GamifIcation Course Notes

1. WHAT IS GAMIFICATION 1.1 Introduction

- technique called GAMIFICATION: how some of the techniques designers use in games could be applied to problems in business, education, health and other fields -what gamification means means and its application to real world problems: - learning from games (e.g. Angry Birds): not just learning about games themselves, but understanding what makes the game successful, engaging, what games can do, why they have power - taking these techniques and thoughtfully applying them to situations which are not themselves games (e.g. Samsung Nation – game elements/mechanics used to engage users more) - elements taken from games: leader-boards, leader-boards, badges, point systems 1.2 Course Overview

-learning goals: 1) understand what gamification gamification is 2) understand how it might be valuable 3) learn how to do it effectively 4) understand some specific applications -course structure and assessment: assessment: -video lectures (6 weeks) + embedded questions -multiple choice homework: 35% -peer-graded written project: 35% (5+10+20) (5+10+20) -final exam: 30% -what is different: new method, new concept, new course, practical knowledge 1.3 Definition of Gamification

-Gamification -Gamification is the use of game elements and game design techniques in non-game contexts. e.g. Nike+ – a device built into the shoe to track running, connected to a phone with applications for it, telling e.g. what is the farthest or fastest run a person has ever had, and other tracking data, as well as doing comparisons, and establishing goals and challenges awarded with trophies and medals; friends can get involved in the form of competition or encouragement. e.g. Zombies Run – adding another dimension to the experience of running, a more immersive one than Nike+, but both serving a purpose which is outside of the game. -Game elements: toolbox (e.g. Empires and Allies: points, resource collection, quests, avatars, progression, levels, social graph) applied to services that are not games (e.g. KIas: progression, points, levels, rewards, quests, avatars, social graph, badges; challenges) -> regular design patterns -Game design techniques: not only engineering, but also an artistic, experiential side, thinking about problems in a certain way, taking an approach that uses concepts common to all forms of design, as well as concepts that are novel and specific to games – game design modality -> a way of thinking -Non-game context: some objective other than success in the game, other than a game for its own sake (business, learning, employment, etc.), might still be game-like, but the purpose, rationale for the experience is something outside of the game.

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1.4 Why Study Gamification

-an emerging business practice (Microsoft, Nike, SAP, American Express, Major League Basketball, CodeAcademy, Samsung, Foursquare, Stack Overflow, Dell, LiveOps, Foot Locker, eBay, Cisco, Siemens, Universal Music, etc.) -games are powerful things: addiction, time-consuming, having a real pull -lessons from psychology (link to some very basic aspects of how our mind works, motivation), design (how to do it), strategy (understanding how to do business, what it means to lead…), technology (the ability to create rich immersive personalized experience and track interactions in real time, and analyze them) -harder than it appears: has to be good, ethical, effective, etc. 1.5 History of Gamification

-1912 Cracker Jack with toy inside -1980 Richard Bartle, MUD 1 - first multi-user domain/dungeon (MMOG), (MMOG), first shared virtual world -> took the collaboration platform and gamified it – taking something that wasn’t a game and making it into one (while today it is the opposite of this: taking what is a game and turning it into something that is not) -1980 to present: research by education scholars – video games and learning – Thomas Malone, James Paul Gee – Ben Sawyer, David Rejecsk – private sector, academia -2002 to present: Serious Games Movement – academia and the military using games for training and simulation, non-game purposes (e.g. battlefield,

training mechanisms); Games For Change Movement – using games for social impact -2003 Nick Pelling, Conundria – promoting gamification of consumer products -2005: Bunch Ball -2007: first modern gamification gamification platform platform incorporating mechanics mechanics like points and and leader-boards and so forth to serve engagement purposes in companies companies -> Badgeville, Bigdoor, Gigya – specialized service providers offering gamification; and many companies building e.g. Kiosk – gamification gamification services and systems on their own. -2010: gamification as a common term determined by the community that reached critical mass; presentations crystallized the idea of gamification for people – Jesse Schell, Schell Games, 2010 DICE Conference (toothbrush, cornflakes, bus – points and bonuses, REMTARTAINMENT system); Jane McGonigal: Reality is Broken, TED talk – alternate reality games solving major human problems











