I talk to people about gamification quite a lot! The conversation usually starts with a little curiosity, then some scepticism and if I have done well, enthusiasm.
One thing that happens in probably 9 out of 10 conversations is a little section I like to call “No, it’s not about making games”. You all know this one. The person you are talking to suddenly has a moment of revelation as the think they have understood what you are talking about and say “Oh yeah. Minecraft!”.
A while back, I was asked how “Dark Personalities” fit with my Hexad of User Types. At the time, I had no answer – because I had never heard of dark personalities.
So, as I always do, I responded with honesty and promised to look into it. I have touched on it with how I now explain disruptors in my book and in some papers I have helped with – but have never really mapped them out to make it easy to understand.
The first thing is to discuss what dark personalities are. It seems to stem from an article in the Journal of Research in Personality by D. Paulhus and K. Williams. They describe three types of dark personalities: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.
So, here it is. Writing and publishing the book have broken my brain a little! I am working on two blogs at the moment though. One about publishing a book for under £50 ($80) and the other about dark personalities and disruptors!
However, anyone who has been reading for a while will know that when my Gamification brain breaks, I pursue other creative outlets. There were the Batman Breaks, the short stories and the memes.
Well now I have been writing some poems for my children! Yep, you heard that right! You can find them all on Wattpad – Poems for Children
So then, it is finally available. Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play is out in paperback and ebook formats from Amazon.
Amazon.com have it in stock now.
There are many, many ways to get gamification wrong, but there is one that really sticks out head and shoulders above the rest.
The best way to get Gamification wrong is to ask the question “What game mechanics should we include?” before any other questions. Questions like: what is the purpose of this? What is the content? Why are we gamifying? What are we gamifying? Who are we doing it for?
There is nothing wrong with having a list of mechanics that you would like, but it should not be your fist consideration when you are looking at gamification!
