It takes a lot to rile me up enough to blog about it. I just finished with the Virtual Goods Summit here in San Francisco, and the new buzz word in entrepreneur and venture circles is “gamification”.
This Wikipedia entry sums up for me best what gamification is, and also explains exactly how it’s nothing. I’ve never been so frustrated by something that I wanted to be excited about, and where I wanted to see the light bulbs go off, and just hearing (to my ears) empty, meaningless, self-referential chatter.
The worst part is that I’m probably wrong. These are smart people talking about this subject, smart people that I like and have respect for. I’m 90% sure that I don’t get it somehow and that in 3 years I’ll be bitter and muttering to myself, but there’s also 10% of me that sees a man riding down the street with no clothes, and for some reason that gets me really agitated.
What I’ve heard so far about gamification makes some valid points, but I haven’t heard anything worth making into a business model. At it’s core, the idea seems to be that by providing some kind of incentives/rewards to users/players for doing something that the (Designer? Operator? Service Provider?) wants them to do, they will see better results. Layered on top of that there’s the possibility of using competition, progress feedback, goal hierarchies, etc. to get these users/players really stoked about doing that something even more.
But isn’t this just good marketing, service design or product design? Companies and people have been doing this forever, why is it suddenly something to build an enterprise around? Is Toyota’s philosophy of “Challenge, Continuous Improvement, and Verification” gamification? Certainly it was hugely influential to many types of industry, but that was because it was an extremely well-designed and appropriate methodology, not because they invented the idea of goals, transparency, feedback and progress scoring.
What about Speak and Spell, or Report Cards, or “678 days accident free”? Is this gamification? If we can make a website that replaces or incrementally improves any of those core concepts, is that brilliant or a defensible business plan? I think there’s some opportunity there, but no more than there was 5 years ago if I was pitching an interactive learning website (what genius!).
Scrum is definitely “gamification” (they even have planning poker!), but so what? There are hundreds of services and applications around managing scrum and agile methodology, but why are they suddenly so much sexier than they were in the past?
One huge problem I see for gamification is that most real-world stuff isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair, not even close to it. Imagine a game where we all start with some random assortment of items: playing cards, a bucket of water, a small bag of rice, a few yards of twine, a stack of monopoly money, an army of orcs, a haunted castle, a private jet, an island, x-ray vision, or constant, incurable flatulence. Then we’re told to check in with the people around us to learn the rules… and good luck!
I’ve heard this comment, often from bemused parents or spouses of gamers: “If you spent as much energy on your (homework, job, marriage, business, health) as you do in (WoW, Starcraft, Call of Duty, Second Life), you’d be a (genius, billionaire, superstar)”. This is missing the point entirely. The reason why people spend time on game achievements instead of real-life achievements is because real-life achievements are 1) hard 2) perhaps a lot harder for you than they are for other people 3) might actually not work out. Most people are not up for that level of stress and uncertainty in their lives, and this is why games are so appealing.
With games, it barely matters who you are or what resources/abilities you have… if you put in the time, you’ll be able to “succeed”. The most popular games virtually guarantee success. Take WoW for example: A person with very little ambition, goals, prospects, or resources can become an epic figure who cannot fail. Simply by performing tasks that scale to their ability, the player is able to advance and become fantastically powerful. They’ll get to experience a level of success and accomplishment that they may never feel in their real life, and that feeling is virtually guaranteed.
No amount of gamification is going to provide that kind of incentive and reward around real-world stuff, and more importantly we can’t provide that level of certainty to the outcome.
Some people love to compete, but it’s unlikely they are the people who need much incentive to be successful in their “real lives”.
Gamification of healthcare is talked about a lot, mostly it seems to get people more interested in taking better care of themselves. I agree totally that some amount of rewards and incentives around staying in shape or sticking to a healthy lifestyle can be useful, but I don’t see anything magic here. People and enterprise have been using these tools for years. I think that there is opportunity out there to execute some solid services or products around this, but I don’t see anything particularly unique or novel in that. And I really don’t believe that “gamification” will be the magic bullet that revolutionizes health and fitness, at least not more than it already does, and has been doing for decades.
Wouldn’t it be cool to make an activity that was fun, gave good feedback and scoring, was social, was both cooperative AND competitive, and helped get us in shape? We could sell product and services around those activities, and in fact… there might be other businesses that spring up, simply to help users/players feel vaguely connected or associated with those activities. It could spawn an entire industry! We could call it basketball, athletic apparel and sports drinks.
