Thursday, March 27, 2014

IJSG - International Journal of Serious Games

The International Journal of Serious Games (IJSG) has lauched its first issue (volume 1, number 1, january 2014). The published papers are fully available for download:


Individual and collaborative Performance and Level of Certainty in MetaVals
Mireia Usart, Margarida Romero

Gamification and Smart, Competence-Centered Feedback: Promising Experiences in the Classroom
Michael D. Kickmeier-Rust, Eva C. Hillemann, Dietrich Albert

Guidelines for an effective design of serious games
Chiara Eva Catalano, Angelo Marco Luccini, Michela Mortara

Serious Games for education and training
Alessandro De Gloria, Francesco Bellotti, Riccardo Berta

Business models for Serious Games developers - transition from a product centric to a service centric approach
Jannicke Baalsrud Hauge, Stefan Wiesner, Rosa Garcia Sanchez, Poul Kyvsgaard Hansen, Giusy Fiucci, Michel Rudnianski, Jon Arambarri Basanez

The journal is seeking for contributions in several topics. Gamification is one of those topics.

The IJSG is published by the Serious Games Society.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

A Brief History of Gamification: Part III - The Definitions

The third part of The Brief History of Gamification is here, following A Brief History of Gamification: Part I - The Origin and A Brief History of Gamification: Part II - The Name. I invite others to contribute (with comments to the post) if something is missing and to correct what may be wrong or incomplete.

This third post is about the definition of the concept that became known as gamification. There are probably as many definitions for gamification as people writing about it. Gamification definitions have been proposed since the word appeared in 2010. Some of them were listed previously in this blog in a post where 23 definitions were listed. Those definitions were found in web logs, technical reports and academic papers. Some of them are redundant or very similar to each other. 

Here are some of those definitions and a few more recent ones:
  • “The notion that gaming mechanics can be applied to routine activities” (Johnson et al., 2014);
  •  “The use of game mechanics and rewards in non-game setting to increase user engagement and drive desired user behaviors” (Duggan and Shoup, 2013);
  • “Implementing design concepts from games, loyalty programs, and behavior economics to drive user engagement” (Zichermann and Linder, 2013);
  • “The use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-game contexts” (Werbach and Hunter, 2012);
  •  “The application of game metaphors to real life tasks to influence behaviour, improve motivation and enhance engagement” (Marczewski, 2012); 
  • “Using game techniques to make activities more engaging and fun” (Kim, 2011); 
  • “The use of game attributes to drive game-like player behavior in a non-game 
context” (Wu, 2011); 
  • “Taking game mechanics and applying to other web properties to increase engagement” (Terrill, 2008);

     
Other definitions from the academia are:
  •  “Incorporating game elements into a non-gaming software application to increase user experience and engagement” (Domínguez et al., 2013);
  • “A form of service packaging where a core service is enhanced by a rules-based service system that provides feedback and interaction mechanisms to the user with an aim to facilitate and support the users’ overall value creation” (Huotari and Hamari, 2011);
  • “The use of game mechanics, dynamics, and frameworks to promote desired behaviors” (Lee and Hammer, 2011);
  • “The use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Deterding et al., 2011).
This shows that there is no consensus for a single and widely accepted definition for gamification (Werbach and Hunter, 2012). The first known definition in an academic paper is the one from Huotari and Hamari. In spite of all these different proposals, the definition that is more often found in academic papers is the one from Deterding et al. (2011). This definition is now widely used as the academic definition for the concept of gamification.

The definition from Domínguez et al. refers to non-gaming educative contexts. To conclude, some more definitions regardind education and training contexts:
  • “The adition of elements commonly associated with games (e.g. game mechanics) to an educational or training program in order to make the learning process more engaging” (Landers and Callan, 2011); 
  • “Using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems” (Kapp, 2012); 
  • “Simple gameplay to support productive interaction for expected types of learners and instructors” (Rughinis, 2013); 

See also:

