fun

PBL Battle – The Greatest Game Ever Made*

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Pbl battle 1 PBL Battle 8211 The Greatest Game Ever Made

I’ve finally done it! After countless hours of brainstorming and coding, I’ve created the ultimate game for those who live and breathe gamification. Say goodbye to boring gameplay—because there isn’t any—and wave farewell to contrived narratives. Game mechanics? Nah, not really! This is pure, unfiltered gamification with a satirical twist, designed to both engage and amuse.

What Makes PBL Battle So Special?

  • No-Nonsense Fun:
    Forget traditional game elements. PBL Battle is not about complex stories or puzzles—it’s about pure, addictive engagement.
  • Satirical Edge:
    It’s a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the futility of bad gamification. If you’re a gamification designer or consultant, you’re bound to appreciate the irony.
  • Global Competition:
    Test your mettle by climbing the global leaderboard. How many times can you push the big red button before your streak ends?
  • Challenging and Addictive:
    With its minimalistic design, PBL Battle proves that sometimes less is more. There’s no hidden trick or convoluted strategy—just a race to see who can push the button the most.

Ready to Join the Battle?

Try it for yourself and see if you have what it takes to reach the top of the leaderboard in PBL Battle! This is gamification, reimagined with a dash of satire and a whole lot of fun. Read More ...

The Dangers of Forced Fun

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Forced to play games The Dangers of Forced Fun

We’ve all been there. You go to a meeting or an event and there’s an Ice Breaker. It might be something as simple as “turn to the person on your right and tell them your name”, or it might be something more pointless like Hat Colours. But sometimes it is something even more sinister… a game.

I love games. Always have, always will. However, the games that I like have two key elements. They are made by game designers and they are played voluntarily. Both of these points are critical to my enjoyment of said game. If just one of those is missing, it is highly likely that I am not going to enjoy the game. Read More ...

The RAMP to Fun

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RAMP to Fun The RAMP to Fun

A while back I started talking about FUN again. In that post I mentioned the RAMP to Fun, but never actually posted it! So here it is in full PowerPoint diagram glory 😀

This is obviously based on my RAMP, but also on some research I did a long time ago on what people find fun.

The idea is that you need to include elements, mechanics and concepts that people will find fun – even if these do not look fun to you on the surface. As they all hook into core intrinsic motivators – some will find them fun! The more you can link together and embed – in a way that is sympathetic and sensible to the design, the better. Read More ...

The Engagement Channel Model 2.0: Fun, Flow and Engagement

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Engagement Channel Model 2 0 The Engagement Channel Model 2 0 Fun Flow and Engagement

Fun. A three letter word you won’t hear me mention often when discussing gamification! Why? Well, fun is really subjective. What you find fun, I may not. However, for the purposes of this blog, we will assume I like fun as do you and when I mention fun – it means something you will find fun!

With that out of the way, here’s the thing. If you look at Flow or my Engagement Channel stuff, you will see that to enter flow and be truly engaged, the challenge of whatever you are doing should match or slightly exceed your current skill level.

As with my Engagement Channel model, you can soften the impact of a challenge being too much by adding meaningful rewards and you can soften the impact of your skills being greater than the challenge, by adding personal challenges.

However, in games I am seeing more and more games that drop you straight into a scenario where the challenge instantly far outweighs your skills. By all our models, this should lead to instant frustration and most likely disengagement – but it doesn’t always. For some reason, there are some games that I play, that no matter how tough they are and how far off my skills are from the challenge – I keep coming back over and over again. Why? Because they are fun to play!

Does this mean there is another dimension to the Engagement Channel or the our view on Flow?

BJ Fogg

If we look at BJ Fogg’s famous Behaviour Change Model, we can see that there are three main dimensions in his B=MAP formula. Behaviour = Motivation x Ability x Prompts.

Basically for a behaviour to happen, motivation, ability and prompts all need to align. If a task is hard, but you have high motivation to do it – the right prompt will start to encourage the behaviour. If the task is easy, your motivation can be lower with the correct prompt. A third factor can influence the outcome without anything else changing.

So, how can I steal this idea and start to add a new dimension to my Engagement Channel Model. Well, I’m glad you didn’t ask!

The Engagement Channel Model 2.0

To simplify the original concept, what I am now proposing is that fun can act as a buffer between engagement, frustration and boredom, essentially widening the Engagement Channel.

Now, I am not trying to tell you what your users may find fun, what I am saying is the older I get, the more I realise that fun makes a huge difference to your motivation to do things, even if they are really hard or if they are slightly boring. Adding that element of fun can make all the difference.

Free Printable Games

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Wraith King Screen Free Printable Games

Hi all.

In this crazy time, I thought I would share a few games that I have made over the last couple of years to either entertain myself or the kids! They are all very simple but might help kill a few hours. Any feedback on them would be also greatly appreciated. They are all very simple looking btw, no fancy graphics!

There will be one more soon, once the kids have had a chance to play it. But head to the gamification hub on Facebook if you want to get a try now. It is a simple escape room type puzzle game.

Wraith King

This is the most complex. It is a solo or co-op tile-based dungeon crawl. I enjoy playing this from time to time when I am stuck for something to do. The world evolves as you play to try and defeat the Wraith King in his lair.

Download Wraith King

Shortcut

This is my favourite (and the kids). It was born on a napkin in a restaurant when my youngest was very board. I wanted something more interesting than snakes and ladders. I bought some drywipe pens and some drywipe sleeves to make the game reusable.

Pens: https://amzn.to/2XkkxEL

Sleeves: https://amzn.to/3bW1qoC

Download Shortcut

Driver

The simplest game, with 2 difficulty “settings”. Just race around the track!

Download Driver