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Gamification

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Serious Games? Definitely. Gameification? Too Early To Say. As readers of this blog know, I have a keen interest in serious games. Among other virtues, they provide a way to deal with tough circumstances by changing the way team members interact. In an upcoming research document on the subject, I relate the story of a development team that had to rewrite a creaky old application from scratch.

Which features did the team need to re-implement right away? By running a serious game with the stakeholders, the team pinpointed which features were essential and why. Serious games have plenty of other uses. For example, I've seen lightweight role-playing exercises used to help develop personas and user stories. As enthusiastic as I am about serious games, I'm not yet sold on a wholly different trend: gameification.

In contrast, gameification is, as the name implies, about turning regular activities into games. To be fair, gameification advocates cite other potential benefits. Or, we might resent the intrusion of games into our work lives. [P.S. SXSW 2011: The internet is over | Technology. If my grandchildren ever ask me where I was when I realised the internet was over – they won't, of course, because they'll be too busy playing with the teleportation console – I'll be able to be quite specific: I was in a Mexican restaurant opposite a cemetery in Austin, Texas, halfway through eating a taco. It was the end of day two of South by Southwest Interactive, the world's highest-profile gathering of geeks and the venture capitalists who love them, and I'd been pursuing a policy of asking those I met, perhaps a little too aggressively, what it was exactly that they did.

What is "user experience", really? What the hell is "the gamification of healthcare"? Or "geofencing"? The content strategist across the table took a sip of his orange-coloured cocktail. This, for outsiders, is the fundamental obstacle to understanding where technology culture is heading: increasingly, it's about everything.

Web 3.0 The game layer The dictator's dilemma The road to that end state won't be smooth. The ten rules of gamification. Gamification may have been the buzzword of 2010, but its influence shows no sign of abating in 2011. It is a term derided by game designers, misunderstood by brands and unknown to consumers. So as you set out to “gamify” your business, what are the cardinal rules of gamification? 1. You’re not making a game Gamification is not the same as game-making. Gamification is about using game-like mechanics to improve a business process, or customer experience, or profits. Game-making is about fun and wonder and challenge and art. “Want more hovertanks? So stop thinking about how you can build a real-time strategy game with resources allocated according to your customers’ weekly shopping bill – “Want more hovertanks?

2. See #1 above. What is the point of your game? Go away. 3. Gamification can be very powerful. Can you achieve it without gamifiying? In short, realise that gamification is no quick fix or panacea. 4. Seriously. “Oh, but that’s different, they sell big games in boxes.” 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Gamification: what are the rules? As multichannel commerce becomes commonplace, it’s more important than ever to focus on long-term engagement and coherence, creating a uniform, satisfying customer experience across every platform.

Recently, Gamification has become an increasingly important part of this mix, using game mechanics to enhance UX and guide user behaviour. When it’s done well, the rewards can be impressive; boosting engagement and brand awareness as well as vastly increasing direct conversion, shareability and repeat business. But what exactly do we mean when we use the term? It’s important to remember that gamification is a blanket phrase which can relate to multiple levels of deployment. Here’s a quick roundup of some points you should be aware of if you are considering gaming as a marketing tool. Gamification vs pointsification First of all, let’s define our terms. Unless you happen to be Blizzard, you probably won’t have millions in resources and a crack team of designers, artists and coders to hand. Le double jeu de la gamification » Article » OWNI, Digital Journalism.

Glisser du challenge dans chaque interstice du quotidien ? C'est tout l'enjeu de la gamification, nouvelle expression à la mode et alléchante potentielle machine à cash. La gamification est un des gros buzz du moment. En janvier 2011 s’est tenu d’ailleurs le premier “Gamification Summit“. Elle consiste essentiellement à se demander ce qui nous attire tant dans les jeux, puis d’en extraire les recettes fondamentales, afin de les appliquer hors du cadre ludique. Au coeur de ce processus se trouve l’idée que le gain de points, l’acquisition d’un statut, sont des moteurs d’amusement suffisants pour encourager les utilisateurs à recourir à un service.

Exemple type, Foursquare, application sur mobile où l’on recommande à ses amis divers lieux dans la ville, celui qui en conseille le plus étant à même de récupérer bons d’achat ou coupons de réductions dans certains des lieux recommandés. La gamification roule des mécaniques Un concept largement critiqué Gamification et nouvelles monnaies. Les ambiguités de la gamification. Par Rémi Sussan le 01/03/11 | 9 commentaires | 7,377 lectures | Impression La gamification est un des gros buzz du moment.

