Gamification

My year of blogging 2011

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A look back at my blogs from 2011. Interesting to see me slowly switching focus from Social Media and Technology to nearly all Gamification!

New Year – What could it Bring

Posted on December 31, 2011Well, in a few hours it will be 2012. Now, sadly we are not traveling in flying cars though luckily it doesn’t look like the world is going to end. So what is going to happen in 2012? I think it is pretty certain that a gajillion new social media related jobs will be created. That said, I have to wonder how long that can last. More…Posted in Opinion Read More ...

Rewards and Reward Schedules in Gamification

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Reward schedule Rewards and Reward Schedules in Gamification

Anyone who has read a few of my blogs will, by now, be under the impression that I am not the biggest fan of rewards. Well, that is not entirely how I feel.  Those that have read earlier blogs may remember something I said – “Rewards should recognise achievement, not be the achievement”.  I also found myself saying in an email “Gamification at the moment is often nothing more than an attempt to illicit Pavlovian responses to external stimuli”. I know, how up myself does that sound – but it’s true.  The way many people are using rewards are as a way to encourage people to do things – like giving a dog a biscuit for rolling over on command Read More ...

Harry Potter and the Gamification of School

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1326285 97973871 Harry Potter and the Gamification of School

When I was a kid a school (long before Harry Potter had been thought of – and gamification for that matter…), teaching methods generally sucked. A teach stood at the front of the class, dictated out ancient notes and you had to write them down in your exercise book. If you didn’t pay attention or did something the teacher did not like, you got a board rubber thrown at your head. There was no intrinsic enjoyment to be had from the learning process; it was all drained by the way we were taught. This was not unique to my school years; it had been this way for decades. Read More ...

Flow, Player Journey and Employee Satisfaction

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Slide3 Flow Player Journey and Employee Satisfaction

What follows is an exploration of what happens when you start to map player journeys in games onto Flow theory and then try to bring that into the workplace. Just for fun! It was inspired by Mr Scott Golas after seeing last weeks post on relatedness. It may or may not have any worth, but it has been fun to develop. Click images to see the bigger versions or you can see the presentation at SlideShare

What is Flow and what is the Player Journey?

Mihayi Csikszentmihalyi suggested the concept after seeing that under certain conditions people’s experiences became optimal. This is to say that everything around them was lost as they concentrated on the job at hand. This can be seen in many artists who just “get into the grove” as they work. Time stops, nothing else matters and when they finally come out of it, they have no concept of how long they have been working. Read More ...

Relatedness: The Often Ignored Glue of Gamification

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1118 BatmanArkhamCity 277 BMInterro3 Relatedness The Often Ignored Glue of Gamification

Another great conversation with my friend Scott Sinclair and another batch of inspiration for a blog. This time about why social is really the key to gamification.

Let us look at one of my favourite video games of all time, Batman: Arkham City. Without going into too much detail, you are Batman and you have to uncover a plot to take over Gotham. For me, this is one of the most complete single player experiences I have ever had.

How Does a Game Progress?

The way the game works is exactly what you would expect from a player journey. You start with very little in the way of skills and abilities. You are taught how to play the game with “on the job” nudges, hints and tutorials. Once you have the basics nailed, you are thrown into your first “boss battle”. This gives you a chance to test your new skills against a proper challenge. Once this is over, you start up the path again. New skills are added, abilities are enhanced, the story progresses and it steadily gets harder and harder. This pattern repeats – learn skills, master them, boss fight, and repeat. This continues until you have achieved a high level of mastery in the game. Then it is all about the narrative, using your new mastery to get to the end of the game and defeat the final boss. Read More ...