Juggling with Gamification Gurus weightings

Hi friends, hola amigos (Sorry, just training for this year Gamification Design MOOC).

As you may know, after an awesome chat with Toby Beresford about metrics and gamification, he let me propose a new weighting of the gamification gurus ranking for next month, justifying my proposal. Not because I’m more objective or wise than other gamification professionals, but because I was just there talking with him (and because this way the next nominee will surely bright when compared with my redesign :D)

I eagerly accepted the challenge (of course!) and here is my exploration on the topic.

First, a purpose

What defines a “guru” within a community? Lots of things, I know. But taking into account that gamification community is not so huge and that one of the main milestones I think we need to achieve is proactive interaction (not among members, but with the generated content), here it is my definition.

Gamification guru’s ranking should identify the members creating the content that motivates other people to engage with it the most, generating in turn their own contents and making community knowledge grow.

It’s not a tweet size purpose, but almost. Of course is not a forever and ever all-solving purpose. But it will serve for this month.

And now, the reasons...

Having a written purpose (even if incomplete) facilitates A LOT the design of the rules that later I’ll apply to the KPI. Let’s create some rules, then:

Members that create and share content should achieve higher positions in the ranking

Content that generates active behavior from audience should have higher value than other content

The more engaged the audience behaviour, the more valuable is the content  for the community. We understood that a behaviour is more “engaged” as it costs the user more effort. For example. Clicking “Like” is a less engaged behaviour than comment something entirely new, but it’s more engaged behaviour than simply “view” the content.

Content could be equally valuable for its novelty, for reframing old content in new ways or for presenting it in a aesthetically attractive format, as long as it motivates members proactive engagement

I think these four game constraints will be enough to begin our game. Applying them, I weight from the most valuable activities to the less ones as it follows:

Content evoking audience’s High effort behaviors (ie. Audience creates new content, comments…)

Content evoking audience’s Medium effort behaviors (One click actions)

Content evoking audience’s Low effort behaviors (Views)

The Content by itself (isolated from audience)

I’m not sure how influence generated due to other rankings position (Klout, Alexa…) affects the main purpose as I stated it, so I have zeroed Alexa and Klout

And the final (imperfect) weighting is…

@Mentions	10%
Blog Comments	10%
G+ Mentions	10%
Slideshare Comments	10%
Post Plusones	8%
Retweets	8%
Slideshare Downloads	8%
Slideshare Favorites	8%
Youtube views	6.5%
Slideshare Views	6.5%
Instagram uploads	5%
#gamification tweets	5%
Blog Posts	5%
Klout score	0%
Alexa Rank	0%

Further discussion & iterations

I’m aware that this initial approach (philosophical, almost) has many flaws that need to be addressed. This is only the beginning and I hope next nominees will find other solutions and will ask other questions towards new achievements.

Some unaddressed questions:

Is the defined purpose useful at this moment for the gamification community? Why or why not? Any alternatives? Iterations?

Are the proposed KPI representative enough of the purpose? Why or why not? Alternatives? New KPIs?

How can we reinforce the mathematical sustainability of the whole system, given different metrics with different scales (how do you compare the number of youtube views vs the number of retweets?), taking into account the possibility spaces given for each activity design (some widgets usually give more opportunities for one click answers than for complex ones, for example and others could facilitate sharing or not due to its intrinsic design and not the content itself, like blogs).

In addition, to balance the tool a bit, I think if we’re counting slideshare views, downloads, comments and favs, we should equally count youtube views, comments and likes, at least.  Same thing applies to other channels who share widgets with almost the same features. If not, one channel may be biased.

But all those are tales that will be told by others. Now, as Davy Jones said…

Release the critics!!

And the next nominee is…

As I said in other post, let’s make this more social and playful, ice-bucket style. I challenge one among the top 20 gamification gurus to do this same weighting game for next month’s ranking.

Who?

Pokemon mode on

My dear Andrzej, I choose you! (You say interesting things about a non leaderboard system, and I would want to know more).

Pokemon mode off

It is a FUN way to discuss gamification and metrics, isn’t it?

One Challenge for the Gamification Community

There is a Spanish saying that could be traslated as something like “gratefulness is a feature of great people”. That is the essence of this post.

Last Wednesday I had a nice chat with Toby Beresford, whose team developed Rise and its leaderboard tool that holds the gamification gurus list that I talked about in my last post. We were going to have that conversation on Hangout, but technical problems at the last minute forced us to change to Skype.

Topic: Gamification Metrics.

Metrics are, maybe next to balance, two of the most difficult questions when designing gamification solutions. As gamification origins arose mainly from business and not from academia, I don’t feel like having yet objective enough, scientific, medium or long term data to produce consistent conclusions on what indicators best represent certain concepts (like engagement).

