I have written a little about Gamification. I love the concept and have just been doing a little bit of it on my website – www.yars.co.uk. I have implemented very simple ideas like Achievements and Experience points for participation.
I talk to many people about such things and they often come back with the same comments. Where is the game in that? Is that not just Kudos or Karma like we used to have on forums?
My response is always the same, yes. It is exactly that. The game is the mechanic of doing a task for a reward, but now we have a buzzword for it.
However, when I talk about projects like Digitalkoot that uses a game to digitise words, people get the Gamification idea straight away.
This got me thinking. I understand perfectly well, why we call both things Gamification. However, it is clear that many don’t see how the first example fits with this moniker.
Should we instead consider making it easier for people to understand?
Rewardification and Gameification.
It would be very simple to split the two.
Offering rewards for tasks in situations that are not obvious games, such as Experience points and Achievements for submitting news and reviews to my site, would be Rewardification.
Using actual games, that are easy to see as games, to complete tasks would be Gamification.
Just a thought.
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Interesting point you make and in some ways i agree. However, my concern with ‘rewardification’ suggests that there is a ‘prize’ for completing the task (and in many peoples head that means money or gifts).
The principles in Gamification go far beyond simple rewards, its an intrinsic behaviour we have as humans that drive ‘addictiveness’ based around status, altriusm, gifting, achievement, competition and self expression.
On the other hand, the common misunderstanding that Gamification means creating games is just wrong!
I agree and as you know I am aware of this. However your point about the common misunderstanding is the key to all of this. It is common – anyone who doesn’t study the concepts of gamification struggles with it. How about Achievementification….