Gamification – Not a New Swearword

You would be forgiven for thinking that gamification describes a new
type of weapons technology that shoots gamma rays. It is a lot more
benevolent than that and simply describes a way in which games are being
used to expose concepts in different settings.

More people are starting to use games in their learning and using
strategy simulations and complex real-time games to simulate learning.
Organisations have also realised that linking products to games and
putting in an educational context drives much better adoption.

The idea of using simulations to learn is not new and was practiced
by apprentices and artisans that copied their masters. After many years
of learning how the master did it – you could finally venture out on
your own and create your own work.

The idea of simulation entered the modern age when fighter pilots
were crashing planes and the military realised that the best way to
teach people to fly is to give them more time behind the control. The
first flight simulators were boxes with sticks and plane like controls –
but through successive generations of refinement they are more lifelike
than planes today. It also allows trainers to setup often hard to
replicate conditions such as storms, multiple systems failures and even
terrorist incidents. This type of training is “real” in that quick
decision making, multiple attempts at a scenario and lifelike conditions
create the ingredients to prepare pilots and crew for dealing with most
situations by giving them a strong experience base.

In the 90’s a lot of experimentation was done in emergency management
situations with games. We have all seen a show were fire-fighters enter
the burning building and put it out. To prevent loss of life a lot of
these life-threatening situations were transferred onto computer
simulations and later into virtual reality simulations. The same has
been done for police services, crowd control and many other areas.

While most of us will hopefully never end up fighting a fire or
having to calm a crowd – in recent years there has been a look at how
this applies to business.

A whole generation grew up on video games and is now using the method
to learn about how to run their life, do business and run
organisations.

Games and simulations are being used to teach people how to manage
their personal finances, how to better recruit staff and how to talk to
your boss. You can get simulations and coaches that take you through
most business scenarios and you need to see the solution in a given
parameter set.

A common type of game is one in which resources are limited, a
solution needs to be found to a static or evolving scenario and only by
applying your management skill can you make the right decisions in terms
of procuring more resources or producing more output. The aim of these
games typically are to shift the behaviour of an individual from being a
producer to being a manager of resources and the manager soon realises
that you can only win the game if you focus on employing your resources
more effectively.

Other gamified scenarios highlight the effect of competition,
co-operation, impacts of different changes and acting with particular
behaviour patterns. One consulting company used a game that you play to
assess your consulting behaviour. You are given scenarios, with possible
outcomes and each outcome leads to an evolution of the scenario. If you
choose the wrong path – you are in front of the media explaining your
actions soon and if you take the right path you get to go to the
interview.

It also seems that gamification is becoming popular in general
marketing and communications. A loyalty scheme is a type of game. Get
points and you get a reward. Using an interactive game to sell is
translating into some retailers offering game type settings in which
people can buy groceries. Why should it not be fun and why can you not
do it from the comfort of your own home?

Why gamification is attractive in a learning context is that players
do not get penalised for being bad – but get more points when they
improve. This idea is called levelling up and is attractive as it
promotes learning. While not everything can be taught by a game – games
have always proved useful in transferring key learning concepts.
some providers have always used games, interactive exercises and workplace
based learning to enrich the facilitated and online class-room
experience. By drawing on the skills and experience of adults it creates
an environment in which people add to each other’s knowledge rather than
“breaking-down” your understanding of a concept in a hope that you
figure out how to integrate it into your own practices.

Games are designed to work on your desire for reward, achievement,
competition, status, self-expression and sometimes fear and absence of
punishment. It takes these dynamics and links it to learning concepts.
In this way you get conditioned to prefer a specific behaviour or action
and through repetition you increase your ability to do this at pace.

Some newer behaviours that have been find to drive people in a more
social and open sharing world include making new connections,
strengthening of existing links via shared experiences,
values-expression, altruism, co-creation and collective problem solving
seems to be a new category of emerging drivers in game dynamics and
communities.

To make the game work you need a game logic – the rules by which the
game is played. This may be as simple as a game-controller or as complex
as a manual that describes what is allowed and what not.

This then is linked to a reward system such as points, leaderboards,
badges, levels, challenges, rewards. You may have to increase your
capabilities as you go through the game and this may have other
impacts.

Once people are involved in a game the game designer uses peer
pressure, time, specific starting conditions, specific ending
conditions, increased reward frequency, exclusivity, show and tell and
other dynamics to embed the idealised behaviour.

Virtual reality is also adding to the potential of gamification with
new technologies likely to enter the main stream and become a lot more
accessible.

Companies are using games to collect customer information, get a
clearer sense of preferences and to drive a clearer understanding of
customer metrics. This represent a whole dimension that is often lost to
the game player – but why should a product not work better if the user
helped design it? Games also represent an opportunity for in-game
advertising and increasingly games are also becoming revenue generators
in themselves with participants paying for in-game goodies.

People remember the game long after the learning event. When you are
engaged in a learning environment and it stimulates your interest – you
form more direct and permanent bonds. It is as if nature hard-wired us
to value experience above learning. By participating in learning
experiences we can learn more about ourselves and train ourselves to
re-act better in different circumstances.

Conclusion

While it would be nice and tempting to have a game that runs
everything – we must never forget that there is still a “real world” –
or is it just a game? The translation of learning to the real world is a
key metric for any learning system.

Gamification is certainly not applicable to every situation and
increasingly we will see highly engaging content and simulations
becoming a common interface to interact with complex ideas and
concepts.

These experiences only work well if they are designed to be effective
and consumers will only adopt if there is a highly engaging experience
on the other side. The challenge for business and for learning
institutions is to create games and learning experiences that are
valuable and that supports behaviours and values that are useful in the
working environment.