As you may expect, we didn’t reach conclusions in our little meeting (that wasn’t the point) but we share powerful questions that will keep my neurons (and his, and yours I hope) busy for the next weeks.

What questions? We talked a lot not only about what metrics would define a valuable contribution to a community, but also about what would be an adequate weighting formula to design those metrics as a balanced system. And also talked about how and who should decide that. What are your thoughts on these topics, my dear reader?

And when we were just finishing, Toby asked me to share my thoughts about the ranking metrics, and propose some weighting configuration for the next month as a way to explore the questions we shared.

I wasn’t expecting that gift! By doing that, Toby gives the gamification community the possibility of using Rise’s ranking as a tool to explore what metrics are the most interesting and (most important reason, I think) a way to talk about why do we choose one key performance indicator over the other.

That said, I would love to extend Toby’s idea into a game-based challenge (ice bucket style).

What if each month the present “Ranking advisor” could nominate other member (let’s say for example one among the top 20 gamification gurus) to manage the weighting and indicators for the next month?

But with that “power” comes great responsibility: New advisors should post via their blog or facebook (or wherever) the reasons for their decision. This way we could develop interesting threads on this topic, learn and share.

I’m going to do that. In my next post I’ll publish my weighting proposal and the next nominee for the “Ranking Advisor” position (if he / she wants to accept the challenge). My proposal won’t be perfect (it will be inaccurate and subjective, for sure) but maybe it will have some little useful idea, and I hope it will spark some nice critics that will serve to grow.

Do you understand now, my dear reader why I tag Toby’s challenge as a “gift”? That said, I keep my opinion that this ranking shouldn’t be the one and only way to detect valuable members of this community (Don’t forget that :D).

I want to finish this post thanking Toby again for being such a wonderful guy, open minded, with great sense of humor and an enormous interest in helping the gamification community to achieve new heights.

Thanks, my friend.

Do you want to be a gamification guru?

Born in the late 70s, I grew up surrounded by comics, literature and the cinema mythos of the 80s. These are images that powerfully call my attention. Maybe your attention too :D.

One these cool scenes happens when the hero, confident in his abilities, attacks his nemesis with a blow that he believes unbeatable or deploys a strategy that (he thinks), will give him the final victory against the terrible enemy.

After receiving the hit, the opponent rises from the ashes (preferably with an evil laugh) and thunders:

"Is that the best you got?"

Besides an obvious homage to Campbell's Hero's Journey ... What all this has to do with gamification?

***

While writing the post about 2015predictions a couple of weeks ago, I began to reflect on the community of gamification professionals and how we could be perceived by society and potential customers. I was surprised to discover that one of the most visible landmarks for the measurement of the value added by each member of the community, and perhaps the only "official" international reference we had today, is Rise’smonthly ranking (ex leaderboarder) under the unfortunate (in my opinion) "gamification gurus " name.

What is the purpose of that ranking, I wonder? Highlight those members who contribute most to the community? Increase the visibility of a company? Encourage competition, and thus a larger quantity of content (regardless quality, maybe)? The truth os, I have not arrived to a clear conclusion, even after reading the header that explains the ranking.

"Gamification Gurus" Ranking - January 2015

At first glance it seems a bit unbalanced ranking when weighting quantity vs quality (with the first term ahead from the latter one): Quote a phrase from someone or give your own opinion is equally rated, if associated with the hashtag #gamification. Writing the same post in English and Spanish (as I do) counts twice, even if obviously doesn’t double the corpus of knowledge of the community, or my value as professional.

Even more, from a competitive point of view (which appears to be the ranking’s core mechanic)… Could it arrive the point were my decision to give visibility to the ideas, tweets or posts of other professional depend not so much on the intrinsic value of the idea by itself, but on its proximity to my position in the ranking, and the perceived danger associated at losing positions? If you think this is a crazy idea and it couldn’t happen, pleaseremember what happened in the ranking for “the most influential gamification professional”organized by GSummit and the criticism that hindered its reliability and value (beyond the rightness or not of the topic).

In addition, rankings are not only a tool for social comparison. They can be an excellent way to self-assess our performance against our own past behaviour, regardless of the other people involved at the ranking. But that requires a key element: measurable and understandable dimensions.

Perhaps the ranking suffers from excessive functionality, or it does not own an attractive GUI. Maybe the measured dimensions or the assigned weights are not adequate (youtube views did not appear at the ranking measures until recently) or they are not as precise or clear as they should. I encourage you to try to calculate manually your score at the ranking or compare it with other members.

