Opinion

Serious Games: Too Broad a Term to be Meaningful

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Darfur is dying Serious Games Too Broad a Term to be Meaningful

A while back, I wrote a piece on the difference between serious games, games and gamification. It was simple, but covered the important areas of what makes them different from each other.  Since then, I have had more involvement with serious games (recently helped as one of the judges for the Serious Play Awards for instance) and it has started to dawn on me that we are still confused as to what they actually are.

Yesterday, Mattie Brice posted the following on twitter

Hey y’all, tell me the most popular serious games you know of Read More ...

An Interview with Karl Kapp

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Week Two 002 445x273 An Interview with Karl Kapp

To continue the interview theme for another week, I present my interview with Karl Kapp. Karl is an eLearning expert, author, researcher and all round fountain of information and understanding!

Can you sum up what you do in a single sentence?

I teach, study, research, write, and educate others about the convergence of learning, technology and pedagogy with a focus on games and gamification.

How did you get involved with learning and helping people understand it better?

I discovered the field of instructional design my first year out of college.  I was working for a company that happened to be an instructional design firm. Working for them changed my life, when I found out what the field was about and how it impacted people through carefully designed learning interventions, I wanted to be a part of it. When I found out about this field, I changed my graduate program of study from Educational Counseling to Instructional Technology and I haven’t looked back. I think the ability to impact learners through instruction is compelling and to do it with methods like games and gamification is even more exciting. Read More ...

Carification – Looking Back

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Carification Carification 8211 Looking Back

Hi, I’m Andrzej. I am a blogger and speaker on Carification. Now, I’m sure most of you know what this is all about, but I thought I would start with a little look at what carification is and a short history lesson on it.

So, first off, what is Carification?

There are many variations on the definition, but generally it is;

The use of car parts and components on things that are not cars to enhance user experiences.

First coined around 2002, carification was originally used to describe the act of making things that were not cars into cars or at least more car like. Who can forget the sofa car for instance? Read More ...

More on Gamification and Careers

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Flow User Jounrney Motivation More on Gamification and Careers

Extrinsic Rewards and the User Journey

A couple of small bits this week whilst I pull together more substantial work (I’m not a machine!!) First a small revisit of my Flow and User Journey work. In various conversations I have had about the use of rewards in a gamified systems the general question is always “do you need rewards at all”. My answer is that it can’t hurt if it is done properly.  One thing that occurred is that during the on-boarding phase and into the habit forming phase of a user journey, rewards can play a key part.Charles Duhigg presents the idea that habits are formed when three key things are put together. Cue, Routine and Reward. Read More ...

Feedback Loops, Gamification and Employee Motivation

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Feedback loop Feedback Loops Gamification and Employee Motivation

To anyone involved in game design, feedback loops will be a well known concept. To those in gamification, they are often talked about, but not everyone will know what they actually are and how they can be used.

Feedback loops come in two main flavors; positive feedback loops and negative feedback loops. Which ever you are looking at they are constructed in a similar way, with two or more phases.

  • User performs an action
  • Something happens
  • User experience is modified
  • Repeat

Basic Feedback Loop, will have 2 or more steps

A positive feedback loop amplifies something, whereas a negative feedback loop will reduce something. Read More ...