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!!
Gamify For The Win
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 bat, I replied, no. However, when asked why, I was a little stuck. My brain knew it was the wrong thing to do, but I struggled to vocalise it initially. There are a number of issues that trouble me about telling people they are using a gamified system. The first is people’s perceptions of gamification. Very often their best view is that it is some kind of benign manipulation. At worst, they feel it is a deliberate, cynical and underhanded form of manipulation.
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 Gamificaiton
A little while ago, I did a piece called “What the Experts Think” where I invited industry experts in gamification to give their opinions. We, I opened this up so any one can answer and here are the first answers I have had. I will leave the survey open as I would love to get more of you to tell me your thoughts. Thanks to everyone who has been involved so far 🙂
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 you lovely people have viewed (over 500 on slideshare at last count – so massive thanks!!)
Basically this is a take on many other peoples attempts at defining a simple framework (I read about Kevin Werbach’s D6 framework the day after my presentation for example). It has no clever abbreviations or acronyms (WWW HATTAR seems daft)
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 most shallow and un-engaging elements of games to a task and say it is gamified.
They didn’t like that we as gamifiers were watering down the depth of real games. Having just watched the first video of section 11 of the great Coursera.org gamification course, Kevin Werbach talks about this exact issue.