Either way, it is clear that this design could be useful for other things, but not as a facilitator of individual progress for someone who is not a full-blooded “killer”: variability between each measurement point (month to month) is so high that participation becomes a rollercoaster ride experience, rather than a process of controlled progression. Maybe regulatory mechanisms for managing disproportionate monthly variations are in order, for example by changing the frequency of measurement or including corrective factors to take into account the overall performance will be appreciated.

Or maybe it's just me. I'm doing a misreading, asking for the impossible. This ranking is perhaps not the tool to measure the health of a professional community and the way to identify the most valuable members of it. Maybe it's just a popularity contest, where the winner is the best community manager of your own personal (gamified) brand.

Let me clarify something very important: What I am criticizing here is not the team behind the creation of the ranking nor am I denying the value of people who are (myself included) in the top positions. Toby Beresford, who I had the fortune to meet in the last Gamification World Congress, is a open-minded professional, concerned as everyone about the development of the gamification community and very responsive to any proposals for improvement. Andrzej and Yu-kai Chou are two excellent professionals whose contributions have brought value to the community beyond any other one.

I'm just thinking that the ranking requires a few iterations (those I proposed here, and others) to meet all its potential. But everything depends on the pursued goal, of course.

Sure some readers may be thinking, "Okay, my dear ... Then why you don’t leave the ranking?"

You don't like rankings? Then...

Very simple: Like the Gamification World Congress and GSumit forum are the "places you must go" if you like gamification, Rise’s is "the place to be" if you want to have visibility on the field and find out "who's who". Like it or not, external customers and anyone interested who does not know about gamification, sooner or later ends up falling on that list. Of course, after that you have to prove tour value with facts.

And it’s fun, of course: Like any human being I find fun on the list movements, all the meeting new people thing and (above all) make jokes about the Spanish top-ranked and stuff ... I think it helps when building a community.

However, this don’t leave me happy. For example: check the “number of comments on posts” indicator ... Can we really call ourselves “community” when we generate content, but did not interact meaningfully with each other? Perhaps we are not measuring the important things properly? Is this the best tool we can design as gamification professionals to create a stronger community? Are we a guild of blacksmiths using rubber hammers to forge, instead of metal ones?

I hear how organizations and markets rise and ask us ...

"Is this the best you have?"

It's a multifaceted topic, and I will be more than happy to discuss alternatives in the comments or in social networks… but please don’t forget using the hashtag #gamification :D

Gamification 2015 & four shirts

Yes, my dear reader: It's here. It has come. The preview of what 2015 will bring us in gamification.

I guess that to minimize the risk of diving in the dark and blurry waters of the future, we should take a look at the ideas forecastedtwelve months ago, in order to see the state in what they are. We will see that in many cases we have move forward, but also very cool challenges lie ahead.

Mix gamification with other disciplines

Games that (HR) People should play

Three or five years ago we were evangelizing small groups within different organizations, exploring together if "theend justifies the games." It was at the Fun & Serious Festival last year where I had the opportunity to participate as a speaker talking about artisanal gamification, and observe that, in regard to integration with other disciplines, gamification has advance naturally hand in hand with one of our "older brothers": the video game industry. In the recent Gamification Spain Meetups electronic entertainment has been present one way or another, and gamification design solutions has showed multiple overlapping areas of interest with the former, including professional skills or working methods, among other things.

What remains for 2015? Coupled with the above, another challenge I posted was the design of truly memorable experiences. There are still many disciplines with whom we need to nurture the same close ties that we had with the videogame biz. Boardgame design and alike can teach us a lot about mechanics and player strategies (Gsm Barcelona was the first stone in this road, but much remains to be built). We can add value to that know how by clarifying organizational needs and by opening doors in certain business contexts where “play” is not seen as useful as we would like.

Art, cinema, painting, comic, magic performers... All of them can teach us how to convey complex ideas intuitively, and that is one of the sources of a truly memorable experience. Examples? The latest newsletter of CookieBox shows very good projects in this regard that reflects the openness and multidisciplinary nature of gamification.

Building a strong gamification community

Here we have advanced the most this year, I think. The impressive Gamification World Congress initiative, incredibly well leaded by Sergio (@gamkt), Jose Carlos (@josek_net) and their team, has managed to bring to Spain many of the gamification aces, worldwide.

At a different level Gamification Spain Meetups, which I have the honor to coordinate with Victor (@victormanriquey), Ricardo (@rickyrola), Cristina (@cristinapages) and lots of local fellows organizing each encounter, has grown to reach today more than 150 members, five editions and at least two more planned for 2015.

They are not the only places in which gamification has been on the scene (It comes to my mind smash-tech, GAMESIS and others in different parts of Spain), but the GWC & GSM are perhaps the more specific and the oldest forums in Spain.

