Just out of curiosity, I had a look through some of the historical pages on Wikipedia’s Gamification entry. It was an interesting time line of the evolution of our definition of gamification, first added in October 2010 it seems. Take a look. It is interesting to see that it puts emphasis on technology based solution in 2010, which is dropped by 2012. Around 2011 the term Funware is added to the definition. This gets dropped by the end of 2012. 2012 also sees the idea of game thinking entering the core definition as well as engagement (which vanishes for a bit then comes back in 2013!). In 2013 we see the first mention of solving problems as part of the core definition. Also, Nick Pelling starts to get some credit for coining of the wold Gamification. The difinition that first comes up early 2013 remains pretty much intact right up until presnt day (April 2014).
Looking back at my life – Computer games are in there!
As I turned 36 yesterday, I started to reminisce a little about what things have helped define my life. I am not talking about family or friends, but actual things.
The first that came to mind was Games, more specifically video games. Now, I am too old to be a millennial – so I of course have not had computers in my life since I was born. However, I have had computers in my life from pretty much the first memories I have – and that is around 4 or 5 years old.
First we I remember us having an Apple II and playing Star Trek with my dad. After that it was a ZX Spectrum+ with a Micro Drive. My dad had only a few games for this, but I strongly remember Ant Attack – one of the first survival horror games!. Somewhere around this time I discovered my dads Acetronic MPU 1000, This was my introduction to multi-player games as we would spend hours playing Space War, Golf, Tank Plane Battle and Space Invaders. That system came out many times over the years!
