Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: May 11, 2011
What if McDonald’s ran Settlers of Catan promotions instead of Monopoly?… College Humor attempts to find out in this video: Settlers of Catan: McDonald’s Edition.
Posted by: Karl Bunyan on: May 4, 2011
Sebastian Deterding has posted another of his excellent presentations about the potential pitfalls of gamification. Some of the slides may be missing something without the commentary but there are still a lot of good points that come across even in this format. Whether this kind of thinking makes much of an impact on the games=points=marketing [...]
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: October 29, 2010
Lipton’s brand guidelines have been made into an iPod game along the lines of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” to help brand managers remember the details better: BRIEF: Lipton approached us with a problem: no one was reading their brand guidelines. However, when was the last time anyone got excited by brand guidelines? SOLUTION: [...]
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
“Imagine software that mixes work and play… where every message is a jumbo jet.” That’s the promise of 3D Mailbox. It’s been around for a while but somehow bridges the divide between ridiculous and genius, or at least it does for me. (And no, I don’t use it: Gmail’s does me just fine.)
