows players to explore unique worlds and create anything they can imagine in that world. With games fostering creativity, would playing games with creative elements have an impact on players’ creativity, in a manner analogous to the way playing games with violent elements influences players’ aggression? These games offer academia new avenues of research into possible creativity benefits.
Minecraft Minecraft in particular is a game especially tuned to foster creativity. It can be thought of as Legos: the Video Game. Players in the game have been able to rebuild locations (real or fictional): Battlestar Galactica, Westeros, London, Earth, etc. They have built fully functional droid armies, computing systems, and cities with electrical systems and running water.
The self- motivated players create these complex systems in a game with very basic rules and properties, otherwise known as mechanics. The core game mechanic of Minecraft is to create and implement ideas within the constraints of the game. This may seem vague, but that is because the game itself is vague. When a player begins to play Minecraft, they see a world of blocks procedurally generated in front of them.
They are not given any narrative of the game world, any instruction of how to play the game, any goals, or rules. The player has to decide how to react to this game world. Do they explore the world by walking around? Do they explore the limits of their character by experimenting how their character reacts to different keyboard commands or interaction with the environment? Once they realize they can collect (mine) the blocks that make up the world, do 4 they choose to keep collecting or do they decide to organize the blocks in order to craft some new structure? If players decide to create objects they tend to follow a creative process of coming up with ideas (ideating), deciding which ideas they want to pursue (evaluation), and then figuring out how to carry out those ideas (creative problem solving). Minecraft is an effective tool for creative expression because it allows for a wide range of creative expression.
The game has the potential to foster many different creative products. Theories and Measures of Creativity It is hard to operationalize creativity. In the multidisciplinary creativity literature, there are over 100 different descriptions of creativity (Ackoff & Vergara, 1981). There is little consensus or agreed upon organizational framework in the creativity literature.
Some argue that creativity is little more than originality or novelty. A common viewpoint describes creativity as novelty and appropriateness (Paletz, & Peng, 2008). Creativity can also be described with the criteria of divergent thinking: novelty, elaboration, fluency, and flexibility (Guilford, 1966). Mumford, Mobley, Uhlman, Reiter-Palmon, and Doares (1991) have also proposed a cyclical and dynamic description of creativity as problem construction, information encoding, relevant category search, specification of fitting categories, combination of category information, reorganization of categories, idea evaluation, implementation of ideas, and monitoring.
Finally, some models summarize creativity as ideation-evaluation cycles influenced by knowledge and motivation (Basadur, Graen, & Wakabayashi, 1990). Given the variety of creativity definitions, it is outside the scope of this study to make claims about the effects of video games on creativity as a single construct. Instead, this study employs a range of creativity-related measures and refers to findings specific to those particular 5 measured aspects of creativity. However, in an attempt to cross the breadth of the field and its definitions, the measures selected for this study will attempt to capture and analyze several of the dimensions along which creativity has been conceptualized.
These approaches to creativity assess it either as an individual difference, cognitive process, or with regard to its products. The individual differences approach analyzes the difference between high-creativity people and low-creativity people by self-reported measures, peer reports, motivation, attitudes, and adjective checklists. As a tool that allows for a great variety of creative expression, Minecraft, might attract high creativity individuals. Additionally, since playing Minecraft usually involves creative practice, playing Minecraft should result in higher reports of creativity.
The Imaginative Capability Scale will be used as a measure of self-report trait creativity. This scale is based on Liu and Noppe-Brandon’s description of imagination as the ability to conjure new possibilities and realities, conceive of ideas deliberately or intuitively, and make connections between things that previously seemed to not have a connection (2009). Their self-reported motivations, past experiences and products, attitudes, personality traits, self- conceptions, and interests have all proven to be valid predictors of real-life creative accomplishments (Hocevar, 1981). The cognitive process approach focuses on understanding divergent thinking and convergent thinking as the cognitive processes that underlie creativity.
Divergent thinking focuses on measuring the ability to come up with ideas or ideate, in the language of this literature. It can also be conceptualized as the ability to overcome functional fixedness. Functional fixedness is the inability to perceive objects as having functions other than those for which they are commonly used (Amabile, 1983). For example, functional fixedness might not allow participants to give responses other than cutting 6 for a knife.
In contrast, an example of divergent thinking would be to use the top of a knife as a straightedge to draw a line.