The next obvious step could be mixing these two initiatives into one. A single image, whole and international brand that will allow the generation a common fields of knowledge, something of which we have been talking a lot as the year comes to an end... Watch out, 2015!

Ethics, scalability, KPIs and Society

Those are four of the main dimensions where gamification should settle part of its philosophical and methodological foundations. In addition to large projects with awesome KPIs evolving its weight toward social mechanics, such as BBVA Game thanks to Bernardo Crespo (@b_crespo) and his team of design cracks, or Compettia’s Challenge Me. The incoming year gamification will fully enter in the educational world thanks to projects like “Zombiología” (@zombiologia) or “Settlers of Mars” (@jlred1978) which, despite numerous obstacles, serve as the stepping stones of the quantitative and qualitative value of this approach in class.

There are many more projects. You can see the vast majority of them in the Gamification World Map created by the likes of OuiPlay (@ouiplay), Flavio Escribano (@ludictador) or Carlos G. Tardón (@carlosgtardon), among others. Many of these initiatives are small ones now, but they represent the seeds of ideas that could escalate to really powerful levels... Didn’t we talk twelve months ago whether the market would go at cloning successful projects or it will opt for the experimental and indie designs? I think it's still a pretty divided answer, even if I found  a certain bias towards the latter.

Do we continue business as usual?

As we move forward, new doors are opening. An Coppens (@AnCoppens) challenged community at the GWC, quite rightly, to promote greater presence of women in the various gamification forums. Very interesting idea that could be extended not only to genre, but also to cultural diversity when seeking for gamification perspectives (Has gamification a place within oriental business culture?).

On the other hand, a strong community that tends to globalization and with lots of small projects booming, need ways to rigorously systematize the growing body of knowledge generated. As it happened with coaching, logistics or HR we also should expect the apparition for “experts” claiming mastery and panacea without scientific basis, generating unachievable expectations that will do no good to the methodology, to potential customers or to the gamification community. We need to be able to cope with this trend.

Maybe is the time to rigorously design one common, professional certification for this methodology?

And you .... What do you think 2015 will bring us? I'd love to hear your opinion!

PS: Thanks everyone for making this 2014 awesome and playful. And to those who gave me their love in the form of t-shirts, mugs or by just sharing with me their ideas. you know who you are, my friends.

Gamification Mechanics 6: Worlds (Season Finale)

[English version below - English subtitles available for the video]

El "Mundo" en gamificación marca el contexto, el corazón filosófico que une el resto de mecánicas y define la experiencia de usuario... Seguro que no vas a usarlo?

¿Quieres diseñar gamificación? Te ofrecemos una revisión (de final gamificado, por supuesto) de las mecánicas más utilizadas, basándonos en el Gamification Toolkit de Victor Manrique disponible en:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

¡Disfruta!

****

The term "World" in gamification design refers to the context, the philosophical core that encompasses the rest of the mechanics and settles user experience... Aren't you going to use it? This overview (with gamified ending, of course) of the most used gamification mechanics is based on Victor Manrique’s Gamification Toolkit available at:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

Enjoy it!

Gamification Mechanics Overview 5: Levels

[English version below - English subtitles available for the video]

¡Felicidades!, ¡Has llegado al quinto vídeo de la serie! Pero aún te queda mucho para ser un "gamification ninja"... Los niveles miden la progresión de tus usuarios. ¿A quién no le gusta saber lo bien que lo hace?

¿Quieres diseñar gamificación? Te ofrecemos una revisión (de final gamificado, por supuesto) de las mecánicas más utilizadas, basándonos en el Gamification Toolkit de Victor Manrique disponible en:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

¡Disfruta!

****
Avatars are player's instances within our gamified systems. No matter if they're are designed as a bunch of statistics or as a graphical representation... you have to take care of them!

Congratulations! You arrived to the fith video of this series! But you have a long way to go to become a "gamification ninja"... Levels measure players progression... Who doesn't wnat to know how good he/she perform? :D This overview (with gamified ending, of course) of the most used gamification mechanics is based on Victor Manrique’s Gamification Toolkit available at:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

Enjoy it!

Gamification Mechanics Overview 4: Avatars

[English version below - English subtitles available for the video]

El avatar es la representación de tu jugador en el sistema gamificado. Ya sea un conjunto de estadísticas o una representación gráfica... ¡Hay que cuidarlo!

¿Quieres diseñar gamificación? Te ofrecemos una revisión (de final gamificado, por supuesto) de las mecánicas más utilizadas, basándonos en el Gamification Toolkit de Victor Manrique disponible en:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

¡Disfruta!

