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.

Sometimes the best ideas are born when people start to think outside the box and conventional patterns swop places with extraordinary ways of thinking.

Unsurprisingly, companies try to get the very best out of their teams. Most of them use traditional team building workshops, aiming to solve problems with a positive experience. Yet, without the essential foundation for a successful team in place, the team lacks motivation to continue the process after the intervention. At Groundwork we saw an opportunity to approach this gap in a slightly different way to kick-start a team development process, a board game. Whilst including work on the development of core competencies, we aimed at a focus on learning, creating a safe space and facilitating the drive to develop as a team also beyond the actual game. We went for a board game because we wanted the players to sit around a table and have direct and personal interactions, which present an essential element for every team for their effectiveness and success.

Gathering inspiration by several studies (a.o. Kolb & Kolb 2012; Bober 2010; Mekler, Brühlmann, Tuch & Opwis 2017) that substantiate the motivation generated through gamification and serious play, our aim was to create a business learning game which motivates the team to discover, explore and develop key skills for highly successful teams. All whilst maintaining a playful and fun way and ensuring relevance for their everyday work. The core skills, which are based on a theoretical framework by Daniel Coyle (2018) and adapted by Groundwork, are: establish purpose, create belonging, share vulnerability, stimulate creativity and build safety. The result is called “Lord McGroundwork’s Teamcastle”, created by Thomas Lahnthaler and Thomas Kayer of Groundwork.

One of the key recurring topics during the development of the game was how to capture the interest and motivation of any team playing the game. We focused on some key areas:

Context. Part of the secret to engagement lies in the context we created and how the different elements play together. When the team enters the world of “Lord McGroundwork’s Team Castle”, based in the highlands of Scotland by an enigmatic lake, the players are tasked to get to the top of the castle in order to release the team spirit. They will be captured for around four hours, forgetting their smartphones and the real world around them. Guided by “a butler”, who represents the mysterious Lord McGroundwork, a group of four to six players will be confronted with multiple exciting short challenges, demanding leadership from everyone. Working their way through five different rooms of the castle, each representing one of the five essential skills, will help your team to become the best version of itself.

“I was a bit skeptical about the idea of a board game for team development, but I have never done anything where I learned more about myself and our team. And it was so much fun!” Creative designer, PR-Company

Incentives. The tasks are all designed with a little narrative that relate to the context the team is in, the world of the McGroundworks. The short challenges, whose difficulties is determined by the team leader of each round, and the immediate rewards when successfully completed accompanied by short messages from Lord McGroundwork himself play into different psychological phenomena creating the urge and motivation to want to play the next challenge.

Individual vs. collective. Simultaneously to the team discovering and reflecting the skills in the different rooms, they are also playing as individuals and can win by being the most successful leader. This dual motivation presents an interesting twist and point of reflection for what motivates the individual players. The key detail is that you can only be successful as a leader if your team is successful, which requires strategic thinking by each player. In order to avoid conflict, the team members decide on the price for the winner beforehand, while the team reward is presented by “the butler”.

Game dynamics. The process to develop this game was at least as exciting as watching it being played and seeing the effect it has. Before the game had its current shape, format, rules and content, we tested repeatedly and integrated feedback to refine the game dynamics and the technical elements to ensure that the participants do not lose interest or motivation at any state, and if this happens, the game provides a way to get them back into play smoothly.

This business learning game will take you out of your comfort zone and subsequently force you to reflect on your way of thinking and behaving, individually and collectively. At the end, after releasing the team spirit on the top of the castle, the team gets the opportunity to transfer new learnings about the core skills into their daily work and everyday life through a facilitated reflection by “the butler”.

“The potential of this game is limitless, we played four hours and time just flew by. Can’t wait to play again and take away even more from it.” Team leader, IT-company

This game-based solution provides a perfect, safe and motivational kick-off to a team development process. The combination of learning a new theoretical framework, become closer as a team and reflect over in which ways the team can work more effectively together presents a great foundation for the next steps in order to grow and continuously develop. It opens their minds for team development as a long-term process and finally establish purpose, create belonging, share vulnerability, stimulate creativity and build safety.

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People who are into games and gamification often get excited about it. Yu-Kai Chou, Andrzej Marczewski and Jane McGonigal have all spoken about their passion for games and gamification, and how they feel play can change the world. If you share that passion even a little, and try to make work and life more playful for others, sooner or later you’ll come up against the objection:

“But some people don’t like games.”

This objection throws some powerful curveballs for game-designer enthusiasm to field. Are we failing dissenters or even being unethical by forcing them to play? Are we faced with sidelining them and having to deal with the impacts of their non-engagement? Should we give up the idea of introducing gamelike structures into work and life when we come up against this?

My simple answer to all of these is: no, so long as we do it right.