There are many many more examples of why I think gamification is an empty concept, and maybe I’ll go into them in later blogs. I don’t want this to be a huge endless treatise though, so I’m gonna wrap it up. I hope readers chime in with comments or counter-arguments and that there can be a real discussion about this. It could very well be that there is something of real value here that I’m missing, but my gut is telling me that there could also be a lot of wasted time, energy, and money on something that will never amount to anything unique.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that “gamey” concepts applied to real-life stuff is a bad idea. I think there are some interesting “mash-ups” that are happening, and that will happen around games, social networks, LBS, brands, education and “serious stuff”. There’s no doubt that rewards, incentives, feedback, cooperation and competition are all very useful in any industry, but clever people and businesses already use these techniques, and have probably been using them since the dawn of civilization. I don’t think there’s anything 1) new and 2) unique or defensible to build a truly scalable industry around even if you slap a fancy-pants name on it.
-Phil
You are right that “gamification” exited before, but so games existed probably even before humanity. Its just a term that tries to encircle number of ideas and practices. Was there a term before that captured those ideas in such view? I guess that its getting popularity and traction just because it gets just the right “slice” of ideas and practices that interest many right now.
Also I do not share your view on games and that they are more popular then “serious” activities because they are simple, guarantee a success or make it more achievable. Game and play exited before humanity in some forms be it young animals playing among themselves or predators sometimes playing with their pray. And that’s just because games at their core are combination of perfect learning elements.
Any game has rules and aims that together provide a feedback loop of how to act in field formed by rules to fulfill your aims. It’s basic principle of learning process be it us, animals or AI. And it is built in to us by evolution as a powerful strategy or so I believe.
Sadly as any other thing it can be exploited, but it can be also used to design right processes that improve education or work. It just needs to be done right. Not by providing some fake points and scores or other satisfactions… I think that we just suffer from meaningless games and game designs that just exploit our affection to games but do not provide much of meaning or sense of usefulness of that gaming experience in a right way.
Comment by wonderwhy-er — October 14, 2010 @ 2:15 AM
Welcome to Silicon Valley, Phil. Why is gameification trendy? Because it’s trendy. So far, that’s my only conclusion for VC trends. It’s like watching the stock market. Why do some stocks fly and some tank? Sometimes there’s a real reason but many times it’s because traders start buying/selling the stock and everyone else piles on.
Key influencers (Tim Chang) push what they think is a great new idea. Others see this and start agreeing, a bit like yesmen. It takes on a life of its own and a few lucky entrepreneurs end up profiting wildly (like $100M) from something that is probably not quite worth investing in.
Comment by Ted Howard — October 14, 2010 @ 8:20 AM
I agree with pretty much all this. It seems to me that this boils down to the fact that this concept of using game-like systems in non-game businesses is just being talked about and recognized as useful more. Yes, it has been around for a long time. It is just getting more recognition, getting more adoption, and the concepts are being expanded and refined.
Nothing terrible about that– it’s even good– but I can understand how it might be annoying to hear so many people twittering on and on about it.
I don’t know exactly what sorts of businesses, let alone defensible ones, could be built around “gamification” explicitly.
Maybe software SDKs or services that help non-game apps build in things like Achievements, friend notifications about progress, goal / quest tracking and rewards, etc.
I can imagine lots of advertising systems or platform that start to get explicit about asking users to pay attention, click, etc, setting game-like goals and levels for it and offering rewards. That might be really valuable.
I can imagine people creating games that are fun and engaging in their own right, and then requiring you to take real world actions (“go to a starbucks”, “check in at Target”, “buy a slurpee”, etc) to complete certain goals / quests / achievements. Probably someone could make lots of money doing that type of thing.
Maybe it will be valuable just to be able to demonstrate that you / your company know how to effectively “gameify” products and services and demonstrate better… customer retention, customer LTV, viral adoption, or what have you, and then using that to provide marketing, consulting, advertising, or other services.
But, yeah, regardless, none of that is necessarily new or super defensible. Just a new name and buzz for older concepts. Seems we’ll be seeing more of this stuff.
I definitely agree with your point too that games are appealing in part because, well… they’re just games.
No matter how much you “gameify” stuff that kinda sucks in real life, it’s not going to be as engaging as a good game. Still, when done well, “gameifying” might make the real life stuff a little more satisfying or enjoyable (or maybe it’ll just make it more annoying, heh).
