Computers in Human Behavior - Special Issue on Gamification: Call for Submissions

Call for submissions to Computers in Human Behavior - Special Issue on Gamification: Gameful Design, Research, and Applications.

Following the conference on Gamification 2013: Gameful Design, Research, and Applications (see the conference videos here), the conference organizers and editors of this special issue invite researchers to submit contributions on all aspects of gamification to this special issue of Computers in Human Behavior. See this other post, with a link to the Proceedings of Gamification 2013.

Gamification uses game design to make a system that primarily supports non-game tasks more fun, engaging, and motivating. We invite a wide variety of high-quality research papers into our special issue. We seek to understand the research necessary for increasingly effective implementation of,gamification in business, health, education andmentertainment. We welcome substantial research studies of gamification successes and failures, unanswered questions about gamification, gamification metrics and processes, methods of gamification commercialization and more.

This special issue aims gamification researchers interested in - but not limited to - the following fields:

• Game Design
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Psychology
• Computer Science and Informatics
• Game Studies
• Education
• User Experience and Interaction Design
• Social Sciences and Humanities (e.g., digital humanities,
  communication research, sociology)

Special Issue Editors:

• Lennart Nacke, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
• Sebastian Deterding, Rochester Institute of Technology
• Kevin Harrigan, University of Waterloo
• Neil Randall, University of Waterloo

Important dates:

• May 30, 2014: Submission deadline
• August 30, 2014: Notification back to authors
• April, 2015: Planned date of publication

Leaderboards: A Social Game Element (Part II)

 http://csi.softwareadvice.com/gamification-preventing-support-agent-burnout-1022112/

Another paper presented at Gamification 2013 shows how to use a leaderboard to improve behaviour change (see this previous post Leaderboards: A Social Game Element). 

The paper, Time's Up: Studying Leaderboards For Engaging Punctual Behaviour (João Costa, Rina Renee Wehbe, James Robb and Lennart E. Nacke) studies the use of a leaderboard for improving punctuality of participants to regular work meetings. Again, the authors conclude that leaderboards are more effective if they are used as a social game mechanic. They conducted an experiment where data were collected from 28 participants, members of the Laboratory of Games And Media Entertainment Research (GAMERLab). The arrival times to meetings of laboratory members were recorded for nine meetings.

Concerning the different kinds of leaderboads, discussed in the previous post, the leaderboard in this experiment was a multiplayer leaderboard, ranking high performance peers.

These are the authors' main conclusions:

"Our study showed that leaderboards do give way to positive social behaviours like social comparisons, which were of great importance to the majority of the participants, in particular to assess their improvement or standing in comparison to those who were of their interest, as opposed to assessing themselves in the global panorama of punctuality.
In conclusion, our study shows the possibility of gamifying meetings to improve the punctuality of the work group. This can help individuals project a better self-image, keep on task and increase their productivity."

The paper is available in the conference proceedings.

Leaderboards: A Social Game Element

Leaderboards are one of the most popular game elements that are used in gamified systems, along with points, badges or achievements (see How Gamification Can Drive Behavioural Change). Essentially they appeal to extrinsic motivation and are a means to give feedback to the players. Badges are probably at the top of this list. They are used in many systems and recently, Moodle's latest version also includes badges (see All About Badges and Open Badges). There is a lot of information, blog posts and academic papers about how to use badges and there are even MOOCs on badges.

On the other hand, leaderboards are less mentioned although they are also common in gamified systems. Applications like Leaderboarded can be used to easily create leaderbords. Gamified systems in the education sector do not use leaderboards so often, probably because they appeal to competition.

A recent paper presented at Gamification 2013 (see this other post), Reimagining Leaderboards: Towards Gamifying Competency Models through Social Game Mechanics, discusses how to use leaderboards as social game mechanic. Leaderboards are game elements that can be collaborative and qualitative and not only quantitative and competetive. In this way, leaderboards are a social game element. The paper proposes a framework that uses a prosocial leaderboards. Prosocial interactions occur when individuals act in the interest of others.

The paper defines social gamification as "... an emerging subgenre of gamified systems that use game mechanics and elements from social games, which feature interactions designed for close peers and direct ties to social networking systems , in which they are often embedded". It then cites one of our previous works, A Social Gamification Framework for a K-6 Learning Platform, mentioning that in our proposal, game elements were taken directly from social games. We also have our own definition of social gamification: the use of design elements from social games in non-game contexts to drive game like engagement in order to promote desired behaviours. 

