We as a society live in interesting times. Some of the
highest earning people we have in the world are connected more to the world of
entertainment than to making the world a better place. It is often the top of
the talk to talk about the latest in entertainment news or what you've been
watching lately. With the increasing weight of entertainment, some find it
necessary to integrate the factors that most people find entertaining into
other factors of their life. From this, we find gamification, the integration
of game-like elements into other activities. But, with the attempt at merging
games into other aspects of life, are we helping or hurting.
What could be wrong with trying to make everything more fun?
Jane McGonigal, in her TED talk on using gaming to help the world ("Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world"),
takes the approach that gaming leads to great potential. Many hours of time are
spent every day by people everywhere playing, forming ideas, and analyzing
situations in a game. The games become
situations where people have extreme levels of focus, analysis skills, and
drive, who have gained so much experience with videogames that they are considered a virtuoso in the field and being able to apply that to the real world could
open opportunities to expand ideas and solve problems like never before. The potential McGonigal sees with gaming is
that tapping into the expanding nature gaming and the amount of time invested
in it, a gamer's skill and believe in their skills virtually, can be applied in
reality.
With the potential being presented, what would be a good
idea for getting gamification right? Researching design and adding game design
principles to the word, Sebastian Deterding's Google Techtalk about "MeaningfulPlay: getting Gamification Right" discusses the factors we already use in our life to gamify it, and what
elements are good and what needs to be considered. Sourcing back to the child
like nature to create their own activities, from dividing chores into tasks, to
playing in the sand, people are adding game elements all the time to their
lives. Rules are created, goals are given, along with ways to gauge progress to
those goals, and a contained environment to do those goals is given. But when
expanding this to gamification in a bigger scope, we have to pay attention to
what keeps attention and what can be harmful to the environment we create as well.
It is a balancing approach of variety, growth, progress, and reward, without
cheapening the value of what we do that can bring gaming qualities and
activities to greater output.
This definition of gaming and the need to is also analyzed
in Tadhg Kelly's article on Tech Crunch, "Everything you'll ever need to know about gamification" where a mindful eye on how game design is done is analyzed for what is
essential for an optimal gaming environment. One of the major things Kelly emphasizes
in this article is just because you want to gamify something does not mean your
audience expects the same kind of ideas. Gamification needs to go beyond just
adding progress bars and and goals, people aren't naive and want to be engaged.
Don't focus on the "gamification" skin of points and badges, but the
validation given for completions and the potential prizes that come from a user
accomplishing their goal. There is also a concern over knowing what real
completion and prizes are, as people are often understand when someone is being
used as advertisement, or when a prize, is not really much of a prize at all.
It wouldn't be fair to view gamification elements without
also considering the negatives. Gamification is a method of trying to appeal to
an audience with the theory of fun just as much as it is about using game
elements to enhance a task. Iam Bogost, writer of articles related to videogame
theory and design, has an opposing view on gamification in his article
"Gamification is Bullshit". Unlike the other articles seen today, Bogost sees the concept of gamification
as a marketing ploy, a buzzword used to make a venture sound and look
appealing. His view is based on the
simple conception of gamification as adding repeatable concepts which provide
shallow rewards. Even with this in mind, the perspective is maintained as
gamification being a ploy designed to put a skin over a concept and make it
more promising.
When all is said and done, adding gaming elements to life is
not a new concept, in fact in the broadest sense games were created by the need
to add gaming elements to life, done by even children. Even with the difference in focus, there is
one thing in common between all the articles and talks we've looked at today,
the emphasis on finding the proper elements of gaming to use. It is more than
just adding a gaming veneer to your activity, to make use of the concept of
gamification, there is a need to add in purposeful elements that provide enough
satisfaction to make sure of the focus, drive, and attention, which people give
to games. With that, gamification can grow beyond the simplicity of points and
levels.
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