gamify

Driving the wrong behaviours with rewards.

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875413 47541979 Driving the wrong behaviours with rewards

I have written about this whole thing quite a lot already, but I have some new insights based on things I have witnessed recently.

We know that extrinsic rewards are meant to demotivate people when doing anything that is even slightly creative. So why do we keep seeing them being used in gamification and marketing. On the face of it, that kind of thing works well. Offer a reward and ask people to do something simple. Like this, follow that, +1 the other and you can win a book. Low and behold you can get hundreds or thousands of these clicks – great. The question is, how many of these are valuable? What is the goal? If you are trying to develop new and worthwhile interactions and relationships. Does the same person liking everything you have ever written, just to win the prize, have any actual value long term? Read More ...

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The danger of extrinsic rewards on motivation – What I learned from my 5 year old

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20120211 085538 The danger of extrinsic rewards on motivation 8211 What I learned from my 5 year old

Another quick one, prompted by an interesting behaviour exhibited by my daughter today that taught me rather a lot about extrinsic rewards.

I have mentioned before the research that has been done on motivation in the past by the likes of Edward Deci and the writing of Dan Pink and more. All of them point to the same thing, extrinsic rewards are bad for intrinsic motivation. The basic reasoning is that at some point, no matter how careful you are, the reward will become the reason to do the task. The extrinsic reward replaces the original intrinsic motivation. Read More ...

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Is Gamification a benign form of manipulation and does it matter?

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1242969 93675797 Is Gamification a benign form of manipulation and does it matter

Let me expand on this.

A discussion started on twitter when I mentioned in passing to a couple of gamification people, that really gamification is often a benign form of manipulation. It became an interesting chat, fast. I suppose I expected that! However, when you look at the definition of manipulation in the Oxford English Dictionary you get these two definitions

  1. handle or control (a tool, mechanism, information, etc.) in a skilful manner
  2. control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly or unscrupulously

Of course, we take notice of the second normally – focusing on the more negative connotations, but it is the first that I am interested in. As gamification people, we understand behaviour and how to use game mechanics and the like to influence this behaviour. We use this information to set up systems that promote certain actions. Sometimes this is for the benefit of the end user, other times it may be for the interest of the company (or brand or whatever). Either way, it is done in a way that is meant to engage the end user (god forbid let them have a little fun as well). Read More ...

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Gamification: Some More Views

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Gamification Gamification Some More Views

First of all, thanks to everyone who has viewed or downloaded my Gamification presentation. It has had over 600 views on Slideshare, which is fantastic! Looking forward to my next chance to do the talk (hint hint people!!!)

Also, check out this short interview I did with the Association for Interactive Media & Entertainment 5Qs Gamificaiton

A little while ago, I did a piece called “What the Experts Think” where I invited industry experts in gamification to give their opinions. We, I opened this up so any one can answer and here are the first answers I have had. I will leave the survey open as I would love to get more of you to tell me your thoughts. Thanks to everyone who has been involved so far 🙂 Read More ...

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Plea to the Games Industry to Embrace Gamification and Get Involved

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Mario chart Plea to the Games Industry to Embrace Gamification and Get Involved

With Eurogamer already fading into the deepest recesses of my mind, there is one thing that has stood out. Just how much the games industry dislikes gamification.

The general feeling was that everyone doing gamification is getting it wrong. They do not understand games and therefore think that it is fine to just add the most shallow and un-engaging elements of games to a task and say it is gamified.

They didn’t like that we as gamifiers were watering down the depth of real games. Having just watched the first video of section 11 of the great Coursera.org gamification course, Kevin Werbach talks about this exact issue. Read More ...

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