Game mechanics EVERYWHERE!
by petermeI’ve just returned from SXSW Interactive 2010, and perhaps the best talk I saw was Andy Baio’s “Gaming the Crowd, Turning Work Into Play”. He hasn’t yet posted slides or notes, but you can get the gist of the talk from this blog post and these notes. The main thesis addresses bringing game mechanics into non-game contexts to encourage desired behavior (and how that can sometimes go terribly awry, as in the case of the very evil Swoopo.)
Game mechanics even pervaded talks on other subjects. On the otherwise tepid “City As A Platform” panel, Dustin Haisler rocked my world with his presentation of Manor Labs, which attempts to bring social media tools to community and government engagement. Among the elements of Manor Labs are game mechanics that reward participation.
Jane McGonigal, who spoke at UX Week 2008, just had her TED talk “Gaming can make a better world” posted.
There’s Jesse Schell’s “Design Outside the Box” talk from DICE 2010 that burned up the blogosphere a few weeks ago, with his insights about game mechanics in non-game contexts.
Given all this, we’ve realized it’s important to bring the discussion around game mechanics to UX Week 2010. We’ve got Nicole Lazzaro, UX-designer-turned-game-designer, who will share insights from her research on game play and connect that to UX practice. And there’s Dave Gray from XPlane, bringing his Knowledge Games that apply game thinking to what are typically business processes.
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May 11th, 2010 at 2:05 am
McGonigals TED talk was very interesting in that it pointed out all the things that can go wrong if this mechanic is applied to the wrong goals – those set up by fast food chains and soft drink manufacturers.
An old gaming mechanic (user levels) is contained in a couple of forum frameworks and is largely inconsequential to most users, except those that feel they need to compensate for real life achievement.
On the other hand, gaming mechanics that encourage responsible behaviour, from a simple “green” gauge in some new cars that tells you how you’re doing on fuel consumption, weight-watcher points to more game-like tools like Wii Fit, there is plenty of opportunity to use these mechanics for good. Plus they can make boring stuff fun.
Thanks for the links.