****
Avatars are player's instances within our gamified systems. No matter if they're are designed as a bunch of statistics or as a graphical representation... you have to take care of them!

Do you want to be a gamification designer? Watch this overview (with gamified ending, of course) of the most used gamification mechanics, based on Victor Manrique’s Gamification Toolkit available at:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

Enjoy it!

Gamification Mechanics Overview 3: Quests

[English version below - English subtitles available for the video]

¿Te gustan las misiones? ¡Entonces te gustará nuestro nuevo capitulo de esta serie (Te retamos a verlo :D)

¿Quieres diseñar gamificación? Te ofrecemos una revisión (de final gamificado, por supuesto) de las mecánicas más utilizadas, basándonos en el Gamification Toolkit de Victor Manrique disponible en:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

¡Disfruta!

****
Do you like Quests? Then you will like our new "#Gamification Mechanics Overview" chapter! (We challenge you to see it :D)

Do you want to be a gamification designer? Watch this overview (with gamified ending, of course) of the most used gamification mechanics, based on Victor Manrique’s Gamification Toolkit available at:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

Enjoy it!

Gamification Mechanics Overview 2: Tutorials

[English version below - English subtitles available for the video]

Los tutoriales son una parte importante a la hora de empezar a jugar cualquier juego... y muchas veces son una característica descuidada en nuestros diseños gamificados.

¿Quieres diseñar gamificación? Te ofrecemos una revisión (de final gamificado, por supuesto) de las mecánicas más utilizadas, basándonos en el Gamification Toolkit de Victor Manrique disponible en:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

¡Disfruta!

****
Tutorials are one of  key features at the onboarding stage, useful to communicate game components and game constraints... sadly, they're usually not as good as the could be in our gamification designs.

Do you want to be a gamification designer? Watch this overview (with gamified ending, of course) of the most used gamification mechanics, based on Victor Manrique’s Gamification Toolkit available at:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

Enjoy it!

Gamification Mechanics Overview I: Game Constraints

[English version below - English subtitles available for the video]

¿Quieres diseñar gamificación? Te ofrecemos una revisión (de final gamificado, por supuesto) de las mecánicas más utilizadas, basándonos en el Gamification Toolkit de Victor Manrique disponible en:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

¡Disfruta!

****

Do you want to be a gamification designer? Watch this overview (with gamified ending, of course) of the most used gamification mechanics, based on Victor Manrique’s Gamification Toolkit available at:

http://www.aprendeo.com/landing/gamification-toolkit

Enjoy it!

Gartner redefines "Gamification"

The chances of having attended a talk on gamification and listening a quote from Gartner are 99% . That organization is responsible for painting a future where 50 % of companies will use gamification to innovate their processes and 80 % ofprojects will fail gamification in 2014 due to design problems.

On 4 April, Brian Burke (Analyst) published on the company blog that future failures could be foreseen due to a loosely definition of " gamification" and therefore they have given a new twist to this definition (no, they have not decided to call it “ludification” ):

"The use of game mechanics and design experience to digitally engage and motivate people to Achieve Their goals"

In case anyone is wondering , the latter definition , extracted from their IT Glossary was:

Gamification is the use of game mechanics to drive engagement in non -game business scenarios and to change behaviors in a target audience to Achieve business outcomes . Many types of games include game mechanics : such as points , challenges , leaderboards , rules and incentives That Make enjoyable game -play. These Applies Gamification to motivate the audience to higher and more meaningful levels of engagement. Humans are "hard -wired " to enjoy games and have a naturally tendency to interact more deeply in That activities are framed in a game construct .

I write this post two days after the release , and I'm not the first to react ( Herger , Rackwitz Marczewski and other have already answered). Dear reader, as an exercise , I'd like you to try to think what points of the definition that have been more criticized. Then read on.

Keeping the concept of "Game Mechanics" instead of "Game Elements" , ignoring the dynamics , balance or aesthetics elements whose importance had been stated by frameworks such as MDA.

The other option to maintain the “Game Mechanic” approach is that they have decided to include every other concept (feedback, balance, reward patterns…) within it, an inefficient decision especially when designing or when identifying the value that each element brings to the whole system.

Continue using points, medals and leaderboards as paradigmatic examples. Besides, as Herger or Rackwitz says in the comments of the post, those are mainly feedback elements (like the "wedges" in Trivial). With the huge number of innovative examples throughout the past three years, using PBL as examples of gamification instead of gifting, avatars, vanity items, powerups etc ... Is in my opinion a simplistic (and somewhat outdated , I venture to add) perspective.

I think Mr. Burke has to receive a deck of Marczewski’s or Manrique’s cards, to see the full potential of game elements.

