There is no human being on Earth who hasn’t experienced conflicting emotions inside themselves at least once in a while. And most of us experience them every day. Often in almost unrecognizable dimensions and situations and at times of the epic and intimidating scale.

The internal struggles

We doubt, criticize, and defend ourselves in our thoughts. We are fearing and courageous, if not simultaneously then often in close succession.

Each of us can find both of these two persons and more:

“One who would throw caution to the winds, another who would worry endlessly.” 

— Nora Roberts, Daring to Dream (Dream Trilogy Book 1)

Here is what a well-known American brain researcher, Jill Bolte Taylor, who experienced a stroke and shared her experiences shortly before, during, and afterward in her acclaimed book My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, wrote in this respect:

“It appears that many of us struggle regularly with polar opposite characters holding court inside our heads. In fact, just about everyone I speak with is keenly aware that they have conflicting parts of their personality.” 

— Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

And a little later in the same paragraph, she wrote,

“Many of us speak about how our head (left hemisphere) is telling us to do one thing while our heart (right hemisphere) is telling us to do the exact opposite. Some of us distinguish between what we think (left hemisphere) and what we feel (right hemisphere).”

Before reading the quote above for the first time, I often thought about how far apart these conflicting parts are situated inside of me. Ultimately, my heart is around the center of my body, and my head is on top of it. But reading this made me aware that the same entity of myself generated my thoughts and emotions.

Whatever side and color these thoughts and emotions took — ambitious or cautious, joyous or skeptical, optimistic or pessimistic, enthusiastic or procrastinating, pressing on the gas pedal or pulling on the brakes — they were communicated or set off in the same space inside me, my brain.

“Brainy Olympic Games”

The above epiphany was very inspiring and enlightening. I discovered the quotes above in the first couple of years of turning my life into fun games. That was when I realized that by designing and playing my self-motivational games, I was organizing something I started thinking of as the “brainy Olympic Games.”

In my first self-motivational game, which I called the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, I pursued a project or activity of my choice (for me, it started with writing one of my books) for five minutes a day for a month and recorded my score after each game session.

Get the 5 Minute Perseverance Game on Amazon 

If I managed to write for at least five minutes on any given day, the enthusiastic and driving part of me got the point, and if I didn’t, the point went to my procrastinating self. If I did something, but in less than five minutes, these two parts of me shared a point. At the end of the month, I checked which part of me won that monthly round.

Competitive and collaborative games for ourselves

So you could say the ambitious part of me competed with the procrastinating one. That means the 5 Minute Perseverance Game, along with many other self-motivational games I created for myself, is a competitive game.

A competitive game is “[a] game with two or more players and a single winner.” — Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design is available on Amazon

It might seem that there is only one winner in this game, and there is. But none of my self-motivational games remain static. I adjust their design as my experience and preferences change, remembering that:

“the destiny of games is to become boring, not to be fun. Those of us who want games to be fun are fighting a losing battle against the human brain because fun is a process and routine is its destination.” — Raph Koster, Theory of Fun for Game Design

Theory of Fun for Game Design is available on Amazon

In the process of designing games for myself, I realized that this activity of turning my life into fun games is a game in itself with a specific gameplay loop involving awareness, moving one tiny, effortless step at a time, and taking and appreciating this step in fun, playful, and gameful ways.

So the designing activity in itself is a game too. And this game is a collaborative one:

In a cooperative game,

“[p]layers coordinate their actions to achieve a common win condition or conditions. Players all win or lose the game together.” — Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev, Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms

Building Blocks of Tabletop Games Design is available on Amazon

Takeaways

When we turn our lives into fun games, we adjust the design of whatever we are up to so that it feels like an exciting and enjoyable game. That is why I call the result of turning life into fun games a self-motivational game. The motivation is available on tap in the process of their gameplay and development.

We are both the designers and the players of these self-motivational games. We pay attention to our own emotions and adjust when something doesn’t or stops working in such a way that we want to engage and play again. Or we find or design a new game — be it one in a traditional sense or a real-life one — to engage in.

This partnership between the players and designers in ourselves is one of the best kinds of self-partnership there can be, and it turns the process of turning life into fun games into a collaborative game, in which all parts of us win.

Thus, the paradox of this collaborative and competitive duality of turning life into fun games doesn’t come from the fact that various parts of us both compete and collaborate in the games we create, but from the fact that there are no losers against the popular belief and self-doubt. We often consider ourselves losers, but we are not. We are winners, even when we don’t see it that way.