1.6 Examples and Categories

-3 main categories/areas categories/areas where gamification adds value: - external (to the firm, organization): application to the customer, marketing, sales, customer engagement e.g. Club Psych – gamified website (points, rewards, avatars, challenges, badges, leader-board) -> 30% increased visit, online merchandise sale 50%, page views 130%, 300000 shares, 40 mill. users seeing) - internal (application to people in the company): HR, productivity enhancement, crowdsourcing (process of reaching out to lots of people by splitting things into small parts or a challenge sent out to many people) – internal in terms of ‘within a community’ – getting a lot of people to actively participate -> gamification as a motivation) e.g. Windows 7 Language Quality Game – gamified localization testing (leaderboard) -> 4500 participants, 500000 dialog boxes reviewed, 6 700 bugs reported, hundreds of significant fixes - behavior change: health and wellness, sustainability, personal finance -> wanting helped by gamification e.g. speeding and police – radar gun vs. devices showing you how fast you are going e.g. Volkswagen contest – FUN theory: games and fun for solving real world problems – Speed Camera Lottery : not fining people going too fast, but devices taking picture of people and their license plates and if they are following rules, entering them into a lottery financed by money coming in from fines -> Stockholm 20% slowing down 32 to 25 kmph average speed -lessons: gamification can motivate, applications in many domains, encompasses many techniques 2. GAMES 2.1 Gamification in Context

-gamification -gamification is not: - making everything a game -> enhancing experience, make more rewarding, create greater motivation, but not pulling out of the real world - any game in the workspace (e.g. Windows Solitaire) -> using game elements not games - any use of games in business (e.g. Cracker Jack toy ) -> have to change the experience, learn from games and put it to use - simulations – reverse, not taking from games and putting it into the environment, but taking the environment and putting it into a game - just for marketing or customer engagement - just PBLs (points, badges, leader-boards) - game theory: set of algorithms, formulas and quantitative techniques for analyzing strategic decision-making (e.g. the prisoners’ dilemma: tw o prisoners would be better off if they cooperated, but the incentives are not to) -gamification is: -listening to what games can teach us – recognition of the power of games -learning from game design (and psychology, management, marketing, economics) -appreciating fun











2.2 What is a Game

-Ludwig Wittgenstein (20th c. philosopher): games as one of his core examples about the difficulty of using language to define things -> it is impossible to define game: can point to it and say it is a game, but it is difficult to say what is the framework that defines games given all the different kinds, what is it that ties them together -> ‘how the concept of the game is bounded? what still counts as a game and what no longer does? can you give the boundary? no.’

-Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper : we can define every every possible game based on three concepts: prelusory goal (objective), constitutive rules (a set of rules or limitations that make the activity into a game), lusory attitude (the player follows the rules voluntarily, i.e. not cheating, because the games mean something to the players) -> a game is voluntarily overcoming unnecessary obstacles -Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: games and play are essential to what makes us human, even to the serious things in life like religion and government and the legal system – The Magic Circle: in a game there is a physical or virtual boundary that divides the world of the game from, what we could call, the real world (e.g. lines around the soccer field, embedding yourself into the game), and in the game, game-rules matter, not the rules of the real world – virtual environment where the games matter -> the challenge and the opportunity for gamification is to put the player as much as possible in the magic circle, to feel like the game matters, like it is important, there are real constraints, the players will be motivated to play and respond to the incentives that the t he gamified system provides 2.3 Games and Play

-Roger Callois: paidia (play) vs. ludus (games) – two different poles, opposites play – aimless expenditure of exuberant energy, done spontaneously and for its own sake, zone of proximal development development (level the child can get to, advancement, where the child behaves beyond his average age), free movement movement within a more rigid structure game – closed, formal system that engages players in a structured conflict, and resolves in an unequal outcome; series of meaningful choices, domain of contrived contingency contingency that generates interpretable outcomes, problem-solving problem-solving activity approached with a playful attitude -takeaways for gamification: voluntariness (James P. Carse: Whoever must play cannot play.), learning or problem solving, balance of structure and exploration (freedom vs. objectives) 2.4 Video Games

