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Gamification

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Meaningful Play. Getting »Gamification« Right. Jesperbylund.com. Gamify | The Gamification Platform.

Incentive tools

Gamer Humor for the Minor Illusion of Win « Kelly Rued's Work Blog. Effectively using humor in marketing is tricky. If you know your target market well, humor is great linkbait. The most viral web phenomena to date have all been funny… to some people. The problem is knowing if the market for your website or app has a generally homogeneous sense of humor. Sometimes we are so immersed in our personal subcultures that we fail to see how anyone can NOT get the jokes that we take for granted. Nowhere is this becoming more of a problem in my media diet than in the realm of gamer humor. Something happened this past week that made me wonder if gamer humor has crossover potential or if the misapplication of gamer humor is going to become a problem now that gameification is the new the black. Gameification may be encouraging game designers to apply the stock tools* of game design to applications that might be much better without even a whiff of Leeroy Jenkins’ chicken.

But Everyone I Know Thinks It’s Funny! But Humor will Help My Gameified App Go Viral! Like this: Game Mechanics « Strategic Synergy. Social Media « Strategic Synergy. Question: If you had the choice between a real rose and a virtual rose, which would you choose? Before answering, let’s take that virtual rose, and present it in some context. Perhaps the virtual gift is an invitation, hinting at fun and social entertainment with friends. Now make that virtual rose persistent, so the flower is available at every visit to your site. Display the rose in a public environment, where others see the gift from a friend. And lastly, add functionality to the rose, perhaps the rose completes a collection, unlocks new content, or provides new status within the community. Virtual Gifts are experiences that can be used as positive and powerful social exchanges.

They make a message stand out. Rarity (scarcity) increases a virtual gift’s value, and time-limited offers create urgency. A virtual gift can also represent status in level, price, or value. Examples from Facebook: (Source: Wikipedia History of Gmail) Some interesting options for gift-giving features: Chinese: India. Seriosity: The Enterprise Solution for Information Overload. Mphil-is-b23406902f.pdf (application/pdf-objekt) Welcome to the Decade of Games - Seth Priebatsch - The Conversation. By Seth Priebatsch | 9:45 AM September 9, 2010 For those of you still trying to wrap your head around the meteoric rise of social networking over the past decade, this post might hurt a little bit.

Because just as you and most of the world were getting a handle on it, the decade of social abruptly ended. I don’t mean that we will stop using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr to share with our friends, colleagues and families. In fact, quite the opposite is true, our combined usage of these social networks will continue to increase. What’s taking its place? When you hear games, you probably immediately think about things like World of WarCraft, the Nintendo Wii and Farmville. Game dynamics are fast becoming a critical currency of motivation. The decade of games is starting now because cultural and technological shifts have led us to a perfect convergence of reach, relevance and demand.

At SCVNGR we like to joke that with any seven game dynamics you can get anyone to do anything. Where virtual worlds once ruled, FarmVille dominates | Geek Gestalt. Almost every week for the last few years, it seems, I've gotten a press release or a pitch touting some company's great new Facebook games network or kids' virtual world. And why not? Companies like Zynga and Playfish are making money hand over fist with their collections of massively popular social games, and 2D Flash games aimed at children like Club Penguin, Webkinz, Habbo Hotel, and others have garnered vast amounts of virtual world investment dollars in recent years. But to someone who cut his virtual world teeth on more immersive, 3D environments like There and Second Life, these never-ending announcements of new companies trying to jump on the social gaming bandwagon have left me with one nagging question: Where is the innovation?

To find the answer, one has only to do what investigative journalists were always trained to do: follow the money. And I wasn't alone. But does it make sense? And that conference was just the first of many. Sherman agreed. Don't fear the Farmville- Destructoid. [Editor's Note: We're not just a (rad) news site -- we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware that it may not jive with the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on our community blogs.] Somewhere deep in the subterranean depths of the Farmville stronghold, a dark and forbidden ritual is taking place at this very moment. The game's creators, clad in jet black robes, stand in a circle in the server room, chanting gutturally in unison. The focus of their eldritch magicks is an obelisk of pure obsidian in the center of the room, pulsating with a menacing aura of madness and depravity.

With each seed planted, a small portion of the player's soul energy is siphoned off through the internet to the servers, and then channeled by the chanting into the obelisk. This is not speculation or a wild flight of fancy. Myth: Farmville hurts mainstream gaming sales. What Do I Like About Farmville? What do I like about Farmville? That’s a question that I often get asked by my friends, who obviously don’t play Farmville.

So here goes my thoughts and opinions and whatever else you would like to call it – why I play Farmville. I just love its concept, which is also fully supported by the quality of the graphics. I just love to see that my trees actually look like fruit trees in bloom and that my animals look like animals that move and bark and moo etc. Another thing that I like about Farmville is that I can redecorate my farm whichever way I want. Some time back they launched stables and nurseries. The special themes and events coinciding with popular holidays make it even more fun. I also liked the Haiti relief fund initiative in Farmville, where they raised funds for the earthquake relief in Haiti. There are quite a few other points that I can site, but it would take up a lot of time and space.

Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell. Last weekend I wrote about how the big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters. Major media can’t stop applauding the companies long enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success. In short, these games try to get people to pay cash for in game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won’t pay cash, a wide variety of “offers” are available where they can get in-game currency in exchange for lead gen-type offers.

Most of these offers are bad for consumers because it confusingly gets them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers). Examples Of Scams: The Personal Economics of Farmville « Psychohistory. I’ve been playing Farmville, a social video game by Zynga, over the past week, and I have to say that I’m extremely impressed. It’s a very simple simulation game, with well integrated social aspects to promote virality, a good technology tree, and clever virtual goods integration. If you’ve played the game (and at this point, approximately 9 million people have), then you are likely already familiar with the primary economics of the game.

As a farmer, you have a certain number of plots. It costs money (coins) to plow a plot and plant seeds. Different crops take different amounts of time to grow, and are worth different amounts at harvest. Quite simply, the question is: Which crops should you plant? Since I do love an excuse to crack open Excel, I built a simple model that tells you what crops are the “most valuable” to plant. Revenue is just the value of the crop at harvestCost is the cost of the seeds + the cost to plow the square In order to compare crops, I had to normalize the values:

The Mass Appeal of Farmville. The most common description that I’ve heard for Farmville is that it’s a pyramid scheme. Nels Anderson, a designer at Hothead games, commented on Twitter that it was the most cynical game design that he had ever seen (“Ending Up Back in the Arcade”, Above 49, 6 October 2009). It is also one of the most played games on Facebook with more accounts than World of Warcraft or even Twitter (“Zynga Facebook App Data”, AppData.com). At GDC this year, Farmville was one of the most debated topics, both hailed as the future of video games and as the end of the industry as we know it. What is the appeal of such a successful but criticized game for players and developers? It would be more accurate to call Farmville a pyramid game, instead of a scheme, because there is no real deception occurring between user and developer. You don’t have to give them money, click on the ads, or hassle your friends if you want to play. Instead, those options exist if you want to speed up the game’s leveling process.

Tech, Startups, Capital, Ideas. » Top 10 Ways to Apply Game Mechanics To Non-Game Services. One of the great benefits of investing in the social gaming space is the opportunity to be immersed in game mechanics. Game mechanics don’t just apply to gaming companies: they apply to virtually every web site on the net. Here are my top 10 ways to apply game mechanics to non-game services: 1. Your service: The game. Start thinking of your service as a game and it’s easy to envision all the subtle and not so subtle ways to take advantage of game mechanics in your service — whether it’s a consumer offering or an enterprise one. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Of course, there are many more ways to apply game mechanics to your service.