A Brief History of Gamification: Part I - The Origin

A Brief History of Gamification: Part II - The Name

References:
Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., and Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining ”gamification". In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments, MindTrek ’11, pages 9–15, New York, NY, USA. ACM.
 Domínguez, A., Saenz-de Navarrete, J., de Marcos, L., Fernández-Sanz, L., Pagés, C., and Martínez-Herráiz, J. (2013). Gamifying learning experiences: Practical implications and outcomes. Computers and Education, 63(0):380–392. 
Duggan, C. and Shoup, K. (2013). Business Gamification for Dummies. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.  
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., and Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Technical report, Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. 
Huotari, K. and Hamari, J. (2011). Gamification: from the perspective of service marketing. In Proc. CHI 2011 Workshop Gamification. 
Landers, R. and Callan, R. (2011). Casual social games as serious games: The psychology of gamification in undergraduate education and employee training. Serious Games and Edutainment Applications.
Lee, J. and Hammer, J. (2011). Gamification in education: What, how, why bother? Academic Exchange Quarterly, 15(2):2.
Marczewski, A. (2012). Gamification: A Simple Introduction. Marczewski, A.
Rughinis, R. (2013). Gamification for productive interaction reading and working with the gamification debate in education. In Proceedings of the Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI), 8th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies.
Terrill, B. (2008). My coverage of lobby of the social gaming summit   
Werbach, K. and Hunter, D. (2012). For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Wharton Digital Press. 
Wu, M. (2011). What is gamification, really? [web log message] 
Zichermann, G. and Linder, J. (2013). The Gamification Revolution. McGraw-Hill Education. 

Friday, March 21, 2014

gEducation Workshop: Call for Papers

The gEducation Workshop - How Gamification is changing the future of Education will be held in Barcelona, on the Gamification World Congress. The gEducation Workshop will be on Saturday, May 24, 2014 (9:00am - 1:30pm).  

Topics of Interest:

    •    Tools for education
    •    Gamification in education
    •    Techniques and strategies
    •    Frameworks
    •    Collaborative learning
    •    Innovative methodologies
    •    Success stories
    •    User experiences and gamification in the clasrooms
    •    Management of gamified classrooms
    •    Useful resources for educators
    •    Gamification for different learning levels
    •    Styles of gamfication in educational environment
    •    E-learning

Important Dates:

    •    Submission deadline: April 14
    •    Notifications: May 1
    •    Workshop: May 24

http://www.gamificationworldcongress.com/

Friday, March 14, 2014

A Brief History of Gamification: Part II - The Name

This is the second post regarding the origin and evolution of gamification, following A Brief History of Gamification: Part I - The Origin. I invite others to contribute (with comments to the post) if something is missing and to correct what may be wrong or incomplete.

The Name

About the concept’s name, several authors claim that the term gamification, a neologism, was created in 2002 (Marczewski, 2012; Penenberg, 2013), or 2003 (Werbach and Hunter, 2012), or 2004 (Rughinis 2013) by Nick Pelling, a British programmer and video game designer. In fact, according to this alleged author, the word was created in 2002 (Pelling, 2011) and became public in 2003 in Pelling’s company website. By then, he intended to apply his gamification ideas to electronic devices. Others claim the term’s authorship for themselves at even earlier dates: “a trend I call gameification, which I first identified in the early eighties” (Burrus and Mann, 2012). Other sources indicate that the term was invented by Tim Chang from Norwest Venture Partners at an undefined date.

In digital media and according to Huotari and Hamari (2012), the term, written as gameification, was mentioned for the first time in 2008 in a blog post (Terrill, 2008). Werbach and Hunter (2012) note also that it was only in 2010 that the term was widely adopted. In fact, the term only started to be searched in Google on August, 2010 (Duggan and Shoup, 2013; Zichermann and Linder, 2013).


Before the term gamification came into widespread use on digital media, the underlying concept was also known as funware, a term proposed by Gabe Zichermann. Similar terms were associated with the concept like fun at work, serious games or games with a purpose (Rughinis, 2013), although these last two terms are in fact related with different concepts. Landers and Callan (2011) also use the term gameification, applying it in learning contexts. Besides all of these alternative terms, the word gamification prevailed even not being consensual.

The concept is seen by many as misleading and difficult to define (Anderson and Rainie, 2012; Raczkowski, 2013) and as Robertson (2010) claims “is the wrong word for the right idea”. Although game design is central to the concept of gamification, some game designers do not agree neither with the word nor with the concept (e.g. Bogost, 2011a). As long as the word became popular, criticism of gamification also made presence in digital media. Some game designers point that gamification is just a meaningless buzzword. Depreciative terms like exploitationware (Bogost, 2011b) or pointsification as proposed by Robertson, shows that both the word and the concept are not consensual.

See also:

A Brief History of Gamification: Part I - The Origin

A brief history of gamification, by Zac Fitz-Walter

Who coined the term gamification?

References:

Anderson, A. and Rainie, L. (2012). The future of gamification. Technical report, Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. 

Duggan, C. and Shoup, K. (2013). Business Gamification for Dummies. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
 
Burrus, D. and Mann, J. (2012). Gameification: Accelerating learning with technolog

Bogost, I. (2011a). Gamification is bullshit

Huotari, K. and Hamari, J. (2012). Defining gamification: A service marketing per- spective. In Proceeding of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference, MindTrek ’12, pages 17–22, New York, NY, USA. ACM.
 