Third point, the unnecessary inclusion of the "digital" term, excluding from the definition all activities not technology mediated and all the environments where technology is irrelevant, but not gamificatio). Burke himself , in a comment on his post, argues that if anything differentiates gamification today ,is the possibility to bring the power of PBL to lots of people through technology . Mr. Schell was right: The gamepocalypse has arrived.

Fourth, the exclusive emphasis on commitment and motivation as the ultimate goal of gamification. Again I don’t deny the value of gamification to “energize” users , but I don’t think that is the main value of it. Well-designed systems use gamification to make out surrounding reality more comprehensible, to make people achieve their goals because they are more effective at making decisions and at applying their skills, and not only because they are more motivated . Gamification works because it empowers (and not only motivate) the knowledge and skills of people.

In a nutshell, I don’t see the definition of Gartner as “bad” (Although, I’ve gutted it top to bottom). I think that with their emphasis on the “digital” thing, the firm is trying to narrow a definition of the term that meets their needs as a consultancy, technology and services company, rather than defining gamification with the intention of helping the discipline to take a qualitative leap forward .

Gartner has contributed a lot to the development of the discipline and its popularization. If they keep this definition... will it mean a loss of credibility within the professional community that uses gamification as a tool? I don’t think so.

But I get the feeling that, with this new revamped definition they are helping to fulfill their prediction of 80% of failures by bad design. Self-fulfilling prophecy?

As Indy's Guardian of the Holy Grail would say: When defining gamification, Gartner choose... poorly.

Classic (?) Gamification Examples

As a group evolves, it is nice to see how their members gradually built their own culture (in terms of castes, myths, heroes & villains, good and bad examples…). I believe that forums such as the Gamification World Congress and the Gamification Spain MeetUps are helping at the development of robust theories about what gamification is (and is not) in Spain , and perhaps they will be the source from which our particular Alkalabeth will arise.

This process of consolidation occurs parallel to the emergence of "experts" (the quotes are not a typo :D ) that cite almost religiously those “sacred gamified examples” they recently read on the subject trying to pass them as the ultimate mana to solve all our engagement and commitment problems. Dear reader, if you are interested in hiring a professional this year 2014, the first question you should ask him/her is "What exactly is gamification?" If you get an answer like "the application of game mechanics in non- game environments " and nothing more ... fly you fools! (or calmly thank the “expert” for his/her time and tell him maybe you will call him in an undefined future) .

The first classic example that comes to mind is the piano stairs by The Fun Theory.. Good example, but in my opinion it has been used already enough times.  Curiously, its goal was not only encouraging the healthy behavior of climbing stairs, but also the positive perception towards a particular carmaker.

If you want to continue using this example, at least use other version different than the Stockholm one. I share this from Auckland (And even if it’s not related to an automotive brand, it is supported by... well, you better watch it by yourself) .

The piano stairs serves to discuss the relevance and coherence of actions and mechanics within the culture of the organization or educational institution or product/service or wherever you apply gamification. Although I insist that I think the major fault when using it in professional environments is that it has lost its impact due to overuse.

The second example is the scene where Mary Poppins sings “A Spoonful of sugar”. It has been used as a clear example of “what is gamification”. I use it myself for a while too but, analyzing it a bit more, discovered that the message is (perhaps) not the most appropriate to define the concept.

A cup " Spoonful of Sugar " style

Let me explain. Take for example this mug for breakfast. Is it cool isn’t it? Well, it depends for example on your tastes or your personal history with videogames, obviously. OK. The cup is our "spoonful of sugar": Even though it may looks cool, if I put a disgusting beverage in it surely the cool cup will not make you drink it. In the same way, if you love chocolate, you’ll probably take it… even if it is a cup with Justin Bieber images. You shall drink the awful beverage probably only if I am able to make you see the value of the intake above the negative emotion that the smell creates.

Sustainable Gamification goes beyond applying a spoonful of sugar on those tasks we find unpleasant . Gamification is a tool to clarify the meaning and value of the work we do, the visibility of our progress, the effects of our skills on results ... It is not about giving "a spoonful of sugar " to the player - student - worker - client to do the damn job, but to make sense of what they are doing.

This little difference could seems trivial, but choosing one or the other will determine the relationship generated among designer and players, and the perception of players in terms of intelligence, autonomy , competence... To name just a few.

I think 2014 should be the year to change those paradigms and examples for others, solid, data based and shared. And as I said before, the Gamification World Congress and the Gamification Spain MeetUps may surely be the places with the most potential to do so.

The next Gamification Spain MeetUp is at Valencia in march.

Will I meet you there? :D

Unpredictability, games and companies

Some people tends to associate the concept "game" with others like randomness, unpredictability, chaos and therefore (here comes a second and more dangerous conceptual association) they see the former as an undesirable element in their businesses.

