I don’t often post press releases here, but this one excites me! Razer is a company that has produced gaming peripherals for years now. Used by pros and casual gamers alike, they always produce distinctive and interesting kit.
So when they announced they were going to release a fitness like band, I had to find out more!
It turns out they have made a competitor product to the likes of FitBit (which I use) and Nike Fuel Band (which I can’t afford!!). Not only does it look really cool, it has a boat load of features. Rather than just a fitness tracker, it is a full features smart watch, showing you incoming calls and notifications. It is a fitness tracker, with location awareness and all sorts iof other bio data. Finally it is social, with band to band communications.
The other reason I have decided to post about it, they mention gamification as one of the features. As such, I have asked for a unit to do a full review of – with luck I will have one soon to do just that with!
Here is the full press release 🙂
At CES this year, Razer entered the arena of the Quantified Self and smart watches as they announced the Nabu Smartband!
The Razer Nabu is a revolutionary wearable technology that delivers notifications from a smartphone right to one’s wrist and tracks selected personal information. More impressively, it is also an open platform that third-party applications can exploit to create novel experiences for users, applying personal, physical and geographical opt-in data.
The Razer Nabu has three core features:
1. Notifications on Your Wrist
The Razer Nabu has two OLED notification screens – a Public Icon Screen and a Private Message Screen. The Public icon screen – located on the top of the wrist – notifies users of incoming calls, texts, emails and app updates via notification icons. The Private message screen – located on the inside of the wrist – provides detailed information of texts, emails, bio data and other updates that can only be viewed by the user.
2. Advanced Sensors to Track Data for Self Analysis
The Razer Nabu has advanced sensors for data tracking, including location information, bio data feedback (steps walked, distance traveled, stairs climbed, etc.), sleep data, band-to-band communication and much more, collected on an opt-in basis for users to better understand and adjust their daily activity. An included utility app can customize the type of data collected and can set permissions for the data to be shared.
3. The First Truly Social Wearable
The Razer Nabu’s band-to-band communication abilities allows for social discovery. Find nearby friends, mutual acquaintances and more based on user-defined settings.
The collected data as well as pre-configured capabilities and gestures on the Razer Nabu will be available on an open development platform to allow first- and third-party developers to update existing apps or build new ones to create new types of personal and social experiences for Razer Nabu wearers and third-party app users.
“Smart watches in their current form are too bulky and fitness trackers are easily forgotten after the initial novelty wears off—we have fixed all of that,” notes Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder, CEO and creative director. “The Razer Nabu provides a revolutionary new platform that bridges the divide between so-called smart watches and fitness bands. It delivers only the information you need, collects data that you want, and deepens your social interactions. Most excitingly, with our open platform, developers can utilize data collected by the Nabu to deliver incredible experiences to individuals via mobile or desktop apps—social or otherwise.”
The Razer Nabu comes with a downloadable utility app available on both iOS and Android devices—a one-stop destination for band settings, profile ID, notifications received, opt-in data, app synchronization and more.
The Razer Nabu will be available for sale worldwide in late Q1 2014 (retail price, TBD), while developers can sign-up now and get the band at the developer’s price of $49.
About the Razer Nabu smart band:
Availability: Worldwide launch at the end of Q1.
Price: Developer’s price, $49; retail price, TBD.
Displays and sensors:
Public icon screen: 32×32 pixel OLED
Private message screen: 128×32 pixel OLED
Accelerometer
Altimeter
Cylindrical vibration motor
Software:
Works with iOS + Android
Downloadable Nabu Utility app for notifications, data, and other settings
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.
When did gamification show up on your radar?
Well, to answer this question, I went back to my blog to see that my first post with the word “gamification” was November 8, 2010. It was a post about Jess Schell’s Gampocalypse. But actually, I had been thinking about and writing about the concept for some time. I knew that learners could benefit from elements of games integrated into instruction but I didn’t have a catchy word for it. In fact, I had written about game-based elements for learning in my 2007 book, Gadgets, Games and Gizmos but didn’t have a jazzy term for it. So when I heard the word “gamification” I knew that was the term I could use. Not everyone likes the term but it sums up the idea of using game elements in traditional instruction pretty well.
