Andrzej Marczewski: Gamification Thought Leader

Challenge the Rut

March 28, 2014 by Andrzej Marczewski

So, two weeks and I have maintained a blog per working day. Yay me.

The question is, why? Why have I suddenly gone from one blog per week to one per day. I don’t need the coverage or the readers – they have all been more than happy with one per week. I certainly don’t need the extra work or hassle that comes with generating more interesting (ish) content.

The reason was to challenge myself and push myself out of a rut I was in with my blogging. For about 3 years I have posted one blog per week, usually on a Monday. This was normally a well thought out piece of writing that was either an expression of a new idea I had had or something that I felt would be of interest and use to my readers. However, the routine was beginning to kill the creativity. I was binning ideas because it was the wrong day for them or because new ones were taking their place too fast.I was too set on this idea of one per week. Read More ...

Points & Badges Video Tutorial

March 27, 2014 by Andrzej Marczewski

Vlcsnap 2014 03 27 11h36m24s217 Points 038 Badges Video Tutorial

The fourth video in my series of tutorials (finally!!)

This one is just a short (10 minute) look at points and badges in gamified systems and how to make some use of them. Not all that different from my Points and Badges: Not Totally Evil blog post, but also talks about balancing and best use case.

Enjoy!

Mechanics and ideas to support your gamified systems

March 26, 2014 by Andrzej Marczewski

A slightly cheating post today. Here are the mechanics and ideas that I have been using when supporting certain user types. I wanted to present them in a non usertype specific way. So instead of Player, here you see “Short term engagement, Activity”. This should help people see a little more clearly how to support different gamified activities.

The smaller / fainter the mechanic or idea, the less impact it has.

Click one of the links to jump straight to the activity.

Gamification Design vs Game Design

April 24, 2014March 25, 2014 by Andrzej Marczewski

Yesterday I posted a tweet that got a few nice retweets.

Is there a middle ground where game designers and #gamification designers can meet and create amazing things? Surely yes!
— Andrzej Marczewski (@daverage) March 24, 2014

It is no secret that I would love to get the games industry to become more involved in gamification and have spoken to many people in the industry about it. Ian Bogost refereed to my original plea as a “gentle form of terrorism” saying that it was like me saying to the games industry Read More ...

Gamification: Low tech real-time feedback

January 6, 2015March 24, 2014 by Andrzej Marczewski

Using gamification on my kids is nothing new. I have openly written about my failure as a gamifier when it came to my eldest daughters reward chart! However, now I am trying a little experiment, one that is nice and low tech and involved no points or badges!

On our fridge we now have this little chart.

Throughout the day my wife and I alter the position of the arrow depending on how my daughter is behaving. We don’t tell her what the current reading is – she has to look at the feedback for herself. Of course this is on top of other verbal feedback we are giving her as well. However, this gives her a fixed reminder of how we feel she is doing. Read More ...