Truth is that, as it happens with other cognitive biases, this perception has (partial) real grounds that serves to sustain an entire chain of (not-so-clear) causes and effects that move us away from embracing all the possible benefits that the playful design could offer to educational, occupational or product design settings.

Games are sets of rules at their core. Almost all existing definitions give set rules as a key element when analizing the concept of "play ". Rules that have been voluntarily accepted by players... and are not much different from the rules we accept, for example, when joining an organization.

Machinations : Games as a set of rules

I daresay that, analyzed as a whole, rules in games are much more balanced and usually have much greater internal coherence that rules governing organizations. They've even been more exhaustively tested than many internal processes at a company. At that difference has impact in our players - workers.

Then, Isidro, you're just saying that unpredictability in games is just appearance? No. I'm not saying that we can make organization processes fully deterministic by redesigning them in a playful way (I think determination is impossible as long as human factors are involved). But I want to highlight the fact that unpredictability is a must that can be better managed by learning from game design. Randomness is one of the things that make games interesting. Therefore we should not try to override it, but manage it properly to add value to organizations when trying to improve their efficiency. 

But... How?

Very simple. If unpredictability is due to a poorly designed game (rules are poorly balanced, or they're not defined at all, unreasoned changes or they don't follow the same patterns for everyone according to his profile or level) players will not feel that they're facing challenges, but living within an unwanted Russian roulette they will try to escape from by any means ASAP .

But as I said before, randomness and unpredictability could become drivers of efficiency when they emanate from :

1. Clear rules of probability: If I skip chain of command to do something that I believe true... what will be the consequences? If I volunteered to a project, will I be able to apply my professional knowledge or I will onle be following orders? I don't need a numerical, quantified answer to this questions, but I can be able to can predict with certain a degree of reliability if the probability of a consequence is "high, medium or low" in order to manage my resources properly. Are this chains of rules-actions and consequences clear enough at organizations?

2. Changes in skill level: In soccer, different skill levels carry different executions. Therefore, although the rules are identical, final results can vary mediated by individual differences between players. The same is true at sales, project management or bakery. If we are able to get proper feedback on our performance, skills improvement to succeed against unpredictability can become an intrapersonal (or interpersonal) challenge .

In games, well-designed randomness empowers challenge

3. Complexity: Complex systems do not involve necessarily complex rules. If you don't believe me, take for example chess or Candy Crush. Complex gamification doesn't need complex mechanics. Games with a short range of possible options that can be easily assimilated can result in an emerging process which entails many possible strategies each one of them with variable efficiency... and therefore an uncertain outcome.

Where is this trail of thoughts leading? I think many situations, jobs and processes at companies cope badly with unpredictability because they are poorly designed. People try to move in an environment whose complexity is not based on improving your performance or defining more efficient strategies, but in trying to understand the basic rules of play. THAT is frustrating.

It's like you are sitting at a table with five cards in your hand, but do not know what game you are playing at with each one of the other players. This design flaw also prevents getting all your efforts to challenges that matter: Make your company earn money and boost your professional (and personal) development.

It is understandable that, with the latter scenario, many times the workforce try to get off the train or rest disengaged at the boundaries of the company ecosystem. And when situation worsen they're most likely to begin to show helplessness behaviors like apathy, negative emotions, biased perceptions and other common symptoms of "zombiefication".

Can we change this? I think so. This should be our 2014 challenge.

My wish for you is that 2014 will be a year full of games, playfulness, happiness and a journey of 365 epic days.

Fun & Serious Chronicles: Ian Livingstone

When a speaker takes the stage and in his first five minutes he is able to show a photo of himself with Gary Gygax or Steve Jackson (among others), you know that you are living a special opportunity to listen new ideas and insights.

If the speaker is also called "Livingstone" and if, at the year you were born, he was opening a store called Games Workshop (does this clues ring a bell somewhere in your brain?). Or if, while you were "living la vida loca" (more or less), his name was attached to projects like Dungeons & Dragons, Fighting Fantasy Books or Tomb Raider, you should be sure that you can spent the rest of the presentation applauding to the speaker and the time would be worth it. Because he deserves it.

Last week, I was lucky enough to share stage with Ian Livingstone at the Fun & Serious Festival Bilbao, and watch him exposing (with that British-ness mixture of seriousness and fun, honoring the name of the festival) about games and why we should embrace them in all areas of our life as a natural way to learn, freeing them from obsolete prejudices that keep them relegated to certain ages or enclosed to some areas (the more distant from educational and industrial world, the better).

Let's use the "informal" learning in "formal" areas!