-c.1972 Pong – revolution, because it allowed people to interact with what was on their screen -> 2011 CityVille 0-100 mill. users in 6 weeks – big and evolving industry -> a true mass medium - 97% kids (12-17) play videogames - average game player is 30 years old, 37% are older than 35 - 47% of all game players are women











2.5 Just a Game?

-Real world building blocks: Digital building blocks: -e-business (/e-commerce) 2.0 - analytics, cloud, mobile -> core elements of games -social networks and media -> embedded in the videogam vi deogames es industry today Non-digital building blocks: - loyalty programs – rewards, but no fun and progression, manipulative, not necessarily user’s interest - management and marketing research -video games and the real world are getting closer together, games are becoming increasingly real by moving the real world inside the game; games are coming to the real world (e.g. virtual goods, gold farming – getting real money for virtual vir tual goods) Real World Activity monthly sales competition frequent flyer program tiers weight watchers group free coffee after ten purchases American express platinum card

Game Concept challenge levels team reward badge

3. GAME THINKING 3.1 Why Gamify

-game thinking: thinking like a game designer -Dodge Ball : one of the first successful smart phone applications for people who like to hang around in bars – check-ins, where you were, and where your friends were; but: chicken and egg situation – only working if people of interest to you are actually using the app, otherwise there is just a blank map -> how to achieve critical mass? -Dennis Crowley, Foursquare: implemented gamification reasons: - engagement gap: need to get more people to engage - no choices: no direct result, just doing it or not doing it - no progression - very social: social interaction is very powerfully tied to games, because we love to compete, collaborate, collaborate, share, and team up - need for habit formation: natural, automatic what Foursquare did: - concept of Mayorship: if you check in the most times, you’re the Mayor - badges (e.g. Super Mayor Badge, for being the Mayor of 10 locations at the same time) - connected with Twitter and Facebook, creating friendly competition competition -> reward - points - leveling up within badges











3.2 Think Like a Game Designer

-Jesse Schell, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses – 5 words – reminds us that game design is a state of mind, and it is something ‘ I am a game designer.’ designer.’ – most of us have already done (e.g. kids on a playground), that comes naturally to us, but we don’t necessarily think about it in a systematic way, we don’t realize it is a skill we can cultivate – not necessarily being a game designer, different than thinking like a gamer (have to consider the structure of the game which gamers playing don’t do) - participants as players: they are the centre of the game, feel a sense of autonomy/control (choice -> result -> meaning), play - goal: get player playing, and keep them playing (not tricking them, but creating an experience that will genuinely engage them for an extended period of time) 3.3 Design Rules

-The Player Journey – the player is engaged in an experience, going through an experience while playing the game, the journey being a conceptual path that they follow through the game - elements: beginning, middle and end – not just a random walk – ideally in some sort of progression 1) Aspects of the Journey: onboarding – getting the player into the game as quickly and easily as possible; scaffolding – how does the game provide training wheels?, places where the game makes it easier and overcomes some of the complexity that otherwise would get a user stuck; pathways to mastery – does the game enable the player to get to mastery?, the point where the player has conquered and achieved some real skill, real accomplishment within the framework of the game (e.g. Plants vs. Zombies: guides, highlighting, feedback, limited options, limited monsters, impossible to fail 2) Balance: not too hard not too easy, not too many choices not too few choices, not too easy for one player and not too easy for the other player, not to favor one group systematically systematically over another; games need to be balanced throughout (e.g. Monopoly and the prices of properties, money injection of 200$ for passing the GO) 3) Create an Experience: taking something that is not game-like and making it feel game-like by creating an integrated experience (e.g. turntable.fm: club interface, rating the music reinforcing the notion that you are in a particular kind of world that means something, the experience is richer and deeper) 3.4 Tapping the Emotions

-What makes games engaging? -> the emotional component – FUN - fun is not limited to recreation and entertainment, it is something we can enjoy in all sorts of contexts: work, social impact, behavior change - categories of emotions and experiences that are fun: winning, problem-solving pro blem-solving (achievement), (achievement), exploring (finding something), chilling out, teamwork (collaborating, cooperating to achieve a goal), recognition, triumphing (someone else loses, vanquishing opponent), collecting, surprise, imagination, sharing, role playing, customization (making something on our own), goofing off