The right way to get objectors onboard

On the idea of forcing, things are simple: don’t, if at all possible. Many, including Mollick (2014[1]) have shown that ‘mandatory fun’ and forced participation at work decrease motivation, performance and learning. Many definitions of games and gamification (e.g. Suits, 1978[2]) include the idea that participation must be optional. If you don’t choose to play, you’re fulfilling a task, not playing.

But the human motivational triggers that games and gamifications tap into are deeper than games, and predate them. We can tap into them via games and gamification, so long as we can get people to engage voluntarily. We can do this in two ways:

• Design the experience so it takes account of their issues
• Handle objections and ‘sell’ participation

In gamification as opposed to actual games, we have a very specific version of the design solution that’s appealing: we can gamify so subtly and with such a light touch that people don’t feel they’re playing a game. As, in fact, they aren’t. But here we should tread carefully in case we seem manipulative.

Beyond that, both responses should be based on the specifics of the game or gamification, and the specifics of the objection. If we take the objection at face value and fail to get to the reason behind it, we don’t stand much chance of addressing the issue.

So the first step should probably be to do the work to find out why our audience might not like games. We can do this by asking directly or through research in any discovery/scoping phase (the ‘empathy’ phase in design thinking). Although of course we could also just try to design to address as many of these as possible.

Design solutions

I’ve identified seven basic categories of objection, based on my own experience and research. Here are a few ideas for each:

‘Don’t like competition’

• De-emphasise competition
• De-emphasise or avoid points, badges and leaderboards
• Include collaborative elements
• Include activities and actions separate to any competitive element

‘Feel exposed playing’

• Include solo play elements and options
• Reduce actions requiring exposure
• Ensure individuals can contribute to a team without exposure if they choose

‘Don’t see the point’

• Make the link between play and real-world analogy/effects as explicit as possible
• Frame the game/activity carefully to showcase the point
• Make sure rules and instructions emphasise the point

‘Games aren’t serious’

• Make the setting and elements realistic and serious
• Frame the game/activity carefully to showcase its link to real-world situations
• Build in elements that are used in non-game settings, e.g. feedback and review

‘I’m not good at them’

• Design the experience so that there is something for people of all skill levels
• Include elements of luck
• De-emphasise the importance of the outcome, e.g. instead focusing on learning

‘Demands too much focus’

• Limit periods of intense focus
• Limit overall game time
• Include plenty of variety and changing activities
• If possible, make it consumable in small chunks at times of their choice
• Make it more relaxed and social

‘Too complex’

• Make the game simple
• Reduce the number of rules
• Design a tutorial phase

Objection handling solutions

When it comes to attempts to handle objections around game-playing, a trick borrowed from sales techniques is probably a good start: begin by acknowledging and exploring the objection, rather than dismissing it. It’s perfectly okay to not want to play games. Can they help you understand why? And, based on their answer, you can try to explain how they may find value in this experience anyway.

For example, you could:

• Explain that the game isn’t really about the factor they’re concerned with (e.g. winning/losing)
• Explain the other outcomes and positives they’ll get even if the thing they dislike is present
• Explain how the game is designed to marginalise or eliminate the factor they’re worried about
• Suggest ways to approach the game that minimise the issue
• Explain how, even though games aren’t real, the lessons and skills they help us develop can be applied to real situations
• Coach them through their learning curve to address issues
• Explain how respected and serious organisations such as Google and the armed forces use games
• Explain how this game is different from others they’ve played

Helping the reality combat the idea

For many objectors, it’s not your game that’s the problem, it’s a generalised idea of games, based on bad experiences they had with a specific game, game category or situation (e.g. who they played with). If you’ve designed a game or experience well, it will almost certainly be different from those experiences, and they may well see that, from inside the experience. You just need to make it welcoming enough to convince them to step inside.

The post “But some people don’t like games” first appeared on Ludogogy.

But as we grow and mature, it becomes less ‘acceptable’ to spend time ‘playing’.  We are expected to ‘take things seriously’.  And, as many of us who work in organisational learning settings know, it can be extremely hard, sometimes, to sell in the idea that games can be ‘serious’ and can facilitate learning in mission-critical areas like Strategy, Leadership and Change.

And yet what could be more ‘serious’ or mission-critical than learning to walk, or speak (or hunt food, or fight)?  What is it that leads many to accept that something is a (potentially the) most effective way of learning for an organism, but suddenly – simply because that same organism has aged, becomes not only ineffective, but something viewed with disdain – characterised as ‘wasting time playing with children’s toys’ or similar?