How do you see games and gamification (remember our comment discussion on the difference a while back) affecting education in the next few years?
Games for learning and gamification appear to be gaining momentum in the learning industry and I do not see a slowdown in growth. Several elements are converging to spur this growth. First is that the technology used to create learning games and gamification experiences is becoming more accessible. It is still difficult to program a high level game and all of the associated artwork but it is 10 times easier than it was just five years ago and in another five years it will be even easier than today. So the technology is making it easier to create high quality learning games.
Second, the current generation entering the workforce has grown up playing video games. They are familiar with the conventions of video games, they play video games on their mobile devices and they are not opposed to using video games for learning. They understand that the medium of learning games can help them learn because they have learned by playing games. They are also expecting more “fun” in every day interactions so elements of games added to every day experiences like driving a car or paying for gas are expected to be more “game-like.”
Third, the research-base for game-based learning is finally starting to grow. Previously there was little focus on games for learning aimed at adults in the research literature. However, the combination of the first two items has generated an entire focus on the area of studying games for learning and the existing research to date has been positive for the impact of games for learning. Gamification still needs some more research to determine when it can be most effective but there are a number of elements underfoot in that area.
Fourth, games have the added element of replayability. Most people would not want to sit through a typical classroom lecture or online learning module again and again and again. Yet, these same people will play a game over and over. Games provide the chance to practice and hone skills because the learner wants to engage with them time and time again because they have elements that lend toward replaying scenarios or situations and observing the outcome. Gamification, if done well, will propel people through content and help them cover material more effectively by knowing what is of value by the difficulty of earning the points or badges.
But keep in mind games and gamification for learning still encounter resistance and this is because the people resisting don’t understand that well designed games or a gamification event contain all the best learning design: they start easy and allow the learner to gain skills as they go, this is the pedagogical element of scaffolding, they provide models of desired behavior, this is Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, when played over time, they use the concept of Distributed Practice, they provide Targeted Feedback and they allow the learner to employ all the elements of Self Determination Theory which are autonomy, relatedness and mastery. Games and gamification events when designed correctly, are the perfect vehicle for learning and that is why I think the future of games and gamification for learning is expanding.
Do you see value in gamification outside of education?
Yes, we need to learn constantly in all types of situations from learning which subway train to take to get where we are going, to learning how to fill out an expense report to learning how to make the best choice for our health. Given all of these reasons, I think gamification is going to gain a great deal of traction outside of the educational environment. Designers are going to add more and more game elements to everyday experiences and we are going to be immersed, for better or worse, in gamification. At times it will even seem like too much.
How do you see it changing in say the next 3 or 4 years?
I hope that in the next 3-4 years, we will have more data on what really works and what is hype and that we will see less superfluous adding of game elements and more targeted and thoughtful gamification. I see more understanding of what works and what doesn’t work and more thought behind gamification of learning events. I also see more acceptance of game-based learning and a greater understand of the power of interactive learning to make a difference. That’s my class is full vision. The other vision is that vendors have overdone the entire game and gamification thing and that they add games where they are not needed, gamification is forced down people’s throats and there is tremendous backlash. But let’s go for the first vision of the future.
How do you see MOOCs affecting the future of education
To me a MOOC is really just an online course, a large lecture online course. There will be no real lasting impact of MOOCs. They will eventually monetize as either a for-fee software service or an advertisement-driven medium like television. The real impact on the future of learning would be adaptive MOOCs or online courses that adapt to what the learner doesn’t know. The real revolution in online learning will come with adaptive learning not with broadcast based learning that we currently have with MOOCs.
I assume you are a gamer 😉 What are you playing when you have the time?
I am a gamer! My current passion is Assassin’s Creed III. I’ve lost weeks playing that game. And I cannot wait until Assassin’s Creed IV. On my mobile phone I like Sid Meir’s Civilization Revolution and on my iPad I like The Silent Age.
