gamification for beginners?

Gamification#mac309@rob_Jewitt

Before you do anything, I recommend you read the slides by Sebastian Deterding, who inspired this presentation. Trust me, they’re better than mine and very pleasing on the eye. Each image above is a link to his work. Seriously. Do it now!

In today’s session I want to look at a current marketing buzz-word, ‘gamification’, which promises a lot of engagement between a product or service and its user-base in order to keep people interested by rewarding people for their interactions

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In the first section I want to offer a brief overview of what the term refers to for those unfamiliar with it

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I’m sure many of you have played the game, as a child, that involves you walking on pavement stones where you haven’t got to touch the cracks?

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When I was a child I used to pretend that if I touched the crack my back would snap, so it was imperative that I didn’t mess up. This games used to make the mile walk home fun (or slightly less dull!)

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Similarly, any household chore could be turned into a game for some folk…

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I used to like to put my toys in situations they were not meant to be in… Exploring potential scenarios in the context of a safe play space. Usually this involved toy torture

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It is these 3 core elements that, if done well, can make games or gamified experiences very enjoyable and effective. You’ve probably done something like this yourselves…

Make believeRules,

challenges

GoalsFeedback

Free, Safe play space

There’s a new buzz word in town (although there’s some discontent regarding its significance, or at least its application). Games are encroaching into reality, breaking outside of the confines of the traditional game space. From playing games in public, through flash-mobs, to augmented reality applications – games are everywhere!

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Some reading…Not every gamified experience will be the same. Depending on who you listen to, different proponents will have different takes on the successful implementation of the gamification experience. McGonigal sees it as making work fun in order to change the world for the better. Schell sees it as the future of advertising

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Some more reading…Zichermann sees it as being akin to a very cheap form of customer loyalty programme. Kim sees it as a new field of (meta)game-design and community engagement. Reeves sees it the future of work as a perfect information market.

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Will Wright, the creator of SimCity and The Sims, once suggested that the proponents of gamification elements tend to see it as a form of monosodium glutamate (MSG) – ‘Make it Seem Game-like’ – that can fix everything. He argues that the distinction between the virtual and the real world is an artificial one.

In this section I want to look at some of the ways in which people confuse what gamification is (or isn’t)

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Not all games are funKat Bailey of 1UP.com found nothing to like about the game, calling it a “lazy, corporate-mandated cash-in”. IGN claimed “MindJack is ultimately a frustrating and forgettable shooter with horrible presentation, clumsy controls and a plodding campaign”

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Serious gamesFloodSim: A flood prevention simulation/strategy game designed to inform the people of the UK about the dangers of flooding as well as to help gather public opinion on the problem that flooding presents. Players take control of the UK's flood policies for three years and attempts to protect the people and the economy of the nation.

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Sturgeon’s revelationDerived from quotations by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science-fiction writer. He noted that while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, the same could be said for the majority of works in other fields and that science fiction was thus no different in that regard to other art. The same applies to games.

‘ninety percent of everything is

crap’

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A Theory of Fun for Game DesignIn 2005 Raph Koster observed that playing video games tends to be fun because it provides experiences of competence, self-efficacy and mastery, not some externalised contextual reward. McGonigal makes much the same point in Reality is Broken

‘fun from games arises out of

mastery’

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This is a point made by Sebastian Deterding. Just adding something game-like to a product or service is no guarantee of fun. To make something fun, you need all the hard work of game design: iteration, play-testing, balancing –preferably performed by real game designers.

Games are not fun because

they‘re games.

Games are fun when they

are well-designed.

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Reward behaviourYou have an activity that you want your users or customers to partake in and you offer them rewards for doing so. This might take the guise of points or badges, and it might even include some form of competition or a leaderboard to rank users against each other. However, rewards do not equal a sense of achievement

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I get very little pleasure from becoming the mayor of the Prospect Building as it’s very simple to do. Turn up regularly and check in on Foursquare. This is where I work! It’s not a challenge! It’s certainly not fun despite Foursquare’s attempt to make it seem competitive

There are lots of examples of games that reward inane behavior simply because it’s a function of the (poorly considered) design. This is something Jakob Stjerning parodied when he built Progress Wars. Observe how those lovely bars progress as you click! Isn‘t it fun? Isn‘t it engaging? Er, no….

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Games + social = ?All manner of social games have become very popular across a range of different demographics. Often these games are powered by a freemium business model whereby those players who are time poor but cash rich can buy their way to success. Players may also be rewarded for inviting friends to play or for playing socially

Jesse Shell (2010) suggested the success of games like Club Penguin are based on ‘psychological tricks’. It is free to play and players accrue virtual money but in order to spend that money in-game a $6 per month subscription is needed ($72 per year), creating an “elastic velvet rope”. Disney paid $350 million for it in 2007 for it

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Games + social = license to print $

There is a history of games from one space bleeding into another. Fantasy football is a game that leeches off another game, which used to be the confine of nerds but is now mainstream and enjoyable

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Watch your points with Weight Watchers. Players are rewarded for various achievements and hitting critical milestones. It might be a game but is it fun? Nintendo’s Wii Fit was an attempt to bring game dynamics to healthy living and other ‘serious games’ exist

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Track your progress, beat your score, compare your performance with other users of Nike+!

