I vehemently object to the idea that you can add levels, achievements, or points to an arbitrary system and get a better system as a result.
What i do appreciate about the notion of gamification is that it can be used as a trojan horse for making developers/designers/product ppl to think about user experience.
That said, i treat nearly anything that talks about gamification with a jaundiced eye. I think that encouraging user interaction has little to do with games, and much more to do with understanding the position of one's product/system and what users' motivations are.
Is facebook's "poke" a "gameified" feature? Cause it certainly encouraged engagement, and fit in the sphere of what facebook was trying to accomplish. No points, no levels, no achievements, and yet it ended up kicking off a massive number of game-like descendants.
I think that's the real reason why the notion of 'gamification' is bullshit. It doesn't really mean anything. (If you can give me a suitable definition of "game" then i'll reassess ;) )
What i do appreciate about the notion of gamification is that it can be used as a trojan horse for making developers/designers/product ppl to think about user experience.
That said, i treat nearly anything that talks about gamification with a jaundiced eye. I think that encouraging user interaction has little to do with games, and much more to do with understanding the position of one's product/system and what users' motivations are.
Is facebook's "poke" a "gameified" feature? Cause it certainly encouraged engagement, and fit in the sphere of what facebook was trying to accomplish. No points, no levels, no achievements, and yet it ended up kicking off a massive number of game-like descendants.
I think that's the real reason why the notion of 'gamification' is bullshit. It doesn't really mean anything. (If you can give me a suitable definition of "game" then i'll reassess ;) )