En janvier 2011 s’est tenu d’ailleurs le premier “Gamification Summit“. Elle consiste essentiellement à se demander ce qui nous attire tant dans les jeux, puis d’en extraire les recettes fondamentales, afin de les appliquer hors du cadre ludique. Au coeur de ce processus se trouve l’idée que le gain de points, l’acquisition d’un statut, sont des moteurs d’amusement suffisants pour encourager les utilisateurs à recourir à un service. Sur ce point, la gamification se démarque par exemple du “jeu sérieux” qui lui aussi cherche à utiliser le jeu dans les sphères économiques ou éducatives, mais qui prend souvent l’apparence d’un jeu vidéo “classique” (d’où son coût de développement fréquemment élevé, d’ailleurs).

Selon les thuriféraires de la gamification, le concept devrait bientôt devenir partie intégrante du design de n’importe quel site web. Check-in - Check-IN Audace - Les nouveaux mystères de San Francisco… Les nouveaux mystères de San Francisco… Publié le 29 janvier 2011 Depuis quelques mois, un jeu débuté en 2008 et des plus mystérieux, avec pour terrain les rues de "SF", est en train de sortir de l'anonymat. Les participants sont «accros». Son nom? The Games of Nonchalance, tout un programme… A quand une marque sponsor? Ce jeu interactif ressemble à un scénario tout droit sorti de l’esprit sinueux de David Lynch. Tout commence par une visite dans le Jejuneinstitute, une sorte de centre mi scientologiste-mi raélien, situé downtown.

Et c’est parti pour une première étape de plus de 2 heures qui doit mener le ou les curieux vers un premier indice.Très vite le joueur se rend compte que son premier contact avec le Jejuneinstitute est biaisé et qu'il devra se méfier de tous les personnages ou indices qu'il va croiser ou récupérer... Le jeu, découpé en 4 étapes disséminées dans 4 quartiers différents, emmène les participants dans une immersion totale de la ville. Sylvain Bénémacher. Gamification: The Art of Turning Work Into Play.

Gamification is a hot topic as of late and has seen marketing, education, and non-profit groups adopting the use of gamification concepts at a rapid rate. While some will say gamification is not true gaming and others see it as an unnecessary distraction, I think both groups may be missing the point. Before I dive into why I believe this let’s recap what gamification actually means and some real world exampled. So what does gamification mean? According to Wikipedia it is defined as follows: Gamification is the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications (also known as “funware“), particularly consumer-oriented web and mobile sites, in order to encourage people to adopt the applications.

Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners is credited with coining the term gamification and he recently participated in the first ever Gamification Summit (which sold out btw) that just took place 20-21 January in San Francisco. Some real world examples of gamification include: Buzzword Watch: The Gamification of Work. Gamification, according to Wikipedia, is " is the use of game play mechanics for non-game consumer technology applications. " Our own Audrey Watters defined game mechanics as a "rule-based system for scoring, setting goals, and allocating rewards. " A related idea is the "Gamepocalypse," Jesse Schell's hypothetical future in which everything is gamified. Wikipedia emphasizes consumer applications, but the enterprise is not exempted from the gamification trend.

But will it actually make work any better? ReadWriteWeb guest blogger Ethan Stillman wrote that "Having a game mechanic integrated into your product is effectively a launch requirement at this point," referring to consumer applications. Writing for the site Hide & Seek, Margaret Robertson points out a fatal flaw in so-called "gamification": That problem being that gamification isn't gamification at all. Robertson writes that "gamification," as it's currently practiced, would more accurately be termed "poinstification. " What's The Difference Between Game Mechanics in the Enterprise and Good Management? We covered the emerging trend of gamification - the application of game mechanics outside of games - in November. A few enterprise vendors, such as Moxie and Rypple, are starting to incorporate elements of gamification into products.

Constellation Research analyst and co-founder R "Ray" Wang has identified five engagement factors for gamification in the enterprise: intrigue, reward, status, community and challenge. But aren't these common elements of a good workplace, with or without the idea of "gamification"? First of all - why apply gamification principles in the enterprise? Training Collaboration and knowledge sharing Customer loyalty programs Ad network optimization Virtual goods and currencies. I can see the applications for customer-facing programs, but how well will internal programs work out? Intrigue is obviously the hard part. When we covered gamification before we quoted Margaret Robertson: That problem being that gamification isn't gamification at all. Photo by andi.vs.zf. BranchOut Tries to “Gamify” Career Networking on Facebook: Tech News and Analysis « I recently pegged LinkedIn as a social media company to watch in 2011, but a (relatively) new kid in town, BranchOut, is using social gaming tactics to take on the career-networking giant.

