Gamification is on debate. There are arguments towards and against them. Here I pick a great text, that warn about the dangers of gamification. It argues, that gamification is mostly about extrinsic motivation – but the more valuable motivation is the intrinsic, that comes from within.

In a 1973 study on motivation, Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett found that children who expected (and were given) a reward of a gold star and a ribbon for drawing pictures spent less time playing with the drawing materials in subsequent observations than children who were assigned to an unexpected reward condition and to children who received no extrinsic reward. Similar studies with college students have shown that people who are not offered a reward will work longer and harder on a given puzzle than people who are offered a reward.

This thought is not mentioned in the text, but is somehow at hand: while gamification can be a nice tool for things like Groupon, it somehow makes the problems in the global monetary system more than obvious. Because the game-rules can be so much stronger than anything else. Whether you fit into it or not.

I think this is especially interesting in a play(ful), game-designers context. Because it is also a little bit about getting stuff done vs. playful behaviour. I can only encourage you to read this text. In the end I figured out, that gamification is/can be really about EVERYTHING that is. Really a mind-opener in some ways that leaves some perplexing thoughts behind. (via)

Here is the link to a talk from Maxis Creative Director Stone Librande who made one game for his kids every year in the last 15 years. He shows the games, explains his design goals and foremost, the design lessions learned from making this games and playing them with his kids.

A highly recommended talk for people, who want to peek into the art and craft of making games. There are good lessions also for game design veterans, for example, that items could be as important as goals.

A new episode of the legendary “Games Cuture Circle” taken from live-footage from Berlin. This show got the topic “Reality” and is all about games and the thing we call “Reality”. It’s about media theory, games, layers of gaming, augmented reality and stuff like that. Enjoy. Here is the permalink to the video-site.

Participants:

• Julian Oliver (Artist)
• Greg Trefry (Game designer)
• Claudia Becker (Media researcher at Vilèm Flusser Archive)
• Kristoffer Gansing (Artistic director of Transmediale)

There is a new game-developer forum on the net that looks promising: The Super Friendship Club is a forum, dedicated to the art and craft of making games. There are at least game-dev competitions every two month. “Everyone is welcome! Come and make games!” This is the friendly claim, when entering the forum. Sounds like music to my ears. (via)

Digital Tools is still in the Top 20 Wikio UK Gaming Blogcharts. This is the preview of the Charts, that will be released on the 5. July 2011. Unfortunately Digital Tools fell from place 15 to 17. But nevertheless Top 20 after all!

Support this blog, by tweeting content, like it on Facebook or better by linking to this blog. Why not post something in your blog with a backlink or trackback to Digital Tools?

And here are the charts:

Ranking made by Wikio

This could be a huge leap forward to new kinds of production: the Solar Sinter Project from Markus Kayser. It is some sort of production unit, that is able to work only driven by the sun. It can sinter objects out of the desert-sand, by using the direct sunlight through the lens, in order to “glue” the sand together. Sintering is some sort of 3d-printing. Ok, I would say, that you would in fact need sunlight like in the desert to make this robust and stable work. But at least it works and looks awesome cool (especially the “office”). (via)

PS: We made also some solar-cooking experiments lately with Regeneractiv at the Dingfabrik. Here is a video.

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.