Comment by Whozat — October 14, 2010 @ 10:05 AM
It seems to me to be just a case of applying lessons about human psychology from the world of video games to other industries. I consider many MMOs to be vast, voluntary (but still cruel) psychological experiments and am surprised they don’t get more attention from academics.
Also, I really hate the word itself. The suffix is twice as long as the root! A lexical disaster.
Comment by Neil — October 14, 2010 @ 11:38 AM
Ooo. That was good for me. Bravo. Investors, media and summit types like a new buzz word to flap around. I agree it doesn’t mean much as a term – just like a new fancy job title with no compensation doesn’t mean much either. New memes are tossed around independently of actual innovation. Hey, that’s just branding at it’s most mediocre. Marketing memes are shallow to knowledgeable talent, progenitors and veterans. It’s like real estate I suppose? Take my hood for instance, once the same old park was rebranded Alamo Square Historic District the prices went up and tour buses appeared, but otherwise that cherry blossom tree, crime and the Fulton winds blew up the same as always. Now I s’pose I don’t sip lattes on my stoop in jammies – I put on actual pants and/or skirts instead. We’re superficially glossed up a bit by marketing and the pressure of attention, but still the same. My only regret is the way the experience changed. A little something fun and comfortable subsided as the hype increased. The flavor of my lattes are a little obscured now. I just hope the same isn’t true for “gamification” of games? Being in the comm arts biz, my belief is: Less marketing is more. So sue me fellow marketers, and garage your BS forklifts. Try whispering uniquely amidst the noisy din – they’ll hear you louder by contrast and flock to your fun, refreshing subtlety while developing long term loyalty and respect for your superlative brands. Communication innovation is preferable to a meme any day. Market memes have a shelf life that quickly become laughable. What’s next? Game-a-go-go? How groovy.
Comment by Wintermute — October 14, 2010 @ 1:00 PM
“Wouldn’t it be cool to make an activity that was fun, gave good feedback and scoring, was social, was both cooperative AND competitive, and helped get us in shape?”
You just described my trip to the gym every day. At first, by chance, I ended up on the treadmill directly behind this super hot girl with excellent taste in spandex. My running times would get longer depending on when she showed up and left. We’ve never really spoken to one another but smile as we pass by to and from our workouts. I am now in the best shape of my entire life. Thank you hot girl with spandex for gamifying my workout!
Comment by Richard — October 14, 2010 @ 7:56 PM
Yes, I think that’s pretty much the way it goes. I admit I feel the pull when a VC says they’re bullish on some buzzword, and I’ve fallen into that way of thinking before. What would you do for $20M?
Comment by Phil — October 14, 2010 @ 10:43 PM
Hi Phil –
I’m having trouble parsing out your key points, but I think your last line captures it:
“I don’t think there’s anything 1) new and 2) unique or defensible to build a truly scalable industry around even if you slap a fancy-pants name on it.”
1) “Nothing New”: Agreed. I used to work at a design firm called IDEO, one of my favorite quotes from my time there was “Innovation = Invention + Opportunity”. In 2007 when we started working on our Nitro Gamification platform, we took the existing Invention of Game Mechanics, and combined it with the Opportunity to (a) take Game Mechanics out of the gaming world and (b) provide them as a scalable, flexible web service so that anyone could leverage their power without having to build them from scratch.
Just because they’re not new, doesn’t mean they’re not valuable.
And just because they’re not new to you, doesn’t mean they’re not new to anyone else.
2) “Nothing Unique or Defensible”: Sure. There’s not many businesses on the internet that are unique and defensible. Could Google copy what we do? Absolutely. Could they copy what you do? Absolutely. Could they copy what every startup ever covered on TechCrunch does? Absolutely. So I’m not really sure what your point is here. If businesses see a value in using gamification to drive business goals, and they don’t want to (a) build the technology (b) build the expertise, which is the case 99% of the time, then there is a market opportunity to provide the technology and expertise to them. Big companies like Hasbro, MySpace, Comcast, NBC, Warner Bros, small companies like IMHOMedia, and even non-profits like HopeLab have all validated that market opportunity by becoming our customers.
If your argument is that it’s not a unique and defensible strategy for the companies that are using it, then I agree with that. It’s no different from integrating social networking, or a Facebook Like button, or anything else. Their core content needs to be their unique & defensible strategy, game mechanics just help make the experience more compelling, while enabling businesses to guide and drive high value behavior. Does it matter if it’s unique and defensible if it enables them to make more money? No.