BranchOut’s app launched last summer, but CEO and founder Rick Marini told me that over the next week or so, the company plans to roll out game-like quizzes — and, later, badges and leaderboards — geared towards helping users further their careers. How? The service’s Connections feature enables users to connect to other Facebook users outside their network of friends. BranchOut targets three constituencies: career networkers, recruiters and sales professionals looking for leads. BranchOut soaks in and displays two degrees of Facebook friends (i.e., friends and their friends) and any company information they’ve posted. Marini figures he can leverage Facebook’s nearly 600 million users with their existing friends networks to gain ground against LinkedIn’s 85 million users. How Can We 'Gamify' the News Experience?

One of the biggest emerging conversations over the past year in Silicon Valley is around “gamification.” Simply put, this is the idea of applying game mechanics, particularly those found in videogames, to all sorts of non-game experiences. After following this conversation for many months, I’ve come to believe that over the next decade gamification will profoundly reshape the way we experience the web, to the same degree that social media and networks redefined the web last decade.

To that end, I’ve been thinking in the broadest terms what that could and should mean for how we can reinvent digital news. To carry this thinking forward, I’m announcing the launch of a new project: NewstopiaVille. The goal is to explore how game mechanics can be applied to reinvent the way we produce, consume and interact with news. Second, I want to build a prototype of a fully gamified news experience.

To be clear, all I have at this point is what I think is a big idea. About Gamification Virtual Goods. "Gamification": A Growing Business to Invigorate Stale Websites. Rajat Paharia is a new breed of business consultant. For a monthly fee he promises to invigorate stale websites by turning them into video games. Visitors become players. If they perform certain tasks, such as commenting on articles or e-mailing links to friends, they earn points or badges. Paharia's company, San Jose-based startup Bunchball, has performed more than 50 online makeovers for NBC (GE), Playboy, and other large websites.

"Our customers don't want to be game designers," says Paharia, 40. "They just want more page views. " Video game designers have spent the last few decades perfecting the art of making their products addictive. Bunchball, Badge-ville, and other game consultancies charge clients as much as $10,000 a month to bring game features to their sites. Online Loyalty It's a neat trick—if it lasts. Social status is another motivator. "Game Mechanics" The techniques behind gamification are known in the business as "game mechanics," and they're everywhere. With RewardVille, Zynga Will Pay You To Play Its Games. Jobs 2.0: Data-centric Jobs for Generation Y: Online Collaboration «

While some may say that Generation Y are slackers, I think they’re just waiting around for the next crop of interesting jobs. Well, good news, 20-somethings, the new fall line of jobs is here! You’ll note that most of these jobs center around one thing: data. Gen Y (which I prefer to call Gen A, for “Analysis”) will be the first generation entering the workforce that have the skills to apply measurement and analysis to everything. They’ve been counting calories on their iPhones, anxiously trying to raise their Klout scores and driving their follow counts on Twitter. Data is the new black. Content Monetization Manager (Department: Production) There are an incredible number of ways to monetize content coming onto the horizon. Webmaster 2.0 (Department: Marketing) Pretty much no one has the title of “Webmaster” any more. Amplification Manager (Department: Marketing) As social media evolves and expands, it also becomes more diluted. Employee Mechanics Designer (Department: HR)

Cubeduel Launches Social Game on… LinkedIn? If you haven’t yet played around with Cubeduel, do it now. It won’t make you any smarter, but it’s an oddly entertaining way to browse through your coworkers from years gone by in a hilarious, cage match format. Cubeduel is an unexpected opportunity to evaluate head to head match-ups that you just wouldn’t see in the wild. Who would I rather have worked with in that telecom job I had ten years ago: Ramu from accounting, or Nathalie from sales? Predictably, I had never really thought about that question before. Fun! Evaluate a certain number of duels and you get to see your own score, as well as those of your co-workers. All votes are anonymous, so participation, in theory, shouldn’t get you fired. But what I find most fascinating about Cubeduel is that it was built on the LinkedIn API. At this point, we don’t know. But let this be a gentle reminder to all of us entrepreneurs. Innovation can come in all shapes and sizes.

Food for thought. As websites become games, understand the trend with the Gamification Encyclopedia. Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world. SCVNGR Pulls in $15M for Real World Gaming Expansion: Tech News and Analysis « Social Gaming And Career Opportunity Platform Gild Hits 100K Users. Not motivated? Make a game of it - Page 4. Soyons sérieux, jouons! (5/5) : Le jeu est l’arme de la subversion. Soyons sérieux, jouons ! (4/5) : Le jeu est le futur du travail.