game design

Play Games, Enjoy Games and be a Better Gamification Designer

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Video game 2154473 Play Games Enjoy Games and be a Better Gamification Designer

Over the year my opinion on the need to love games to be a good gamification designer has fluctuated. In the early days, I was more flexible on the idea. It was all about psychology in a nearly pure form, understand behaviour and use that understanding to encourage the behaviours that you want. The “game” aspect was less important as gamification is not making games!

However, as I work on more and more projects it becomes clear that this is rubbish. Anything beyond the most simple of applications of gamification needs a solid understanding of games. It is not necessary to be a games designer as such, but having a good idea of what makes games work is an essential. If I was not a gamer, I would not be able to do my job at this level! I would have no inspiration for a start. After that, I would have no idea what worked and why. Finally, I would not have the love of play that is so desperately needed in good gamification implementations. Read More ...

The Game Thinking Spectrum

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A quick thought around my original Game Thinking content from a few years back.

I often listen to others talking about gamification, serious games and the like, as if they had no relationship to each other. Whilst it is true that they all require different approaches to develop solutions with, they should not be considered as totally exclusive of one another.

A good gamification consultant will look at the problem they are given and decide what the best solution is for their client based on their needs, not on the semantics surrounding the difference between gamification and serious games. If the solution requires a game, that is what will get made. If it will benefit from gamification, with some learning based games and maybe even a few pure entertainment games, then that is what will get made! Read More ...

The Games Invasion: Why it is Good!

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In 2010, game designer Jesse Schell spoke at the DICE summit about the impending invasion of games into everyday life. Many people felt the talk had a semi-apocalyptic feel, but I came away with a different opinion. His final words were words of potential positivity – if we took the correct actions. Here I talk a little bit about that and what it could mean to us all.

Here is a short (well 12 minute) video I recorded discussing some of my thoughts on it all. Enjoy and don’t forget to comment on YouTube if you have questions 🙂 Read More ...

The Periodic Table of Gamification Elements

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Just a quick post to officially introduce the Periodic Table of Gamification Elements. This is all 51 of my Gamification Mechanics and Elements in a pretty table 🙂

Buy the poster here https://www.redbubble.com/people/gamifieduk/works/25949573-periodic-table-of-gamification-elements

My next blog will be explaining my new design framework, but as a teaser here is a quick video I did to introduce part of it.

5 tips for good Gamification I learned from designing games.

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Gamification often takes and claims inspiration from game design. One of my side hobbies is making the occasional game, as well as spending the last seven years reviewing games for my site yars.co.uk. I thought I would just put a few gamification ideas into context based around my personal knowledge of games and game design. I am y no means an expert, but I hope you will find it interesting.

Tl;TR?

First up, points. I have made games with point systems and I have made games without. Generally I use the points as a way to represent progression and skill – ie, the higher the score, the further your skills have progressed. This is intrinsic on its own, it is a way for the individual player to see how they are doing and if they are improving. This only works if the points reset each time, that way the player can easily see that if they score higher next time – they have improved. Cumulative points don’t allow you to do this, they just show how many points you have collected over time, which is a little less useful. You could consider a personal leaderboard, that just shows the player their scores over time for an exercise- thus easily showing them their improvement. Read More ...

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