Pic: (cc) BY scnclr.de
The Gamification-debate is about roll and I do not have a tightened opinion yet. I just read this article at 4 color rebellion (thanks @ludonaut), about how to get it wrong. Just applying achievements and most simple game-mechanics to real-life tasks is not the thing, we should talk about, when we talk about Gamification! From a game-designers point-of-view this is a big failure. Just making game-mechanics and achievements does also not work too well, when making games. If you have a game, that is based upon simple game-mechanics and achievements only, than the result will be a) a poor game or b) a game, that lasts for minutes or hours to play. Boring stuff. There is more to good games.
If we talk about real game-design here, there is much more about stuff explore (and exploit!). When it comes to Gamification, I can imagine really new concepts of getting things done, for example at companies or webbased-platforms. Sites like “Stack Overflow” for example really improved the content-quality, just by applying really simple mechanisms, that most wouldn’t even consider to be a game. If applied right, than we could get much more productive while having more fun at work, even without noticing it. Several years ago, one thought popped in my mind and I wondered, why nobody else had this in mind: If you playing Tetris or any other puzzle-game, that you are doing sorting, sorting, sorting all the time. Humans like to sort! Humans love to collect as well! Now imagine, how many billion people are playing Tetris just in this second? Could we apply this to real-world tasks? I was wondering, why really nobody was coming up with this topic for years. Now with the Gamification debate, things are moving slowly into that direction. I agree with 4-color rebellion, that there is a risk to apply it wrong. If we want Gamification to happen, than we need real game-designers do this work and not some experts doing trends!
Some links, that might be of interest: gamification-research.org, GameToilet – cartoons about game-design, Why Gamification will kill us all – SMBC Comic. (Add your link here.)
[Message from post supporter] If you’re feeling nostalgic, you can play Tetris on Reader’s Digest.
