Gaming

OnLive and Communication in the Age of Social Media

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20120818 084119 OnLive and Communication in the Age of Social Media

What can OnLive teach us about communication in the age of Social Media?

Last night the gaming Twitterverse went into riot mode (well polite murmurings), as a single tweet from Brian Fargo announced that OnLive was no more effective that day. This was based on an anonymous email he had received that said

“I wanted to send a note that by the end of the day today, OnLive as an entity will no longer exist”

From that rumours started to roll. OnLive was filing for bankruptcy. All employees were being laid off that day. IDG reporter Martyn Williams was even stood outside tweeting that he was seeing people leaving carrying boxes. Read More ...

Don’t Love Games? Step Away From the Gamification

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Games. I love them. Board games, card games, video games and anything else you can put the word games after. I play them, I write about them, I think about them, I dream about them and from time to time I even try my hand at making them (http://www.fuzzyd.co.uk/robbers). So what does this have to do with such a business orientated subject as Gamification. One needs to be a savy expert to be able to speak on such highbrow topics – not a games loving lout?

Well Mr suit, that’s where I think you are dead wrong. Jesse Schell in his excellent “The Art of Games Design: A Book of Lenses” asks a simple question. “Do I love my Project”. He goes on to state “If the creators of a game do not love it, the game will surely fail”. So I ask you. If you do not love games, dream about them and want to play them all day every day – how can you talk about gamification with any conviction, let alone make decisions about it’s implementation or design? As horrible as the name may be, gamification contains a key word. Gam(e). Whether you like it or not, implementing gamification is implementing at least some elements that come from games. Read More ...

The Death of Gamification

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Ok, so that may have just been one of those attention-seeking headlines. However, what I want to explore briefly is what will kill gamification if people keep heading the route they are now.

The short answer to this is, misguided over complication. As more people jump on the gamification bandwagon, people’s definitions and ideas seem to be getting ever more complex. They seem to miss the core point about gamification.

Recently at gSummitX, Gabe Zichermann was discussing the key reason games work. Just as I have described games simply as Task and Reward, he added a key final stage. Ahhhhh. Task, Reward, Ahhhhh. As he explained, that Ahhhh is the release of Dopamine – a feel good drug the body creates when you achieve something. In video games this is happening constantly. Within your workday, under normal circumstances, it probably never happens. Read More ...

The Jobification of Games – A Parody of Gamification

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A Parody of Gamification

I have written at length about Gamification.  Some people have even begun to take what I say seriously, which is great.  However, time for some fun.  What if we flipped the idea on its head.  If games worked based on the set of rules many businesses have.  How would a jobified game actually play?

A Quest is Born

The day starts with you sitting at your desk.  First you boot up your pc and do the morning kitchen dance, as you get your first cup of coffee for the day. After returning to your desk and going through your RSS feeds and non essential emails, it is time for work.  Top of your inbox you see an email with a red exclamation mark. 

Gamification: you got to play to win

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A lovely chat with some new friends brought about an interesting thought. Can you really write games or gamify things if you don't play games?

I have rambled at length about my views on gamification. I have explained what I think the basics of game theory boil down to. A task with some kind of reward or incentive offered for completion.

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