3.5 Anatomy of Fun

-Nicole Lazzaro’s 4 Keys – 4 different kinds of fun that are general categories that appear in any kind of game-like context: 1) easy fun – blowing off steam, chilling out, goofing off, hanging out; casual, light, nice, easy 2) hard fun – challenges, problem-solving, mastery, competition, overcoming obstacles -> fun represents accomplishment, accomplishment, overcoming something 3) people fun – the fun of interacting with others, working together on a team, socializing, fun that requires other people -> fun that comes from a social interaction 4) serious fun – serious, real objectives; meaningful, good for something, has an objective -Marc Leblanc’s 8 Kinds of Fun: 1) sensation 2) fantasy 3) narrative 4) challenge 5) fellowship 6) discovery 7) expression 8) submission (casual, pastime) Fun for Game Design -Raph Coster, A Theory of Fun

-Takeaways: fun can (and should) be designed, fun can be challenging, there are different kinds of fun 3.6 Finding the Fun

-Volkswagen, The Fun Theory: Speed Camera Lottery , Piano Staircase (people going on stairs instead of the escalator, because it is more fun), World’s Deepest Trashcan -LinkedIn: job profiles, the goal was to have as complete profiles as possible -> the profile completeness bar -> 20% increase – feedback, progression, completion 4. GAME ELEMENTS 4.1 Breaking Games Down

-designing using game elements (e.g. building a house – components, not a gun shooting out done houses)











4.2 The Pyramid of Gamification Elements

-recurring elements:

Dynamics

experience experien ce of the game

Mechanics

-esthetics (visual experience, sound)

Components

-Marc LeBlanc, MDA Framework (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics): influential framework for understanding all games l evel conceptual elements, ‘the grammar’, the hidden structure that -Game Dynamics: the most high level makes the experience somehow cohere and have regular patterns, not the same as the rules, they are more conceptual, rules can be viewed as their manifestation, conceptual kinds of elements that provide the framing for the game: 1) constraints – games create meaningful choices and interesting problems by limiting people’s freedom 2) emotions – variety of emotions (games have a bigger range than gamification, because gamification happens in a real world context, and situations like getting someone really upset or abject sadness are not thing that are going to be valued) -> richer experience, emotional reinforcement 3) narrative – the structure that pulls together the pieces of the game or the gamified system into some coherent feeling whole: explicit – the storyline in a game, implicit – consistent graphical experiences, creating a sense of flow, alluding to certain kinds of particles or certain kinds of story ideas that may be in players’ heads – if there is no sense of narrative, there is a risk that the gamified system will just be a bunch of abstract stuff which limits effectiveness 4) progression – the notion of starting at one place, going up along the way until you get to some higher place, giving the sense that the player will have the opportunity to improve, or at least move from where they have started; doesn’t require specific examples as levels and points, but those are typical 5) relationships – people interacting with each other (friends, teammates, opponents), very

important to the experience of the game











-Components: lowest level, most service level kinds of game elements, specific examples, specific ways to do a higher level that mechanics and dynamics represents 1) achievements – some reward attached to doing a specific set of things 2) avatars – visual representation of character 3) badges – specific visual representation of achievements, achievements, as well as of the higher level dynamics and mechanics 4) boss fights – at the end of some part of the game, a really hard challenge 5) collections – pulling a bunch of different things t hings together 6) combat 7) content unlocking – you need to do something in order to gain access to certain new content 8) gifting 9) leader-boards – list in order of score 10) levels 11) points 12) quests – things to be done, specifically specifically defined within the structure of the game game 13) social graph 14) teams 15) virtual goods -Lessons from the Pyramid: variety of options, lesser levels tend to implement one or more higherlevel concepts 4.3 The PBL Triad

-Some game elements are more common than others, and more influential than others in shaping typical examples of gamification. One reason for this is because they serve a variety of functions. However, gamification should not rely only on these elements, because it could easily become boring and shallow. -Points: - a way of keeping score - they can determine the relative position of the players or they can actually define winning - they can connect to rewards - they provide feedback - way of displaying progress - provide data for the game designer - fungible – one point is equal to the other, things are then comparable comparable by points











