Three Thoughts on #Games & #Gamification

Here are three thoughts I had the other day when I was discussing gamification with some folks.

1) The term “game” has some really positive associations with it. Lots of people like to play games and games mostly seem to be fun but the term also causes people to have some really negative reactions. I find this suprising but if you think about the term “game” you have comments like “gaming the system” or “She’s just playing a game” or “what game is he playing with me?” The term game really has just as much negative association as positive association. Then add “ification” to it and some people go nuts. Often it’s better to throw around terms like interactivity, engagement and authentic practice to help people get past some of the negative ideas about games.

2) Eventually games will be common place in work-transactions for learning, collaboration and education. Think about 20 years ago when just the thought of wearing a pair of khakis and a polo shirt to a business meeting with a potential client would get you fired. The workplace evolves and changes over time, it changes in how people perceive work with tools like Blackberrys opening the door to tethered access to work and work issues all the time. It changes in the location people work (more people working from home than ever before) and it changes in how it gets done (more collaboration with colleagues around the globe). Plus the aforementioned changing of work clothes. So the thought that games will eventually become an integrated part of a lot of work and leisure activities that we do is not a crazy idea. Things will change, games, gamification and game-like computer interfaces will be common place.

3) Learning is a complicated mess. Games can be an engaging, active and energetic learning tool. The problem is that there are so many things going on in a game like Halo or even a simple game like Drawing with Friends or Angry Birds that it is hard from a research perspective to pin down exactly what makes a game so engaging and meaningful. Isolating variables and studying them as they relate to games is hard and artificial. When I play a game, its the entire experience. Even simple stuff like names. Would I like the game Angry Birds as much if the game was called Angry Hamsters? or Angry Chipmunks? It might have an impact? Or not. Or what if the birds were drawn more realistically or what if there was no story behind why the birds were angry or… I think that sometimes as researchers we dissect too much and many times we need to step back and look at the Gestalt to really understand what is happening in a game and even then, maybe we should just enjoy it and not study it.