Thinking
- The Art of Play: Real rules for location-based gaming
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In location-based games, location is everything. Construction, a cold front or finals week could entirely derail you. A parade, an unusual character in a storefront or a sunny spring day could make your game the memorable, wonderful thing that people talk about for years.The video game Zelda will be the same Zelda in any environment- rain or snow, wind or hail. It’s the same game in Tucson with a group of college guys as it is for 11 year old girls playing in Alaska. Location essentially means “real world” and in the real world, whether you get wind, hail, college boys or teenagers all make a difference in how your day goes. [...]
- Gangs, Gongs and Government.
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Gamification and Democracy.
Here’s a confession. I’m having a love-hate relationship with Gamification at the moment. When I first came across the idea, I thought “brilliant” – make dull things fun by turning them into games, or game-like by incorporating the “mechanics” you find in games. Dullest of the dull is housework so you might find Kevan Davis’s Chore Wars rewarding – literally. Personally, we went for plan B and hired a cleaner! [...]
- Gamification for Newbies.
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As you may have already gathered this edition of ¡Design Thinkers! is a special on ‘gamification’. Over the past year or so its a word that has been gaining popularity and even breaking into everyday lingo for many. However, it’s not fully clear what it actually means or what impact it may (or may not) have on our lives so here’s a brief overview. [...]
Support
- Green Gaming.
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A lot of what we talk about on here describes various ways of changing people’s behaviour. In advertising the behaviour change is to get you to buy their product, or switch from a rival brand to their product, or to love their product enough that you’ll become an advocate for getting other to change their behaviour (this might be familiar if you’ve ever sat in a bar with an Apple fan). [...]
Techniques
- #5 – Collecting.
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If you grew up in the UK you may remember Panini sticker albums that encouraged kids to collect stickers of their favourite soccer players (I believe in the US the equivalent would be baseball cards). As you collected you filled up your album and traded cards with your friends in the struggle to complete the full album. [...]
Video
- On Productivity
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Taken from The School of Life: Sunday Sermon series of talks, here Jane McGonical talks about how games don’t have to be time-wasters but can be used to actually help your productivity.
Tools
- Get Gamified!
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There’s really only one way to find out if a gamified world is going to work for you and that’s to try it. Here’s some examples that you can try out online and on your smartphone.
Library
- Reality is Broken
by Jane McGonigal
Jane McGonigal is probably the person most recognised as leading the current ‘gamification’ movement and in this book she outlines why she thinks that gaming can help in nearly every area of life. [...]
- Gamification by Design.
by Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham
People enjoy computer games – therefore if you turn non-game things into games, everyone will be happy. That’s the idea, and that’s what this book is trying to tell you. But (and I guess you saw that BUT coming) the argument is not convincing. [...]
- The New Games Book
Edited by Andrew Fluegelman
I read about this book in Jane McGonical’s Reality is Broken and sought it out on Ebay. Published in the mid-seventies, this book is half a guide to communal games you can play [in parks, beaches and other spaces] but the other half presents essays outlining the relevance and importance of gaming. [...]
- Your Choice.
By you?
Gamification is fairly new and whilst there is a lot of talk about it in blogs and forums not many authoritative books have been written on the subject. We certainly didn’t want to recommend any that we haven’t actually read so we’re asking for your opinions and reviews of any you have read which make a case for (or against) gamification.