4.4 Limitations of Elements

-Game elements are a starting-point for gamification, they are raw materials and tools that can be used and deployed, but they are not the entirety of what needs to be done. The elements are not the game. What makes the elements successful is the way they are all tied t ied together. -Not all rewards are fun; not all fun is rewarding. – the rewards themselves are not necessarily wrong, but if it is the only thing the designer focuses on as an objective, then there is a danger that the system won’t actually generate the true results which come from real engagement. -Cookie clutter – users don’t differentiate and get burned out if the focus is only on PBLs. -PBLs need to motivate and engage users to do something other than they would otherwise do, or they don’t make sense, they do not have a direct connection to driving real business value (e.g. Google News Badges).

-If focusing only on elements, what about: Meaningful choices? Puzzles? Mastery? Community? Different kinds of users? 4.5 Bing Gordon Interview

-It is normal for people born after 1971 to see life as games, to be used to the interface, to some of the rules. It is important to understand how they think and the lens through which they see the world. -> generational change (e.g. the use of numbers in everyday: from baseball statistics to Pokémon cards) -A bunch of principles of game design underscore and prove all kinds of communication and motivation theory. -Robert Trent Jones, golf-course designer: look hard and play easy -The things that work in the best games are the best principles. -2 typical mistakes: - primary motivation of games is winning competition - high-score ranking (typically demotivating) 5. MOTIVATION AND PSYCOLOGY (I)











-buying computers: make really good computers, price them affordably -> retail experience: make the process efficient, quick, easy -> Apple Store: people should come in, hang around and browse, get familiar with a product – lounge experience 5.2 Behaviorism

-two major traditions in psychology: behaviorism (looking externally, at what people do) and cognitivism (mental states, what’s internally going on in people’s heads)

-The behaviorism program: internal states are not scientifically testable – ‘the black box’ : what’s inside a person’s head is off limits – what can be tested scientifically is what goes in and comes out (scientific method: hypothesis, test, falsification, advancement advancement…) - stimulus : something that gets done from the outside, something that happens that is externally creating some challenge, challenge, opportunity, or reaction which is the: response -Pavlov, classical conditioning: ringing a bell to get dogs to salivate – the stimulus is instinctively related to the response - B.F. Skinner, operant conditioning: not just an instinctive association of two things, but a feedback loop – there is a stimulus and a response, and based on that pattern there is learning -> the response is ultimately conditioned upon the stimulus; consequences of actions, not just a sequence of things happening; there is a sense, a knowledge, or awareness that the stimulus produces a response, and when the response is made in a certain way, more of the stimulus is administered (e.g. Skinner box experiment : an animal pushes lever and food pops out, if it does something wrong, there is an electrical grid as punishment) - in certain cases people will respond to stimuli and they will learn to draw associations between stimuli and response -Behavioral Economics: new, novel, influential branch of economics – thinking about what people actually do, instead of why - people make “mistakes” consistently, they do not always conform to abstract economic theory: loss aversion (being more afraid of losing then being taken by the possibility of gaining), power of defaults (e.g. opting in and out – people tend to go with defaults), confirmation bias (people tend to find what they are looking for, the brain wants to see patterns whether or not they are really there) -Takeaways on behaviorism: observation (we should look at what people actually do), feedback loops (observable feedback tends to lead to a response; action-feedback-response motivates behavior), reinforcement reinforcement (learning occurs by reinforcement of stimuli).













-Reinforcement -Reinforcement through rewards (e.g. MLB. com Badges) -> behavioral loops - The Dopamine System: the power of rewards, obsession, addiction lies in brain chemistry comes from the structure in the brain that is associated with pleasure pl easure and learning; the brain releases and reabsorbs the neuro-transmitted dopamine in response to certain activities (e.g. rewards tend to cause dopamine-release) dopamine-release) and it causes people to make the association of the activity and the pleasure (e.g. Samsung Nation Cruise Badge – getting a badge just for being there) -Behavioral gamification gamification tends to focus on creating rewards that maximize the engagement based on dopamine-release. 5.4 Reward Structures