And this win-win situation becomes more than apparent when you become aware of your powers of being both your life’s player and designer.

The post The Collaborative-Competitive Paradox of Self-Gamification first appeared on Ludogogy.

Self-Gamification is the art of turning our own lives into fun games, of which we are both the designers and the players. It is the application of game design elements to our own lives. Self-Gamification is a self-help approach showing us how to be playful and gameful, but it is not only about games. It has three dimensions or tools for it to unfold and have the maximum outcome.

Here are the tools which Self-Gamification brings together.

First of all, it is anthropology.

“Anthropology is the study of the human species, from DNA to language.” — Cameron M. Smith, Anthropology For Dummies

So, you study whatever is inside and outside you non-judgmentally as anthropologists do when they study a fascinating, for them, culture. Thus, you observe all the dynamics that happen in front of you (your thought processes, the world around you, and your feelings and reactions towards it). And you observe it with curiosity and interest, but without judging, validating what you see, or comparing it to what you already know.

Then you apply kaizen, which is both a philosophy and strategy to break anything you want to achieve or any challenge you need to face into small bits and process them that way, one small “bite” at a time. So, all while being utterly aware, you identify the smallest step you can take toward your dreams or the smallest bit of the challenge you are facing that you can solve with what you have available here and now.

And finally, you tap into gamification and all things gameful and playful. You identify how you can take that little step and appreciate it in a fun way.

And then you repeat—especially any time you need help.

These three tools work amazingly together. They come together into one strong synergy because they build upon each other as well as complement and support each other.

I consider Self-Gamification as one of those ultimate and utterly useful tools, which embraces three skill-sets, just like a simple Swiss Army Knife that can help to cut, open a can, and to repair something with an in-built screw-driver, for example.

Isn’t it amazing to know that we always have available a universal tool to turn any challenge, any task, however big or daunting into a fun game? I tested this theory, and this tool many times, and it became a practice. Even before I formulated this approach, and I test it today again and again. Both because I enjoy it, and also to find out what else is possible without pressure or effort, and instead with fun and pleasure. Even, or especially, in times of crisis.

The Core Gameplay Loops in Self-Gamification

When describing my background in terms of gamification, I often say that I am a non-gamer, in other words, one of those who play games, and especially video games, very occasionally and prefer spending their free time doing activities other than games. And after turning my life into games continuously for several years now, I am still a non-gamer in the traditional sense of games.

But I don’t seem to be able, or willing, to stop turning my life into fun, for me, games. On the contrary, I find myself to design and play my self-motivational games more and more, both in times of joy and those of being upset.

I contemplated why that could be so and even gave interviews on that, but recently I discovered a game mechanic, which could explain why I am so engulfed into turning my life into fun games.

A note to game and gamification designers: This core mechanic of games will be well-known to you, but please bear with me and in mind that I am a non-gamer playing a role-playing game of an anthropologist studying among other this fantastic and still very fresh and new for me game design and play cultures.

Thus, the discovery of this core mechanic, which I made during the revision process of the little book I wrote recently during the lockdown 2020 period and which I call Gameful Isolation (https://www.victoriaichizlibartels.com/gameful-isolation/), was a eureka moment for me.

Here is this game mechanic:

“At the heart of your game’s design, there are core mechanics, and the core gameplay loop. In short, it’s the main activities that structure the entire design and the players engage into repeatedly, in a looping sequence. It’s part of the essence of the game, something you cannot remove without fundamentally altering the experience.”

“In the original Mario, this would be walking, running and jumping. The various enemies, bosses, and environments stem from the core mechanics. They are here to surprise the player, challenge his skills and keep the experience fresh. In other words: to exploit the core loop to its fullest, and add extra depth to the experience.” — Game Analytics (https://gameanalytics.com/blog/how-to-perfect-your-games-core-loop.html)

After learning about the core game (or gameplay) loops, I realized that Self-Gamification, and thus also each challenge, project, or activity turned into a self-motivational game, has a specific core gameplay loop too.

In fact, it has two. These two loops are closely related to the three approaches, which Self-Gamification brings together into one strong synergy.

Here is the main Self-Gamification loop:

1. Become aware (assess) —> play the “Anthropology of Now Game”;
2. Take the small step —> play the “Kaizen Game”;
3. Appreciate (celebrate) it —> play the “Appreciation Game.”

