Gamification

Fengol

From the Meetup Community Night event

Irfan Pardesi
I Believe in gamification of all business processes.

Ben Myres
Great! Although we haven't had much Gamification content in a while :).

Steven Tu
Gamification is a study that came from observing games and the playing of games :)

Andre Odendaal
Last year I attended a great Coursera course on Gamification for business. I can highly recommend it

Irfan Pardesi
Andre. Would love to hear more about it.

Henri
I've noticed a trend that recent games, especially mobile games, are basically "gamified" versions of more traditional games. XP, leveling up, achievements, and unlocks are being added willy-nilly to games that have no reason to have them. Well I guess it's not willy-nilly. It's for cash milking via microtransactions.

mattbenic

Irfan Pardesi
Andre. Would love to hear more about it.

I can recommend it as well:
https://www.coursera.org/course/gamification

Henri
I've noticed a trend that recent games, especially mobile games, are basically "gamified" versions of more traditional games. XP, leveling up, achievements, and unlocks are being added willy-nilly to games that have no reason to have them. Well I guess it's not willy-nilly. It's for cash milking via microtransactions.

It's not just about milking for microtransactions. In the case of achievements and leaderboards at least, a large part of it being expected for consistency on the platform. In the case of achievements, I'd also argue that there are very few game types that wouldn't benefit from well thought out achievements.

In the kinds of freemium mobile games I suspect you're talking about, this "gamification" of them outside the system achievement/leaderboard system is a continuation of this approach in freemium games on social platforms-and it's largely used because it does have a proven track record of retaining players. And yes, often the reason for wanting to retain players is to milk them for IAP.

HotClaw

I agree achievements don't really detract from most games if done correctly. And of course leaderboards are also useful in most games.

The other things (XP, leveling and unlocks) are annoying though. It's as if "gamification" has become "RPG-fication, " but only the most mundane and superficial parts of RPGs are used. I hate that most games on mobile are freemium garbage that use these cheap tricks to get money out of players. I'd much rather pay for a game up front and know that I'm playing an honestly designed game in which all the mechanics are there to enhance gameplay, instead of to entice me to spend tons of money just to keep playing.

dammit

Gamification isn't about (and really shouldn't be about) badges and points and leaderboards. Those are the "makeup" on the internal systems that you don't see.

Gamification is about thinking about people, how they understand and react to tasks, motivators and punishment. It's about understanding how we can turn situations that a boring or win-lose for the employee (yes they get paid, but their brain goes numb in the process) into the best possible situation it can be. Certain tasks will never be fun, but they can be less dreary.

It's also about empowerment. Creating options, choices, goals and rewards that are meaningful.

Recommend: Extra Credits on Gamification

dislekcia

dammit said:

It's also about empowerment. Creating options, choices, goals and rewards that are meaningful.

So much this!

I wrote a talk/rant thing the other day about how play is the act of creating meaning in arbitrary situations, so thus games are about creating meaning in structured rule sets. This then points to gamification having to have meaning to work, without meaning its just pointsification... But when designers focus on exposing meaning, we actually get the chance to have huge impacts on the systems we're interacting with - change becomes inevitable.

HotClaw

dislekcia said:

without meaning its just pointsification...

This is basically the gist of my rant. All the gamification attempts I've seen have devolved to pointsification. I really have started to have an intense dislike of XP and leveling-up in games. It feels so arbitrary.

dammit

HotClaw said:

dislekcia said:

without meaning its just pointsification...

This is basically the gist of my rant. All the gamification attempts I've seen have devolved to pointsification. I really have started to have an intense dislike of XP and leveling-up in games. It feels so arbitrary.

The worst thing is I've had people ask me to gamify a system and then get upset when I show them that it's more than pointsification - which means it's not a simple solution. People are looking for quick fixes for complex problems and gamification can appear to be that way on the surface. Just sign up for badge ville and you're good to go. The problems that these incorrectly used systems can create are sometimes worse than the problems they're trying to solve. One of the best (worst?) examples of this comes from Disney Land and the electronic whip

mattbenic

IMO one of the best things about the Coursera gamification course is that they emphasize Achievements and Leaderboards (or in their terminology: Points, Badges and Leaderboards) as one tool among many. They specifically call out examples of lazy gamification that just pbl a service, adding no real value (the Disneyland example is actually one of their downside case studies). They also highlight completely out there examples that have nothing at all to do with pbl and are pretty awesome.

Gamification can be amzing, but unfortunately as @dammit points out, most companies think it's just slapping a PBL layer on their website.

Them: "They'll visit our website more because they can get points! And badges! And compete for those points!"
Us: "But what value will those points add?"
Them: "It doesn't matter, everyone loves points!"
Us: *run away screaming*

dammit

@Mattbenic : Exactly. The coursera course really useful and well presented and that is where I remember the example from (though, I've read some books on the subject too that mention it amongst others)

Kree8

I would love to see an indie game developer use their skills to gamify some aspect of business. To create a game experience that imparts knowledge and virtual practical skills.

dammit

Kree8 said:

I would love to see an indie game developer use their skills to gamify some aspect of business. To create a game experience that imparts knowledge and virtual practical skills.

;) Working on it.

