[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 73, Issue 8

Sat Dec 11 06:16:16 EST 2010

Ah, my favorite subject.  There is a massive amount of misinformation and
confusion about this topic.  And much of it has to do with a clash of
cultures.

There are about four groups of people in this discussion

   - *Venture capital funded startups* that are using badging and point
   systems to enhance retention.  You know you are dealing with this crew when
   they pull out "40 mechanics that guarantee success".  Most contain newbie
   designers if they have designers at all.
   - *Game developers who are reacting against the blind application game
   mechanics*.  Traditional industries are under threat and there is an
   immense amount of fear around anything new.  They are rightful angry when
   they observe ignorant people co-opting their year, sometimes decades of
   learning, for something that is often little better than snake oil.  Yet, a
   lot of this anger is indiscriminate and poorly thought out. You see almost
   interchangeable rhetoric against with social games and gamification projects
   even though they are typically radically different problems.
   - *People who are listening to hearsay *and forming opinions with no real
   understanding of the underlying issues.  Many have heard the sensationalist
   speech by Jesse Schell and think this is the sum of the argument.  They fail
   to realize that 'gamification' and 'serious games' is an old topic that has
   been going on for years.
   - *Game designers who are seriously attempting to apply games to a
   broader range of activities*:  I can think of only three names worth
   listening to here:  Amy Jo Kim, Jane McGonigal and Nicole Lazzaro.  All
   three have done actual projects and seen actual success.

When you dig into the term 'gamification', there are actually four very
distinct applications of game design to broader activities

   - *Use of metagame* activities such as leveling systems, achievements,
   leaderboards, etc to magnify some core activity.  This is not new.  Boy
   Scouts does it.  Toastmasters does it.  Almost any long lived
   human organization uses the same 'pointification' systems that are now being
   promoted as 'new'.  The trick here is that you need a valuable core activity
   to magnify.  Just adding points does little.  There is a rich set of
   learning about where and how to use such systems that is not easily
   summarized in a pithy API feature list.
   - *Learning schedules*:  Games have a variety of techniques for parsing a
   complex activity and spreading it out over a gradual learning curve.
   - *Games*:  A new game that is inherently fun is created that add joy to
   some portion of the application.  This is what we did with Ribbon Hero.  We
   created a challenge mechanic
   - *General usability*:  The sad fact is that most 'design' in application
   development is limited to graphic design.  Traditional UX designers rarely
   have a deep psychological understanding of how their users operate and they
   also lack the conceptual tools necessary to iterate towards a quality
   experience. Game design deals with these factors on a daily basis and simply
   bringing this perspective to the table can result in huge experiential
   improvements.

None of these areas 'add instant fun'.   Nor are they inherently 'manipulate
and control humanity'. Two issues:  1) Applying the techniques of game
design is complex.  It takes a lot of skill to gameify an activity and the
practical skillset is currently rare.  2)  People are complex.  These
techniques help yield desired results, but often only by providing users
with real value.  There is a tertiary backlash going on against the
sensationalism currently making its way through various media outlet that
instead emphasis intrinsic motivation (autonomy, shared purpose, mastery)
over extrinsic motivation.  From this school of thought, games are a
powerful tool and the intended use of this tool is to make lives better.
 Yes, you can build a prison camp with points and ranks and punishments and
call it a game, but that is a more a blatant misappropriation of the term
than any sort of fundamental flaw in the original goal.

Some of my past essays on the subject.

   -
   http://www.lostgarden.com/2010/01/ribbon-hero-turns-learning-office-into.html
   -
   http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/06/what-actitivies-that-can-be-turned-into.html

I've been consulting in this area for some time across a variety of
projects. One lesson I've learned: Beware of religiously repeated sound
bites in any complex field.  They result in unnecessary wars. :-) (And a
lack of needed investment in the things that actually matter)

take care
Danc.

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 6:30 AM, Alex Gibson <polyopticon at gmail.com> wrote:

> Long time lurker, first time poster, great list thank you to all the
> contributers. Also thank you for last months discussion on China, I arrived
> in Beijing on an artists residency (Nov-Mar), just as the China discussion
> was getting started, and thoroughly enjoyed the information, insights and
> meditations about Chinese new media arts practices and its various contexts.
>
> Back to games:
>
> A buzz word being thrown around in Silicon Valley (rather amusingly) is
> 'gamification' [1]:
> "The popularity of video games and the explosion of social networking are
> intersecting to redefine how we will experience the Web over the next
> decade."
>
> The attempt to create subjects and identities that are 'socially
> engineered' [sic] by developing game goals, strategies and incentives reeks
> of the profit motive. This is particularly unnerving when considering that
> the main function of many of the most popular social networking sites,
> funded by so called 'angel investors', is to make money through advertising
> (ie// facebook.com).
>
> The buzz around 'gamification', I would suggest, is more about using a key
> function of games; that is to limit and persuade the decisions of the end
> user so that the system may better serve the interests of the social network
> and its stakeholders. Perhaps this phenomena will be more common in other
> new mass-media; microblogging, wikis, etc. Of course, games serve more
> functions than to persuade the end-user, but this in particular demonstrates
> the persuasive power of games to control behaviour, a power that is not only
> being deployed for entertainment, but also for control and profit on a large
> scale.
>
> This post perhaps is a diversion from the main topic, but I think it
> illustrates an interesting tangent of how games are being deployed and
> exploited in other domains.
>
> [1] http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16401223?nclick_check=1
>
> Kind Regards,
> Alex Gibson
> www.alexgibson.com.au
> http://tuanjiespace.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
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