People often say that “Content is King”. I have always maintained that whilst that is true, “Context is Queen”, and we all know who really wears the pants in a relationship!
When you create gamified solutions there is often a risk and even a desire to throw the kitchen sink at the design, deciding on the mechanics you want to include well before you have any idea of what the project will actually require!
Included in this risk is the desire to create things that have no relevance at all to the project, but look pretty! One of the biggest perpetrators of this crime is the “mini game”. Many gamification designers are, at their heart, game designers in some form or another. Our enthusiasm for games can sometimes spill over into the creation of meaningless games that do nothing to address the overall needs of the solution.