Save Your Best Songs for the Encore

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Guitar 1468928560 Save Your Best Songs for the Encore

Years ago I read an interview with a musician (whose name escapes me), where he was giving advice to new musicians. There was lots of good stuff, but the one that really stuck with me was this.

Save your best songs for the encore, even if you never get the chance to play them.

At the time, this struck me as very odd. However, over the years I have started to see where this guy was going. The first thing is that all your songs should be good – if you rely on one or two and the rest are fillers, people will notice. If you are so confident in your songs that you can leave the ones you feel are best for a potentially never heard encore, you are on to a winner! Read More ...

New Gamification User Type Test

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Test New Gamification User Type Test

Hi all.

Lots of changes on the go at the moment, but one big one is an overhaul of the User Type Test. In collaboration with the Austrian Institute of Technology and HCI Games Group, this new test has been validated and should provide a much more accurate set of results over time. It is early days yet, but the last version had over 4,000 responses – so I hope we can do just as well here.

It will be used for continued research by them (I will link to a couple of papers that have been written about the process once they are available), but also for my own interest. Read More ...

[News] RNLI creates Minecraft beach survival game to teach water safety to children

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Image News RNLI creates Minecraft beach survival game to teach water safety to children

This Summer, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) is launching year two of the charity’s Beach Builder Challenge using the interactive video game, Minecraft, which allows children to create and build virtual worlds.

The Beach Builder Challenge, available to play from 1 August, has been created by the RNLI to teach children about beach and water safety at a time when many young people will be visiting the coast during school summer holidays.

New for this year, the RNLI has expanded the virtual world to include a Beach Island Adventure, which means as well as being able to create epic beaches, this year creative youngsters are also tasked with completing four levels in the Beach Island Adventure. The four levels are based on the charity’s Stay SAFE acronym: Spot the dangers, Take Advice, Stay close to a Friend or family member, Learn what to do in an Emergency. Read More ...

Narrative Choice Architecture and Gamification

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Slide4 Narrative Choice Architecture and Gamification

The more I play games, the more I realise just how important having choices that are meaningful, or at least feel meaningful.

One of the key features that separates games from other media is that the player is put at the centre of the story and can interact with it, you are not just “along for the ride” as you are in a film or a book.  When you sit down with a book, you start at the start and then read every page until you get to the end (unless it is a choose your own adventure…). The only choice the reader gets is whether or not to start the book and read it all the way through. Read More ...

6 Tips for Short Term Gamification

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Pblnc2 6 Tips for Short Term Gamification

A question I get asked a great deal is “Are points, badges and leaderboards enough?” The stock answer from me is usually a resounding “No, you must consider motivation and the needs of the user, think RAMP and more…” In fairness, this is good advice and you should consider intrinsic motivation over extrinsic and the like. However, the answer really should be “Sometimes, it depends what your goals are.” You see, if you are looking for a short term or short sharp engagement, PBL may well be fine. Very often in gamification we are trying desperately to get people to consider long-term motivations and engagements. Really, it is likely that it is just a single simple task that people want completing. Read a new policy, complete the training, check out a new product. Read More ...