Last week was Gamification World Congress 2014, the biggest Gamification event in Europe and I think in the world with over 600 people. They all came together over 3 days to celebrate the best Gamification has to offer in 3 days packed full of talks (seriously 9 am until 8:30pm with over 30 talks on the second day!) and workshops.
On day one, 60 delegates attended 4 workshops, run by Sergio Jiménez, Mario Herger, Alberto Tornero and me.
The workshops were great fun, I think everyone enjoyed most of the content they got to see and work with. My own had some highs and lows – which I am going to build on to create my next one (details soon I hope).
Hard at work
Talking about EEEE Framework
Activity loops or mess?
The day of the talks was massive. So many great speakers, I can’t think of a single talk that I didn’t enjoy! I also enjoyed my talk hugely and was happy to answer all of the questions thrown my way.
I can’t wait to see the output from the third day, which I sadly missed. it was on the use of gamification in education and health care and I am sure it was just as amazing as the other days!
I just wanted to use this blog post to thank everyone involved, from the organisers to the attendees to the speakers. Everyone was friendly and the event was one of the most pleasant experiences I could imagine. On a personal note, I was thrilled to get to meet Kevin Werbach and Mario Herger – two of my gamification heroes!
I was also thrilled to win a trophy. I was overall third in the 2014 Gamification Gurus Leaderboarded annual awards. To give that some context though, let me explain the leaderboard and who was above me. The leaderboard runs all year, releasing monthly updates on who is the most active, most retweeted, most mentioned etc. gamification “gurus” in the world. There are over 300 people on the board. The annual award takes all of the last 12 months activities and gives it an overall score, this is then put in to a leaderboard an the top three are given a trophy.
First place was given to Yu-Kai Chou. Yu-Kai is one of the true pioneers of gamification, having been involved in gamification in one way or another since 2003. He was at the top of the leaderboard for several months straight. Second place went to Mario Herger. He is one of the most respected people in the industry, having worked for SAP and now being one of the founders of Enterprise Gamification Consultancy (along with Yu-Kai) – the first gamification consultancy of its type. He has never been far from the top of the leaderboard over the last 12 months.
I came third, 2 points behind Yu-Kai and a fraction of a point behind Mario. For me this is huge. It is like your local town football team winning the world cup, or your dad in a winning the Forumla 1 Championships in a Ford Mondeo. Next year, I am coming for the number 1 spot though, having been at the top of the board (finally!) for the last two months, I hope that this will be my year!
Thanks to the guys at GWC14 for having me and I hope to see you all again next year!
And finally, Bart Briers gave a sublime talk to close the event, with a single resounding message. 1202 (look it up with regards to Apollo 11). If you fail – reboot quickly and try again.
As many of you know, I recently took exception to a particular definition of gamification that was doing the rounds. However, the positive effect was to make me think about what it really means and also started to make me wonder what other people think of it. So, I asked them – I did a little research…
The results were interesting. I gathered 30 different definitions, some from industry experts and others from people with an interest. They are all listed at the end, but I thought I would share a few thoughts from them.
The first thing that caught my eye was there are two distinct streams of thinking. The first is the idea of adding gaming elements or ideas to things that are not games. The other is to make things that are not games more like games. Similar, but slightly different concepts.
I love that so many made mention of “people” or “users / players”, showing that we agree that gamification is a people centric way of designing engaging experiences. Fun came up quite a lot as well!
Here is a quick breakdown of the most common concepts that came up. I have normalised the wording (so mentions of users became people, objectives became goals etc.)
Basic Concepts
Word / Concept
Percentage of Definitions
Engage
38%
People
28%
Fun
25%
Motivate
22%
Play
16%
Solving problems
16%
Behaviour
16%
Goals
16%
I have a more detailed breakdown after the definitions.
The average definition
Anyway, I thought I would create a simple definition that encapsulates this. I went through many iterations and discussed with other experts and friends and came up with this.