Also, you're actually asking for two different things. 1. To gamify an aspect of business and 2. To create a game that educates. I'm working on the first.

Cheatsi

Is gamification only restricted to digital games? I'm a bit confused.

dislekcia

Kree8 said:

I would love to see an indie game developer use their skills to gamify some aspect of business. To create a game experience that imparts knowledge and virtual practical skills.

QCF has done a bunch of stuff like that over the years. From games that teach mathematical skills without drill/rote repetition to ARGs that focused on empowering people to begin social entrepreneurship projects through the World Bank Institute, there's been a lot.

We've also "gamified" the business side of how the company itself works, stuff like paying people on the first of the month and ensuring revenue share on projects, etc.

Tuism

dislekcia said:

We've also "gamified" the business side of how the company itself works, stuff like paying people on the first of the month and ensuring revenue share on projects, etc.

Revenue share I get, but how's getting paid first of the month gamification? Can anything that reinforces positively count as gamification then?

dammit

Cheatsi said:

Is gamification only restricted to digital games? I'm a bit confused.

Gamification is not supposed to be about games - it's supposed to be about solving business problems with a game design toolkit. However, the start of this thread pointed to some people being unhappy with people using the same toolkit to try and improve their games - in a way that actually takes away from the experience of the player as there is a misunderstanding of how to use the tool.

dammit

Tuism said:

dislekcia said:

We've also "gamified" the business side of how the company itself works, stuff like paying people on the first of the month and ensuring revenue share on projects, etc.

Revenue share I get, but how's getting paid first of the month gamification? Can anything that reinforces positively count as gamification then?

You know what would really be gamification in this regard - and would be a really interesting experiment - is to have people get their money "as they earn it" so to speak. This could create an interesting situation where people could essentially finish all their work in the first week and do what they like the rest of the time - and if this isn't effective for the business (and probably isn't healthy for the person) - there would need to be a counter measure whereby you have a maximum earning per day/week. This has the other effect of making sure people actually rest between work shifts (which is vitally important).

You could have bonus monies for doing things in less time than was originally planned for (though still to the same quality) or for coming up with great business solutions. This I feel makes more sense than just a 14th check in terms of driving behaviour (since it is closely linked with the behaviour you're driving to drive, rather than just randomly happening in december).

dislekcia

Tuism said:

Revenue share I get, but how's getting paid first of the month gamification? Can anything that reinforces positively count as gamification then?

First day of new job: Hi, here's your salary, now earn it!

Makes a big difference to how work is perceived, plus it creates an instant trust impact - we're okay with paying people "before they've done the work" because we know they will. So far we haven't done it to that many people, but it's had a huge impact when it comes up.

dammit said:

You know what would really be gamification in this regard - and would be a really interesting experiment - is to have people get their money "as they earn it" so to speak. This could create an interesting situation where people could essentially finish all their work in the first week and do what they like the rest of the time - and if this isn't effective for the business (and probably isn't healthy for the person) - there would need to be a counter measure whereby you have a maximum earning per day/week. This has the other effect of making sure people actually rest between work shifts (which is vitally important).

You could have bonus monies for doing things in less time than was originally planned for (though still to the same quality) or for coming up with great business solutions. This I feel makes more sense than just a 14th check in terms of driving behaviour (since it is closely linked with the behaviour you're driving to drive, rather than just randomly happening in december).

The big problem with doing something like this is tracking the actual work delivery. Most of the jobs that are about easily trackable progressive milestones (like sales positions or repetitive task jobs) aren't really open to the sorts of time savings that come from smart ideas. The knowledge jobs that benefit most from productivity spikes like the ones you're looking to maximise are also the jobs that are hardest to track reliably because actual deliverables aren't usually tied to hours worked.

I've always relied on focusing on the management side of knowledge work - supplying a good team atmosphere and trying to get people communicating so that estimates are more reliable - rather than be focused on tracking time and/or progress religiously. Many businesses seem to fall over when it comes to tracking work, I always see that as a failure to understand what your actual outputs are... It might well be possible to solve that with game-like thinking, but I'm not convinced that the tracking problem is one that can be responsibly solved by businesses: If we had solutions, businesses would make people work in much nastier ways :(

dammit

dislekcia said:

The big problem with doing something like this is tracking the actual work delivery. Most of the jobs that are about easily trackable progressive milestones (like sales positions or repetitive task jobs) aren't really open to the sorts of time savings that come from smart ideas. The knowledge jobs that benefit most from productivity spikes like the ones you're looking to maximise are also the jobs that are hardest to track reliably because actual deliverables aren't usually tied to hours worked.

I've always relied on focusing on the management side of knowledge work - supplying a good team atmosphere and trying to get people communicating so that estimates are more reliable - rather than be focused on tracking time and/or progress religiously. Many businesses seem to fall over when it comes to tracking work, I always see that as a failure to understand what your actual outputs are... It might well be possible to solve that with game-like thinking, but I'm not convinced that the tracking problem is one that can be responsibly solved by businesses: If we had solutions, businesses would make people work in much nastier ways :(

Oh, I totally agree - it's nearly impossible to really track output - but it would be totally cool if you could do it accurately. Sadly, I'm well aware of how badly companies can do this.