Gamification

Learning From Games: Onboarding and Mario

by
Mario 1 1 Learning From Games Onboarding and Mario

I’ve probably mentioned this in the past, but Super Mario (for me) has one of the best on-boarding experiences of any game I’ve ever played.

But let’s start at the beginning.

What’s On-boarding?

On-boarding, in this context, is the way the game introduces the player to the rules of play. It is how the game teaches you what to do, without having to rely on pages and pages of text in a manual.

Mario, designed by games design genius Shigeru Miyamoto, was one of the first games I played where the instructions consisted of only the most basic information (what button to press to do what). Read More ...

User Types HEXAD: What Links Philanthropists to Socialisers

by
Hexad Evolution 2 User Types HEXAD What Links Philanthropists to Socialisers

A new paper looking to validate the User Types HEXAD Survey has just been released from the HCI Games Group (Games Institute, and Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo). You can find it here Empirical validation of the Gamification User Types Hexad scale in English and Spanish or free… http://hcigames.com/download/empirical-validation-hexad-scale/

One of the findings is something that has been noted before and is not a surprise to me, but something I realise I have never explained. The finding is that the Philanthropist and Socialiser types are very closely linked when you look into them. Read More ...

Books, Music, Advice, Return to Quality Content and Stuff

by
Cover banner Books Music Advice Return to Quality Content and Stuff

Hi all.

So, I wanted to give a bit of a life update as the site has been lacking in what I would consider “quality content”. I have had to take a bit of a step back recently for various reasons. I have been writing here about gamification for since 2011 on an almost weekly basis. At some stage, you run out of ideas! I also have just finished the new book, so needed to distract myself away from gamification a little.

As such, I have been doing more music-related content on YouTube.  Every year I try to challenge myself with something new. This year it was to start doing more around guitar, a passion of mine for the past 25 years. This saw me starting up the YouTube channel and just this week releasing some music on Spotify, iTunes and Google Play. Read More ...

New Book: Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play Unicorn Edition (Special Price)

by
Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play Title New Book Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play Unicorn Edition Special Price

So, after much time wasted for various reasons my new Gamification book, Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Unicorn Edition is finally available on Amazon as a paperback. The eBook will be available on Monday!

This is a much bigger book, with around 100 extra pages since the last version. Also, the majority of chapters have had some sort of update. There are some that have remained untouched, but not many!

For 1 week it will be available for the price of £12.99 (or equivalent local price), but will rise to around £15.99 after that – so if you want a copy, now is the time to grab it. The eBook will be £9.99 or £2.99 if you buy the paperback version.  Below is the main index, so you can see what has changed. Here is a free chapter to check out as well – “How to Use Narrative to Create
Deeper Experiencesr” Read More ...

Beware of Popularity Contests

by
Book thumbs Beware of Popularity Contests

Voting. A fair and representational way to decide if A is better than B… Isn’t it? A simple mechanic where people are asked to express their opinion by way of simply ticking a box, or clicking a button or whatever.

However, as we can see time and time again, this is not actually as fair as it seems on the face of it. Instead of being a fair view of what people feel about something, it actually turns into a popularity contest.

If you set up a competition where the criteria is “he who has the most votes wins”, what do you think is going to happen? Are those invovled going to just sit back and wait for votes to come in, or are they going to campaign? If they campaign, who will they campaign to? Will they be people who can make an informed decision on what is actually the best option, or will it be friends, family and social media followers? Worse still, will it be people who have been encouraged into voting (read bribed)? Read More ...