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We have all heard the saying “Content is King”. Marketers tell us this, SEO experts, PR people, writers and more. They promote quality over quantity as the way to attract and keep people. They also promote the long game, looking for repeatable and sustained success rather than a quick and temporary fix.
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….
When you consider your career, unless you are a games developer, I am pretty sure Mario does not enter your thoughts all that much. However, this game (as with almost all other games really) can teach us a lot about how we can plan our careers and how businesses really need to reconsider how they handle the careers of its employees. This is not so much gamification as it is learning from games.
Games offer players a lot fo different mechanisms to understand where they are in the game, where they are going and how they are doing. All of this information is available at a glance, never more than one button press away if it is not on-screen already.
Ok, so maybe a serious blog this week.
Prompts are important, we use them all the time, but we probably don’t think much about them. Do you set yourself reminders on your phone or in Outlook? Meeting requests, messages on your pin board at home to remind you what to by at the shops, Post It notes on the fridge? All of these are prompts, they are also all calls to action.
My daughter has a lot of toys. For the most part they all make noise as well. One of the things that scares the hell out of me is when one decides to make noise, five minutes after she has stopped playing with them. She as one called Alfie Bear. When you put him down, just before he switches off properly, he suddenly laughs and says “Come play with me”. Creepy, but a very good call to action. There is no ambiguity about what you need to do next – go play with him! Lots of her toys do similar, in much the same way as arcade machines of my youth had an attract mode. This would show you some of the cool things in the game and shout things out from the machine, to attract you to play.
Hi all. I’ve been hit by the dreaded lurgie and have had flu for several days now. Makes it hard to come up with a blog post that is worthy of you all spending time on!
Instead I will remind you of one of my definitions of Gamification – adding the unusual to the usual to create benefit. Well, here are the lyrics to the theme of one of my all time favourite shows – Happy Days. With luck it will raise a smile. That in its self is a benefit in my mind.
Sunday, Monday, Happy Days,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Happy Days,
Thursday, Friday, Happy Days,
Saturday, what a day,
Rockin all week with you.
