Gamification

Randomness, Serendipity and Gamification

by
Random 1415617109 Randomness Serendipity and Gamification

Recently I have been trying to write a few games, just for fun, with my daughter. There area  couple of card games and I am trying to make a single player board game.

Making a game with a 7 year old is an interesting experience. I got asked to go into her room as she had a new game she wanted to play. She had made a game board with LEGO. You had to get from one end to the other, with certain bricks having modifier effects on the game (move faster, move slower etc). She said I could go first, so I asked “how do we decide how many spaces to move?”. I expected a dice or something, but no. Her answer was “just pick a number between one and ten”! Read More ...

Game Mechanics in Gamification – Revisited

by

Many moons ago I wrote about a massive misunderstanding in gamification around game mechanics and what they actually are. There were several lists around that said they were key game mechanics, which turned out to be very little to do with actual mechanics. Fast forward almost 2 years and, well it is getting better, but there is still a lot of people getting it confused. That is easily done as even in game design circles there is an argument over what they truly are, but there is a general high level agreement at least. As I summarised in my post: Read More ...

Gamification to encourage my daughter to read more

by

As any regular reader will know, I spend a lot of time gamifying my daughter, in a good way. She has taught me a great deal about what does and doesn’t work in the real world.

Most recently I was trying to encourage her to read more, so decided to test out my EEEE framework with her. She was doing it, but it was a real battle, she found it frustrating and not very enjoyable.

My Daughter, based on observation of how she plays games and acts, is part Free Spirit, part Achiever and part Player. That is to say, she likes to have freedom to choose, explore and be creative. She loves when she understands a new concept and nails it, but she does like to see some kind of reward if it is available. Read More ...

How to Use Game Thinking

by

A while back I started to introduce my alternative catch-all to Gamification, that is Game Thinking.

Game Thinking takes four common components of game like or games based solutions and puts them under a single banner. Those are Playful Design / Game inspired design, Serious Games, Games and Gamification / Motivational Design (more on that another day). I was asked recently under what circumstances each would be most appropriate, so I hit powerpoint and made the following matrix thingy!

This is very similar to the Thin Layer vs Deep Level gamification model I presented a while ago – though slightly contradictory on the length of gamification engagement, so forgive that one! Read More ...

Gamification: Novelty is not enough

by

Recently the following video has been doing the rounds.

It shows a great idea to get people to stop at crossings when the red light shows. The idea is that rather than a boring red man stood there you get a real time animation of someone dancing in a booth a little further away.

They claim that the number of people stopping rose to 81%, which is awesome.

It also hooks into loads of motivations. You have free spirits are engaged as they get to dance their hearts out. Philanthropist types will like that by dancing they are helping reduce accidents. Achievers will want to do the best dance possible, whilst players will want to beat all the other dancers. Socialisers get to watch the show and chat to the people around them also watching. Even disruptors have a chance to be subversive in their actions in the booth! Read More ...

Exit mobile version