The Future of Gamification

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Augmented reality 1476093062 The Future of Gamification

Recently I was honoured to be asked to be part of a documentary about games, their history, and evolution. One of the questions that I was asked that really got me thinking was “What is the future of gamification?”

I am asked this quite often and tend to go with a safe answer. In my view, we will not speak about gamification within the next few years. It will be spoken about in the same way social media or digital is, just  another part of various strategies. In the case of gamification, it will become part of a standard set of tools for experience design. Read More ...

Play in Context

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Play in context e1474889485746 Play in Context

As you may know, the concept of play is very important to me. I feel that it is one of the true keys to engagement in adults, but as I was speaking about recently, adults often have no idea how to play. They have the intrinsic desire to play battered out of them by the “real” world. Unlike children, they don’t see the potential for play in the world around them. Some blame work for this – they often say that the opposite of play is work. However, I prefer to go with Dr. Stuart Brown’s (founder of the National Institute of Play)  analysis in this case, that the opposite of play is actually depression. Read More ...

Product Gamification Summit

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Mind Rocket FULL Product Gamification Summit

Hi Guys

Recently I had the opportunity to record an interview about gamification for the Product Gamification Summit. This is an online event with free and paid options that contains interviews with about 30 experts in product creation, gamification and monetization.

You will get to see favorites of mine like Amy Jo Kim, Nir Eyal, Roman Rackwitz, Michael Wu, Yu Kai Chou, An Coppens and so many more! Hell, I can’t wait to watch some of them myself 🙂

If that sounds interesting, click on the following link to register. In the spirit of openness, this is an affiliate link that all speakers will have, so you may see a few emails and blog posts le this asking you to sign up from various speakers! Read More ...

I’m Too Busy and Important to Play Games

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Player stats I 8217 m Too Busy and Important to Play Games

Everyone who is involved in gamification has hit this same problem, someone who thinks they are just too busy or important to play games. You are in a meeting, selling gamification like a bad ass and you get hit with a comment like “I don’t like games” or “My employees are busy and important, they won’t want to play games”.

It stops you in your tracks. Your funky coloured trousers and gamification issue converse and hoody seem suddenly childish, your theme and mini games feel unimportant and you start to doubt the point of gamification at all. Talk of millennials and the need to engage them in different ways begins, but this company is full of 50-year-olds so that matters not. Games just have no place in the real world. Every preprogrammed gamification response is met with the same look of disdain. Read More ...

Gamification User Types HEXAD Validation Study

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1 O5FClRZSTMg4sSlO5WyJkA Gamification User Types HEXAD Validation Study

I thought it would be good to finally show you all the research results from Austrian Institute of Technology and HCI Games Group, Games Institute, University of Waterloo and of course Gamified UK around the User Types and the survey.

The link below will take you to a blog written by one of the researchers, Gustavo Tondello, who explains it all better than I can!

https://medium.com/@hcigamesgroup/the-gamification-user-types-hexad-scale-a6d8727d201e

Several studies have indicated the need for personalising gamified systems to users’ personalities. However, mapping user personality onto design elements is difficult. To address this problem, Marczewski developed the Gamification User Types Hexad framework, based on research on human motivation, player types, and practical design experience. He also suggested different game design elements that may support different user types. However, until now we were still lacking a standard assessment tool for user’s preferences based on the Hexad framework. There was also no empirical validation, yet, that associated Hexad user types and game design elements. A collaborative research project by the HCI Games Group, the Austrian Institute of Technology, and Gamified UK sought to accomplish these two goals: (1) create and validate a standard survey to assess an individual’s Hexad user type and (2) verify the association between the Hexad user types and the game design elements they are supposed to appeal to. Read More ...