The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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3:41pm on Tuesday, 4th April, 2023:
Anecdote
There's a technical term I use when describing gameplay to students: "tokens". A token is basically like a component you get in a boardgame: it doesn't necessarily do anything, but it can have things done to it.
I used to call these "entities" but it's old-fashioned and some students didn't really get it. I then used both terms, but that confused more than it helped, so eventually I just went with "tokens". I've been using the term for maybe a decade now, with no issues. I ask them in their assignment to list a representative set of tokens from the game they're designing, and they list a representative set of tokens from the game they're designing. It's easy marks.
This time round, though, maybe one in eight of the students thought that tokens were like the ones you put in slot machines — some kind of fake money. I don't know for sure why, but suspect one or more of the following to be the reason:
1) They didn't know the word because English isn't their first language, so they looked it up and got the wrong definition. We do have a known issue with certain groups of overseas students at the moment, some of whom have apparently passed their English exams yet still have to use a translation app on anything they're given to read.
2) The publicity associated with NFTs might mean students think "tokens" is merely shorthand for "non-fungible tokens".
3) They could have all used ChatGPT and this is what it told them to write about tokens. Most (but not all) of the students who made the wrong-use-of-"tokens" mistake also chose to describe what rules were, rather than listing a representative sample of important rules for their game (which is what they were supposed to do).
I don't know who the students who did this are, because I mark anonymously.
I'm wondering if I should go back to calling tokens "entities", or if there's a more in-vogue word I should be using.
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