‘Play’ comes to be seen as the polar opposite of ‘work’ – and along with that comes the idea that each can be done, but at specific, and different times.  This implies that many of the characteristics of ‘work’ cannot be shared with play.  Work doesn’t need to be, or maybe even shouldn’t be, ‘fun’. Work is something we are compelled to do. Play is what we choose. Work is acting under instruction or some other external influence. Play is self-directed (a consequence of choosing to do it). The logical extension of those beliefs when applied to workplace learning, is that learning should be like our work – that is, an obligation that is not fun, and that what and how we learn is prescribed by someone else.

In contrast to these (somewhat depressing) beliefs, if anything, there is a case to be made that games are even better at facilitating learning in adults than they are for children – games being more structured than the ‘play’ through which young children learn – but that is the subject of a whole different article.

Knowles principles and assumptions of Andragogy are widely used when designing learning for adults, as opposed to Pedagogy – learning for children.

Much of Knowles work is concerned with adults’ motivation to learn.  Indeed, his theory of adult learning can be stated in terms of six assumptions relating directly to engagement and motivation.

• Adults need to know the reason for learning something.
• The learning needs to have immediate relevance to their work or personal lives.
• Adults respond better to internal rather than external motivators.
• Adults require autonomy in their learning, needing to be responsible for their own decisions, including in planning and evaluation of learning.
• Experience, including errors should be the basis of learning activity.
• Learning is problem-centred rather than content-centred.

Of these, the last three are particularly well satisfied by learning which is based in games or play. Games, other than games of pure chance, are engines which allow players to progress autonomously through a  decision -> action -> feedback loop. Games are mechanisms for creating experiences, and those experiences focus on solving a problem (to reach the next ‘win-state’) to progress.

A really important point made in “The Art of Game Design – A Book of Lenses” by Jesse Schell, is that the ultimate goal of a games designer is not to create games but to use games to create experiences.

This means that the disciplines of games design and learning design for adults are extremely congruent in their aims.  The experiences which the learning game designer must create should bring about a change in knowledge, skill or attitude (a simple but sufficient definition of learning).

Games, simulations and other kinds of playful design, are, fundamentally structures made of ‘mechanics’, rules or even mathematical models. But games with very similar structures can offer very different experiences, because those structures can easily be ‘dressed’ in different ‘aesthetics’ and themes and stories.  As an example, Cluedo (Clue in the US and elsewhere) is a hidden information game, and so is Battleships, but one is ‘about’ a murder in a stately home, and the other, naval warfare.

This ability to attach story, theme and purpose, to an underlying structure helps us to satisfy the first three assumptions in the list above, and also (if well designed) can be a large part of what makes playing ‘fun’ – a great motivator to continue to play.

So, if as learning designers, or clients of learning designers, we are happy to accept that Knowles gives us appropriate guidance in how to design effective learning for adults, we should also be happy that games provide us with one very effective route to do that.  This should be regardless of how ‘serious’ the application.

As mentioned above, it is sometimes difficult to convince a client that activities, which may elicit ‘fun’, can, in any way, be compatible with what they want to achieve in a ‘work’ setting, but this shows a misunderstanding of what ‘fun’ is.  It is not necessarily trivial, because it is not a homogenised experience.  Playing ‘Minecraft’ can be fun, but so can walking a tightrope across Niagara Falls (for some people), and the second is definitely serious, deadly serious, in fact. It is true that neither of these kinds of fun would be encouraged in most workplaces, but there is plenty of fun that could be; forming fulfilling professional relationships; working towards solving a knotty problem, finally solving it, exercising creativity, being delightfully surprised by learning something.

Looked at this way, disregarding a method to facilitate learning because people might enjoy it too much, not only wastes the opportunity to highly motivate learners, but also makes you look like a bit of a killjoy.

The post Why games are definitely not (just) for children first appeared on Ludogogy.

Before we can take a basic look into motivational design, it is important to understand what is gamification and the link that it has to designing products that motivate their intended users to interact with the product being developed.

Games have always had the powerful ability of keeping their players engaged through a variety of ways such as compelling stories or experiences that are hard/impossible to find in average day-to-day activities.

As a result, domains outside of games such as social media and educational tools have been keen to capitalise on the ability to engage audiences using gamification, a process that applies features and elements typically found in games, such as points and achievements into contexts and situations that involve user interaction. Organisations that have been utilising gamification to increase user engagement within a variety of different scenarios include;

• Recyclebank, who are looking to promote positive social change by rewarding users with local deals and savings as they recycle their waste.
• Duolingo with the use of progress bars and awarding the user with badges and in-game currency to spend on customising the app’s owl mascot and accessing more interesting or quirky lessons in their desired languages. (e.g. Flirting or Idioms)
• Serious Games companies, such as Imaginary SRL creating applications and games to address and solve an underlying problem they are approached with.
• Social Media websites such as LinkedIn utilise a progress bar showing your ‘profile strength’ as the user adds more information to their profile such as previous jobs, skills, portfolio links etc.

