Education

Gamification Element: Investment

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Piggy bank 1493903513 Gamification Element Investment

I have just added a new element to the gamification periodic table, investment.

Whilst I have Loss Aversion and a few other things that may seem similar, I have felt for some time that there was still an ingredient missing. It turns out, it was investment (I think…).

Now, you may instantly think of investment as a financial affair, in fact, the icon I have chosen deliberately induces that though. However, investment comes in several flavours;

  1. Financial: Money, virtual currency, possessions
  2. Emotional: When you get into a good book or film, you are emotionally invested. The same is true of any relationship.
  3. Time: When you spend time doing something, you are investing in it. So time spent getting your stats as high as possible in-game, that’s a significant investment.
  4. Effort: Whether it is mental or physical, expending effort is an investment in an activity.

A great example of all of these being in play is higher education. Students have to spend money on tuition fees (or at least be aware they will be paying them back for some time). They have to invest emotionally, not just in the subject and the process of learning for higher education, but also in the relationships they form whilst in higher education. They have to invest a significant amount of their time, years in fact. Finally, there is a huge amount of mental effort required to succeed. Read More ...

Some Gamification Videos and a bit of Fun

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I’ve been busy making videos of late, here are the last few. Some tutorials, a few rants and a bit of fun 🙂

Player Types and User Types in Gamification

Ethics in Gamification

Failure and Consequences in Gamification

Stop Perpetuating Bad Gamification Design

The Games Invasion: Why It’s a Good Thing

Parenting and Gamification

The Little Cog

Schools, Rewards and FFS

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Chatting to my daughter today and she was telling me about the latest incentive/bribe scheme the school was running to get kids using RM Easimaths – a gamified maths app. The app, by the way, is brilliant.

The set up was this. Most hours on the app gets a prize…

So, anyone know where this is going?

I’ve written about his in the past 

The first thing that happened was a couple fo kids got caught out logging in to the app and just leaving it running for hours and hours. The rules, such as they were, did not prevent this as they were looking at a quantitative analysis – the number of hours, rather than qualitative for example, number of questions done per hour of use. Anyway, they put a stop to that, to an extent, but still were only really measuring time, but with a few sense checks in there. Score one for lack of understanding. Read More ...

Focused Feedback and Attainable, Maintainable Goals

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Don’t Mention Gamification

I was challenged recently to talk about gamification without mentioning games or gamification! The reason is that many people have not got time to dive too deep into the meanings and on its own, gamification as a word is confusing, to say the least. So, I took to YouTube and had a go!

My thoughts revolved around two core concepts; Focused Feedback and Attainable, Maintainable Goals.

Focused Feedback

Feedback is essential for engagement in anything we do, whether it is related to our job, social life or hobbies. Without feedback, we don’t know where we, how we are doing or where we are going. Not having feedback is like driving without seeing the road or a map! Read More ...

Strategy: A missing component in Gamification

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One of the more common questions I get about gamification is “what is the difference between games and gamification”. I have spent lots of time writing about that exact issue, the Game Thinking pieces are my most concrete thoughts about the topic. However, just recently I was playing North vs South on the iPhone and was struck by a blindingly obvious part of games that seems to be missing from most if not all gamification.

Strategy.

Gamification is, in general, becoming much better implemented. The use of narrative, onboarding, intrinsic motivation, well thought out rewards and more. That said strategy does seem to be missing. What do I mean by strategy? Well, the need to plan and consider your actions to create the most desired or best possible outcome. On the surface, it doesn’t seem that gamification offers much opportunity to plan or consider what the consequences of certain actions might be. You just do what the system asks of you and get rewarded! Read More ...

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