What is your favorite game of all time
My favorite video game is James Bond 007 Nightfire for the PlayStation II. For some reason that game just really impacted me, I’ll still play it from time-to-time. My favorite board game is still Stratego. I had a CD-ROM of that game a while back and it was just as awesome. I also really liked RIVEN, the sister game to Myst.
Thank you to Karl for taking the time to do this interview, check out his blog at http://karlkapp.com/ for insights into eLearning, gamification and more!
Karl is author of the best selling learning book The Gamification of Learning and Instruction which explores the research and theoretical foundations behind effective game-based learning and gamification for learning. In the book he examines everything from variable reward schedules to the use of avatars to the gamification of pro-social behaviors. He has recently completed the accompanying fieldbook which is a how to guide to developing games, gamification and simulations.
Whilst I process the amazing presentations, talks and general chats that happened at SocialNow, I wanted to put together a quick post around the ideas of accessibility and immediacy.
Imagine the situation. You are an airport and have thousands of people moving through your building every day. Most have a very predictable path. Land, get of plane, walk to baggage claim, go to the exit. On the way, they have to go through various checks. Customs, passport control, security etc.
All of these people are in a hurry, they have a goal and want to get to it as fast as possible. Your problem is, you want to find out how they have found the experience of going through the processes in place at your airport. How was the flight, how was the security, how was baggage claim etc.
The traditional way would be to ask them to fill in a survey. This could be done by randomly selecting people as they tried to leave the airport, as a survey they have to fill in and post back or even online after they have got to their destination. However, each of these has an issue.
No one likes their path to be blocked by someone holding a clipboard – especially fter a 6 hour flight, when all you want is to get to your hotel or see your family. You are not likely to get reasonably thought out responses with this. The other ways all rely on memory of the experience. They rely on people remembering how it felt to go from the plane to the exit. What they did and didn’t like.
There are two issues here. The first is that many people won’t bother to fill in the survey (unless there is an incentive of course and even then you can’t guarantee that they are telling you the truth or what they think you want to hear). The other is that if they do fill in the survey, they are doing it from memory and anyone who watches CSI knows that memory cannot be relied on!
So, knowing all of this, it seems that some clever people in certain airports have come up with a simple yet brilliant solution. At each major stage of your journey around the airport, they have placed one of these.
Each one has a question. In this case, “How was your baggage delivery experience today?”. All you have to do is press one of four buttons, from happy face to angry face. If you then feel you want to say more, you can fill in a short feedback card as well.
This is brilliant in a few different ways. The first is how simple, accessible and immediate it is. You don’t even have to slow down to tap the button you want. It also prompts you then and there to think about a certain stage of your experience – rather than having to remember all of the stages at once in sequence. As I walked from the plain to the exit I saw three or four of these, asking about how my experience was. I clicked the appropriate face on each one. The other brilliant part was the use of four buttons. It is easy to think that giving four options over three is making it harder, but it actually forces you to make a meaningful decision rather than just opting for sitting on the fence at each one.
All in all, I think we can learn a lot from this. Whilst they cannot ask all the questions that they could in a full survey, it does allow them to get meaningful feedback on key questions from a much larger number of people. It breaks down the goal, to make it much easier for people to achieve and in some minds is a bit of fun, especially compared to a survey!
Thanks to Morgan Tinline for the better title!! https://twitter.com/mtinline/status/488227078576566272
Prompts are important, we use them all the time, but we probably don’t think much about them. Do you set yourself reminders on your phone or in Outlook? Meeting requests, messages on your pin board at home to remind you what to by at the shops, Post It notes on the fridge? All of these are prompts, they are also all calls to action.
My daughter has a lot of toys. For the most part they all make noise as well. One of the things that scares the hell out of me is when one decides to make noise, five minutes after she has stopped playing with them. She as one called Alfie Bear. When you put him down, just before he switches off properly, he suddenly laughs and says “Come play with me”. Creepy, but a very good call to action. There is no ambiguity about what you need to do next – go play with him! Lots of her toys do similar, in much the same way as arcade machines of my youth had an attract mode. This would show you some of the cool things in the game and shout things out from the machine, to attract you to play.