Gamification: Creating more game-like experiences in non game contexts
This is very simple and does not include anything about why or how, just what it is.
I could have gone for “The user focused application of game elements, game mechanics, game design or game thinking in non game contexts to engage, motivate, change behaviour, solve problems, make goals more achievable, make tasks more playful or add fun” but that does not seem to roll off the tongue as well.
The point is, we are all looking at this in pretty much the same way. We are all trying to make more engaging experiences for people using ideas that games have been using forever. We may all define it a little differently, but that is just semantics. Platforms and techniques may differ, but the goal is the same.
Anyway, here are the definitions and the names of the contributors.Thank you to everyone who contributed!
The Definitions
Reverse-engineering what makes games successful and grab it into business environment
Roman Rackwitz
The use of strategic elements of game thinking, game-design and game mechanics for use on non-game environments such as business, education, healthcare, not-for-profit and government applications.
Marigo Raftopoulos
Making a non-game experience worthy of a human being’s sustained engagement, usage and loyalty by making it more compelling (more social, competitive, collaborative, mastery building, goal seeking — but not necessarily more fun) through the skillful integration of game thinking directly into that core experience.
Barry Kirk
The use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals
Brian Burke
The use of game attributes to drive game-like player behavior in a non-game context with predictability. Where game attributes may be anything that a game-designer use to make a game fun and engaging. For example: game mechanics, game dynamics, game-design principles, gaming psychology, player journey, narratives, incentives, etc.
Michael Wu
Gamification is an empathy-based process of enhancing a service with affordances for gameful experiences to teach, engage, entertain, measure to support players’ overall value creation to indirectly support entities’ overall value creation
Mario Herger
Gamification is the craft of deriving all the fun and addicting elements found in games and applying them to real-world or productive activities – human focused design
Yu_kai Chou
Gamification is the use of game-design elements in non-game contexts
Sebastian Deterding
Gamification is the process of using game thinking and game dynamics to engage audiences and solve problems
Gabe Zichermann
Gamification is using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems.
Karl Kapp
it is the use of game-design and game psychology in non-game settings to engage the target audience and motivate specific behaviors.
Keith Ng
The use of game mechanics to increase engagement and use of websites and applications.
Erika Webb
Gamification is the use of game design thinking in non-game environments to engage people.
Sergio Jimenez
Gamification is the process of designing fun user experiences in non-game context by means of game mechanics and experience design
José Carlos Cortizo
Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts to increase people’s motivation towards a well-intended objective
Victor Manrique
the use of game elements and design metaphors to solve problems
Andrzej Marczewski
The use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-game contexts
Kevin Werbach
the use of game mechanics, dynamics, and frameworks to promote desired behaviors
Lee and Hammer
gamification takes the characteristics we like about games and adds them to everyday actions in order to make them more interesting
TechnologyAdvice
a fun way to do things that have to be done
Opusphere
Gamification is the use of the elements that make games fun in non-gaming environments to create motivating experiences that help solve concrete problems
Wonnova
Using game elements to engage & influence people at a level that motivates them to give you a desired outcome.
Laura Marczewski
Gamification is reframing goals to be appealing and achievable using game-design principles
Nat A Lee
Gamification is the application of game elements and design principles to solve problems in non-game contexts
Frederik Agge Ronex
The design of game elements and game dynamics to engage play in non-game arenas
Dutch Driver
Gamification is taking fun and habit-forming elements found in games and applying them to productive activities
Michael Finney
gamification: the use of game concepts in a non-game environment to solve problems and also to make the experience funnier
Adrien Rubstein
The use of game elements to increase engagement and make life and work more fun
Mark Schreiber
the application of game concepts to a traditional idea or setting
Hunter Fortuin
Gamification is the application of gameful or playful layers to motivate engagement with a specific context
Scott Nicholson
Applying game mechanics to processes not normally thought of as games
