The Paradox of Play

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Blurred play The Paradox of Play

Play from the Start

When we are born, we don’t have a set of predefined rules imprinted on us about what we should and shouldn’t do or how we should and shouldn’t do it! Babies have a totally open and clear mind.

They spend their time learning everything they can, using all their senses. They learn the sound of their mother’s voice, the feel of her touch, the scent of her hair, all before they even open their eyes to learn what she looks like.

From that moment on, they are exploring their environment and learning. Everything is new to them, it’s exciting and probably terrifying in equal measure. Strange faces, strange smells, and tastes. People playing peekaboo, talking in strange voices and making odd sounds that should probably mean something, but don’t. They get bounced on knees, thrown in the air, passed around and cuddled like a toy. The experience new things called emotions; love, fear, joy, sadness and more. Read More ...

Gamification Element: Investment

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I have just added a new element to the gamification periodic table, investment.

Whilst I have Loss Aversion and a few other things that may seem similar, I have felt for some time that there was still an ingredient missing. It turns out, it was investment (I think…).

Now, you may instantly think of investment as a financial affair, in fact, the icon I have chosen deliberately induces that though. However, investment comes in several flavours;

  1. Financial: Money, virtual currency, possessions
  2. Emotional: When you get into a good book or film, you are emotionally invested. The same is true of any relationship.
  3. Time: When you spend time doing something, you are investing in it. So time spent getting your stats as high as possible in-game, that’s a significant investment.
  4. Effort: Whether it is mental or physical, expending effort is an investment in an activity.

A great example of all of these being in play is higher education. Students have to spend money on tuition fees (or at least be aware they will be paying them back for some time). They have to invest emotionally, not just in the subject and the process of learning for higher education, but also in the relationships they form whilst in higher education. They have to invest a significant amount of their time, years in fact. Finally, there is a huge amount of mental effort required to succeed. Read More ...

4 Tips to Balance Your Gamification

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There is nothing worse than playing against people who are miles ahead of you in terms of either ability or equipment. It is very demoralising to lose time and time again when in reality you never have a chance. Take leaderboards as a good example. Very often the people at the top are always the same few names, over and over again. For most companies, this does not seem to get addressed for some reason. It’s a bit like pitting your local Sunday Dad’s league against Chelsea every week. There is no opportunity for the Sunday players to ever be as good as Chelsea, they will get destroyed week after week until they give up playing. It is totally unfair and unbalanced. This is why in organised sports, you have divisions and leagues. You only play against people that you have a fair(ish) chance of beating. Read More ...

Some Gamification Videos and a bit of Fun

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I’ve been busy making videos of late, here are the last few. Some tutorials, a few rants and a bit of fun 🙂

Player Types and User Types in Gamification

Ethics in Gamification

Failure and Consequences in Gamification

Stop Perpetuating Bad Gamification Design

The Games Invasion: Why It’s a Good Thing

Parenting and Gamification

The Little Cog

The Games Invasion: Why it is Good!

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In 2010, game designer Jesse Schell spoke at the DICE summit about the impending invasion of games into everyday life. Many people felt the talk had a semi-apocalyptic feel, but I came away with a different opinion. His final words were words of potential positivity – if we took the correct actions. Here I talk a little bit about that and what it could mean to us all.

Here is a short (well 12 minute) video I recorded discussing some of my thoughts on it all. Enjoy and don’t forget to comment on YouTube if you have questions 🙂 Read More ...

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