-Gamification, -Gamification, at least in its more behavioral manifestations, manifestations, tends to be very heavily about rewards. -ways to do rewards: - what kinds of behavior does the designer want to incentivize (e.g. Foursquare badges: 1 st, nd rd 2 , 3 time check-in, regular check-in, showing up at a certain type of place, etc.) – giving meaningful choices and options - different categories/kinds of rewards – Richard Ryan & Ed Deci, Cognitive Evaluation Theory : 1) tangible (physical, e.g. money)/intangible (‘not real’, e.g. badge) 2) expected/unexpected (effect of surprise, dopamine) dopamine) 3) contingency (what has to be done in order to get the reward): task noncontingent (getting the reward no matter what), engagement-contingent (getting the reward when starting the task), completion-contingent (getting the reward when the task is finished), performance-contingent (getting the reward based on how well the task is done) e.g. Samsung Nation Cruise Badge: intangible, unexpected, engagement-contingent; engagement-contingent;











6. MOTIVATION AND PSYCHOLOGY (II) 6.1 Limits of Behaviorism

-There is a lot to learn from behaviorism. behaviorism. The notion that we should be scientific and systematic, and not just rely on peoples’ reporting of their feeling is a worthwhile endeavor. And some of the concepts behaviorism focuses on, e.g. the importance of feedback, the idea that feedback loops systematically modify people’s behavior, is an important finding and one that’s quite relevant to gamification. And the different kinds of rewards can help us see how to construct different kinds of systems to motivate behavior. But there are serious limitations and blind spots to the behaviorist – reasons for slowing down, cause and effect, not learning). approach (e.g. Speed Camera Lottery –

-Modifying people’s behavior through constructed systems of reward and punishment based on learning from feedback scared people. B. F. Skinner’s work on operant conditioning fell out of favor in psychology. -If you focus entirely on the behaviorist approach, you tend to focus on the people involved as a black box. And that tends to move away from the notion that this is a human being, a player. 6.2 Dangers of Behaviorism

-potential for abuse/manipulation abuse/manipulation – the way the brain responds to rewards and feedback leveraging to achieve someone else’s desired results has the potential to be problematic -> addiction: ethical danger, the response from the customers, government agencies, and danger of the company not focusing on what they should be -Hedonic Treadmill: once you start focusing on giving people rewards in order to give them pleasure, you better keep doing it; if people learn to respond to a reward (feedback loop), then they’re only











6.4 How Rewards Can Demotivate

-Rewards, acting as extrinsic motivators can crowd out the intrinsic motivation that was already there. -> The Over-Justification Effect (e.g. drawing: kids who were intrinsically motivated and then motivated extrinsically with a reward, after being taken away the extrinsic motivation, were no longer intrinsically driven; day care pickup: motivating parents to come on time by punishment in money failed to achieve its effect, the intrinsic motivators such as social factors and care being replaced by an external motivator, money; blood donation: civic duty and helping other people replaced by paying them resulted in a negative effect on donations; teacher salaries: teacher meritpay, paying teachers based on the results of their students, did not work because teaching turned into a calculus about how to get the desired results for the reward) - but the analysis focused on “interesting” tasks , not all tasks are intrinsically motivated - reward types matter: tangible are most demotivating, unexpected don’t affect the outcome, performance-contingent can go both ways 6.5 Self Determination Theory

-1970s Ed Deci & Richard Ryan -Self Determination Theory is a comprehensive theory of human motivation, which through many studies has been able to show that people are not necessarily always motivated by rewards; and that, in fact, intrinsic motivation is a more powerful and more effective way to encourage people to act in certain ways. -The motivational spectrum: amotivation (no motivation, motivation, indifference)

extrinsic motivation

intrinsic motivation

external regulation (unwillingness, external cause)











