Designing a simple “Thin Layer” gamified system.

Cropped gamification Designing a simple 8220 Thin Layer 8221 gamified system

I thought this week, after 2 years of avoiding it, I would write a short starter for actually creating a gamified system.  This will cover the basics of what I call a Thin Layer system – also known as PBL (Points, Badges and Leaderboards) system.

Now, before you all shout at me for explaining how to do a system that I can often be heard saying is not the best type of gamification, consider this. Thin Layer is the most common type of system out there and it is the easiest to start with. It can also be very effective over short periods of time, for things like short campaigns, education and on boarding into deeper systems. The point is (as Kris Duggan from Badgeville once pointed out to me), sometimes, something is better than nothing, as long as it is well designed and created for a purpose. My view is, of you are going to try – you should at least be armed with the right information to make the best go of it possible. Read More ...

Disruptors: My Negative User Type

Alfred Disruptors My Negative User Type

One of the questions I get asked about when people see my User Types, “What about Killers?” Now I have spoken about the Bartle Killer type and why I don’t really account for them in the types. In a nutshell, Killers want to destroy and humiliate other players in MMO’s. This is not a behaviour we are trying to build for in gamificaiton and as my User Types are written to help give ideas and structure for designing systems – they didn’t really have a place. This is especially in enterprise gamificaiton where this type would be handled with internal policy! Read More ...

Gamification: What the Experts Think

Gamification Gamification What the Experts Think

A few weeks ago, I sent out a short survey to about 15 people in the Gamification world. The idea was to get a some simple answers to questions I have pondered over time. I thought it would be fun to get them all to give answers to the exact same questions. Here are the first round of answers!

Massive thanks to the first run of responses – Scott Schnaars, Marigo Raftopoulos, Michael Wu, Mark Sorrell, Barry Kirk, Erika Webb, Steve Bocska, Jesse Schell, Scott Sinclair, Ivan Kuo,Toby Beresford, Anthony Williams Read More ...