3) “Fancy-pants name”: Whatever you may think about the word, I’m glad that there’s a name for this that is sticking. Over the years we’ve had to be very evangelical and educational, and figuring out how to describe what we do has been a challenge. We’ve talked about game mechanics, metagames, I even tried to get the phrase “web catalytics” to stick. In the end, we settled on gamification for the simple reason that it implies that there’s something existing (your site, community, media, etc.) that’s being transformed, rather than something new that’s being created. It’s a process, not a thing.
I’d be happy to give you a demo of our platform sometime. You might even think it’s cool.
best, – rajat
Founder, Chief Product Officer
http://www.bunchball.com
Comment by Rajat Paharia — October 16, 2010 @ 12:14 AM
Interesting post – and you’re right, the component parts are nothing new. As a loyalty marketer this is what we do every single day – building out gaming elements which encourage people to exhibit behaviors which are profitable for brands.
The difference for me with gamification – and as you say, the thing that excites – is how this is put together. The main difference between standard loyalty and loyalty gamification is 3 fold.
1) Utilises Social Currency – For competitive behavior to take hold you need to show what your peers are doing. 99% of loyalty programmes today don’t do this. They are very insular – one to one between brand and member.
2) Recognize achievement – many programmes, especially FFP do this using tiers, but unless you virtually live in the airplane you’ll get nothing. What gaming introduces is the concept of additional levels, other forms of reward (badges/status/etc.) and the ability to get lift from the masses, not just the 20% giving 80% of revenue.
3) Recognize the interaction – Loyalty is directly linked to the purchase transaction as this typically funds the points. Gaming requires more interaction – check-ins, reviews, likes – whatever. These need to be encouraged, recognized and reward. Gaming mechanics help to do this and this in turn creates more frequent brand interactions = increased brand engagement.
It’s less about something new and more about a new way of thinking.
Comment by Mark Sage — October 16, 2010 @ 3:02 AM
You are definitely missing the point about gamefication. It’s not about adding reward structures to make things more interesting. That’s a component of games and the gamification of activities but it’s really about rewarding people with a fun experience for doing things that help themselves, the environment, or any number of other great things. For what gamefication really means: http://thefuntheory.com.
Despite this being a rant there was really only one part I found offensive, being a game designer:
“The reason why people spend time on game achievements instead of real-life achievements is because real-life achievements are 1) hard 2) perhaps a lot harder for you than they are for other people 3) might actually not work out.”
The reason why this is offensive is because it completely discredits games as an art form or intellectual challenge for the designers and the players. Games are not an escape from our every day problems, they are training for them. Games are teaching tools that teach some abstract system. It’s no coincidence that this abstract system often represents some real life problems (Spacial Relationships in Chess, economies in Settlers of Katan, or Social interactions in Diplomacy). The reason why they are so essential to our evolution is because they have allowed us to prepare for real life situations (ie. hunting) without real life risks.
I understand it’s easy to get caught up in the buzzword, oversimplified, marketing jargon regarding gamification. But this process, put in the hands of skilled designers, can really do good things for the world!
Comment by Jonathan — October 16, 2010 @ 4:40 AM
Related article: http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/14/bigdoor/
Comment by Whozat — October 17, 2010 @ 9:30 AM
Not following how what I said discredits games as an art form or intellectual challenge…
The point I was making is that the appeal of games over “real life” is that they are almost always fair, with clear and transparent rules and mechanics, with everyone coming into the system with the same basic tools. Usually games are a “perfect” or idealized abstraction of a real-life system or problem. Whereas in “real life”, people might be coming from an underprivileged background, lack self-esteem, working with a disability, committed to other responsibilities, consider themselves too young or too old, consider themselves too busy, too weak, too whatever to accomplish what they dream of accomplishing.
Also, in “real life”, things happen that really aren’t “fair” as we like to think things should be. People are robbed, screwed over, get sick, get in accidents, are cheated out of life-savings, bullied, dumped, etc. Games usually try pretty hard to mitigate these types of things, and present worlds and situations that are “fair” to the playerbase.
The examples you gave of Chess, Settlers, and Diplomacy are great examples of idealized, fair, abstracted versions of life systems. There is an enormous chasm between playing Settlers and playing the stock market.
Exactly! And that’s a big part of the point I was trying to make. In order for things to be “gamified”, there needs to be careful, hands-on treatment by designers, entrepreneurs, thinkers, etc. Regardless of what we call it, applying game mechanics to real-world situations can produce positive and fun results. All I’m saying is that this isn’t a novel or new idea, and that as far as I can see, it’s going to be very difficult to come up with generic or universal tools or business models to “gameify” any old thing.