These days we are bombarded with such prompts. But, not all of them are calls to actions and are really a waste of time. A Happy Birthday message from a forum you have not visited for years is a great example. The idea is, you get the email and then you are tempted to visit the forum again. The trouble is, there is no call to action, there is no reason to visit. Nothing has changed since you last went, so why bother now. The more often this happens, the more numb you become.
Why am I talking about all of this? Well, LinkedIn has done just this. It seems that every other person in their network of 200,000,000 has had an email thanking them for their contribution and telling them they are in the top 10%, 5% or 1% of profiles visited (I was in the top 5% apparently). On the surface of it this is great, another little step into the word of gamification actually. It thanks me, it has a call to action “Read More” and I did indeed click the link. The thing is, that is all it does. It takes you to a page that thanks you again, offers you the chance to view an infographic, share your ranking via social media or visit LinkedIn.
There is nothing new to see, because I am already very active on LinkedIn – the same as anyone who would have got the email. To have a profile that is viewed lots of times, you have to be fairly active – so a call to action to visit the site is a little wasted. Yes, it has probably created a little more traffic in the short term and it has prompted a few conversations – on rival social networks (I notice sharing your status with Google+ is not an option), but it is all very short term like so many of their other gamified ideas.
A prompt, or a call to action, should remind you to do something beneficial. It should remind you that you need to run tonight to keep up with your goals, it should remind you to go to the online grocery store and spend money (preferably with a cheeky money off voucher), it should remind you to go and play with Alfie Bear once again. It shouldn’t just show you something you already see on a regular basis or that has not changed since the last time you went there. That is just considered spam!
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!!
Posted on December 17, 2012 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… More…
Posted on December 10, 2012 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… More…
Posted in Gamification, Opinion
Posted on November 30, 2012 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…More…
Posted in Gamification, Opinion
Posted on November 26, 2012 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… More…
Posted in Gamification, Gaming, Technology
Posted on November 19, 2012 Whilst I normally blog about Gamification and finding the benefits in understanding the psychology of people, this post is of a deeply personal nature. It also shows how important user experience is. I hope though, you will retweet this far and wide. Oh – and it is a bit of a rant. This was to…More…
Posted in Rants
Posted on November 12, 2012 I have written about this whole thing quite a lot already, but I have some new insights based on things I have witnessed recently. We know that extrinsic rewards are meant to demotivate people when doing anything that is even slightly creative. So why do we keep seeing them being used in gamification and marketing.… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on November 7, 2012 Another quick one, prompted by an interesting behaviour exhibited by my daughter today that taught me rather a lot about extrinsic rewards. I have mentioned before the research that has been done on motivation in the past by the likes of Edward Deci and the writing of Dan Pink and more. All of them point… More…
Posted in Gamification, Opinion
Posted on November 3, 2012 A very quick blog this week, whilst I work on a few deeper ones (possibly) An argument that is pretty constant in Gamification, is that of Extrinsic vs Intrinsic motivation / rewards. Things like badges, points and even money vs altruism, autonomy, status and more. The general consensus, based on the works of people like… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on October 29, 2012 Hello all and a very happy Monday to you. As ever, I am blown away by your reactions to my blogs. The Gamification Framework and Resources posts seemed to go down very well. As such, I have added them as menu options with the Evangelist page! I would really plead with you to get into…More…
Posted in Gamification, Opinion, Rants, Technology
Posted on October 23, 2012 Let me expand on this. A discussion started on twitter when I mentioned in passing to a couple of gamification people, that really gamification is often a benign form of manipulation. It became an interesting chat, fast. I suppose I expected that! However, when you look at the definition of manipulation in the Oxford English… More…
Posted in Gamification, Gaming, Technology