And the first step of awareness, or the “Anthropology of Now Game,” has a gameplay loop of its own:

1. Become aware of your starting point: your circumstances at this moment, how you feel, and the state of your mind.
2. Remind yourself of your goals and dreams for each task. What is the win-state there?
3. Identify the smallest and most effortless step that will take you onto the path from your starting point closer towards the goal of your challenge, project, or activity “game.”
4. Recognize at any given moment the fun ways or elements to take and appreciate both small steps (that bring you experience points, for example), the intermediate goals (the levels in your games), and reaching the goal (the win-state).

The fact that each of our lives is so surprising and multi-dimensional let me “exploit the core loop to its fullest, and add extra depth to the experience” of Self-Gamification naturally, without me needing to force anything.

The only thing I need to do is to be willing to see what is in front of me as a game and actually play those games, including the design and appreciation “games.”

P.S. To find out more about the Gameful Isolation project, where you can access a video series for each of the chapters of the future book, visit the Gameful Isolation page

The post Self-Gamification and the Core Gameplay Loops first appeared on Ludogogy.

Please note that this list is not exhaustive.

1. Projects are the building blocks of our professional and personal lives. To live joyfully, we also need a joyful approach to our projects. And if fun is a great tool for motivation and success, where would be the best place to look for it? Games, of course! The main reason people spend time playing games is that they make us happy and are supposed to be fun. So why not turn anything we want or have to do into fun and engaging games?
2. Drama falls away in games. If we look at what we want or have to do as a game, then the stakes are not that high, are they? It’s just a game, isn’t it?
3. We are less critical of ourselves in games. In a computer game we don’t dwell on the fact that we just bumped our car into a wall. Instead, we notice what happened, reverse, turn the car around, and move on. We can do the same in our real-life “games” (including projects and project management activities).
4. We are less afraid of failure in games. In fact, failures in games are often not considered as such, but as steps on the way to winning. Which is especially true for game design. Discarded game designs are rarely regarded as failures. They are scarcely analyzed for why they “failed” at all. They are just steps on the natural progression towards the successful design.
5. When you see and treat whatever you are up to as a game, you can better deal with fear and anxiety. Self-Gamification and its three components can help you to address and bypass fear and anxiety, which are as present in project management as any other activity in which we want to succeed. The more we want to succeed, the bigger the fear, of both failing and succeeding, as well as what people might say in either of these scenarios. But if what we do is just a game, then the fear diminishes considerably, and we are more willing to try again or try something new.
6. In games, you don’t stay upset for too long. If you do, then you stop playing the game. To continue playing, you need to put your upset aside and focus your attention on the next move in the game. Or to another game. Imagine how much easier real-life projects can become if you proceed with them in the same way. In real-life projects, you can do the same: acknowledge the upset and move on.
7. When you no longer spend so much time on upsets and complaints, you save an enormous amount of time. I observed this consistently in many projects I turned into games. What happens then is that the projects or tasks are completed with much less effort than anticipated, and often before the deadline (or at least on time). So you also save money in the process. And thanks to the great atmosphere in the project, and better results than expected, you might even get referrals, not only from your customer, but from your customer’s customers too — all as a result of awareness, small steps, and gamefulness.
8. When we see and treat our projects like games (which we both design and play), then we can stop seeing the challenges the project poses as a hardship, but rather as something fun, to be addressed with curiosity and creativity.
9. You might even become curious about something you previously resented. You might find you are suddenly eager to start work on the project now, just like you couldn’t wait to try out a new (or old but newly rediscovered) toy or game when you were younger.
10. As a game designer, you feel in control; you can be that in project management too. Because as the designer of your projects and project management games, you can adjust one or both of the following: the way you approach them, and the way you record your progress.

11. Game designers are utterly resourceful. And you can be that too, in an instant, if you become aware that you are both the designer (or co-designer) and player (co-player) of your project games. If you consider anything you do as a game, of which you are the designer and the player, then you immediately become resourceful on how to adjust the flow of your work so that it becomes fun for you and all involved. With gameful practice, resourcefulness becomes effortless and extremely fun.
12. Empathy is more natural in games, and we judge our partners in games less than partners and customers in projects.