In the Gamification 2013 paper, leaderbords are defined as "... a performance comparison game element". They can be single or mutiplayer. Single player leaderboards compare the players latest score to the previous scores. Multiplayer leaderboards can display rankings of near performing peers (a usual approach in social games) or rankings of high performing peers (where players with lower score may not be present, leading to demotivation, which is a drawback for this kind of leaderboards).

An example of a multiplayer leaderboard of high performing peers is the Gamification Gurus Leaderboard built with Leaderboarded:

The prosocial learderboard approach uses elements like status, scarcity, karma points and group leaderboard. These elements are used to encourage prosocial behaviours. In this prosocial approach all users must benefit and social interaction is achieved through altruism, sharing, reciprocity and gratitude. The concept is being applied in a competency-based assessment system for medical education.

Leaderboards, that at first are nothing more than an extrinsic motivator can, in this approach, be used to promote social interaction and to foster intrinsic motivation. It appeals to relatedeness and to a feeling of doing something not just for our own sake but for the sake of our group or community.

References

Seaborn, K., Pennefather, P., Fels, D. (2013). Reimagining Leaderboards: Towards Gamifying Competency Models through Social Game Mechanics, Proceedings of Gamification 2013, Stratford, Ontario, Canada, 107-110

Simões, J., Redondo, R. D., Vilas, A. F. (2013). A Social Gamification Framework for a K-6 Learning Platform. Advanced Human-Computer Interaction 29, 2, 345–353.

Gamification 2013: Proceedings

The Gamification 2013, the First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications was a three-day, dual-track conference that took place in the University of Waterloo (October, 2-4). 

Education and Serious Games were some of the conference topics:

"This conference is the first of its kind and we will use this opportunity to unite the burgeoning area of gamification with the best approaches from professional user experience and game designers. Our program is a blend of academic research and experimental applications with industry and non-profit examples, procedures, best practices, goals and results. It gives an idea of what all is now possible in the field of gamification. Our topics range from using citizen science games for motivation to best practices of exergames and classroom gamification. Not to forget the necessary discussion of the overlap between serious games and gamification".

In this conference gamification is defined as the use of "... game design in systems that primarily support non-game tasks to make them more fun, engaging, and motivating. With this motivational power of games comes great responsibility to go beyond using playful badges and point systems to truly tap into the intrinsic motivation of users".

The conference proceedings are available. Here are some of the papers related to gamification of education:

Full Papers:

• Competition as an Element of Gamification for Learning: an Exploratory Longitudinal Investigation; 

• Improving Participation and Learning with Gamification; 

• The Design and Evaluation of a Classroom Exergame;

• Driven to drive: Designing gamification for a learner logbook smartphone application;

• Gamification and Serious Game Approaches for Introductory Computer Science Tablet Software.

Short Papers:

• Gamifying Behaviour that Leads to Learning;

• Improving Student Creativity with Gamification and Virtual Worlds.

Call for Participation: Gamification 2013

GAMIFICATION 2013 - Gameful Design, Research, and Applications

University of Waterloo Stratford Campus, Stratford, Ontario, Canada
October 2-4, 2013

Twitter: #gameit2013

IMPORTANT DATES

• May 1, 2013 - Submission system opens
• June 21 - Deadline for full papers, short papers, Gamification Student Design Competition and industry/non-academic presentations
• August 1 - Accept/Reject decision of the committee
• August 8 - Poster, Demo Submission Deadline
• August 30 - Camera-ready submission, Decision on Posters and Demos
• October 2-4 - Gamification 2013 Conference in Stratford, ON

Gamification 2013: Gameful Design, Research, and Applications is a new international and interdisciplinary conference with a focus on researchers and professionals in gamification. Gamification uses game design to make a system that primarily supports non-game tasks more fun, engaging, and motivating. We invite a wide variety of research and applications to be submitted for presentation and showcasing at the conference.

The goal of the conference is to demonstrate current high quality research in gamification and encourage discussion of this research as a foundation of the future of gamification. To this end, the conference will feature streams that blend academic research and experimental applications with industry and non-profit examples, results and procedures.

We seek to understand the research necessary for increasingly effective implementation of gamification in business, health, education and entertainment. We welcome presentations of research projects, gamification successes and failures, unanswered questions about gamification, gamification metrics and processes, methods of gamification commercialization and more.

The conference looks for gamification researchers and professionals from - but not limited to - the following backgrounds:

• Game Design
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Psychology
• Computer Science and Informatics
• Game Studies
• Education
• User Experience and Interaction Design
• Social Sciences and Humanities (e.g., digital humanities, communication research, sociology