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Play the game, upgrade your meal for more chances of ‘winning’, watch your health suffer…

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Fast food loyalty schemes try to incentivize repeat custom by rewarding customers for sticking with them. They are now going beyond the sticker-collecting stage and taking advantage of the technology in our pockets – use QR codes to scan and store your data

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Frequent flyers are rewarded for their repeat engagement: ‘rank up’ based on experience points?

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There is a tendency for car manufacturers to include fuel economy gauges for drivers to maximize their fuel efficiency. The aim of the game is to ‘score’ your highest MPG. Play Fuel Challenge™ by ‘hypermiling’ with some unintended consequences, such as refusing to slow down at traffic lights so as not to have to accelerate later

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Geo-location services like Foursquare and Gowalla reward players for registering their position via GPS by giving them badges and exclusive discounts with specific retailors. Geocaching games abound where players use their location to find ‘treasures’

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In this section I want to look at responses to gamification

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Gamification = application of game design elements to things that aren’t typically considered a game. It strives to encourage users in desired behaviours by taking advantage of psychological predispositions to engage in a game format when the task at hand may not be that exciting (wink to Sebastian Deterding for this one…)

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Volkswagen Sweden employ the “The Fun Theory” to reformulate the mundane act of recycling into a game that increased bottle bank deposits in the above example.

Play video

Use the ‘data shadows’ left behind by the Oyster travel card on the London Underground to make the daily commute more interesting: “Pick up Items. Complete Collections. Take on Missions. Join a team and together take over London”

The decreasing costs and increasing sophistication of accelerometers, RFID chips and other sensors is creating a context in which they can be found almost anywhere, and their centrality may engender new possibilities for innovation and engagement. Even the most mundane objects like a smartphone can be utilized as part of a ‘gamified’ marketing campaign. This doesn’t mean they’ll always be implemented effectively…

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Gamification is bullshitIan Bogost has argued that the rhetoric of gamification is presented by marketers as reassuring and easy, suggesting strategy and formulaic solutions to problems. Game developers and players have critiqued it on the grounds that it gets games wrong, mistaking incidental properties like points and levels for primary features like interactions with behavioral complexity.

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Cow ClickerBogost developed this Facebook game as a parody of the worst excesses of Farm Ville and its clones. The goal was to earn ‘clicks’ by clicking on a cow every six hours. A currency called ‘Mooney’ allowed users to purchase new cow designs. More clicks could be harvested when friends brought their cows to the pasture.

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Every time you clicked a cow your Facebook newsfeed would highlight the banality by posting “I’m clicking a cow”. Despite it being a parody, it became very successful in its own right, attracting over 50,000 players. Some players even posted strategy guides. Eventually Bogost called it to an end via the Cowpoclaypse

The pop behaviourism of B.F. Skinner sees rewards as, well, rewarding… However, humans are not always motivated to react the same way a rat in a Skinner box may be. Many of the gamified social experiences marketed today aren’t being built by skilled game designers

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In summaryMany companies have risen to prominence on the back of viral strategies, placing social experiences at the centre of their strategy. Gamification, adopted as a marketing strategy, is meant to be fun (funware?), but does it always succeed? Not all games work to reward players for their efforts accordingly (only the best designed ones?)

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• # - C!..., 2010, Share• # - @Hella, 2008, Obama• # - Sergio Vaiani, 2009, Scale Stairs• # - Mike Zienowicz, 2007, Joe• # - MissNatalie, 2008, Miss Natalie’s Growth Chart• # - GDS Infographics, 2010,

The Year the Dot-Com Bubble Burst• # - Phil Hatchard, 2010, Sketchbook 2: Internet Dating• # - kurtxia, 2008, Space invaders• # - bitchcakesny, 2008, Weight Watchers Awards• # - Jun Acullador, 2007, Gulf Air• # - plien, 2009, Z4 dash• # - DORONKO, 2010, NIKE +iPod• # – nan palmero, 2010,

Foursquare Pins and Tattoos SXSW 2010• # - yoyolabellut, 2010, Space Invader @ Paris (France)• # - paulszym, 2010,

Step 10 – Place the 5mm Sensor for soldering• # - Nina Leen (LIFE), 1964, B F Skinner training a rat• # - yoyolabellut, 2010, Space Invader @ Paris (France)• # - A. Diez Herrero, 2007, creative commons -Franz Patzig-

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All attempts made to attribute sources but if I’m missed one, get in touch please