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The danger of extrinsic rewards on motivation – What I learned from my 5 year old

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20120211 085538 The danger of extrinsic rewards on motivation 8211 What I learned from my 5 year old

Another quick one, prompted by an interesting behaviour exhibited by my daughter today that taught me rather a lot about extrinsic rewards.

I have mentioned before the research that has been done on motivation in the past by the likes of Edward Deci and the writing of Dan Pink and more. All of them point to the same thing, extrinsic rewards are bad for intrinsic motivation. The basic reasoning is that at some point, no matter how careful you are, the reward will become the reason to do the task. The extrinsic reward replaces the original intrinsic motivation. Read More ...

Is Gamification a benign form of manipulation and does it matter?

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1242969 93675797 Is Gamification a benign form of manipulation and does it matter

Let me expand on this.

A discussion started on twitter when I mentioned in passing to a couple of gamification people, that really gamification is often a benign form of manipulation. It became an interesting chat, fast. I suppose I expected that! However, when you look at the definition of manipulation in the Oxford English Dictionary you get these two definitions

  1. handle or control (a tool, mechanism, information, etc.) in a skilful manner
  2. control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly or unscrupulously

Of course, we take notice of the second normally – focusing on the more negative connotations, but it is the first that I am interested in. As gamification people, we understand behaviour and how to use game mechanics and the like to influence this behaviour. We use this information to set up systems that promote certain actions. Sometimes this is for the benefit of the end user, other times it may be for the interest of the company (or brand or whatever). Either way, it is done in a way that is meant to engage the end user (god forbid let them have a little fun as well). Read More ...

Gamification: Some More Views

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Gamification Gamification Some More Views

First of all, thanks to everyone who has viewed or downloaded my Gamification presentation. It has had over 600 views on Slideshare, which is fantastic! Looking forward to my next chance to do the talk (hint hint people!!!)

Also, check out this short interview I did with the Association for Interactive Media & Entertainment 5Qs Gamificaiton

A little while ago, I did a piece called “What the Experts Think” where I invited industry experts in gamification to give their opinions. We, I opened this up so any one can answer and here are the first answers I have had. I will leave the survey open as I would love to get more of you to tell me your thoughts. Thanks to everyone who has been involved so far 🙂 Read More ...

Plea to the Games Industry to Embrace Gamification and Get Involved

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Mario chart Plea to the Games Industry to Embrace Gamification and Get Involved

With Eurogamer already fading into the deepest recesses of my mind, there is one thing that has stood out. Just how much the games industry dislikes gamification.

The general feeling was that everyone doing gamification is getting it wrong. They do not understand games and therefore think that it is fine to just add the most shallow and un-engaging elements of games to a task and say it is gamified.

They didn’t like that we as gamifiers were watering down the depth of real games. Having just watched the first video of section 11 of the great Coursera.org gamification course, Kevin Werbach talks about this exact issue. Read More ...

Gamification and Stuff: Presentation for the Gamifier Meetup

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Gamification and stuff Gamification and Stuff Presentation for the Gamifier Meetup

Well, as promised to those wonderful people who came to listen to me preach about Gamificaiton, here is the slide deck – all wrapped up in a pretty slide share thingy. Download the presentation to get the full notes – I have written the talk out long hand – well how it was meant to go!!!

Gamification and stuff from Andrzej Marczewski

Couple of Comments

A few great points made after the talk.

  1. Choice is great, but there has to be scope, boundaries and rules. Too many choices will overwhelm the user. However, choices do not always need to be big. It may just be that you give the user the choice of the background of a web page.
  2. Don’t be tempted to reset points systems to try and get people re-engaged. That will just annoy them!
  3. Even pumping new content into a purely extrinsic (PBL style) system will not keep people engaged indefinitely.

Transcript of the Slides

Slide 1

I am going to try and present you more of a look at what gamification actually is, some of the dangers and a few ideas you can take away to think about.

As is traditional now, I have started my slide deck with a picture of an Angry Bird. It would seem that this grumpy piece of wild life has come to encapsulate what far too many people think gamification is. However, this is the last time you will hear me mention that game! You may notice a few clichés and over the top moments in this presentation, for which I apologize in advance. I tried to have fun making this slide deck – not sure how fun that will be for you though – but I shall come to that later! Read More ...