Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: January 6, 2011
The term “gamification” is increasingly becoming used to mean a set of mechanics specifically intended to create viral growth and repeat usage patterns and increasingly disconnected from the idea of games as fun. The Gamification Wiki continues this trend by adding its list of game mechanics to those already out there from the likes of [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: January 5, 2011
The Escapist has a good video called Choice and Conflict. The core points appears to be the distinction between “meaningful choice” and “mathematical calculation” in gameplay. i.e. If I have perfect information about all variables in a situation, then any choice the game asks me to make is a matter of calculation. If, however, there [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: November 22, 2010
From the article Endowed Progress Effect and Game Quests, describing a test where one set of users were given an empty loyalty card requiring eight stamps to complete, versus a card requiring ten stamps to complete but with two already marked: …34% of people who got a 10-stamp card with 2 freebies ended up coming [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: November 15, 2010
Margaret Robertson of Hide and Seek has put up a piece railing against the term gamification and its implication that “game” is equivalent to “points and badges”. That problem being that gamification isn’t gamification at all. What we’re currently terming gamification is in fact the process of taking the thing that is least essential to [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: November 1, 2010
Another great gamification TED video on “7 ways games reward the brain” by Tom Chatfield, the author of Fun Inc. The summary of these are: Experience bars measuring progress Multiple long and short-term aims Rewards for effort Rapid, frequent, clear feedback An element of uncertainty Windows of enhanced engagement Other people Watch the full video [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: November 1, 2010
Immersyve, who previously published the Player Experience of Need Satisfaction (PENS) research piece, have written an excellent article looking at gamification beyond the simple mechanics of points and leaderboards. This simplistic idea of gamification is tapping into psychological triggers that, as they say, “we may not understand … as well as we think we do” [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: October 19, 2010
The President of micro-lending site Kiva made an interesting story by claiming that their biggest competitor is a social gaming company. From Techcrunch: I think our biggest competitor is actually, probably Zynga. It’s not other nonprofits it’s actually competing for people’s attention. That fantasy football player in Canton, Ohio who might play two hours of [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: October 18, 2010
I’ve just finished (most of) the book “Finite and Infinite Games“. I say “most of” because some of it’s heavy going and not in a subject domain that I have much background knowledge of so the complex arguments are a bit wasted on me. So, I skipped them. But there are some interesting thoughts on [...]
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: October 14, 2010
This video, shown as the introduction to the 2010 Playful conference, raises some interesting questions about “gamification” including “do games and playfulness diverge the more we try to integrate games into life”.
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: September 29, 2010
Sebastien Deterding’s presentation, “Pawned: Gamification and Its Discontents”, from this year”s Playful conference, is up on Slideshare, and embedded below. Watch full-screen on Slideshare and read the notes at the bottom of each slide. (You may need to close the ads.) I made a few notes about the presentation in my write-up of Playful, but [...]
