Next week, September 15-16, is the Gamification Summit here in New York City. There look to be at least 4 solid talks categorized as “design intensive,” including Gamification by Design, Designing for User Motivation, and especially The Science of Gamification with Lithium’s Michael Wu. In preparation for this event, I decided to check all my bookmarks for articles and presentations that I have found most useful in wrapping my head around this topic. I hope you find them useful as well.
Article in Gaming Business Review
Slideshare & article by Margaret Wallace
The goal of game dynamics is to drive a user-desired behavior predictably. Therefore we must understand how humans behave, in order to understand game dynamics. And to do this, I’d like to take a psychologist’s perspective and try to understand human behavior though psychological models and frameworks. There are many such models, and they are useful in different contexts, so the criteria for choosing a model/framework should be whether it can give you the understanding you need to address your problem.
Whether you view him as towering, trendy, or trivial, 22-year-old Seth Priebatschgot people talking after his March 12 SXSW keynote, “The Game Layer on Top of the World.” Priebatsch heralds our nascent decade as the flash point for games and social influence, whereas the last decade brought us the structure and connectivity of all things social.
GoogleTalks Video: Gabe Zichermann
Game mechanics and game dynamics are able to positively influence human behavior because they are designed to drive the players above the activation threshold (i.e. the upper right of the ability-motivation axis), and then trigger them into specific actions. In other words, successful gamification is all about making these three factors occur at the same time. As I mentioned last time, the temporal convergence is the key.
When designing game-based applications for a general US population, it may be of interest to examine the frequency of personalities in order to target the broadest reaching gamification strategies. Many personality models are available for study and although each have their own criticisms in scientific approach, it is interesting to look at these reports as a starting basis for design.
Gamification is a hot topic. Missed it? On Google Trends it first appeared as a blip in late October 2010 and then took off in January so quickly that it appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition in March. Investors seem interested, and it already has a sold-out conference and a fast-growing list of agencies that will help you “do gamification.” You can even join a quest to become a gamification expert.
“Behavioral economics…has emerged as a discipline, bringing together economics and psychology to understand how social, cognitive, and emotional factors influence how people make decisions, both as individuals and at the market level.”
Slideshare Presentation: Amy Jo Kim
“Gamification” is a hot topic in the design community these days and it’s up to us, as designers, to turn it into an opportunity for the good. Check out my presentation on how to design for behavior change in healthcare for more details.
It’s time to get real on gamification. I’ve seen much written about gamification. About what it is, how it works, and how to use it. Gamification as a kind of social mechanism that can be readily imported into a new or existing service to liven it up. To enhance and augment interaction and engagement. To make things fun.
Slideshare Presentation: Amy Jo Kim
Not too long ago, the “G” word (for games) seemed to have a negative connotation in the corporate world. It was seen as a little too relaxed and irrelevant to business, so gaming was never really discussed in the business context. I suppose it was traditionally believed that if you are playing games then you are not working. However, as Dr. Stuart Brown so eloquently states in his TED talk, “play is not the opposite of work.” This is the foundation of gamification.