-Roger Martin & David Kelly, Design Thinking: Design thinking should be a process that all business engages in, for any purpose. - purposive, i.e. it has a goal – not just trying to make something beautiful, not just creating a process that does certain things, but trying to achieve some objective, with everything in the process having to tie into that purpose - human centered – designed around people, not just a set of objectives, or a set set of metrics, but the EXPERIENCE (which is greater than the game, and greater than the game elements), having in mind that the experience of the player is not the experience of the designer! - balance of analytical and creative: if you just have analytics, numbers, quantitative formulas, your processes will be too dry and formal; you won’t really address people’s innovation – there experiential needs, and you’ll miss lots of opportunities for creativity and innovation – is some data, but insufficient to give us a clear, clean, structured algorithm, and that often involves abductive reasoning (Charles Sanders Peirce, pragmatism) pragmatism) – inference from insufficient information -> jumping the intuitive leap, but based on a foundation, an initial best available explanation - iterative – it inherently expects that we are not going to get it right the first time (trying-> failing->learning->trying failing->learning->trying again), iterative: doing the same thing multiple times, but improving over time through the process -> prototyping and playtesting (roughest prototype tested by people to produce better versions) -Dan Hunter & Kevin Werbach, Gamification Design Framework – – a 6-step process for implementing gamified systems: 1) define business objectives – What is the system designed to accomplish? What are the goals? 2) delineate target behaviors – What are the target behaviors? What do you want people to do? 3) describe your players – Who are going to be the users? What are they like? How will the gamified system respond to them? 4) devise activity loops: engagement loops and progression loops, structuring the core











- figure out what are the success metrics (win states) – what things will tell you that the gamification gamification process was a success -> should be related to what the behaviors are - what are the analytics, the ways of measuring the path towards the win states by virtue of the activity on those target behaviors (e.g. DAU/MAU – daily average users over monthly average users, the ratio showing how engaging a site is; virality – people referring friends, showing levels of growth; volume of activity – how many points/badges/levels per a period of time, showing what people are doing and how much, giving patterns of activities and how the system is operating 7.3 Players (Step 3)

-Who are your players? What do you know about them? – demographics, demographics, age groups, groups, where they live, income level, and other metrics; and psychographics: their behavior, what kinds of things they like to buy, what kinds of things they like to do -> What motivates your players? – overlapping value structures -How do you define different kinds of players in a gamified system? – The Bartle MMOG Model of Player Types: acting killers (affecting people, vanquishing, healing)

achievers (reach some achievement, achievement, overcome obstacles, get recognition)

players

world

socializers (interacting with others)

explorers (see what’s possible, scope out, push limits)

interacting













-Progression loops operate at the macro level, they are broader structures of activity throughout the course of the game, defining how the gamified system moves forward. - smaller challenges as parts of a larger challenge -> start to finish through a series of intermediate steps, balanced in an effective way - representation of the player journey: the player evolves in the game from a newbie/novice to a master, typically through a rising and falling action rest rest boss fight rest climbing rest climbing climbing climbing onboarding -A well-designed gamification system will typically have well-structured engagement loops that ensure that feedback feedback pushes towards towards motivation motivation which pushes pushes towards action; action; and also wellstructured progression loops, which get users from the early stage, easy-to-learn, up to the tough level of mastery, hard-to-master, through a natural set of processes through the game.











8.2 Is Gamification Right for Me

-4 questions: 1) motivation – Where would you derive value from encouraging behavior? - emotional connections, unique skills, creativity, or teamwork - to make boring tasks interesting (e.g. Neal Stephenson, Reamde: airport security as chasing goblins in a castle) 2) meaningful choices – Are your target activities sufficiently interesting? (e.g. Google News Badges – not meaningful) 3) structure – Can the desired behaviors be modeled through algorithms? - must be able to encode in rules/algorithms (e.g. Samsung Nation: Twitter sharing points, points for product registration) 4) potential conflicts – Can the game avoid tension with other motivational structures? (e.g. salary vs. fun, grading up not down)

8.3 Design for Collective Good

-Using gamification in a thoughtful, t houghtful, deep, substantive, meaningful way. e.g. Stack Overflow – – a question and ask site for programmers -> get people to volunteer in helping with problems and providing answers











8.5 Amy Jo Kim Interview Engagement Verbs - Kim’s Social Engagement Verbs acting

express

compete

content

players explore

collaborate interacting

- game types: competitive (zero sum: win-lose) vs. collaborative (non-zero sum: win-win, lose-lose) -evolving games, The Player Journey : newbie – regular – expert 9. ENTERPRISE GAMIFICATION 9.1 Enterprise Applications

