game thinking

The Cost of Cute: When Your Gamification Stops Serving Its Purpose

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File 000000001fd871f5b26dee2f9781c1d1 The Cost of Cute When Your Gamification Stops Serving Its Purpose

Recently my friend David Chandross wrote a great post about how serious games often miss their purpose, becoming more game than serious if you will. That it’s becoming less and less about the learning. That inspired me to reemphasise something I wrote about a while back.

Gamification should help people do things better. That’s it. But somewhere along the way, too many designers decided that the point was to make people play their systems, rather than benefit from them.

It’s easy to spot. You open an app or a training program and you’re immediately pulled into some shiny loop of collecting things, hitting targets, and chasing streaks. The problem is, you’re no longer learning or improving, you’re just playing. The system has become the goal. Read More ...

Game Based Solutions – Focus on Outcomes not Methods

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After a lovely 3-week break from writing (my longest since about 2012!!), I am back.

I will get back to the “Introduction” series next week and will hopefully compile them into a new book soon as well.

But I wanted to just share a little thought with you.

Gamification, as a term, seems to be getting less popular. Sure, it is still getting search a lot, but I am seeing fewer people using the term to sell products. It is often relegated to the second or third thing on their list if selling points, rather than the first thing as was popular a few years ago.

This is exactly what I have predicted in numerous posts and interviews over the years and fills me with happiness. Why? Because it means that gamification is no longer a trend, it is becoming part of good solution design. That said, I am a little disappointed that it has still not made it into the Oxford English Dictionary (see the header image)!

However, there is still a familiar issue, one that I have been fighting for years. The need to talk more about the method of solving problems than the objectives and outcomes of solving the problems.

This is why I often talk about Games Based Solutions rather than specifically gamification. I solve problems using solutions based on or inspired by games in one form or another. That could be gamification, serious games, simulations, game-inspired design – and so on. The specific method is much less important than the desired outcome and meeting the objectives of the desired outcome!

Don’t get bogged down in terms, let the word gamification pass into natural language and we can all just move on with our lives.

Until then, we still have to keep using it!

See you all soon 😊

Introduction to Gamification Part 2: Game Based Solutions

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In part 1, we spent some time discussing what gamification is and isn’t. In Part 2, we are going to take a look at something that was introduced previously, but not explored; Game Based Solutions. My definition of Game Based Solutions is as follows:

The use of games and game-like app­roaches to solve problems and create better exp­e­ri­ences. 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!

I was gutted recently when speaking to someone who said that they were not that interested in gamification because they didn’t just want a Duolingo clone. This meant one of two things to me. The industry is still doing a bad job of evolving across the board, or they had been speaking to some poor representatives of gamification in the industry. The likelihood is a bit of A and a bit of B.

The Game Thinking Spectrum

To help people understand a little more about what the differences are and why we should not see them as all totally separate, I have put some of the game thinking/games based solutions onto a simple spectrum. They all live in the same areana and should all be considered with equal merit for solutions and used on their own or together to create the best solutions.

Aesthetic

At this end of the spectrum, the solutions share the look and at times the feel of games, they are more “game-like” than they are game.

Structure

Around the mid-point, the solution will not only have the look of a game, they will also share structural comparisons. Challenges, narratives, scoring systems, RPG elements, feedback, progress etc.

Gameplay

As we move to the gameplay end of the spectrum, the solutions are more game than game-like. They have true gameplay and all of the trappings one would expect with a true game, whether it is for more serious purposes or for pure entertainment.

So…

All of these approaches flow between each other and can be mixed and matched in any way needed to create the best solution for a client. Never limit yourself by definitions, semantics, lack of understanding or lack of willingness to try new things!

Guest Post: Game Thinking in Business Education

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Another guest post, this time from Roberto Alvarez Bucholska. Leave feedback and show your appreciation – I am sure he would be happy to answer any questions!

Business education may sound very formal and boring to many, but there’s no reason why studying an MBA can’t have engaging and fun learning materials. And that’s what I do at IE Business School Publishing. As a project manager, it is my task to take the learning objectives and make materials that are interactive, engaging, and even fun if possible. The department has created around 300 interactive materials in over 10 years of experience.

With the development of these materials, and also thanks to the feedback from students and professors, there are many things that have become a common practice in the creative process, and it’s thanks to these that I have encountered what the author of this blog has coined as Game Thinking. In my experience with business students, there is one thing that stands out: Competition. Many things have been said with regards to making use of competition as a motivator, and the fact that there is a large portion of players who are not very moved by it. Nonetheless, within business education, we have found this to be a very compelling and generalized motivator.

There are two materials that we regularly use with students that I’d like to highlight to talk about competition, in one of them, teams of students represent different companies that share a resource. Even though within the objective, to maximize profits, competition is not even mentioned, teams assume there is a competition between them, and end up sacrificing profitability due to their competitive attitude. This is of course designed to work this way, and is very useful to achieve the learning objectives of the material, as the facilitator of the simulation explains after the end. The other one is a simulation where teams represent different members of a productive process. The competitive mindset of the teams might end up increasing the costs of the end product, which of course will be bought by fewer customers, and thus end up reducing profitability. If teams were to cooperate in order to reduce costs of the whole process, they’d all end up in the best of situations.

Thanks for the read. If you wish to stay in contact, I am currently working on a podcast to interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking who will bring the best of their experiences to get ideas, insights and inspiration that help us in the process of getting students or trainees to learn what we teach. To participate in its shaping, community or just stay up-to-date, subscribe at www.professorgame.com.

Roberto Alvarez Bucholska

@RobertoAlvarezB

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