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 ...

Relatedness: The Often Ignored Glue of Gamification

1118 BatmanArkhamCity 277 BMInterro3 Relatedness The Often Ignored Glue of Gamification

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 to uncover a plot to take over Gotham. For me, this is one of the most complete single player experiences I have ever had.

How Does a Game Progress?

The way the game works is exactly what you would expect from a player journey. You start with very little in the way of skills and abilities. You are taught how to play the game with “on the job” nudges, hints and tutorials. Once you have the basics nailed, you are thrown into your first “boss battle”. This gives you a chance to test your new skills against a proper challenge. Once this is over, you start up the path again. New skills are added, abilities are enhanced, the story progresses and it steadily gets harder and harder. This pattern repeats – learn skills, master them, boss fight, and repeat. This continues until you have achieved a high level of mastery in the game. Then it is all about the narrative, using your new mastery to get to the end of the game and defeat the final boss. Read More ...

Driving the wrong behaviours with rewards.

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. On the face of it, that kind of thing works well. Offer a reward and ask people to do something simple. Like this, follow that, +1 the other and you can win a book. Low and behold you can get hundreds or thousands of these clicks – great. The question is, how many of these are valuable? What is the goal? If you are trying to develop new and worthwhile interactions and relationships. Does the same person liking everything you have ever written, just to win the prize, have any actual value long term? Read More ...

A Question of Motivation

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 Deci and talks by people like Daniel Pink, is that extrinsic motivation is in no way better than intrinsic motivation. The research shows that being almost bribed to do stuff will actually decrease your effectiveness. Read More ...

A Question of Ethics with a little nod to Gamification

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 the gamification forums. I would love to be a bit of a place to go to get answers from the community to questions the Gamification world may ask!

On to today’s post though. I was in a toy store with my daughter this weekend and was witness to a pretty neat little game / gamification example in the shop. However, I was also forced to question the ethics of what was being done. Read More ...

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