Personal Experiences in the Last Ten Weeks

In the tenth week of EVOKE, I write about the experiences I had during the missions. Because I played EVOKE within tuitional seminar, the answered questions differ from the original LEARN questions in this mission. But as you will see, the main topics are the same.

Which positive experiences did you gain?

In some weeks, I entered unknown territory, because I have never dealt with some topics before. I had to investigate more time than in other weeks to perform these kinds of missions. But I learnt a lot of new facts in different topics. And I was able to write about it. The given power votes from the other EVOKE players confirmed my efforts and increased my motivation. So I was full of hope that I could manage other missions with unknown topics as well.

Moreover I liked to contribute creativity and collaboration with other EVOKE agents. Especially some ACT missions were great fun in implementing creative ideas into practice. It was possible to evolve existing and develop new ideas. In this way I got a lot of knowledge through fun and games.

Furthermore I worked on my language knowledge. The last English texts I had to write were a long time ago. In the last ten weeks I was forced to phrase my opinions and insights in English. This was not as difficult as I thought at the beginning. Of course, much vocabulary I have not used before, because in some cases it was very special. But I leant a lot new and I noticed that from blog post to blog post it was easier for me to write down what I wanted to tell.

Which negative experiences dig you gain?

To be honest, I did not gain real negative experiences which I could set in contrast to the points written above. Nothing discourages me. Only that some missions needed more time to investigate than others could be mentioned. But the fact that I did not deal with some topics before EVOKE is more negative than the time I had to invest to complete the missions.

Further I want to mention one negative technical or rather gaming mechanism point. Some links to blogs which were needed to complete a mission were not accessible. Of course this is due to the reopening. In addition, I was not content with the method of given power votes for the missions. I will explain this later.

What should be improved in EVOKE to increase motivation?

I would like to make a suggestion in making power votes to increase motivation. Until now, players are able to vote only with one power per blog post. Sometimes I had some difficulty in choosing the “right” power, because two or three power sections were possible to vote for. Moreover, I was under the impression that if you vote for “knowledge” it did not show if this blog post is really a good one. I did not really know, how I felt so, but I would like to have more votes per blog post, e.g. three, which I am able to choose freely. With this method it was possible to diversify the quality of a post more precisely.

What should be improved in EVOKE to increase information brokering?

It would be nice if you were informed about new blog posts of your friends, when you log in. Now you have to click though all profiles to see, if some of your friends wrote something new except he or she occurs on the evidence page or they post it on twitter or facebook. Information about new posts could be displayed on the personal friend page by small symbols.

What is more I would like to have a better overview for the power votes. It is hard to track new received votes after logging in. Improving this, new received voted could be displayed in a different color at the power table on your personal profile. Also a kind of history function to track power votes afterwards would be a nice feature.

What should be improved in EVOKE to simplify the process of completing a mission?

I do not see any problem here. In principle, each user is able to decide when his post is finished and when he has completed the mission. The current game mechanism allows you to write anything to get the rune and the powers for the mission. If he decided in the right way, the other EVOKE agents will show him later by their feedback.

Because EVOKE is a worldwide game, some text-heavy sources for the missions could be added with graphics. This could improve comprehension for people who are not firm in English language.

Describe a special event which is still in your mind.

This special event is definitely the dealing with ACT2 mission. I already wrote about a concept of fruit trees in the inner city of the city I study in. After publishing my post, Marcel and I got into a conversation. After short time it was clear that we should implement the idea by collaborating. We collected all needed things and convinced a non EVOKE agent to help us. On the next day we put our creative ideas into practice. The received votes confirmed that we did a good work and we were motivated to collaborate in another ACT mission again.

Which gaming mechanism where positive to you and why?

The used gaming mechanisms are well thought out and placed in EVOKE. The powers given by completing a mission increase the amount of powers very fast and cause motivation. In addition to the automatical given powers the power votes from the other EVOKE agents increase motivation much more. In the context of powers, the first four achievements are mentioned as well. Further, I liked to give power votes to other players.

Besides, the reflect about some missions and quests pleased me. You had to invest much creativity to complete the task.

Which gaming mechanism where negative to you and why?

The following point probably exists because of the re-opening. But I want to mention it anyway. The List of the heroes of the week is not latest. So it was not possible for us to get some achievements.

Despite of the positively mentioned powers and achievements in the last section, I want to tell something negative about them. The system automatically added the powers to a profile without checking the content of a post. So it is possible to get powers without doing anything for it. Of course this should not happen, but it distorts the powers, especially because the user votes are much less than the automatically given powers.