-Constellation Research: 55 early adopters of enterprise gamificati











9.2 Workplace Motivation

-What actually motivates people in the workplace? 1) rewards: pay, bonuses, stock options, praise, promotions, responsibility -> extrinsic 2) learning/skill development development – helpful for employees, beneficial for employers (e.g. LiveOps: people working from home getting the opportunity to flexibly learn more and advance) 3) information: sense about the quality of work (e.g. Objective Logistics: restaurants can track their performance and give feedback to employees) 4) corporate citizenship (e.g. Microsoft Language Quality Game: sense of doing something that is good for the company) 5) fun (e.g. Zappos Face Game: after login a coworker’s picture appears and you have to identify it, after which it leads to their profile, which eventually leads to getting to know your coworkers better) 9.3 The Game vs. The Job

-If you are designing a gamified system in the enterprise, what you care about is, ultimately, the job. The goal is to motivate employees to do something that’s a business benefit. The game is a means to that end.











9.5 Daniel Debow Interview

-Rypple, Canadian startup -> Salesforce.com - amplifying behavior, goal-setting and coaching, easy way to get feedback -> social performance management - designing a great experience -> gamification -focus on the MEANING -existing game-like behavior moderated and modified -empirical (trials, and practical application) 10. SOCIAL IMPACT & BEHAVIOR CHANGE 10.1 Gamification for Good

-Gamification is a tool for motivation, and that can certainly be used for social good. But it is worthwhile to look specifically at gamification in this area for a couple of reasons. First of all, there are some different issues. There are some unique challenges for gamification in the domains of social good or social impact, and some interesting opportunities, or techniques that seem to work













3) education: changing the curriculum, incorporating game structures, credentialing function (e.g. Quest to Learn – school built around games and game structures; Lee Sheldon, The Multiplayer Classroom, Open Badge Framework s) s) 4) government: acting as an enterprise, providing customer service through interacting with citizens, promoting policies and benefits (Constance Steinkuehler Squire) 10.3 Social Impact Techniques

-Balaji Prabhakar, CAPRI (Congestion (Congestion and Parking Relief Incentives) at Stanford University – a system to incentivize people to spread out their arrival and departure and parking patterns: feedback and rewards monitoring – automatic tracking of arrival time (solving one of the biggest challenges,











11. CRITICISMS AND RISKS 11.1 Pointsification

-Margaret Robertson, Hide & Seek : pointsification – ‘taking the thing that is least essential to games and representing it as the core of the experience’ -> Gamification relies just on the surface aspects of games – game mechanics, game elements. -Focuses in on a limited, but very real set of gamification examples examples and practices. -Is gamification really effective?











-James Gardner , Lloyd’s Bank Innovation Bank Innovation Market : a marketplace with innovative ideas helpful for the bank which people could buy and sell -> insider trading: using information you have, and other people don’t -> bringing teams closer together – ‘beneficial cheating’ 11.4 Legal Issues

-5 issues: 1) privacy – getting lots of information about players, personally identifiable 2) employment/labor law – manipulation, exploitation, playbor, ‘the electronic whip’ 3) deceptive marketing – gaming and game elements embedded in marketing; stealth marketing: a gamified system not clearly designed to market, people thinking they are just











12.2 Inducement Prizes

-alternative to direct funding -1919 Charles Lindbergh & Raymond Orteig: Orteig’s 25 000 dollar prize for flying over the Atlantic non stop -> increased efficiency: 400 000 invested in reaching the accomplishment -> creativity and flexibility (e.g. Exxon Valdez oil tanker: pumping out oil from the cold waters of Alaska, a chemist found a solution he learned while helping a friend lay concrete) -Relatedness to gamification:











-motivators: - money (e.g. Amazon Mechanical Turk) - love – word-reviewing in digitalization process through a - gamification (e.g. Fold It , Digital Coot – game, Mikrotask , ESP Game – people typing in what they see in pictures and if their responses are the same, there is a great likelihood that that is what a picture represents, the fun for the gamers being the ability to compare their entries, and the use for the system being the improvement of image search) -> fun -nature of the task: - split up easily

GamifIcation Course Notes

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