Is gamification the best thing since iced beads? I don't think so and here's why. The mechanics that people are getting excited about in games came from real life to make games more interesting. Not the other way round.

1. The Myth of Gamification
Hint: It’s all about lification
Richard Vahrman
Locomatrix

2. 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

3. 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)

4. 1. Challenges
• Defined missions to complete or goals to accomplish, with awards or virtual items earned upon
completion.
• From the scouts, straight to 4Square

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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)

11. 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)

12. 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?

13. 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

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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

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

21. 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?

22. Life was full of …
• … Life mechanics
• Computer games
came along and
applied them
• The shame is we
never called this
“lification”

23. Because if we had…
… we would now be
getting excited about
applying lification to
er, life

24. 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