The effectiveness of any form of gamification is primarily dependant on the ability to encourage the feeling of intrinsic motivation within the intended users, causing them to keep wanting to use the product on a regular basis. This is where effective use of motivational design methodologies come in handy, one good example being the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as discussed by Richard. M Ryan and Edward L. Deci of the University of Rochester(Adams et al., 2000).

This theory posits that people will experience intrinsic motivation to carry out a task if it allows them to satisfy three motivational constructs, based on human growth tendencies and psychological needs, these being:

• Autonomy: allowing the user to make their own choices and feel that they aren’t being controlled.
• Competence: giving the user opportunities to challenge themselves and improve their skills in carrying out given tasks.
• Relatedness: providing the users with the capability to connect with other people through inclusion or sharing their interests.

Although many games designers have initially attempted to distance themselves from the negative aspects of gamification, where most designers would simply tack on gamified elements to their products just for a quick and easy way to boost user interaction. There are many designers working to improve gamification through useful design methodologies by highlighting its strength as a tool to motivate learning and interaction by effectively using both game elements and psychological constructs. (similar to the ones discussed within SDT)

This is only scratching the surface of the rabbit hole that is motivational design, but I hope that this serves as a nice starting point for people who are interested in this topic.

The post A (hopefully) Simple Look at Motivational Design first appeared on Ludogogy.

Since the industrial revolution, organisations have relied on extrinsic rewards to motivate employees in hopes of boosting employee productivity and combating inefficiency. Many organisations believe in a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work and that any employee can be motivated if the pay was high enough. However, the world is becoming increasingly complex and it will take more than just large pay checks to drive real motivation. In fact, these rewards often impaired motivation and took the joy out of doing tasks which in turn can cause performance to suffer, foster short-term thinking, and sometimes even encourage unethical behaviour and cheating. So why does intrinsic motivation drive us so much? The answer lies in autonomy.

Autonomy means acting with choice, be it choosing when to go to office, how to solve a problem, and how to play. Having a sense of autonomy has a tremendous effect on individual performance and attitude. It promotes greater conceptual understanding, better grades, enhanced persistence toward challenges, higher productivity, less burnout, and greater levels of psychological being. In other words, autonomy involves creating an environment where people can make their own choices freely, which is something immersive Play excels in. Play is one of the best ways to experience autonomy in different forms, such as an open world environment that a player can explore for hours on end, or a puzzle that a player can solve in a multitude of ways. Even if there is no clearly defined goal, players can still be fully engaged and motivated during play if there is sufficient autonomy involved, such as sandboxes like Minecraft and LEGO.

Of course, it does not always mean something must be designed to be game-like for it to be engaging. For example, an organisation can increase employee engagement by providing their employees with freedom to choose how to approach their work and even where to work from. Organisations should avoid creating more linear processes for their employees to comply to unless absolutely necessary as this would only dampen employee motivation and engagement. Autonomy leads to engagement, and only through autonomy can we truly reach our full potential and achieve mastery in a particular field.

The post How Play Leads to Engagement first appeared on Ludogogy.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with this, we have all been repeatedly told that ‘people like competition’, and this is true – for a great many people.  However, if this is always the starting point for designing a learning game, you will inevitably end up with pretty much the same game each time.

The risks of competition

It is predictable, and I see a few problems with this:

1. People who frequently attend games-based training sessions will find pretty much the same experience each time – and will consequently become disengaged.
2. Competition is not always benign in a learning situation. I have seen in almost every event I have attended that it causes problems:
   • Some are so concerned with winning that they ‘game the game’ to such an extent that they learn nothing.
   • Competitive participants become annoyed when they are losing and turn on the facilitators or game designers – questioning the integrity of the game design and consequently learning nothing
   • Competition is not always relevant to the Learning Objectives and is just put in because the games designers feel that ‘games should be competitive’. Experience and learning design is a bit like plotting a novel – don’t put anything in that doesn’t advance the plot.  If it’s irrelevant or worse still, distracting, cut it out.
3. Not everyone finds competition engaging. By reference to frameworks such as Bartle’s player types or Andrzej Marczewski’s Hexad, we can take a much more nuanced approach to designing for different motivations of different people

Proposed objectives of the game

I am designing a game aimed at startups with the following objectives:

1. Learners will have a sufficient level of financial acumen that they can create and read basic financial records required to run a business
2. Learners will have a sufficient level of business acumen that they can interpret basic financial records and metrics in order to make operational and tactical decisions with regard to running a business
3. Learners will be able to demonstrate the correct use of various terms and concepts with regard to costs, working capital and the creation or destruction of value in a business
4. Learners will be able to use standard techniques to measure and evaluate the impact of decisions they make in running their business
5. Learners will leave with a relevant and specific action plan to apply to their business practice

A really important point made in “The Art of Game Design – A Book of Lenses” by Jesse Schell, is that the ultimate goal of a games designer is not to create games but to use games to create experiences.

