Collection of gamification thoughts from the last few weeks

What is gamification Collection of gamification thoughts from the last few weeks

Hi all.

Not a real blog as such today, just a collection of things I have been doing and saying for the past week or so!

A Video

First off, the video of my Gamification of a Career talk at Gamification World Congress has now gone up on YouTube 🙂

A Picture

I was asked on twitter how my User Types might fit with education, this picture was my first run at an answer.

Some Words

Here is a collection of some of the things I have been saying on twitter – may be of interest to some!!

  1. Gamification is not a technology. It is an approach to solving problems.
  2. Gamification can only be the answer if you fully understand the question.
  3. Use gamification to thank people for doing things, not to bribe them into doing them.
  4. If your system is broken, gamification won’t fix it. Chances are it will make it worse! Gamify to solve a specific problem.
  5. Remember. People play games because THEY want to. People use your gamified system because YOU want them to.
  6. Reward systems in gamification are not inherently bad – just badly implemented. Meaningful pats on the back can help early on in a program.
  7. Gamification can be used to motivate, it can also be used to manipulate – which do you think will lead to long term engagement?
  8. Good gamification is not about tricking people into using a system; it is about building a system people are happy to use.
  9. Gamification is not about understanding games, in the same way as driving is not about knowing braking distances.
  10. A lot of gamification is still like a monkey dressed as a ninja. It may look the part, but you wouldn’t rely on it in a fight!

An Infographic

Finally, an infographic I made that talks you through my gamification framework using lots of other ideas from my blog! Read More ...

PDF Tray Collection of gamification thoughts from the last few weeks

Serious Games: Too Broad a Term to be Meaningful

Darfur is dying Serious Games Too Broad a Term to be Meaningful

A while back, I wrote a piece on the difference between serious games, games and gamification. It was simple, but covered the important areas of what makes them different from each other.  Since then, I have had more involvement with serious games (recently helped as one of the judges for the Serious Play Awards for instance) and it has started to dawn on me that we are still confused as to what they actually are.

Yesterday, Mattie Brice posted the following on twitter

Hey y’all, tell me the most popular serious games you know of Read More ...

PDF Tray Serious Games Too Broad a Term to be Meaningful

An Interview with Karl Kapp

Week Two 002 445x273 An Interview with Karl Kapp

To continue the interview theme for another week, I present my interview with Karl Kapp. Karl is an eLearning expert, author, researcher and all round fountain of information and understanding!

Can you sum up what you do in a single sentence?

I teach, study, research, write, and educate others about the convergence of learning, technology and pedagogy with a focus on games and gamification.

How did you get involved with learning and helping people understand it better?

I discovered the field of instructional design my first year out of college.  I was working for a company that happened to be an instructional design firm. Working for them changed my life, when I found out what the field was about and how it impacted people through carefully designed learning interventions, I wanted to be a part of it. When I found out about this field, I changed my graduate program of study from Educational Counseling to Instructional Technology and I haven’t looked back. I think the ability to impact learners through instruction is compelling and to do it with methods like games and gamification is even more exciting. Read More ...

PDF Tray An Interview with Karl Kapp

Gamification, Hypocrisy, Snoop Dogg and Words

Screen 2 Gamification Hypocrisy Snoop Dogg and Words

A couple of weeks ago I put out an article that tried to define the differences between serious games, games and gamification. It was received very well, with a few people even asking for permission to use it in PhD course work.

The work I did was based on researching the “average” definitions of each term and then throwing a little of my own opinion in for good measure and I stand by them. I say this, because depending on how you look at them – I’m wrong, in fact most of us in gamification are … depending on how you look at it all…. Read More ...

PDF Tray Gamification Hypocrisy Snoop Dogg and Words