I’m working on my final written assignment for the Gamification Course at Coursera (our professor is Kevin Werbach, The Wharton School, Univ. of Pennsylvania). One of the most inspiring comments were made during the interview by Werbach of Amy Jo Kim, an expert in game design, gamification and and ‘the development of social architectures’.
On the question about the future of gamification, she answered:
I think what we see right now is the awakening of what will be a much bigger and longer trend, and I don’t think it will be called gamification cuz I don’t think it’ll be one thing. I think it will be many different techniques that are inspired by games, that get embedded in different ways in software. So short answer is, I think the word will go away but the wave will only grow bigger and will become an integral part of most software.
Werbach asked about Richard Bartle‘s notion of player types – something which is also much discussed by virtual worlds experts. In Bartle’s player type model for Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) we distinguish:
– achievers, acting on the world, wanting recognition for their achievements.
– explorers, those who want to interact with the world.
– socializers: those who want primarily to interact with other players.
– killers: they not just want to win, but want to totally vanquish and destroy other players. Or they can control a group by playing a very crucial role, like that of a healer, keeping the whole team together.
Amy Jo Kim warns that while useful for a specific kind of game, Bartle’s model as such is not useful in other contexts – like in most gamification contexts (which are not games in themselves, but where elements and gaming design principles are being used). She works with ‘social engagement verbs’:
Very similarly, there’s competing, collaborating, exploring, and expressing. Explore is right out of Bartle, so that one is similar. Competing is similar to the achievers, but more specific. Collaborating is very much what he calls socializers, but with a very game perspective. (…) and then what Bartle didn’t talk about at all that is a huge driver in social media and social gaming is self-expression. That one was missing. And the drive toward self-expression. For many people, that’s a primary player
type.
This is crucial, as for instance young moms or middle-aged moms will respond more to collaborative mechanics and social mechanics. Which is very interesting, as games do not have to be zero-sum games. There is competitive gaming, but there are also collaborative games. Games such as The Sims and The Sims Online, or Rock Band (she worked on those games) don’t have quantifiable outcomes. ‘You just keep playing’. Amy Jo Kim defines those games as a structured experience with rules and goals that’s fun to play. ‘Rules and goals are pretty critical, fun to play is pretty critical, or at least pleasant, engaging.’
I think what she describes is very interesting for gamification in general, it really broadens our vision of what ‘games’ are, and I guess it could also be applied to open-ended virtual worlds, such as Second Life or OpenSim.
Here you see Amy Jo Kim during Google Tech Talks about applying game mechanics to functional software:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ihUt-163gZI%3Fversion%3D3%26hl%3Den_GB%22%3E%3C
This work by rolandlegrand is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International