Gamification and game design
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This document discusses gamification and game design. It notes that gamification is being applied in many fields like education, fitness, and human resources. However, some critics argue that gamification is just a marketing tactic to exploit games for business purposes. The document also discusses how game design can be a way of thinking that encourages collaboration and positive emotions. It suggests game design could be used to create engaging knowledge media by activating emotions, immersing users, and allowing collaboration.
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Gamification and game design
- 1. GAME DESIGN & GAMIFICATION A LOOK AT THE INTERSECTION OF DESIGN & PLAY
- 2. GAMIFICATION: NEW WORD, OLD CONCEPT Gamification is now being applied to many aspects of business and social life, including: • Education (Quest to Learn school, NYC) • Fitness/ healthy living (Nike+, Jawbone’s UP) • Human resources (Work.com) • Digital indexing (National Library of Finland’s Digitalkoot) Screen cap from Work.com
- 3. MARKETING, SCHMARKETING “…gamification is marketing bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where bullshit already reigns anyway.” – Ian Bogost, “Gamification is Bullshit,” Ian Bogost - videogame theory, criticism, design (August 8, 2011) Gamification = Explotationware? “Exploitationware captures gamifiers' real intentions: a grifter's game, pursued to capitalize on a cultural moment, through services about which they have questionable expertise, to bring about results meant to last only long enough to pad their bank accounts before the next bullshit trend comes along.” (Ian Bogost, 2011)
- 4. REALITY IS BROKEN “Game design isn’t just a technological craft. It’s a twenty-first-century way of thinking and leading. And game playing isn’t just a pastime. It’s a twenty-first-century way of working together to accomplish real change.” – Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and how they can Change the World, (New York, Penguin Press, 2011) • Games produce fiero, a deep emotional rush, and flow, focused, enjoyable concentration* • Gaming for good: examples include Folding@home, which uses spare PS3 computing power to fold proteins (which helps cancer research)* * (McGonigal, 2011)
- 5. SO, WHY GAME DESIGN? Imagine designing knowledge media that: • “Activated extreme positive emotions*” (gameplay is the emotional opposite of depression) • “Immersed users on an epic scale*” • Allowed users to collaborate and engage with each other, and create something new (and possible wonderful) * (McGonigal, 2011) What is than opinion of gamification and look design? “Rather your trying to make applications game Is it just a marketing gimmick, or do you thinkneed to superficially like entertainment or games, we there is real potential for improving designs? think more deeply and less literally about the underlying characteristics of play that make it enticing.” - David Can you think ofEnticing Design in Usability,” Interactions 19.4 (2012) Siegel, “The Role of instances in your life that incorporate gamification or game design?
Editor's Notes
- This is a quick look at a topic that just keeps getting bigger. The graph here – and apologies that the numbers are so small – is a screen cap from Google Trends. It represents the web search interest (world-wide) in the word “gamification” from 2004 until now. As you can see, gamification entered the popular lexicon in mid-2010, and has since taken off. At this point, you might be wondering what exactly I’m talking about when I say gamification? According to Gabe Zichermann, a self-styled “gamification thought-leader,” “gamification is the process of using game thinking and dynamics to engage audiences and solve problems.” I first heard about gamification when Zichermann spoke at mesh, a tech conference in Toronto, back in 2010. He had some really interesting things to say about incorporating games into many aspects of life (and he also likes to swear a lot during his presentation.)
- Although “gamification” has become a recent buzzword, the social sciences have been studying game studies and play for decades.Gamification, in its new and buzz-wordy guise, is being applied to learning (through badges, as we saw in Stian’s presentation), as well more comprehensively through schools like New York’s Quest to Learn, where the curriculum is designed around game play. Other areas where gamification is being applied include fitness (think of Nike+ and the new NikeFuel Band), human resources (in SaaS products such as Work.com, which was developed in Toronto). Even libraries have gotten into the game - Finland’s national library launched a game-based program to help decipher words in order to index old newspapers (kind of like reCaptcha).All of these products/programs/initiatives take the elements of a game - goals, rules, feedback system, voluntary participation - and add them to everyday situations, tasks and knowledge exchanges.)
- Of course, gamification is also being used as a marketing tool.Take FourSquare for an example – its badge system encourages loyalty by rewarding repeat customers - that is, people who buy things, whether it’s shoes or a beer with friends. The appropriation of gamification principles by marketers has led game designers like Ian Bogost to claim that gamificationers have got it wrong; that they are “mistaking incidental properties like points and levels, for primary features like interactions with behavioral complexity.” (Bogost, 2011)The quotes above are from his rant at theWharton Gamification Symposium in August 2011. I think they get his point across pretty clearly. Also, I wonder if swearing and gamification are linked in some way…?Ian Bogost, “Gamification is Bullshit,” Ian Bogost - videogame theory, criticism, design (August 8, 2011),http://www.bogost.com/blog/gamification_is_bullshit.shtml
- So let’s step away from the word gamification, and look at another way of incorporating game design into real life. I read Jane McGonigal’s book “Reality is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and how they can Change the World,” when it came out last year, and it’s really changed the way I thought about this topic. McGonigal’s argument is that there are 183 million gamers in the US who are checking out of reality because the real world lacks the engagement, feeling of community and burst of exhilaration that can be found in games. But McGonigal contends that by designing games that have a positive impact on real life (and that are based in the real world) we can harness this love of gaming for good, so to speak.McGonigal actually doesn’t mention the word “gamification” once in her book. Instead, she talks about how principles of game design, and features of games(especially Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) and alternative reality games (ARGs)) can make the world a better place. For more information on game design elements, I would suggest reading McGonigal’s book.- Jane McGonigal,Reality is Broken: Why Games make us Better and how they can Change the World (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011), Kobo Edition.
- The examples here are taken from McGonigal’s “14 Fixes for Reality.” I think she and David Siegel would agree that getting beyond the label of gamification and looking at the reason why games are so appealingwill help unlock the potential of game design for everyday life.Two questions:Do you think that game design and gamification can help with creating better knowledge media designs? (Or did I drink too much of the gamification Kool-Aid?)Can you think of aspects of your life that incorporate gamification or game design?David Siegel, “The role of enticing design in usability,” Interactions 19.4 (2012). DOI:10.1145/2212877.2212895