Now, you might think that it should be obvious that
gamified systems are fun, but it turns out that when
people start to go down the path of building a
game of fight system, they often lose sight of that objective.
Especially if it's a system that is of
the PBL variety, where you're focused more on the
kind of behaviorist loops of motivating certain action
and certain responses to stimuli feedback that people get.
It's easy to forget that the point here or at least one
of the key points here, is that this is something game like.
This is something that people get pulled into because it feels somehow enjoyable.
And what I found in teaching students about gamification and asking them to come
up with gamification examples, is that very often they lose sight of that.
Very often I have to say, well why would someone want to do this?
Is this really fun?
Can you think about ways to make this
concept that you've come up with more engaging?
More involving puzzles and problems and surprise and delight
and all of those things that we associate with fun.
So this is something that I would encourage all of you to focus
on as well, when you do your gamification design project for this course.
Keep in mind that fun is important.
Now what's fun?
Well we've talked about this a lot, and it's certainly not the case that PBLs are
not necessarily fun, that there's nothing fun in
badges or there is nothing fun in rewards.
The challenge is making sure that those things are deployed
if you're going to use them, in a way that
actually unleashes some of those different characteristics or versions of
fun that I talked about earlier on in the course.
So, for example, here is the Samsung Nation
site which I have used a few times before.
And this introductory paragraph is where they describe to you why this is something
exciting, and it's exciting I guess because
they say it's an exciting social loyalty program.
You earn badges, move up in the ranks
and have fun discovering everything Samsung.com has to offer.
Now, the question is whether that's really something fun and I'm not saying
this to make fun, if you will, [LAUGH] of Samsung or anyone else.
But to pose the question whether this gamified site really focused
in on what aspects of the process are engaging for the user.
Maybe they designed a system that was effective in terms
of designing rewards using some of the techniques that I've described.
And coming up with a platform for people who happen to feel
motivated from the opportunity to earn badges and points and so forth.
But if the activity underlying it isn't something fun and engaging,
then there is an ultimate challenge in making the site effective.
And making it effective for a broad group of people, as opposed to that relatively
self-selected group, who respond more eagerly to these
kinds of addictive elements of PBL type systems.
And again, I'm not privy to what the designers of
Samsung Nation were thinking, or what kind of response they've gotten
to this service, but I think it's important to go beyond
just assuming that the activity is fun in and of itself.
If Samsung.com's website were interesting enough by itself,
they might need some of these game mechanics.
And the point here though, is that fun can be anywhere.
So think about whether Samsung Nation's site has that element
of fun in it somewhere, and think about some other sites.
So for example fitocracy.
I mentioned earlier.
Is about using the same kinds of PBL mechanics to get people to exercise.
And this is a site that really seems
to have a strong commitment to making things fun.
If you just look at the site, woohoo, and you look at all of the messages here.
Here's how fitness can be fun.
You look at the graphics which are kind of fun.
You look at the different kinds of
messages, the, the way that they've designed things.
The little images, the graphics, the discussion among people.
It all seems to be built around this notion reinforced time
and time again, that working out is great, it's exciting, it's awesome.
And you are awesome for going down this path of using a site like Fitocracy and
finding groups of people to work with, and leveling up and so forth.
So, this is a site that at least seems
committed to the notion that what they're doing is fun.
And again, there's no abstract reason why exercise has to be fun or not.
But it's important to at least go down that path
of thinking about where the fun is in the activity.