Posted on October 20, 2012 Here is a list of resources I go back to time and time again. There are many more and if you want to be included, please leave a comment!! Blogs and Websites Badgeville Blog Bunchball Blog Enterprise Gamification – Run by Mario Herger from SAP Gamification.org – Brilliant Wiki, now owned by Badgeville Gamified Enterprise… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on October 18, 2012 A few different conversations this last week have triggered a little built of thinking. This usually leads to me brain dumping a blog – and this is no exception. Don’t expect to find any answers here! The first questions was – should you tell people that they are using a gamified system? Straight off the… More…
Posted in Gamification, Gaming, Technology
Posted on October 15, 2012 First of all, thanks to everyone who has viewed or downloaded my Gamification presentation. It has had over 600 views on Slideshare, which is fantastic! Looking forward to my next chance to do the talk (hint hint people!!!) Also, check out this short interview I did with the Association for Interactive Media & Entertainment 5Qs… More…
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted on October 9, 2012 Well, this week was going to be some thoughts around a conversation with Ian Bogost. However, that will have to wait until I have more time to actually formulate a decent set of arguments 🙂 In the mean time, I wanted to put out the little “framework” I proposed in the presentation so many of…More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on October 1, 2012 With Eurogamer already fading into the deepest recesses of my mind, there is one thing that has stood out. Just how much the games industry dislikes gamification. The general feeling was that everyone doing gamification is getting it wrong. They do not understand games and therefore think that it is fine to just add the… More…
Posted in Gamification, Gaming, Technology
Posted on September 26, 2012 Well, as promised to those wonderful people who came to listen to me preach about Gamificaiton, here is the slide deck – all wrapped up in a pretty slide share thingy. Download the presentation to get the full notes – I have written the talk out long hand – well how it was meant to… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on September 19, 2012When I first started in web design things were different. We only need to worry about HTML 4 and 2 browsers. We concentrated on quality of the content as that was pretty much all there easy. Content was front an centre. Then flash came along. Suddenly we had a way to integrate really rich media… More…
Posted in Rants, Technology
Posted on September 18, 2012 This week there is no real blog post for you I’m afraid. I am in the middle of trying to produce a talk for next week and enjoying the Coursera Gamification course. Instead, here are some questions that I have spinning in my head that I would love to answer. Can any of you amazing… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on September 10, 2012 A few weeks ago, I sent out a short survey to about 15 people in the Gamification world. The idea was to get a some simple answers to questions I have pondered over time. I thought it would be fun to get them all to give answers to the exact same questions. Here are the… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on September 5, 2012 As we begin to enter the world of the next gen of games consoles, I was reminded of a post I wrote for my games site Yet Another Review Site in November last year and thought it was worth a repost! People often ask where the innovation has gone in the games industry. I have… More…
Posted in Gaming, Opinion
Posted on September 3, 2012 Hi all. Well, this is my first try at a video blog. It took far to many goes and as you can see, the version I had to go with has terrible lighting and a really bad angle. (This is due to a lack of Malteser boxes to balance the iPhone on – true story!).… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on August 28, 2012 Continuing my mix of gamification and social media articles (as I need a break from writing about gamification for a week!), I thought I would write down the tools and methods I use to manage Twitter and share articles. Not the most interesting bit of writing I will ever do, but I have been asked…More…
Posted in Social Media, Technology
Posted on August 21, 2012 Good day and all. Today I am merely rambling to try to either prove or disprove an idea I have. I was thinking about short definitions for Gamification – outside of the usual Add game mechanics to non game tasks The more I look at Gamification, the more unsatisfied I am with that description. There… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on August 18, 2012 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… More…
Posted in Gaming, Social Media, Technology
Posted on August 15, 2012Klout. My friend my enemy and subject of some of my earliest posts. In October last year I wrote a blog called Treating the Klout. In it I discussed the big change they had just made to their algorithm that had given rise to many complaints from the community. Some had dropped massively in score,… More…
Posted in Opinion, Rants, Social Media, Technology
