This is edited highlights from a talk I gave in Bath last November. Mostly based on the Gamification and Gameful Design set of presentations that Sebastian Detterding, Rilla Khaled and I have done over 2011. The catchy soundtrack must have been put on in post-production.
Recent years have seen a rapid proliferation of mass-market consumer software that takes inspiration from video games. This is sometimes bundled up in the term ‘gamification’. However this word has become tightly intertwined with a specific flavour of instrumental marketing activity. In this talk I define what is meant by ‘gamification’ in a way that moves it on from this simple, surface, approach to a more engaged form of gameful design. In the process detailing some pre-history and current work that presents a sensitive and thoughtful approach to using games in everyday life.
It’s free and but they would like you to register.
The Innovation Centre
Carpenter House
Broad Quay
BA1 1UD Bath
United Kingdom
Friday, 28 October 2011 from 17:00 to 19:00
This started as a critique of the idea of player types in general and especially the mindless application of Bartle’s 4 types, especially in gamification.
This paper presents a brief history of the concept of player types starting with Bartles’s work on MUDs and continuing to more recent, empirical research. Player types are not a defined concept and any categorization of players or users needs to occur within the context of a particular application or domain. Play-personas are suggested as a useful tool that can be used to put player type research into practice as part of the design process of gamified systems.
The idea of rhythms and tempos is something that I think is very useful when applied to digital gaming, and gaming in general. Though I don’t have a lot of time to go into it now.
Attention has been paid to the mechanics, economics and business aspects of Social Network Games, however very little research has been carried out on the players themselves. Why and how do people play these games? The games themselves are designed for partial attention situations and as interstitials in the everyday, yet there isn’t any detailed research into the quotidian of social gaming. In this paper I describe de Certeau’s concepts of strategies and tactics, and Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis. These are useful, sensitizing positions with which to carry out ethnographic research into the context and situations of Social Network Game play.
Finally the extended abstract for the gamification workshop I helped run.
“Gamification” is an informal umbrella term for the use of video game elements in non-gaming systems to improve user experience (UX) and user engagement. The recent introduction of ‘gamified’ applications to large audiences promises new additions to the existing rich and diverse research on the heuristics, design patterns and dynamics of games and the positive UX they provide. However, what is lacking for a next step forward is the integration of this precise diversity of research endeavors. Therefore, this workshop brings together practitioners and researchers to develop a shared understanding of existing approaches and findings around the gamification of information systems, and identify key synergies, opportunities, and questions for future research.
Just did a little poking around the preview of the upcoming Gabe Zicherman (O’Reilly) book on Gamification. This bit sums up his whole attitude and approach really. Brutal and self-interested. The rest of the book appears to be just as medieval.
And that truism underlies the last basic lesson of games in the real world: No matter what the player thinks, the house will always win a well-designed game. Like any casino manager will tell you, while the illusion of winning is vital to motivating use and play, actually winning is much harder than it seems.
Broadly speaking, this has implications not only for players, but also for those of us charged with building and designing great user experiences. As markets gamify and consumer demand for fun, engaging and creative experience increases, you have a fundamental choice: either be the house, or get played.
Trust us, you want to be the former.
So are they in the business of making things fun or just playing you? And as with casinos, I’m just waiting for the Mob to move in on Gamification and Social Games. Oh wait they have.
I was just sent a link (thanks Ed) to this Pat Kane presentation about how the big society should/might maybe be a playground, but it is not. He’s channelling Sebastian Deterdings points about what separates gaming from mere pointification. Meaning, Mastery and Autonomy. He’s got a nice quote in there about play flourishing in the right mixture of risk and safety. It certainly doesn’t flourish in an atmosphere of risk and pain. Big Society Britain is about as playful as the Roman Arena. So I can fully agree with Pat’s final “Big Society: 50% right idea, 100% wrong time” comment. Spot on.
About the same time I saw a bit on Zocalo about applying game design to work. Basically responses to Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken. Most of them obviously hadn’t read the book and were talking from their own point of view, but Jesper Juul’s point is spot on. Games are abstractions, simplifications and simulations of real world situations. Applying them wholesale to different environments – work, companies, the Big Society, etc – loses the richness of the situations and creates black and white decisions where there need to be fuzzy, political, sensitive ones.
Also if we do end up creating effective systems for feedback and control that are ‘fun’ we have to think about what that ‘fun’ is. I always like the last of Marc LeBlancs eight types of fun. Submission – the aesthetic pleasure of a game as mindless pastime.
Two of the things that are on my radar at the moment are gamification and the construction of cool (as capital). I was just reading Margret Robertson’s post on Hide and Seek decrying the current business/design practice of gamification. Whilst I think she’s spot on, and entuirely agree with her, it does seem that there is a massive backlash against gamification. It is now cool to hate it.
This was really obvious between this year’s Playful and the one of two years ago. Two years ago we had the first flush of this new approach, I remember Iain Tait and Tom Armitage talking about things like points and high score tables. Although they weren’t the TV evangelist preachers of gamification that are currently touring the speaking circuit, they were hinting at the beast.
At his year’s PlayfulSebastian Deterding got the feeling of the room right and if gamification was somehow physically present in the room, we could have taken it outside and dispensed some rough, mob justice. All whilst half the baying crowd checked in to the lynching to make sure they were mayor.
Quotes
When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally. — Lao Tse