We review Autography design as an exemplary case of persuasive application. We immerse it in the context of applied and persuasive games built around gameful mechanics and interactive learning. We then contrast it with superficial gamification efforts. We propose some guidelines for an effective process of cooperative design and process for these complex media productions.

1. Pietro Polsinelli
@ppolsinelli
For
Applied and Persuasive:
Playful Learning

2. APPLIED AND PERSUASIVE
EXAMPLES

3. Autography is a playful
persuasive application
3

4. With Autography people can
draw digital graffiti
in the context of the Opera
del Duomo locations and
works of art.
4

5. It’s a locally available service
and mobile application
integrated with Opera’s web
site.
Created by Opera del Duomo
and Open Lab.
5

6. People are creating wonderful drawings using a limited set
of tools and surfaces: those used in the “real” world...
6

7. Also very classical graffiti 

8. Details matter: the tools are those used for “real”
graffiti. [Perception of unseen depth.]

9. Autography is a playful
persuasive application,
meant for
influencing behaviour and
creating participation.
9

10. How did we get to it?
There was a “removing
graffiti” app idea, how to
remove them.
10

11. But… there is something
POSITIVE in graffiti.
An intention, a form of
expression.
11

12. Let’s make it
easier to create
graffiti!
12

13. In place, as app, on the web (desktop and mobile).
13

14. Enter the doubts phase.
14

15. Will they understand that it
is a positive message?
Or… will it encourage real,
damaging graffiti?
Or… will people ignore it?
15

16. Took the plunge.
16

17. Alice Filipponi
Web-Marketing Director
@ Opera
17
Francesco Pallanti
Marketing & SEO research
@ Chorally

18. Yes they are creating them.Today its almost a
hundred per day.
18

19. Why? Why care?
19

20. Surprise, curiosity.The thing there is totally
unexpected.
20

21. “Uh, its super cool” – but...
Its just a drawing app.
But it looks nice.
I can have informal fun in a
formal CONTEXT.
21

22. From digital to… paper! 22

23. More applied
games / apps

24. Addressing a real world
problem with games.
24

25. Keep Me Safe in Europe
A game for learning how to prevent neglect and abuse

26. Feel Better
Help young cancer patients learn about their therapy path.

27. Once Upon A Tile
An innovative mobile game for educating on sustainable development

28. Redesire
Collaborative definitions of new urban spaces

29. The Workplace Challenge
Learn to meet IT problems in a systemic way.

30. Decameron (Allegra Brigata)
Classic litterature work by Boccaccio presented through narrative puzzles

31. Offshore Safety
Learn how Italian offshore platforms are kept safe

32. Applied games work.
This was a surprising
personal discovery.
Sometimes in unexpected
ways.
32

33. DOMAIN ANALYSIS AND
LEARNING MODELS

34. Let’s try to learn more
about applied games.
34

35. Games are about
complexity, because they
are about people.
You may be making
systems that are
interactions with NP hard
problems.
35

36. Even Mastermind is NP complete!
36

37. Systems of play
37

38. 38

39. 39

40. How are games and
persuasive apps
connected to
learning?
40

41. Relationship to learning is
key in defining applied
games.
Also in defining what
applied games are not.
41

42. Designing Games for Health
RE-DESIGN

43. Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Category, competition,
avatar, war, reward, levels
Vs.
Inclusive, mentor, path,
story, transformation
A language change.
43

44. Ian Bogost: gamification is
bullshit.
44

45. Ian Bogost writes:
Gamification, I suggested, is primarily a practice
of marketers and consultants who seek to
construct and then exploit an opportunity for
benefit. …
As I’ve previously argued,“-ifying” things
“makes applying that medium to any given
purpose seem facile and automatic”
(From Why Gamification is Bullshit)
45

46. But this actually has nothing
to do with what we do.
46

48. 48

49. PRINCIPLES

50. Develop from scratch a
custom built game or more
simply interactive
application that will
progressively familiarize
the player about a non
trivial topic.
50

51. Progression is built in the
application mechanic /
game loop, using an
analogy represented in the
graph below:
51

52. 52

53. Learning in games is not
“by trial and error”:
its by “fail and retry”.
Games, not simulations.
53

54. 54

55. 55

56. CREATING APPLIED
GAMES:
THE PROCESS

57. 57
Applied games as intended
here are about complexity,
so
their production needs to
follow a loop of ideas,
prototypes, tests and
feedbacks.

58. 58
Working on an applied
game concept,
I always start from asking
“why would anybody care”.

59. 59
Its probably very much a
problem in the context of
museum initiatives too.
At least, it should be 

60. People are actually
hungry for knowledge.
In the right form:
“surprise me”.
60

61. The advantage of intrinsic
depth: otherwise, no
museum!
You have it! Enough of
zombies, sci-fi, D&D or
birds!
61

62. Museum curation
experience probably also
means familiarity with
inclusiveness,
62

63. 63

64. 64
Knowledge Base
The very first step is transforming the
available knowledge in a form that is
atomic, so that gameplay episodes can
express such parts.
Such atoms can make sense only in a flow,
or in a flow tree.
They can be in narrative form, as
dialogues, as questions / answers, any
form actually.

65. 65

66. 66
Game as labs: careful, games
are not simulators.

67. 67
Game mechanic:
an interaction of whole game
elements that can be described
by a very short algorithm
expressible in a short natural
language paragraph 

68. 68
Loop until:
Second-to-second
Minute-to-minute
Session-to-session
Day-to-day
gameplay is clearly defined.

69. 69
And:
Define learning progress
Define the audience
Define the devices
Define data collection

70. As a customer:
do not do this
70

71. “Let’s just clone that great
success and change the
words.”: the worst possible
smart idea.
Creating applied games by cloning existing
games is a very bad idea for a host of reasons.
71

72. -You will end up creating a uglier version
of an existing game, the latter acting as a
quality reference for the players who will
expect your applied game to be at least of
the same quality as the cloned one.
-The topic you want to lead the player too
is an obstacle to game play instead of
being built inside the mechanics.
- There will be a dis-alignment between
the game topic and the topic you care
about.
72

73. “We just need a
playable prototype, not a
complete game!”
A playable prototype of
the Space Shuttle is very
close to being the
finished Space Shuttle.
73

74. Lets do some minigames!
≈
Lets do some ugly games!
Lets hint to a mechanics
without developing it!
74

75. “We need the game’s
total cost upfront!”
Just pay for the (first)
game design and
concept. Minimize risk,
we both win!
#noestimates
75

76. “I am an art expert, hence I have
such cool ideas for the game
design.”
You didn’t consider:
inclusiveness, this game your
very kids are playing, NP-hard
combinatorics, that this and that
will cost immensely…
76

77. “We have to change this simple
thing and you ask for more
money?”
What kind of change is it?
Mutual understanding about the
difference say between change
of data and change of behaviour.
77

78. “The game is not teaching what I
wanted it to.”
“I am scared that they will accuse
the game of teaching the
opposite”
Pair with the designer. Connect
knowledge, learning and the
specific core mechanic and
narrative.
78

79. SO...
79

80. How to deal with complexity?
The burocratization of work
or ...
prototypes, short narratives
and conversations.

81. A process compatible with
change

82. LEARN MORE
82

83. 83

84. Steffen P.Walz
and
Sebastian
Deterding,
An Introduction
to the Gameful
World
in The Gameful
World,
MIT Press, 2015.
84

85. 85

86. My twitter stream is
mostly dedicated to
game design
@ppolsinelli
A blog on game
design
designagame.eu
86