The Myth of Gamification

Hint: It’s all about lificationRichard Vahrman

Locomatrix

The Half-Truths of Gamification

• Computer games are fun• Things within games that make

them sticky• These are the game mechanics –

levels, scores, achievements, badges

• Things in life are boring Make them interesting by adding game mechanics

• Welcome to the world of gamification

Chicken or the Egg?

• Meaning which came first: game mechanics or life mechanics

• Let’s take a look• Pick a list of game

mechanics (plenty out there to choose from)

• Coming up is an analysis of Jeff (Get Satisfaction) Nolan’s list (original article here)

1. Challenges•  Defined missions to complete or goals to accomplish, with awards or virtual items earned upon 

completion.• From the scouts, straight to 4Square

2. Points• Basic virtual currency. Points can be spent on virtual items or simply accrued.• A bit like money, then, which you could spend in a shop• Points in a 1960s game show

3. Avatar System• When people create something it’s uniquely theirs and it expresses their individuality, which reinforces their connection to the app or 

service. Avatars are the most basic mechanism for doing this… and are a virtual good that can be acquired with points or currency.• Back in the day, you had to be famous to have an avatar (cartoonist Vicky introduced Supermac version of PM Macmillan in the

1950s. Nowadays any Dave Dick, or Harry has one. Steve Bell with Cameron in the 2000s

4. Avatar Catalogs• Enable a user to buy virtual goods and customize an avatar.• So in the real world, that might have been the Argos catalogue? This is a page from the 1976

edition

5. Trophy Case• Show a user all the available awards, the ones 

that they’ve completed, and their progress.• Had to think about this one

6. Levels• Enables users to earn defined experience or level status 

and attain rankings to demonstrate their status within the community.

• Here’s how football clubs move between levels in 1952

7. Leader Boards• Enables the app or site to keep track of, and publicize, the activities of end users based on statistics 

determined by app.• Golf : Scotland since 1774 (Golf is a good walk spoiled – Mark Twain)

8: Canvas• Enables users to place graphical assets in a 2D space and customize a virtual representation or space, such 

as an avatar, or virtual room.• Or maybe even a map (Hereford Mappa Mundi c1300)

9. Groups• People like being part of something bigger than just themselves, and competing with small groups of individuals or

as teams. Group activities compliment individual activities and can be used in combination in order to achieve new level status.

• Here’s a small group competing in a little game called Top of the Pops in 1967. Guess who?

10. Competitions• A way to allow users to compete against each other, and mini-challenges that users can create and send to each 

other. • Hundreds of newspaper competitions from crosswords to caption contests. 2 favourites – Lobby Lud and I-Spy from

the News Chronicle

11. Gifting• Enable users to buy each other gifts for their avatars, digital canvas (virtual spaces).• Anyone remember Christmas?

12. Trivia• Embed a multiple-choice game widget into a site, and spin up new games on any topic you like. Slideshows 

are another example, increases clicks and drives simple engagement with content submitted by users.• Trivia and slideshows – been there, done it

13. Friends• Encourage selective participation and promote. 

Friends have denote strong and weak connections to other users on the system, inform group participation, and provide audience for user submitted contests and challenges.

• Exactly as above. 1960s Brighton-style

14. Social Network Connectors• Enables users to enable/disable posting to, for example, Twitter and Facebook from your site, and displays

“missions” for users to complete on respective social networks.• Social Network Connectors actually go back a bit before humans

15. Star Rating• Enables users to rate pieces of content and see the average rating by other users.• Very novel – oh no! Michelin did it 1900. And 1960s TV show Thank Your Lucky Stars. See Janice (“I’ll give it five”)

Nicholls in the link in the notes

16. Comments• A comment wall on your User’s profile pages.

Asynchronous communication gives users additional reasons to check back to see how the conversation is evolving.

• Here are some “new” ideas for walls in real life

17. News Feed• Enables a continuous feed of the actions of various end users.• Getting bored now – see below

18. Notifier• Provides feedback and notifications to end users, such as to alert users to points that can be earned

or, challenges that can be undertaken, or site features that should be investigated.• Reader’s digest – obvious, likewise FIFA; but were the cave paintings at Lascaux early notifiers?

Life was full of …

• … Life mechanics• Computer games

came along and applied them

• The shame is we never called this “lification”

Because if we had…

… we would now be getting excited about applying lification to er, life

What we can take from computer games

• Novelty• Variety• Being in control• Chance to make mistakes• Chance to do better• Ability to measure progress• Simulate or stimulate• Doing things you can’t do in life• Doing things you won’t do in life