This means that the disciplines of games design and instructional design are extremely congruent in their aims.  The experiences which the learning game designer must create should bring about a change in knowledge, skill or attitude (a simple but sufficient definition of learning).

Business (games) as usual

The usual business game experience goes something like this, from the participant point of view:

• I have had a business idea – the same idea, coincidentally, as five other businesses also operating in the area.
• A benevolent investor has given me some money to start a business based on my idea. He has unaccountably given the identical sum of money to the other five businesses.
• I am going to operate my business for a set period of time and at the end my financial results will be compared with the other five companies.
• Each action period my company and the other five will go through a series of identical steps – although we will have some leeway to make decisions about pricing, products we make and how much to spend on stuff like advertising and marketing
  • I am winning – this feels great – this means I am better at business than all the others
  • I am losing – this sucks – this means that this game is badly designed and not true-to-life
• At the end of each period I have to fill in financial records and calculate some metrics
  • This is great – now I understand about cashflow, profit, and ROI and so on
  • I am bored – I’ve filled these in five times – I know this stuff now
  • I’ll let Bob do this – I’m not great with numbers
  • Oh good – I don’t need to do this – I can check my emails / twitter
  • I don’t get this
• The game is completed and someone was ‘won’
  • I won – that feels good – also I learnt a few things that will be useful to me
  • I won – that feels good – but I’m not sure I have learnt anything that will be useful to me
  • I lost – that sucks a bit, but I learnt some stuff
  • I lost – and I didn’t learn anything
• Now the game / course is over and I’m going back to work tomorrow
  • This was really relevant to me – I will definitely be doing things differently / better back at work
  • I am unclear about the relevance of the game / course to my working life

What is wrong with this picture?

All of this unsettles me, both as a game designer and as a creator of learning interventions.  As a game it sucks because it is clearly not engaging all of those who are playing.  Often, this aspect is overlooked in games for learning, because unlike games which are played purely for fun, you have a captive audience.

As learning, it also sucks for several reasons:

• The rigid form of the game means that the learning is not differentiated.
• The drive to win within the game often distracts from the learning, because it is unrelated to it.
• There is often little or nothing in the way of assessment built into the game structure. While it may not be necessary to carry out formal assessment, ongoing assessment is essential to check that learning is taking place.

So my plan is to create something that is much less rigid, more participant driven and which addresses clearly the issues of differentiation and assessment for learning.

What could it look like instead?

I want the experience I create for the participants to go more like this.

• I have had a business idea – it may or not be exactly the idea I’ve got back in the real world, but I did have an element of choice. It is not the same business as everyone else in the room.  I can choose to play this on my own or in a team
• A benevolent investor has given me some money to start a business based on my idea. I have had an opportunity to find out about the potential for bank loans, grants and other options.
• I am going to operate my business by interacting with the other businesses around me, some of whom will be my suppliers and some of whom will be my customers.
• There will be some things I will do in common with the other businesses, just like in real life, but many of the decisions I make will be unique to me because of the kind of business I am running.
• It is not relevant to compare my performance to others in the room, because we are not running equivalent businesses, but there is plenty of opportunity for me to measure my own business performance against earlier results.
• I am networking and working with the others in the room to meet my business (game) goals, and am also making connections I can use in the real world, this includes access to mentors, coaches and business services. The Bank within the game is run by someone who actually works in a bank, for example.
• My business goes through a number of action / accounting periods at the end of which I post financial results and learn how to interpret some simple financial metrics
  • I am doing better than I did in the previous round. That’s great.  I’ve learnt from my mistakes
  • Oops, my results are getting worse. I will have to look again at the decisions I made to see where I went wrong, and what I need to do differently in the next round.
• I use the financial records and metrics to make decisions about how to run my business to improve my results for the next round
  • This is great – now I understand about cashflow, profit, and ROI and so on
  • I’m enjoying this. Let’s see what I can do to get even better results next round
  • I’m not great with numbers, but I need to do this because it will help me to improve my profit / decrease my working capital / be more sustainable next round
  • I’m not really getting this, but there are plenty of people in the room who have expert knowledge, and I can use them as ‘advisers’ in the game, and I have time to learn what they are showing me and then apply it myself
• Each round the decisions I make are increasingly complex. This maintains the challenge I feel in the game.  I have opportunity to repeat material from previous rounds if I want to, but equally I can skip these if I feel I have mastered something
  • I can really tailor this game to what I need from it
  • The complexity maintains interest rather than feeling threatening
• I have freedom to decide the goals I want for my business within the game. I can grow or consolidate, innovate or exploit.  I decide what success looks like, not the game.
  • My business and values are not the same as everyone else’s – this experience reflects that back to me
  • The game is more meaningful to me because the choices I am making actually matter to me
• I can play the game at my own pace. I am neither waiting for others to complete tasks, nor am I feeling hurried.
  • I am neither bored nor over-challenged. This makes this game an enjoyable experience
• If I get what I am supposed to be doing, I can challenge myself by moving on and immerse myself in the game. If I am stuck, I can step outside the game and find some help.
  • This is a safe space in which I can try things out
  • Help is available to me
• There is time to reflect and listen to the experiences of others, both about the game and their real life work
  • I feel I have been given the chance to consolidate what I have learnt and think about its relevance
  • I have had the opportunity to hear about best practice, and to learn from the mistakes of myself and others
• Now the game / course is over and I’m going back to work tomorrow
  • I have clear action plan of the next steps I need to take to achieve what I want in my business
  • What I take away from this is relevant to me, because I took the experience I wanted and needed from the menu on offer
  • I’ve met some people who I’m definitely going to look up on LinkedIn