13. Turning your life into games allows you to treat yourself as your best (customer) player and at the same time, your favorite game designer, to whom you gladly give your feedback to make your favorite games even better. And when you treat yourself like that, you will also treat others with kindness more consistently, and vice versa, since people tend to mirror our behavior toward them.
14. Gameful Project Management (i.e., turning project management into games) enables low-budget, effortless, enlightening, and fun optimization of all facets of your project management. You might frown at this sentence, but this is precisely how the management of your projects and your time can become when you turn them into exciting games and treat yourself as if you were both the designer and the player of your project management games.
15. Turning project management into games will not require you to buy a new software system or hire new personnel. Instead, you can concentrate on improving your project management activities with what you already have at your disposal, and with little additional effort. With a self-gamified attitude to project management, you will become aware of what you need for your work (and even life in general) and make conscious decisions on what to do next. You will also acquire gameful resourcefulness and motivation in any situation, including tight deadlines when increased motivation is hard to achieve but often needed.
16. Games and game design are an endless well of creative solutions for project management. “The design and production of games involves aspects of cognitive psychology, computer science, environmental design, and storytelling, just to name a few. To really understand what games are, you need to see them from all these points of view.” — Will Wright in the foreword to Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. So why not tap into such a multidimensional and fun discipline for inspiration?
17. Since games are fun and contain elements that contribute to our happiness, why not approach all our projects and activities in such a way that they become fun, engaging, and entertaining for us, in the same way that games do? If we use fun as the goal, compass, and measuring tool in our projects, along with awareness and progress in small steps, then quality, excellence, success, improvement, productivity, efficiency, and all the other criteria of a successful project and business will come naturally as by-products.
18. Any project is already a game; we just don’t always see them that way. Just consider this quote by Jane McGonigal, which I already quoted in my first article in Ludogogy  and which is worth quoting again and again: “What defines a game are the goal, the rules, the feedback system, and voluntary participation. Everything else is an effort to reinforce and enhance these four core components.” — Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken. See the following five reasons considering various aspects of these four core components in games and real-life projects.

19. When you view what you are doing as a game, you are less likely to forget what the goal is. The goal is always clear and visible in a game. In a real-life project, we often get lost in complaints and forget why we started doing something in the first place.
20. Beyond that, we are more willing to follow the rules in a game and to practice it to become better at it.
21. In games, we don’t resent having to record or document our progress: in fact, we love it. Because, with each move of our figurine on a leaderboard, we get closer to winning the game. If you despise writing reports or creating and updating checklists, project (or business) plans, road-maps, and others, then seeing them as your project game feedback system can help. And then modifying these in a fun and creative way will help you put your resentment aside with almost no effort.
22. We are less reluctant to start playing a game than we are to say “yes” to a real-life project.

It is much easier to be present and give our best in games. If we enjoy a game we don’t try to get it over with. And if we don’t have fun playing it, we either leave it for another game (or something else), or modify the design so that we do enjoy it.

The post What playing games and turning life into games can teach us? first appeared on Ludogogy.

Gamification, for example, taps into games with the purpose of positively influence various parameters of the environment it has been implemented to.

Serious games are created for education, awareness increase of often vital topics, solving challenges that otherwise were not solved, and other higher purposes.

And Self-Gamification is turning our projects, activities, and our whole lives into fun games, of which we are both the designers and the players.

But why is that? What motivates us to call games for help to increase the quality of experience in other areas of our lives?

Before I answer, I need to mention that the term I am going to use as the answer has been seen as controversial in the gamification and also game design community, because it is hard or often impossible to detect or measure in other people.

And I am aware that this position might open a heated discussion.

But here it is.

I think the biggest reason for so many people to go to games as inspiration is the experience of FUN.

When talking about fun, I love quoting Heidi Klum, a German-American supermodel and television personality, who had been one of the four judges on America’s Got Talent (AGT) for many years.

After the results show of the AGT 2017 finals, a reporter asked Heidi what advice she would give to the winner, Darcy Lynn, a twelve-year-old ventriloquist. Without hesitating, Heidi answered,

“Always to have fun. If you don’t have fun, it shows in your performance. That is always the key number one.”

I can’t stop wondering why fun is often forgotten and underestimated, although it is truly one of the prerequisites and indicators for success — both having and not having fun, show.

It is especially visible in the entertainment industry. But also, in other areas, including the most technical and business ones, the experience of fun sets you on the path toward success. Many quotes in both business and self-help literature confirm this.

“Fun is an extraordinarily valuable tool to address serious business pursuits like marketing, productivity enhancement, innovation, customer engagement, human resources, and sustainability.” — Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter, For the Win

Here is another brilliant thought about fun, which I already quoted earlier, but which is worth remembering every once in a while. It is one of my favourite quotes by my favourite authors on living in the moment, Ariel and Shya Kane:

“We have come to realize if we are not having fun, we are moving in the wrong direction.”

But how to find this “right” direction? What is fun anyway?

Fun is a complex term made up of just three letters.

What is fun for us might not be fun for someone else. What we find fun is not only subjective to various persons but even to the same person in different circumstances. We might enjoy playing a game one day and not so much on another.

