The Gamified UK Value Pack for ONLY £9.99

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Collage The Gamified UK Value Pack for ONLY 9 99

Act Fast and Get Over £50 Worth of Gamification Content and Tools for ONLY £9.99! Become a Gamification Pro with the Ninja Monkeys Unicorn Edition eBook and Other Premium Content Included in This Bundle. Don’t Miss Out on This Incredible Offer – Start Building Your Gamified Solutions Toda

This bundle includes all of my premium content.  Even Ninja Monkeys Unicorn Edition eBook (which contains some content, not in the normal retail versions), Gamification and Solution Design Lenses, Inspiration Cards and my Gamification Framework Design Toolkit Read More ...

Delegated Loyalty – Loyalty in an AI World

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File 000000000fa481f4b8cf5b268ddc98f8 Delegated Loyalty 8211 Loyalty in an AI World

I know. Another blog and it’s not even 2027 yet!

Recently Troy, CEO of Zitcha and my ultimate boss, wrote about a conversation he had had about AI shopping with Steve Biddle. The crux was that Steve had wanted new trainers for refereeing football and had delegated the whole process to AI, from initial search to purchase. He got the outcome he wanted without having to think about the brand or the retailer. You can see the original LinkedIn discussion here.

Brand, style, emotion, humanity potentially removed from the buying decision. Or at least, no longer things the customer has to think about directly. He wanted the right trainers with as little hassle as possible. But does handing the decision to AI also remove the bias? Read More ...

Streaks Drive Stress Not Success

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File 0000000085788243b718938ff5670d12 Streaks Drive Stress Not Success

Streaks are everywhere.

Streaks to “encourage” learners to come back every day to learn a language. Streaks to “encourage” players to come back to a game every day. Streaks to “encourage” people to exercise every day. Streaks to “encourage” users to message their friends every day on messaging apps.

Yeah, I was unsubtle there with my little “encourage”.

Streaks are simple behavioural psychology.

Unfortunately, they’re often implemented as little more than bribery, wrapped in negative messaging designed to make you feel that not coming back will have consequences. Read More ...

Life Has Stats: What Games Teach Us About Progress

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File 000000007dac820a88e87e591a8dc9f5 Life Has Stats What Games Teach Us About Progress

Games are hard.

Not always because the controls are complicated or the enemies are unfair, but because games often demand a surprisingly broad mix of skills.

Hand-eye coordination. Strategic thinking. Mental agility. Observation. Pattern recognition. Multitasking. Memory. Timing. Patience. Adaptation.

In other words, many of the same skills required by real life, just turned up to eleven and occasionally involving dragons.

To help players understand how all these abilities are coming together, games use a range of systems to track development. These systems tell us where we are, how far we have come, what resources we have available and what might happen next. Read More ...

Reading, Rewards and How to Accidentally Kill Joy

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File 00000000ae3071f49cedefc3e82a6dc0 Reading Rewards and How to Accidentally Kill Joy

I recently ranted on LinkedIn about my youngest child’s school using attendance awards to encourage children to achieve 100% attendance. You can read that if you want my views on that particular bit of educational nonsense, but this rant is not about attendance.

This is about reading.

More specifically, it is about how a well-intentioned reward system managed to take something joyful, meaningful and personal, and turn it into a badge-chasing exercise.

When Reading Became a Quest

My youngest used to be an avid reader. Properly enthusiastic. The sort of child who would disappear into books because she wanted to, not because someone had built a laminated progress chart and started handing out shiny things. Read More ...

The Problem with “82% More Engagement”

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File 000000001100722f8ee641db0e336e34 The Problem with 82 More Engagement

I love statistics. They are wonderfully effective at hiding the truth.

Gamification has been especially guilty of this over the years. We have all seen the headline:

“82% increase in engagement after gamification was introduced.”

It sounds impressive. On its own, it means almost nothing.

An 82% increase could mean engagement went from 11 people to 20 people. That is a real improvement, but it is hardly the same as the grand transformation the headline suggests. If the programme only involved 50 people, the number looks even less dramatic once you see the actual scale. Read More ...