Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category

Darren Steele, Strategic Director of Mindspace, and co-author of the gamification book, “I’ll Eat this Cricket for a Cricket Badge.” blogs at Mashable and offers 4 Tips For Gamifying Your Marketing Plan. This useful post discusses each of these recommendations:

• 1. Decide on the Right Opacity
• 2. Break Up Information Into Smaller Pieces
• 3. Do Something With Likes and Followers
• 4. Match Incentives With Engagement

Debbie Hemley at the Social Media Examiner offers a guide to 26 Elements of a Gamification Marketing Strategy. According to Gartner, more than 70% of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application by 2014. If you’re considering incorporating this new and popular trend into your marketing strategy, you’ll want to check out this post. Here are the first five elements discussed:

• #1: Achievers (Bartle’s Types)
• #2: Badges as a Reward
• #3: Challenges
• #4: Demographics
• #5: Explorers (Bartle’s Type)

Gabe Zichermann gave the Tuesday keynote talk at the NYC Social Media Week about The Business of Fun: How Gamification Will Change Your Organization. This was a brilliant presentation which explained how gaming improves fluid intelligence (gF) or the ability to problem solve situations that one’s never been in before. This differs from crystallized intelligence which is the ability to problem solve familiar situations based on previously gained knowledge, e.g. how to solve a math problem.

Zicherman explained that gamification engages users because it feeds into our natural addiction to the challenge-achievement loop. Gaming sets up a system of constraint, or sets parameters on creativity and sets up challenges that can be achieved, resulting in the sought-after dopamine reward that gamers experience hundreds of times an hour playing games.

Examples of organizations effectively using gaming to engage their users:

CNN iReport – Citizen journalists reporting news and providing content for the CNN site. Journalists compete to earn badges and have their photos on the front page.

Stack Overflow - Thousands of developers offering code and solutions to technical problems in a community with a reputation system and virtual currency.

Speed Camera Lottery – The Swedish National Society for Road Safety have implemented a game to encourage drivers to stay within the speed limit. While drivers who speed are sent tickets, those who obey the limit are pooled into a lottery to win the fines. The first 3 days of testing saw a 22% reduction in speed.

Code Academy – This website presents an opportunity to teach everyone how to code through taking and developing courses. Badges and other rewards are offered.

Kickstarter is democratizing the funding process for creative projects. It allows anyone to pitch a project that they want funded. Double Fine studio pitched a game that they wanted to develop and set a goal of $400,000. They raised $1 million in 24 hours.

Here’s his presentation:

This past week has been a busy one in the library technology realm, be sure you’re caught up on all that’s happening with this roundup of the 15 top stories you might not have seen:

E-Books

1. The Evolving Book Group: New Formats Mean More Engagement
2. Overdrive’s Top 25 Most Downloaded Titles
3. Integrating Library Borrowing into eReaders

Mobile

4. A Quick Guide to Creating Library QR Codes
5. Five Types of “Tips” Nonprofits Can Post on Foursquare Venue Pages
6. What are mobile friendly library databases offering? A survey
7. 20 Coolest iPad Ideas for Your Library

Social Media

8. 15 Case Studies to Get Your Library Director On Board With Social Media
9. AL Direct – August 31, 2011
10. Cool Tools: Digital Aids for Staying Organized
11. 25+ Resources to Create Library Videos

Gaming

12. Becoming Lore Keepers

Misc.

13. What IT Professionals Can Learn from Librarians
14. Practical IT Security In Libraries
15. Social Metadata for Libraries, Archives and Museums

Please send library and technology related stories for next week’s feature to ellyssakroski@yahoo.com!!!!

The folks at Educause have put together a new “7 Things” guide, this time describing 7 Things You Should Know About Gamification. “Gamification is the application of game elements in nongaming situations, often to motivate or influence behavior. In business contexts, gamification is used to create an engaging dynamic—such as the points system created by Weight Watchers—and to build brand loyalty.” As usual, the quick reference resource answers the following questions:

1. What is it?
2. How does it work?
3. Who’s doing it?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

Jessica Stillman at GigaOm explores the question: Could using games in the digital workspace be Machiavellian?

“Games, after all, are meant to be fun, so should team members start seeing game elements at work not as tools to help them be happier and more productive, but rather disguised directives from the higher-ups, they might lose some of their charm or even seem a bit sinister (a nasty mix of cheer and repression, like a creepy, aggressive clown).

