Introducing Lusory Attitude

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Ludo 1426677384 e1426687741932 Introducing Lusory Attitude

As I have been researching play, there is a term or really a word and concept that has been hard to ignore. Ludic. It comes up a lot in papers and articles about play. It comes from the Latin for play and is defined as;

Showing spontaneous and undirected playfulness.

Let me set the scene. You are in a system that follows the path outlined below.

  • You start with a tutorial. It sets the context for what you are doing as well as giving you the basic skills you need to start.
  • You are given a set of tasks to complete and goals to achieve.
  • Next you start grinding, completing the simpler tasks as you develop your skills and learn more about the system.
  • As your level of skill increases, new challenges become available and new goals are set. These may require you to learn new skills and increase your abilities.
  • Along the way there are surprises and unexpected events. You will meet new people, some will be friends and you will need to work together with them to a bribe certain goals and some won’t!
  • All the while you will be collecting experience and currency as you complete new challenges.

I’ll come back to that. Ludic turns up in various forms when academics speak about play. Here are a few examples.

  • Ludos: this is the original Latin for play
  • Ludeme: this is a concept that Raph Koster speaks about. In their simplest form a ludeme is a unit of play.
  • Prelusory goals: goals set by the game.
  • Lusory means: rules set by the game.
  • Lusory attitude: a playful mindset. An understanding that you are entering play.

The last three are from Bernard Suits definition of a game from his seminal book The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Read More ...

Rewarding quality over quantity in gamification

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Rewards 1426524987 Rewarding quality over quantity in gamification

Something that I see quite often is people making a simple but important mistake. They reward the behaviours that lead to quantity rather than quality.

Let me explain.

When you build a gamified campaign or activity, you need to consider what quality participation looks like. If for instance you want to create some buzz around a new product and you decide to create a simple Twitter competition, are you looking for the number of people who tweet or are you looking for the number of people whom the message will reach? Read More ...

Design compelling experiences, not addicting

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Roulette 1426080131 Design compelling experiences not addicting

A worrying trend I have noticed in gamification is people talking about making addicting experiences or applications.  You hear phrases like “Addiction loops” and “Habit forming”.

I am pretty sure that their intentions are good,  90% of the time. They are describing experiences that people will want to come back to again and again. The key word is want. If you create an experience that people want to return to, you have done your job well. If people have to come back because it is a key tool to their job, or something they have to use on a regular basis, you have done a good job if people find it usable, pain free and at time an enjoyable experience. Read More ...

Learning about playfulness from Toca Boca

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Photo 06 03 2015 10 27 52 Learning about playfulness from Toca Boca

Continuing my investigations into play, I wanted to talk about a few things my kids have been teaching me about just letting go and giving in to the fantasy and the lack of imaginative boundaries that real play demands. It is not as easy as it would first seem either.

There are lots of views of play out there. I offered some of my thoughts in a recent post, that play is a free form activity that is undertaken almost just because it can be and it brings fun and joy. In this sort of description, play is an activity – it follows a similar line of thought to  that proposed by Johan Huizinga in Homo Ludens. It was also Huizinga who gave us the concept of the Magic Circle – the boundary between reality and play. Read More ...

Fun: It’s a funny thing really

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Photo 01 03 2015 14 58 15 Fun It 8217 s a funny thing really

I am still in the process of researching fun – but it has been really interesting so far. If you have no taken my quick survey – please do, it will really help me!! – Fun Survey

The thing that is abundantly clear is that fun is purely subjective, what one person finds fun – others may think is a waste of time. The Oxford English Dictionary defines fun as

Enjoyment, amusement, or light-hearted pleasure
(http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fun)

In the study I have done to date, so far I have identified about 21 distinct things that people feel fills this definition for them. Read More ...