Landers, R. and Callan, R. (2011). Casual social games as serious games: The psychology of gamification in undergraduate education and employee training. Serious Games and Edutainment Applications.
 
Marczewski, A. (2012). Gamification: A Simple Introduction. Marczewski, A.  

Pelling, N. (2011). The (short) prehistory of “gamification”

Penenberg, A. (2013). Play at Work: How Games Inspire Breakthrough Thinking. Piatkus. 

Robertson, M. (2010). Can’t play, won’t play

Raczkowski, F. (2013). It’s all fun and games... a history of ideas concerning gamification. In Proceedings of DiGRA 2013: DeFragging Game Studies.

Rughinis, R. (2013). Gamification for productive interaction reading and working with the gamification debate in education. In Proceedings of the Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI), 8th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies.

Terrill, B. (2008). My coverage of lobby of the social gaming summit

Werbach, K. and Hunter, D. (2012). For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Wharton Digital Press. 

Zichermann, G. and Linder, J. (2013). The Gamification Revolution. McGraw-Hill Education.

Friday, March 07, 2014

A Brief History of Gamification: Part I - The Origin

This is the first post regarding the origin and evolution of gamification, the concept broadly defined as "the use of game elements in non-game contexts". I invite others to contribute (with comments to the post) if something is missing and to correct what may be wrong or incomplete.


The Origin

The concept behind what become known as gamification in recent years was already known almost one hundred years ago. Nelson (2012) argue that the origins of gamification are in the early to mid 20th century in Soviet Union, like “a way to motivate workers without relying on capitalist-style monetary incentives”. Workers and factories could compete with each other to increase production, using points and other game-like elements. Later, in american management, on the transition from the 20th to the 21st century, the strategy of turning the workplace into a more playful setting reappeared. In 1984, Coonradt (2007) published the first edition of his book The Game of Work. Coonradt, known as the “grandfather of gamification”, applied game principles in business contexts, dealing with employee motivation. His principles to motivate people include frequent feedback, clear goals and personal choice, features that can be found in games. These American and Soviet approaches, as precursors of gamification, gave rise to o sub-genre of the concept, the “gamification of work” (or playbour). Even before Coonradt's work, loyalty programs, like frequent flyer programs in airline companies (Kumar and Herger, 2013), where travelers gain miles (i.e. points) that can be exchanged for some benefit, and other marketing campaigns already incorporate some game features.

In other contexts, similarities with game elements can be found in the use of icons or symbols to express achievements, as insignias on military uniforms or insignias used on youth organizations like the Scouts (Silvers, 2011; Werbach and Hunter, 2012). These icons and symbols have their digital counterpart in video games’ badges (Rosewell, 2012). As the Scout can collect badges and display them on their uniform, digital badges can be used to display individual skills, abilities and accomplishments since a software system provides the adequate infrastructure.

In the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) context, Deterding et al. (2011) note that, in the 1980s, in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), the design of user interfaces already benefited from the knowledge of different design practices, namely game design. Playfulness, as a desirable user experience or mode of interaction, gained the attention of multiple HCI researchers. As Deterding et al. refer, game elements were long used in HCI, as game controllers used as input devices or graphic engines and authoring tools of video games used in non-ludic contexts.
Game-Based Learning (GBL) and the Serious Games movement contribute to the spread of the concept, revealing that games could be useful in non-ludic contexts instead of just being used for fun and amusement. Gamification, connects to concepts related to HCI and to game studies, as serious games, pervasive games, alternate reality games, or playful design ( Deterding et al.).


References:
Nelson, M. (2012). Soviet and american precursors to the gamification of work. In Lugmayr, A., editor, MindTrek, pages 23–26. ACM.
Coonradt, C. (2007). The Game of Work: How to Enjoy Work as Much as Play. Gibbs Smith.
Kumar, J. and Herger, M. (2013). Gamification at Work: Designing Engaging Business Software. Aarhus, Denmark,. The Interaction Design Foundation.
Silvers, A. (2011). On education, badges and scouting [web log message].
Werbach, K. and Hunter, D. (2012). For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Wharton Digital Press.
Rosewell, J. (2012). A speculation on the possible use of badges for learning at the uk open university. In EADTU Annual Conference: The Role Of Open And Flexible Education In European Higher Education Systems For 2020: New Models, New Markets, New Media.
 
Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., and Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining ”gamification". In Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments, MindTrek ’11, pages 9–15, New York, NY, USA. ACM.