Game Design: 8 kinds of fun A game is a set of rules that determines what the players involved can and can not do. So how to you make a set of rules into something that is "fun"? This is what all game designer and makers should ask themselves. Yours truly, back in 2011 was a computer science/ digital media student and came across the theory of "fun" which hopes to address the above question. There is also a video of the lecturer explaining the 8 kinds of fun at the end of the tutorial. The following is a breakdown with examples but more stuff relating to game design can be found at XEODesign Our Story XEODesign (pronounced zee-oh-design) is an award-winning firm that helps organizations increase engagement with play. We identify ways to increase engagement by eliminating factors that prevent play, and we uncover new opportunities for creating experiences based on what players like the most about games. We envision new game-inspired products and services, and we design the player behaviors, game mechanics, and emotions that make them work best. We help our clients innovate and attract new markets through revealing player's hidden motivations and catalyze their team's creativity. Our continuing research on why we play games helps us unearth new methods for increasing engagement with play.
Game Studies - Novices, Gamers, and Scholars: Exploring the Challenges of Teaching About Games by José P. Zagal, Amy Bruckman Abstract Teaching about games should be easy. After all, students enjoy engaging with course content and have extensive personal experience with videogames. In reality, games education is surprisingly complex. Why Behavior Change Apps Fail To Change Behavior Editor’s Note: Nir Eyal writes about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com. Follow him @nireyal. Imagine walking into a busy mall when someone approaches you with an open hand. “Would you have some coins to take the bus, please?”
Badges What is a Badge? badge [baj]: a special or distinctive mark, token, or device worn as a sign of allegiance, membership, authority, achievement, etc. (Source: Dictionary.com) A badge is a symbol or indicator of an accomplishment, skill, quality or interest. From the Boy and Girl Scouts, to PADI diving instruction, to the more recently popular geo-location game, Foursquare, badges have been successfully used to set goals, motivate behaviors, represent achievements and communicate success in many contexts.
Gaming's most important evolutions Tempting as it might be to imagine that history just plods along on a linear course, with great advancements magically popping into being at their appointed times, the reality is that it always takes a single, bright spark of an idea to get the wheels of progress moving – mainly by convincing others to steal said idea and improve it. It’s the same with videogames; look at their history as a whole, and it looks like one long, unbroken chain of gradual evolution. Look closer, however, and you’ll see that every last one of the useful features we take for granted today had its origin in one single, (sometimes) brilliant trailblazer that pioneered a new idea and made it appealing for everyone else.
Flow, Player Journey and Employee Satisfaction - Andrzej's Blog What follows is an exploration of what happens when you start to map player journeys in games onto Flow theory and then try to bring that into the workplace. Just for fun! It was inspired by Mr Scott Golas after seeing last weeks post on relatedness. A Checklist for Evaluating Gamification Platforms Conventional wisdom has it that sales people love competition. They want a challenge, beat their friends and colleagues, and be on top of the leaderboard. And sales managers constantly use carrots and competition, because this is what “motivates" sales agents. But is this true?
Game Studies - Issue 1102, 2011 Interactivity, Inhabitation and Pragmatist Aesthetics by Phillip D. Deen Pragmatist philosophy of art provides an account of aesthetic experience particularly suited to the transactive and immersive qualities of video games and superior to spectatorial and institutional alternatives. How a Tweet Turned Into the Best New Multiplayer Game in Years Josh Valcarcel/WIRED Screenshot: Other Ocean Interactive One of the weirdest, coolest, most hyped multiplayer games in years is here, and it started with a tweet: “Contemplating building a game entirely with friends on twitter/fb.
Gamification Platform Matrix Conventional wisdom has it that sales people love competition. They want a challenge, beat their friends and colleagues, and be on top of the leaderboard. And sales managers constantly use carrots and competition, because this is what “motivates" sales agents. GameFlow Although player enjoyment is central to computer games, there is currently no accepted model of player enjoyment in games. There are many heuristics in the literature, based on elements such as the game interface, mechanics, gameplay, and narrative. However, there is a need to integrate these heuristics into a validated model that can be used to design, evaluate, and understand enjoyment in games. We have drawn together the various heuristics into a concise model of enjoyment in games that is structured by flow. Flow, a widely accepted model of enjoyment, includes eight elements that, we found, encompass the various heuristics from the literature.
Real-Life Skills We Learn From Gaming “Video games are a waste of time”. If you’re a gamer, you’ve probably heard this sentence many times throughout your life, often from a partner who’s upset they’re not getting enough attention. Of course, this isn’t the only instance where one might hear the phrase. Parents, teachers, and just non-gamers in general are fond of belittling our favorite pastime.