Posted on August 12, 2012 Seeing the news that Badgeville was to gamify social networks got me thinking about the old days. Social networks are nothing new. Back in “the day”, we all used to use forums (and bulletin boards before that) and chat rooms to be social online. Forums tended to focus on specific topics, with chat rooms just… More…
Posted in Gamification, Social Media, Technology
Posted on August 6, 2012 I had a great little article set up for today about forums, chat rooms and gamified social networks. However, with GsummitX London happening today and considering some of the things I am reading of late, I wanted to rant instead. Buckle in 🙂 Badges and points systems. You know them, and loads of you seems… More…
Posted in Gamification, Rants, Technology
Posted on July 30, 2012 When I started this Blog, my actual aim was to talk about social media and influence. My focus shifted, but every now and then an opportunity to talk about it again raises its head. So, I am very excited and pleased to present a Q & A session with Kred CEO Andrew Grill. To… More…
Posted in Social Media, Technology
Posted on July 23, 2012 People want gamification to mean certain things to them. They want to take the word and try to bend into whatever they think will sell their next big idea to someone. This tends to lead to people arguing about what it actually is and what constitutes a gamified product. Two such ideas seem to be… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on July 19, 2012 Stepping away from Gamification just for a week, whilst is search around for inspiration (suggestions in an email please), I want to quickly talk about something else that fascinates me – influence. More specifically, digital influence. After a great “putting the world to rights” session with friend and Gamification whizz Scott Sinclair (@sinclair300584), I had… More…
Posted in Opinion, Rants, Social Media, Technology
Posted on July 9, 2012 The stages of brand engagement I have been thinking about the stages that a person goes through when becoming “involved” with brands or any system that is being gamified. I may be wrong, there may be more too it. However, as I see it there are three distinct phases. Introduction to the brand (or whatever).… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on July 2, 2012 This is a post that I originally wrote for EnGaming – Repoduced with kind permission (go check them out!!) Time for some fun Every now and again I like to just write something for fun. After writing lots and lots of gamification articles, I got to thinking of fun / daft examples. People often quote… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on June 25, 2012 I have been catching up on the events of GSummit over the weekend. I was very heartened to hear so many people talking about moving beyond badges and xp systems. They were looking for the next phase of engagement. You just need to look at FourSquare recently ditching its gamified elements to see that we… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on June 18, 2012 In a lot of posts, I talk about rewards. My last post discussed the potential dangers of extrinsic rewards when used to try to motivate intrinsic behaviour. So I imagine that most of you think that rewarding failure is a bit of a no brainer. No way. Why would anyone reward anyone for failure? Banks… More…
Posted in Gamification
Posted on June 16, 2012 Hello all. First of all, thank you so much for making this blog (and its syndication’s) way more successful than I had ever imagined! I would never have thought that people would be interested in what I have to say, so thank you. This is all a big learning adventure for me, one that I…More…
Posted in Gamification, Social Media
Posted on June 7, 2012 Last week I got to go to the Digital Shoreditch Play event. It was a wonderful day, listening to games developers, designers, experts and Gamification gurus all with amazing tales to tell from the coal face of the industry. The audience there were of similar calibre , most being experts in their respective fields. It… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on May 27, 2012 Everything has rules. Life works because of rules. Rules have many names and forms. Laws of physics, algebra, logic, frameworks, instructions and more. Without rules you have chaos. That said, some scientists think even chaos has rules. In games, rules are vital. However free and open a game may seem, there will be a deep… More…
Posted in Gamification
Posted on May 21, 2012 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… More…
Posted in Gamification, Gaming, Rants, Technology
Posted on May 12, 2012 Continuing on from last week’s headline grabbing “The Death of Gamification” post, I want to talk about another aspect of gamification that should be kept simple. Integration. In many cases, gamification is meant to add some kind of layer of engagement to a process and possibly even fun. What it is not meant to do… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on May 4, 2012 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… More…
Posted in Gamification, Gaming, Technology