In the brief conversation that I could share with him at lunch (excellent organization of the event, excellent attention at the restaurant and excellent food, by the way) the most fascinating thing was that his arguments convince you the same way a game does: he doesn't use his experience or past successes for lecturing on how games should be used (even if he could :P). Only few minutes of conversation with him shows you the world of possibilities behind his ideas, and those words make you eager to taste that "not-so-far-in-the-future gameworld" were games are a respected way to learn. And those insights invite you to expand his ideas with your own, to contribute... and finally to draw conclusions from the experience. 

Who said "Show, don't tell"?

In his presentation, Mr. Livingstone invited us to regain confidence in our students, to redesign our schools (and I may add : our jobs) as a place to do "the fun stuff", to strengthen the processes of social learning,  to enhance the autonomy of learners... to blur the role between "content provider" and "content receiver".

Games as an "innate" way to gain skills

It wasn't the first time I had heard those ideas. But the difference is that, with his projects and his presentations, Ian Livingstone is acting as a catalyst, facilitating an upgraded educational paradigm where playful criteria could have one important place besides the efficiency criteria .

Ian Livingstone could be doing this simply because he can be an influencer on his own by their experience and former successes. But the best thing is that I suspect that he shares those ideas maybe because he cares. And because he believes in them.

On behalf of everyone of us "believers": Thanks for inspiring us, Mr. Livingstone.

Beatlefication as the NEW gamification

Gradually becoming " the games guy" in my company has great things (like the opportunity to share ideas and laughs with CIEM people the other day ) and awkward things… like the opposition of the so called " immediate experts " , always ready to review the effectiveness of any trend or new idea usually showing utter disdain for objectivity and data, and throwing opinions ranging from the derogatory approach to the “I told you so” topic.

As you can imagine, my proposals for the gamification of certain internal processes are falling on the deaf ears  ("Yeah, great. We’ll think it over for at least a few more rounds"). Some weeks ago I decided to check if people refuse the playfulness attitude as a whole, for an enhanced decision making process… or if it’s just the term "game" which is rejected in the professional context.

So I wanted to check the next hypothesis:

Some people naturally reject those proposals for action grounded on the term "game”, but are willing to accept other alternative arguments, even if they’re based on less scientific grounds.

So this week I've been trying to evangelize using a brand-new-fun trend called " Beatlefication".

Beatlefication: Elige unos versos

Beatlefication : Choose a verse

 What is Beatlefication? As you, intelligent reader, could guess. Beatlefication  is the use of Beatle’s lyrics in contexts unrelated with the British group.

How to apply it in your organization?

Over the past week , the author made ​​decisions based explicitly on lyrics extracted from songs written by The Beatles, trying to prove that the proximity and social acceptability of the group and their lyrics would make the decisions more acceptable.

Frequency

Twice a day (Morning and afternoon).

Practical examples [ I have hidden names on purpose]

After repeated attempts of one colleague to lure me into the discussion of a problem that both had neither authority nor knowledge to solve…

- Let it be, sooner or later we will have an answer. As the Beatles say "There will come an answer , let it be"

Facing someone tearing their hair out because some decision had been taken without their approval...

- You're right , sometimes people do not realize who is affected by this. As the Beatles say ... "Living is easy with eyes closed" [And after that the person keep silent throughout the rest of the meeting ]

When you came across THAT person who never say hello:

- Sing out loud : " I do not know why you say good- bye , I say hello ."

When someone ask you for a task you haven’t had it finished (yet):

- Today is… WHAAAT? OMG!!! Forgive me ! But, as the Beatles say ... " Yesterdaaay , all my troubles seemed so far awaaay " [ This gives you one more week, at least]

[Pro tip: You can get bonus points if you make the other sing along with you]

In addition to lyrics, I recommend the use of these faces ...

Conclusions
I used the technique eleven times. Eight people accepted the verse as a perfectly valid argument. Therefore, I conclude that people are willing to accept much less scientific "arguments"  if they are familiar to them (or to their culture).

What I learned with this fun little experiment is that it is not important if we call a term "gamification” or “Beatleficación" The important thing is that people have a natural tendency to tune in and be persuaded by things that are playful, funny or familiar. Even if they’re not efficient, objective... or even reasonable.

Let's focus on helping enhance life experience and understanding in others. Let's make life a little more fun and epic.

Future research
I challenge you to try it in your organisation, using quotes from your favorite bands or movies (Les Luthiers, Colbert Report… why not?) and make everyone play the experience. I assure you one hell of a cognitive challenge ... and a good time!

Corollary
It worked 100 % of the time I used it in the evenings ... Are people more tired more predisposed to arguments with a playful component? I will continue my investigation...