Gamification: Pianists vs Computers

A thought that spawned from the back of a great Quora discussion about the role games designers in the world of gamification.

You can program a computer to play the most stunning works of classical music. You can create vast orchestras who never miss a note, or simple and flawless solo piano performances.

So why is it that people still go to see live performances, or buy cds of real people playing the music?

Heart, soul, the x-factor if you will. That something that separates each of us and makes us all individual. You can teach anyone to do pretty much anything (within physical / mental limitations of course) and they can become good at it. However, some things come from deeper than just learning. They come from a deep understanding at an almost spiritual level. Read More ...

My year of blogging 2012

2012 My year of blogging 2012

2012 draws to and end and so I present a summary of my blogs for the year!

2012 was a heck of a year for my self discovery. I had not realised until now just how many blogs I had written, covering subjects from video games to social media to gamificaiton and Harry Potter. I was also interesting to see that my switch from heavily blogging about Social Media in 2011 to blogging about Gamificaiton was almost total! Not all of it was good, some was plain wrong, but this synopsis of 2012 really shows my journey through a field that is new and exciting to me and many others. Have a great Christmas, thanks for reading my stuff and I look forward to creating loads of new content in 2013. The year will start with a great interview with Richard Bartle – I can’t wait to publish that!! Read More ...

My year of blogging 2011

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 ...

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

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 ...

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