In other words, if it’s just as hard to gamify an arbitrary real-life thing, and VC’s don’t like investing in individual games or content-creation enterprise, then why the shift now? It wouldn’t make any more sense for a “gamification” design shop to get funded than a game development studio… same risks, not much more upside. Maybe less, since it’s harder to directly monetize the customer.
I don’t want to make too big a point of that last part, because there’s a rabbit-hole of special cases and exceptions when we start talking about individual opportunities.
Anyway, I don’t think I was making the point that you took offense to, if I understand correctly what you’re point was.
Comment by Phil — October 18, 2010 @ 1:30 PM
Mark Sage is absolutely right, which is why we’ve partnered with Maritz to combine gamification and loyalty: http://j.mp/9vaMV2
And Phil, creating a gamification platform is nothing like creating a game. You’re not in a hit-driven business selling to consumers. You’re selling a technology platform that businesses can customize and build on. It’s a standard enterprise technology/sales model. Nobody buys SAP, Oracle, etc. and just uses it out of the box. You customize it and pay for services on top of it, to make it meet your specific needs and to fit your context. If I remember right, most enterprise companies derive 60% of revenues from product, and 40% from services.
- rajat
Founder, Chief Product Officer
http://www.bunchball.com
Comment by Rajat Paharia — October 18, 2010 @ 11:02 PM
Rajat, thanks for posting here. First off, as I said in my original post I’ve got nothing but love and respect for all of you that were on the panel. I’ve not met you personally, but I was impressed by your comments. I’ve definitely had conversations with Tim, I’ve been familiar with Amy Jo Kim’s work over the years, I LOVE the Booyah team, mostly through our shared Blizzard pedigree, but also recently because they brought my friend Shawn Faust on board (shakes fist in mock anger). I’ve also not met Ron, but he seemed like a stand-up and smart guy.
Anyway, I’m glad you posted, because this gets to the meat of what was digging at me during the panel, and I greatly appreciate going to the “source” to discuss the topic. You know I’m 90% sure I’m wrong anyway, which of course is just me covering my ass, but it’s also kind of true.
Yeah, I’m not gonna argue this one. Of course, there’s nothing new under the sun, and a new implementation, or new way of looking at things as you say, is a huge part of what new models are all about. I think the thing that got to me was that in a lot of cases, folks were literally building businesses on the same principles before “gamification” caught fire, and it seems that now these plays are suddenly validated only from the attention that social games have been getting this past year. There’s nothing actually wrong with that, it just bugs me because a) we’re not done “gamifiying” social games, which has been our mission at Gravity Bear from the get-go, and b) because it kind of disses all the hard work that innovative incentive marketers have been doing up until now and c) games (content not platforms) used to be the kiss of death for VCs, and now they’ve found an (apparently) sanitized, platformable model that takes the game mechanics, and safely implements them in the “real world” of curing cancer and balancing your budget. Sour grapes in other words
Right, that’s completely true. So, let me ask you this, what’s the actual opportunity for a gamification platform or toolset? Tim asked that in the panel, and while I understand that there wasn’t time to go into specifics, the gist I got was stuff like ranking, peer competition, points/achievement, immediate feedback, etc. I would assume some sort of transportable user profile would be important for a platform play, so users can “advance” across different implementations. I kind of get the appeal of that, but is that the kind of thing that’s really going to go the distance?
Actually, before I go too deep into this, I should do more research on your product and take you up on the demo offer before I rant about the platform stuff to hard. Ping me and we can set something up (LinkedIn, or Tim has my email). Put it this way… I’m skeptical that there is a HUGE opportunity for a gamification platform, but like I’ll keep saying, I could be wrong.
Another way of phrasing this, is the platform opportunity like Flash, or is it like the offer walls?
Here’s a specific thing that came up in the panel. At one point, after several comments about “bolting on” points and leaderboards, someone said that the task of gamification was delicate business (maybe Amy Jo Kim?), that it wasn’t a bolt-on solution, and that the true value will come from the innovative and appropriate implementation from smart gamification designers. In other words… good gamification is as hard as making good games! It seemed like for a moment there was general consensus and nodding that good gamification was basically a content play. Or as game developers hate to hear, “a hits driven business”.
So what’s your take on that? I’m guessing that it’s provide the enabling platform?
I can get that, esp given the history and examples you cited. Again, part of me is saying “what’s wrong with gamifying games? Why give up the ship there just because Facebook took away all the free money?”. But my love is big, and games are fun, so if it works, it works. Besides, that gripe is a much larger topic that shouldn’t directly impact talking about game mechanics outside of games.