Next steps

Right, so that’s the hard bit out of the way.  I can now picture in my head the experiences I want to create.  Now the easy bit (haha) – pick out the game mechanics and bits of story which will facilitate the experiences.

I might find in a few hours or a few days that this idea is a complete non-starter – and that there are very good reasons why all business learning board games run in much the same way.  I suspect that I may know the major one already – that a free flowing game such as I want to create is going to be much more challenging to run for an instructor / facilitator – and potentially too expensive to create and run, for it to be a viable proposition.  However, this doesn’t matter – nothing is irrevocable, and if I have to backtrack – so be it.  Even if I am only able to implement some of the improvements on the classic business game, it will be a step in the right direction.

The post Motivating learning through meaningful choice first appeared on Ludogogy.

“Your game should be a journey full of thinking of solutions and keeping the player smart.”

-Tim Eckert, How Games Motivate Players

‘Keeping the player smart’ is a great way to think about learning as a core motivator in game play. I had this in mind a few nights ago when I turned on the fireplace, cleared the round table and put the Whoonu game tin in the middle to play with guests. Whoonu, from Cranium, is described as “the fun-filled ‘what’s your favorite thing?’ game.” It lives up to its claim and much more, as some of you may know. How? By keeping players smart. Even in a party game where your slightly silly task is to rank your most-to-least favorite things from six random cards chosen by other players like doing laundry, popsicles, road trips, little dogs, getting up early, cuddling.

To me, ‘keeping the player’ smart in Whoonu breaks down like this:

• Feeling smart at the start. ‘I know he’s a night owl so ‘getting up early’ won’t be his favorite thing.’
• Getting smarter as you go. ‘She said she loved big dogs when someone else got that card earlier.’
• Being smarter at the end. ‘Whoonu she liked doing laundry more than taking road trips.’

Every moment of Whoonu is engineered to keep players smart.

• Smart about playing. Learning why players favor one thing over another gives you clues to earn points.
• Smart about scoring. Learning that a ‘he won’t like any of these’ or ‘she will love these’ hand of cards doesn’t always result in earning points.
• Smart about winning. Learning more and more about each player to steadily earn points or surge ahead to win.

Even party games are about learning

In Whoonu, no matter how surprising and revealing people’s favorite things are, the game environment is positive and accepting. Whoonu?, everyone says. (Even when someone’s partner admits favoring ‘little dogs’ over ‘cuddling’.)  Fortunately, it’s just a party game. Or, is it?

“In games, learning is the drug.”

– Ralph Koster, A Theory of Fun for Game Design

 “Everyone likes learning,” Tim Eckert points out. “No, wait. It’s not the process of learning we love, but the feeling of being smarter now than we were just a few moments ago.” For those of us who design games to help people do new things and behave in new ways, ‘keeping the player smart’ encompasses all the elements needed to motivate individuals. Elements like competition, achievement, relatedness, competence and significance.

Next time you play a game, consider how learning keeps you smart from start to finish. And, when you’re making a game, ‘keeping the player smart’ is a great way to consider learning as the motivating force.

“Play is the highest form of research.”

– Albert Einstein

Feeling smart motivates continued play

Back to the game Whoonu, and the fire and our guests. To our surprise, they asked if we could play again the next night. Even though it was late and we’d been out all day. Why? Because they were learning interesting things about each other and they wanted to play a little smarter than they did the night before.

So, there you have it. Keeping the player smart.

• Feeling smart at the start.
• Getting smarter as you go.
• Being smarter at the end.

And, for fun, here’s how I ranked that random little group of Whoonu things with #6 being my most favorite.

6 Getting up early

5 Road trips

4 Doing laundry

3 Cuddling

2 Little dogs

1 Popsicles

Whoonu!

The post Keeping the Player Smart first appeared on Ludogogy.