But there is a great thing about fun. However difficult it is to define in words (I counted, for example, more than ten definitions of fun in just a few chapters of the acclaimed book Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster), we all know what it feels like for us.

Fun can show in different ways. One time while we have fun and enjoy something, we might laugh, and at other times, while fully engaged in a video game or fantasy novel, we might frown and appear quite tense. But we are still having fun!

There is another excellent feature of fun. You can discover it anywhere and in anything. Even in those activities, you initially claim not to be fun.

We can discover fun when we give that project or activity a chance, approach it with curiosity and without prejudice while being open to recognizing the fun factors in there, or we can bring fun elements into the project deliberately. Or all of these together.

How can we do this?

Curiosity and passion can help us here. I call them the siblings of fun in this inspirational trio, one preceding and the other succeeding the birth of fun in each moment. These triplets helped us, humans, to choose and pave previously unfathomable paths.

Here is one of my favourite stories on how curiosity leads to passion and fantastic success:

“I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling. I had nothing to do, so I start figuring out the motion of the rotating plate. I discovered that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate—two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! I went on to work out equations for wobbles. Then I thought about how the electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there’s the Dirac equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it… the whole business that I got the Nobel prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.”

— Richard P. Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Fun has also led me to initially unexpected but utterly rewarding places. I wouldn’t have become an author if I hadn’t let myself “taste” writing out of curiosity, and let myself follow what felt healing, rewarding, rejuvenating, but most of all, fun for me. I have tried various art forms in my life, including singing, playing guitar, painting, making jewellery, and decorations. But it was writing that turned out to be the best way to express myself.

Through all those experiences, I discovered that fun equalled wholehearted and rewarding engagement. And that is precisely what defines successful projects and those involved in them. The latter are wholeheartedly engaged, and experience this engagement as utterly satisfying.

But where does fun bring us? What is the ultimate goal of bringing game design and other fun elements into other areas of our lives?

I think this definition of games by Yu-kai Chou gives a clue:

“Games have no other purpose than to please the humans playing them. Yes, there are often ‘objectives’ in games, such as killing a dragon or saving the princess. But those are all excuses to simply keep the player happily entertained inside the system, further engaging them enough to stay committed to the game.”

— Yu-kai Chou, Actionable Gamification

This happy entertainment is what ultimately drives us when we bring fun elements into whatever area of our lives. It is no longer a secret that we humans carry our moods from one area of our lives to the other. So, some genius people in many centuries of the history of humanity recognized that not only the bad mood is infectious, but the positive and gameful mood too.

So, what we all in the gameful and playful industries are doing is not only to make other areas of life successful but also entertaining and fun.

[A note: This article contains original content mixed with parts for three books on Self-Gamification: Self-Gamification Happiness Formula, Gameful Project Management, and The Who, What, When, Where, Why & How of Turning Life into Fun Games.]

The post What motivates us when we turn something into games? first appeared on Ludogogy.

“Work is actually very similar to play and even more like games. The main difference is perception.”

I agree with that whole-heartedly. In fact, if we look closer, we will notice that projects, especially those at work, and games have the same components. The following revealing definition of game components by Jane McGonigal in her book Reality Is Broken is known to many:

“What defines a game are the goal, the rules, the feedback system, and voluntary participation. Everything else is an effort to reinforce and enhance these four core components.”

— Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken

I am a business owner, so after reading this, I could immediately see parallels between the projects I was working on for my customers, and games. A contract or an agreement, which my customer and I both sign, contains all four of these components. Each project has a goal, there are specific rules, like how I shall do it and by when. There are reporting and evaluation systems in each contract, which is indeed a feedback system even if the progress is not recorded by getting points or badges. And finally, when my client and I sign the contract and make an agreement, we both demonstrate the free will to participate in that project’s “game.”

The same applies to job contracts which lead to your job “games,” with their goals, rules, feedback system (the regular meetings you most likely have with your boss, before or after which you and your employer provide some kind of evaluation of each other), and both sides demonstrating the voluntary participation by signing the employment contract.

So, any project (or task in that project) is already a game. We just rarely see them that way.

Why do we need to see and treat what we do as games? If we don’t want to see, call, and embrace what we are up to as games, then we won’t be able to “play” them and enjoy them in a similar way to games. Only when we become open to seeing our projects as games, can we identify how we can modify their design to make our “project games” exciting and fun.

The post To Play at Work, See What You Do as a Game first appeared on Ludogogy.