Posted on April 23, 2012 Now that you have all read my little eBook (sorry, could resist the plug) or have at least read my previous blogs, you should have an understanding of what Gamification is and why you may want it. You will also have recently seen my post Gamification Gone Bad, which shows you a few pitfalls. The… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on April 16, 2012 To move on I want to look at how you can easily get Gamification very wrong. When it goes bad, it goes really bad. What you think makes something entertaining and engaging can actually have the exact opposite effect. This is especially true with online learning materials, or e-learning. Just because you add pretty graphics… More…
Posted in Gamification, Opinion, Technology
Posted on April 11, 2012 Recently I wrote a piece about the fact there was more to gamification than just trophies, but I never really explained why. A few people have asked, so I thought I would have a go at explaining. Just Because You Build It, Doesn’t Mean They Will Come The first reason is simple, but one that…More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on March 30, 2012 Right, so back to gamification. I thought I would take a quick look at a couple of gamification techniques you may already be using on your website or blog, but not realise that’s what it is! Exploration and Engagement First up, that little box that slides out of the corner of the page and says… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on March 26, 2012 I know why I blog. Normally I like to write down the thoughts that are in my head. One day they may be of use to me. If they are of use to others then even better. At times I write because I think what I am writing may help to inform others. When I… More…
Posted in Opinion, Rants
Posted on March 13, 2012 In a recent blog post for my company’s blog, Gamification for your company, I made brief mention of evangelists and social reach. The general gist was that in this world of social media, a few enthusiastic supporters or evangelists could be worth more than a mediocre marketing campaign. Social reach can be a much underestimated,… More…
Posted in Gamification, Opinion, Social Media
Posted on February 28, 2012 It’s not just about money One thing that is often asked when people talk about gamification is why use that and not just offer incentives. Well. My first answer is always “but that is gamification”. That is usually followed with “just very basic and possibly expensive!”. Offering incentives is normally a financial concern. If you… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on February 19, 2012 There is a lot of talk by those in the know who are getting fed up with people associating gamification with nothing but trophies and badges. Stick a badge on it and it is gamified. Personally I am not sure I am totally with them. For me if it works, use it. However, more often… More…
Posted in Gamification, Technology
Posted on February 11, 2012 Whilst I continue my quest to write a bit more about the less obvious dynamics and mechanics of Gamification, a little thought occurred. In 2004 a lovely lady by the name of Jo Frost appeared on our televisions in a program called Super Nanny. For those who didn’t see it (it is still showing in… More…
Posted in Gamification
Posted on February 3, 2012 Okay, okay, I know this blog is getting a bit Gamification heavy AND I also promised the next post would be a very serious one that went into more detail about non reward like gamification, but it isn’t – yet – so there. The reason for this blog? Well, it is currently about 3am and… More…
Posted in Gamification, Opinion, Technology
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. More…
Posted in Gamification, Gaming, Technology
When I first started working, I was full of ideals and preconceptions about the professional world. One of those preconceptions was about Networking, as in face to face networking – social networking was still to come. More…
Posted in Social Media, Technology
Posted on January 16, 2012 Below is a very low brow, non expert look at how the technological revolution has changed the definition of words and concepts over the last few years. Social: When I were a lad, socialising meant going ot the local for a few drinks. Now it means something totally different, with the advent of Social Networking. More…
Posted in Rants, Technology
Posted on January 14, 2012 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. More…
Posted in Gamification, Gaming, Technology
When I first started out in web design, things were different. It was like the wild west – small groups of frontiers men still dipping their toe into the waters of what was possible. It was a fairly well established industry at the time, but it was something that the general public didn’t get all that involved in. More…
Posted in Opinion, Social Media, Technology
Posted on January 5, 2012 I was watching a young person with an iPhone the other day. I witnessed, with some amusement, this persons reaction when the phone crashed. The string of expletives that ensued left me to conclude that he had either a. lost an unsaved document he had been writing for 8 months or b. was about to break the world record on Angry Birds. More…
Posted in Opinion, Technology