But not everyone is so enamoured of these practices or even the word itself. Some years ago, Ian Bogost coined the term ‘Exploitationware’.  It was, he said, a much better word to describe what is actually happening when businesses use game elements and mechanisms for non-game applications.

A Skinner Box?

You can see his point. The majority of the thinking about how gamification works is based on Behavioral Psychology. As soon as you mention those words, most people start to think about B F Skinner and all those lever pressing rats.  Not a particularly pleasant idea if you think it is being applied to you.

But it works, you see.  We love our little rewards.  I know for a fact that immediately after posting this, I will find it very hard to resist refreshing every few minutes to (hopefully) see the number of ‘views’ and ‘likes’ rising.  That small dopamine rush gets you every time.

So are all these business simply exploiting their customers and employees, taking advantage of neural mechanisms and conditioning to manipulate people to do what they want?  And if they are, is that necessarily a bad thing?

Gamification in marketing

Consider gamification in the marketing field.  Arguably, it is just a new weapon in the same old war, getting customers to notice you, favour your product over others, and ultimately buy it and make you money.  It is what has always happened and gamification is just a new flavour.  Viewed like that, it makes Bogost’s point in spades.  With some products, it is hard to see it any other way.  If you’re peddling stuff that people don’t actually need, and might actually be bad for them – like ciggies or nasty sugar-laden flavoured fizzy water, then marketing, for you, has to be all about creating demand where none should exist.  There is no doubt that ‘exploitationware’ has worked well here.  Consumers collecting badges for ‘engaging’ with vending machines have boosted sales, but all I can see are Pavlov’s Dogs.

A shift in customer power

But some would argue that there has been a major shift in the relationship between sellers and consumers in recent years and that marketing and selling practices have also changed.  In his book “To Sell is Human”, Daniel Pink argues that the proliferation of information has shifted the balance of power in the selling relationship to the consumer.  Whereas previously the salesman was in possession of all the facts on product, price, quality and so on, now the customer can get that all on the Net, comparing your prices with your competitor’s, reading the reviews about your aftercare etc..

The greater information parity is one of the reasons, he argues, why ‘non-sales selling’ is now the way to go.  This approach is all about discovering what it is your customers want, not about getting them to fit in with what you have. It is about having the flexibility to adjust to their needs and it is about ‘upserving’ not ‘upselling’.  It is totally customer-centric, and it is important to note that when Pink talks about customers, he is talking about everyone you have contact with.  We are all selling ideas, all the time, he says, to our colleagues, our families, to everyone we meet.

Are there better ways of describing ‘gamification’?

I don’t like the word ‘gamification’ too much myself, but I do use it.  I probably should take a stand too, but I don’t have Bogost’s clout.  It is a useful shorthand for me.  Most people have some idea what I am talking about when I use the word, and should the conversation continue, I have some basis to discuss more deeply what it is that I am actually talking about. I have two preferred terms, but have difficulty deciding which is my favourite. It depends!

Gameful thinking and human-focused design

An important aspect of this approach is that rather than making something ‘look like’ a game, one should design to make it ‘feel like’ a game.  This is not a process of trivialising, as ‘gamification’ often is – adding a game veneer to fundamentally mundane activities – ‘chocolate-coated broccoli’.  Rather, argues McGonigal, games are about being focused and motivated.  According to her, the spirit of the gamer is

“…optimistic, curious, motivated and always up for a tough challenge.”

and

“…our organizational goals need to be achieved by empowering the players to get more of what they really want from life”

I also like ‘human-focused design’, the term favoured by Yu-kai Chou, of Octalysis fame. A main idea here is that the design should consider the humans rather than the process. When trying to drive a behaviour, your design should find and enhance the existing motivation for someone to perform that behaviour rather than bend the people to the process.

What are the rewards for getting it right?

Both of these concepts stated above align well with Pink’s ideas about non-sales selling.  And that, in my view is how ‘gamification’, or whatever you choose to call it will continue to be used in an ever larger number of organisational setting.  Games and game-like experiences are all about relationships, and interaction, and discovery, and achievement – real drives.  These are the ‘games mechanisms’ which organisations should be utilising, not the trivial ‘furniture’ of games, like points and leaderboards, which are actually just the extrinsic signs of these.

It is clear that gameful or human-focused design is not as easy to implement as ‘gamification’ was in its infancy (and as it is still understood by many).  It is going to involve a far more radical rethink of the way activities are designed than simply adding a few badges and points.  But for organisations who get this right, the rewards will be immense; true engagement, loyalty and relationships that last.  Because novelty is just that, low level ‘gamification’ will need to be constantly redesigned in order to maintain the effect – the rats eventually learn the maze.  Gameful thinking goes deeper into the design of activities, processes and even whole organisations, and is built to last.