I’m sure lots of my frustration is sour grapes (seriously, lets gamify social games). I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about the gamification topic since VGS, and my thinking is evolving as I knew it would. I’ll post more about my musings when I’ve got proper time, but in the meantime thanks for taking the time to post here and lend depth to the conversation. I sincerely appreciate it.
Oh, one more thing Rajat… you made the comment that if your “status” towards a health goal was made public to your family (say “lose weight” for example), that it would be incredibly motivating for you. Do you mean that? From anecdotal observation, it seems like that kind of “accountability” doesn’t usually work that well. How do you (as a platform) provide tools so that kind of transparency doesn’t turn into nagging, and hence run counter to its intended purpose?
Best,
Phil
Comment by Phil — October 19, 2010 @ 1:25 AM
Hi Mark, thanks for posting!
In games, PvP or zero-sum mechanics are only attractive to a relatively small audience. Global leaderboards usually just discourage starting players, gainer leaderboards bias towards new players, or players who haven’t hit the high-level diminishing returns. Friends leaderboards are more “fun”, but also a crapshoot in terms of how competive you can be. The best ranking systems are those that pit you against users with similar skill and similar play pattern (the new StarCraft II rankings are good example), but these won’t usually be your “peers” and gamification implementations seem to be more appropriate and motivating when you know the people you’re competing against (I could care less to compete in FFP against Randall Pierce from Boise)
Point is… is peer competition a big enough market? Especially in situations where different users have drastically different parameters?
I think gamification pundits overestimate the mass-market appeal of competitive game mechanics. Like I said, competitive games, especially large-scale competitive games are niche products. The vast majority of mass-market games are single player (challenge scales to the skill of the user) or multiplayer co-op (MMOGs).
Competitive ranked, leaderboard-style mechanics are hardcore. It’s not an easy thing to make these fun or accessible by any stretch. If anything, it’s one of the “difficult” challenges in gaming, although it’s a necessary evil when dealing with PvP game mechanics. To apply these mechanics to real-life challenges is both simple/obvious, and perhaps the least appealing, hardest-to-make fun mechanic.
I haven’t heard any talk (so far) about co-op gamification mechanics. Probably because these are much harder to “bolt on”… they require deep understanding of the social interactions within the system, and possibly modifying the target enterprise to increase cooperative and social behavior. Co-op FFP? Sounds like a ton of fun actually, but you’d have to do a lot of work to make it happen, and probably change the airline’s business model.
This is the kind of talk that gets me riled up. Yes, the quoted text is valid, and it’s a good thing to keep in mind. No, it has almost nothing to do with games. Calling “more interaction” “gameplay” or a “game mechanic” is where I call b*sh$%t (I’m smiling when I say that). Seriously, doesn’t that sound like trying to ride the buzzword train? Do we really believe that providing immediate feedback to the customer is a “game mechanic”?
You know what’s funny, is often games will have some feature inside the in-game store, where the more items the player buys, the more loyalty points they get, which in turn gets the player a discount, or better prices, etc. Last game I saw this in was Paper Mario… Even Nintendo is jumping on the gamification bandwagon!
Comment by Phil — October 19, 2010 @ 2:06 AM
Hi Rajat,
Right, I get that. I tried to address that in another post I just made, but just to be clear, I completely understand the difference between the content and the platform play. I’m just not sure the biggest opportunity in gamification is in the platform (love to be proven wrong here).
Right, but when was the last time an enterprise/sales model promised to deliver “fun” and “addiction”? That’s not why I’d talk to Oracle. Even tools like Photoshop and Unity 3D don’t promise “fun”, at best they promise to get out of the way of the creative process. Maybe I’m wanting too much from gamification, and what we’re really talking about is engagement. In my mind, game mechanics are about much more than engagement. One doesn’t play football for engagement. One plays football for the passion, the adrenaline, physical catharsis of simulated war. Fantasy leagues are a better analogy, but even they wouldn’t get traction if they weren’t wrapped around a super-compelling actual game (fantasy noble prize winners anyone?).
Comment by Phil — October 19, 2010 @ 2:22 AM
I agree that Gamification is the current hype word, but it just replaced “Social”, which replaces “e-” (as a prefix). The great thing with the trend of hype words is that they are at least moving closer to people and psychology and further away from technology. And at least Gamification can be described, think about “UX”.
Comment by Hampus — November 16, 2010 @ 5:01 AM