motivation

Learning From Games: Battlefield 1, RAMP, User Types and Awesome Gaming

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Gamified battlefiled1 Learning From Games Battlefield 1 RAMP User Types and Awesome Gaming

Over Christmas, I started to play Battlefield 1, a game that I was especially looking forward to given my love of the series. I’ve not had as much time to play video games as I would have liked over the last 12 months, so I’ve been making the most of this opportunity. I may even review it for my old and neglected games review site http://yetanotherreviewsite.co.uk!

Anyway, back on topic. I’ve always loved the series because of how good the multiplayer experience is. Back when Battlefield 1942 first came out it broke the mould by not even bothering with a single player game, a brave and clever move as it turned out. It also put a much tighter focus on teamwork with its “Conquest” mode. This saw teams holding key strategic points on the map for as long as possible. Achieving this required good balance of character classes and a level of teamwork beyond just rushing off and killing things. Read More ...

Using Boredom and Curiosity to your Advantage

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Curiosity is something that always interests me. I have written about it in the past, but was drawn to looking at it again recently. There are several theories about what curiosity is and how it works; Curiosity Drive Theory, Optimal Arousal Theory, Incongruity Theory and probably more. They all deal with different aspects of what curiosity is.

Drive Theory considers that curiosity is part of a human need to reduce the discomfort felt when we are uncertain about somemthing.

Incongruity Theory suggests that we seek to resolve incongruity (differences) between something that happens and our existing understanding. So if something happens that doesn’t match our preconceived ideas of what should happen, we become curious and want to understand it. Read More ...

Value to the User vs Value to You

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Here is a little excerpt for the book for you, you know that book that I am still editing but hope to have published in the next 2 weeks…!

Whist basing the value of the reward on a user’s personal investment is important, it is also important not to lose sight of why you were gamifying the system in the first place.

Normally it is because there are certain actions or activities that you want to encourage the user to perform and complete. That being the case, you have to sometimes consider how valuable the action is to you, not just how much effort it is for the user. Read More ...

Mary Poppins was full of crap

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Ok, this has been bugging me for years. In Gamification, there are many things you hear again and again. It’s not about games, points are bad, intrinsic motivation is king. There are more, but the one I have an issue is a quote from that most famous of nannies (and most irresponsible in my mind) , Mary Poppins:

In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and ‘snap’, the job’s a game.

This is where I cry “Bullshit!”

At the point she is singing this, she is trying to convince the miserable children she is looking after to do some tidying. Rather than creating a game of the chore, she uses magic to make stuff fly around and put themselves away. Read More ...

Have a Batman break to keep motivated.

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Last Friday, I began a little experiment – Batman’s big day out.

It was the start of a series of little bits of fun I will be capturing and putting up on social media, following the story of my little LEGO Batman figure.

Now, the point is I wanted to have a bit of fun on my Friday and possibly bring a little to my friends along the way. A question that came up though was

“Have you no work to do?”.

The answer was – of course I do. However, the total time take on Friday to do this was about 30 minutes. As I work with a VDU, I am meant to have a break every hour. If I smoked, it would be acceptable to take 45 minutes or more a day for smoking breaks. So is 30 minutes of something that I enjoyed, kept me motivated, was creative, brought joy to others and helped increase social media traffic for me that day a bad thing? Of course not – and I am not giving myself or anyone else cancer having a Batman break! Read More ...

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