A move away from Exploitationware?

Personally, I would not adopt the term ‘exploitationware’.  Many of the companies out there offering ‘gamification’ are in fact operating far more in line with gameful or human-focused design. They are just using the term which they know will be recognised. “Gamification” is maturing as a discipline and it will be interesting to see what comes next.

The post Gamification – Good times or Exploitationware? first appeared on Ludogogy.

Most people don’t know, or haven’t thought about it, which is why it’s a regular topic of pop psych self-improvement tests.  And fair enough, the answer is an important bit of self-knowledge. To a gamification designer, it’s a design-critical piece of information to determine corresponding player types and the motivational drivers that guide effective solution design.

Good gamification design

As a quick review, good gamification design is first and foremost human-focused and ticks 5 main boxes:

1. Be clear on the results you want to achieve
2. Create solid metrics with specific behaviours linking back to targeted results
3. Get a complete picture of the people you’re designing for
4. Understand how your people fit key player types, the emotional drivers at play and the circumstances that influence motivation
5. Create and retain strong user/player engagement with your system

The mysteries of motivation

If motivation were an app we’d all be high achievers, but it’s one of those self-generated (or intrinsic) states that emerges from a deep well of individual need. It can’t be bought or coaxed into long-term service with extrinsic rewards.

Psychologist David McClelland, a pioneer of workplace motivation, contends that all human motivation is underpinned by three needs: achievement, power and affiliation.

Individuals have a dominant trait, of course, but all three come into play according to stimulus and circumstance. Sounds like a job for gamification.

Need for achievement (N-Ach)

First proposed by Henry Murray and later popularised by McClelland, the Need for achievement (N-Ach) is characterised by a desire for significant accomplishment, mastery, or high standards.

People with dominant achievement needs bring the biggest overall benefit to the organisational party. Provided, of course, their need to achieve is activated, their behaviour is supported and their achievements are recognised. Gamification does all of that.

Characteristics of achievement-motivated people

• Achievement is more important (and satisfying) than material reward or recognition
• Financial reward is seen as a measurement of success, not an end in itself
• Reliable, factual feedback, is essential. Again, because it’s a solid measurement of success, rather than a generic accolade
• Security and status are secondary to achievement
• N-Ach types are constantly looking for ways to improve ways of working

Activating the Achiever with gamification

In gamification parlance, Achievers are the player equivalent of N-Ach type individuals.

Achievers want to succeed. They need to be able to see themselves moving up the ranks and to seek out challenging solutions. Each level has to be more difficult than the next, allowing the Achiever to feel a sense of accomplishment once the level is complete. The challenge continues forever and there needs to be a greater good to what this user is achieving (a new skill unlocked).

Bear in mind that there’s an ebb and flow to all three main motivators. Under the right conditions, Achievement behaviours can be awakened in dominant Power or Affiliation types with artful use of gamification mechanics.

Active ingredients

Gamification mechanics are basic actions or mechanisms employed to move activity forward. There are 10 key mechanics that ping the specific intrinsic and extrinsic needs of each player type.

1. Fast feedback. Notices and messages support the intrinsic need for mastery and progress. Achievers thrive on it in pursuit of new learning and personal development.
2. Transparency. Statistics and scores are intrinsic motivators meeting the need for tracking progress and comparing to others through social interaction.
3. Goals. Pursuit of defined goals is intrinsically motivating. Missions, quests, challenges serve the needs for purpose, progress and social interaction.
4. Badges. A public symbol of accomplishment, successful conquest or high achievement, speaking to the needs for mastery, progress, purpose and social interaction.
5. Levelling up. The gamification equivalent of climbing the corporate ladder. Levelling up is a long-term effort and sign of status. It meets intrinsic needs for mastery, progress, purpose and social interaction.
6. Onboarding. Guiding learning within the context of broader gamification design. Onboarding moves new participants through a series of progressively harder exercises until skills are acquired. In other words, training without training. It supports the intrinsic need for mastery.
7. Competition. Not necessarily applicable to every gamification design, leaderboards, are popular mechanics meeting intrinsic needs for mastery and social interaction.
8. Collaboration. In the form of teams, collaborative effort meets intrinsic needs for purpose and social interaction and supports networking, culture and knowledge sharing.
9. Community. A critical success factor in long-term gamification systems, community supports the basic human need for sharing, comparing, and social interactions.
10. Points. An intrinsic motivator supporting progress and social interaction, points indicate progress, potential reward and evidence of accomplishment.

Source: Rajat Paharia, Loyalty 3.0, p 73

Achievement, power, affiliation

Individual motivation is a private blend of universal human needs. Good gamification design combines the right active ingredients, in the right order, to create a dynamic, personally satisfying solution.

The post Hunger gamification first appeared on Ludogogy.