For those with reservations about the “Machiavellian” aspect of using gamification for collaboration tools, another approach to putting games to use to get teams working better together might be a better fit. Author Dave Gray has a whole book out called Gamestorming, which offering ways to use play and games to help your team communicate better and unleash their innovation potential.”

Photo by Jonathan Blanc

Stan Friedman at Library Journal offers coverage of Finding the Future: Inside NYPL’s All-Night Scavenger Hunt. This amazing event gathered 500 gamers to “connect to the future through the riches of the past via the tools of today”.

“They came wearing bowties and fancy hats, skinny jeans and peasant blouses. They came armed with smartphones, tablets, and laptops. On the evening of Friday, May 20, 500 young adults gathered at the New York Public Library (NYPL) to do what no one had done before: spend the entire night in one of the city’s great public spaces, indulging in an ambitious, interactive game that would test their collaborative abilities while introducing them to the library’s vast holdings.”

Adam Kleinberg, co-founder and CEO at interactive agency Traction writes for Mashable about How To: Gamify Your Marketing. This quick guide outlines the reasons why incorporating game theory into your marketing efforts could prove effective as well as provides practical examples of successful campaigns. The article is organized into the following sections:

• Who Are Gamers?
• The What and Why of Gamification
• Why Gamification Works
• How Brands Are Gamifying the Customer Experience

Michael Stelzner at the Social Media Examiner interviews Bart Steiner, CEO of Bulbstorm about How to Use Game Theory to Grow Faithful Followers. If you’re interested in this new trend of leveraging game theory to build community, you’ll want to check out this video.

Lauren Drell at Mashable writes a quick guide to How To: Start Marketing on SCVNGR. SVNGR is a location-based social game similar to Foursqure through which organizations can place challenges at venues for users who earn points and rewards. This brief tutorial discusses the following topics:

• Make Your Own Campaign
• Challenges
• Rewards
• Treks
• LevelUp

According to Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, By 2015, More Than 50 Percent of Organizations That Manage Innovation Processes Will Gamify Those Processes. This is an exciting prediction that will be explored further at the upcoming Enterprise Architecture Summit 2011 in London and San Diego. The press release goes on to suggest that gamified services “for consumer goods marketing and customer retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon”.

“Gamification describes the broad trend of employing game mechanics to non-game environments such as innovation, marketing, training, employee performance, health and social change,” said Brian Burke, an analyst at Gartner. “Enterprise architects, CIOs and IT planners must be aware of, and lead, the business trend of gamification, educate their business counterparts and collaborate in the evaluation of opportunities within the organization.”

via Peter Alsbjer

Brian Herzog at the Swiss Army Librarian suggests that libraries start to Gamify Your Library Fines. In this very interesting article, he makes the argument that supporting patrons who don’t incur fines with a reward system is a great way to encourage responsible borrowing.

“The theory, called gamification, is that people enjoy playing games because of the positive reinforcement from doing something well – thus turning something normally punitive, like a speeding fine, into a game of consequences: play badly and get punished, play well and get rewarded. How awesome would it be to do this with library overdue fines?”

Ben Wieder at The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog reports on the 6 Top Tech Trends on the Horizon for Higher Education. The post discusses the 2011 Horizon Report, an annual look at technology trends affecting higher education produced by the New Media Consortium and Educause. Here are the top tech trends to watch:

1. Mobile Devices
2. Game-Based Learning
3. Learning Analytics
4. Augmented Reality
5. e-Books
6. Gesture-Based Computing

Greg Ferenstein at Mashable blogs about How Social Gaming is Improving Education. The article discusses how schools are replacing textbook learning with social video games, and improving learning outcomes.

“Social gaming has a come a long way from the days when a dozen students would squint at a 10-inch screen of Oregon Trail. The 2000s seemed to be the decade of case studies: Bold educators willing to experiment with developing technologies. But now, the involvement of major funders, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, points to an industry that is on the cusp of freeing education from its 2D textbook prison.”

Justin Hoenke, Teen Librarian at Cape May County Library, guest posts at Library Garden with 5 Reasons why you should be gaming in your Library. If you’re considering video game programs or circulating video game collections in your library, you will want to check out this article for Hoenke’s reasons:

1. Welcome to the 21st Century!
2. Gaming builds community.
3. You will see all sorts of new people in your library.
4. You couldn’t ask for an easier way to get teens interested in the library.
5. The initial cost may be high, but the return investment is priceless.