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Books, Music, Advice, Return to Quality Content and Stuff

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Cover banner Books Music Advice Return to Quality Content and Stuff

Hi all.

So, I wanted to give a bit of a life update as the site has been lacking in what I would consider “quality content”. I have had to take a bit of a step back recently for various reasons. I have been writing here about gamification for since 2011 on an almost weekly basis. At some stage, you run out of ideas! I also have just finished the new book, so needed to distract myself away from gamification a little.

As such, I have been doing more music-related content on YouTube.  Every year I try to challenge myself with something new. This year it was to start doing more around guitar, a passion of mine for the past 25 years. This saw me starting up the YouTube channel and just this week releasing some music on Spotify, iTunes and Google Play. Read More ...

New Book: Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play Unicorn Edition (Special Price)

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Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play Title New Book Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play Unicorn Edition Special Price

So, after much time wasted for various reasons my new Gamification book, Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Unicorn Edition is finally available on Amazon as a paperback. The eBook will be available on Monday!

This is a much bigger book, with around 100 extra pages since the last version. Also, the majority of chapters have had some sort of update. There are some that have remained untouched, but not many!

For 1 week it will be available for the price of £12.99 (or equivalent local price), but will rise to around £15.99 after that – so if you want a copy, now is the time to grab it. The eBook will be £9.99 or £2.99 if you buy the paperback version.  Below is the main index, so you can see what has changed. Here is a free chapter to check out as well – “How to Use Narrative to Create
Deeper Experiencesr” Read More ...

Beware of Popularity Contests

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Book thumbs Beware of Popularity Contests

Voting. A fair and representational way to decide if A is better than B… Isn’t it? A simple mechanic where people are asked to express their opinion by way of simply ticking a box, or clicking a button or whatever.

However, as we can see time and time again, this is not actually as fair as it seems on the face of it. Instead of being a fair view of what people feel about something, it actually turns into a popularity contest.

If you set up a competition where the criteria is “he who has the most votes wins”, what do you think is going to happen? Are those invovled going to just sit back and wait for votes to come in, or are they going to campaign? If they campaign, who will they campaign to? Will they be people who can make an informed decision on what is actually the best option, or will it be friends, family and social media followers? Worse still, will it be people who have been encouraged into voting (read bribed)? Read More ...

Looking for some feedback

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Uni1 Looking for some feedback

Hi all. No words of pseudo-wisdom this week, just looking for some feedback!

Last year I wrote an updated version of Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play called the Unicorn Edition.

It contains large updates to the content as well as 50 or so new pages.

Now, I sent this to a few publishers and have been spending many months working with one to get a proposal together. However, it looks like I will need to completely rewrite the book to fit their audience. No more monkeys or unicorns!

My question to you all is (and answer here or on twitter http://www.twitter.com/daverage), would you like me to release the Unicorn version on Amazon myself, or would you rather wait for the more “business” friendly version if/when it comes out? Read More ...

New Book and some Slides

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The Little Cog book square Cover New Book and some Slides

Quick update of stuff!

First, I have a new book out called “The Little Cog”. You may recognise that as I have told the story here before. It is about a little cog who is trying to understand his purpose in the wider world. It is a tongue in cheek message for managers everywhere – but my kids loved the book as well. Here is a link to get it from Amazon and also a video of me reading it!

The second part of this post is about Marczewski’s Core Principles of Gamification. This is a short series of slides I have released on SlideShare that goes through some of my core principles. They are a condensed version of blog posts on the site AND will be coming out as a small colour book in the next few days as well. Here are 3 of the 4 sets of slides that are in the book. Read More ...