So Gartner has decided to come out and redefine Gamification. Unfortunately they got something as basic as game mechanics, already in the textbooks of many game designers, very very wrong. Game mechanics arent points, badges, leaderboards. Those are game components or elements. Game mechanics are constructs of rules to create game play. E.g. Taking turns, time limit, capturing, eliminating. My response to Gartner: Keith Ng (@Keizng) Brian, I actually did like your definition when you talked about it a few months back in an interview. As the CEO of a gamification platform myself (gametize) who pitches 24/7 for investments and sales to many verticals, I completely appreciate that an authority/thought-leader comes out strong to define and narrow down the purpose of gamification. Adding “experience design” and “digital” certainly adds focus to the key benefits. Dubious interpretations are frustrating and create confusions. I have spoken in conferences where someone in the slot before me says “gamification is part of serious gaming”, or vice-versa, and to see my slides contradict them later on. Many top guns in the industry want to keep “gamification” vague; it might be a fear of being wrong later, keep it a blanket/catch-all term to extend their professional capabilities, but mainly, I believe they want the industry to find its own definition and grow on its own (though it has taken too much time). So yes, more definition, more narrowing, more precision, pretty please. Now, with all that said, I did like your definition of gamfication until this article: You claim in your article: “Gamification is often loosely defined, leading to market confusion, inflated expectations and implementation failures.”. True, gamification is loosely defined, but game mechanics aren’t. Just because two gamification platforms (one of whom had openly discouraged the “g” word and fun when speaking to their clients, preferring to call it RAMP, while the other calls it game components in its site bunchball/about/why-bunchball), game mechanics aren’t PBL. You PBLably want to revise and update that, and not confuse the market further. Here is a pretty good resource too: quora/Whats-the-difference-between-game-mechanics-and-game-dynamics badgeville/2012/10/29/what-is-a-game-mechanic (badgeville’s second definition). blogs.gartner/brian_burke/2014/04/04/gartner-redefines-gamification/
Posted on: Tue, 08 Apr 2014 05:37:36 +0000
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