This Is Not An Article About Gamification

A lot has been said lately about gamification and how it can transform the content that publishers produce into something other. For the unacquainted, gamification is generally accepted as the application of game mechanics to non-game scenarios with the end goal of engaging users and spurring them to greater action. A common example is how LinkedIn uses an animated graphic to encourage users to complete their profiles.Increasingly, gamification is big money: Fortune 500 companies see it as a powerful -- and frankly, manipulative -- marketing tool. For their part, publishers hope to harness gamification to make content more interactive, more engaging, and to urge action, like clicking through an ad or sharing more articles. Gamification is a buzzword, being tossed at conferences and in marketing and technology circles like "social media" was a half-decade ago. And like any buzzword, I'm skeptical whether we really understand what we're talking about. That's not to say I doubt gamification is a real thing and potentially useful for publishers. However, the title of this article is derived from the fact that while I was investigating what gamification is, I came to understand that publishers can use games in a manner that goes beyond simply gamifying content. Let me explain. During my research, I was fortunate enough to encounter the work of Eric Gordon, executive director of the Engagement Game Lab (EGL) at Emerson College. The focus of the EGL is to research and design games that foster civic engagement, working with government and nonprofits to help people to interact with institutions in a more meaningful way. "We actually resist the term gamification because we want to err on the side of creating playful experiences, as opposed to simply mechanically gamifying existing processes," says Gordon. To explain the distinction, Gordon says that where gamification applies game mechanics to otherwise mundane activities to elicit more behavior, his lab focuses on creating games that reframe activities as playful so as to enable discovery and exploration. Gordon uses the term, "gameful design" as an alternative to gamification. "This suggests a focus on games as systems of play rather than just disconnected mechanics that motivate the desired behavior," says Gordon. "We don't want to manipulate people into taking action, we actually want to create a context for people to explore and discover and to make meaning. It's a different kind of engagement that we're looking for."Gordon is seeking "robust learning" and empowerment through games so people can apply their learning to other contexts outside the game. "Games as a larger framework can be really productive for that sort of thing because it's tied to experiential learning, it's tied to exploration and discovery.In this regard, the game is the experience, not an enhancement. To illustrate, Gordon shared the scenario where the Game Lab was challenged with teaching college students about community volunteering so they could be productive volunteers. The Game Lab created Civic Seed, which served as an experience where the students weren't just learning content or motivating actions. In the multiplayer role-playing game people play a character that must replenish a color-depleted world, working in cooperation with other people. Players come out of the game with a deep experience in a fictional world as well as documented credentials for civic duty.Both the game experience and the game result are meaningful. "What we're seeing is a different approach to the content, a different investment in the outcomes and that's the kind of learning we're looking for. It's an example of something that's not a gamified process -- where it's not simply just adding points to a process -- but it's an entirely different world we've created through this game that uses exploration and play as a way of getting at deeper connections and better answers."On many levels, this kind of game experience is similar to what educational publishers are doing with games to improve learning of content-especially adaptive learning programs-where games are structured for students to learn and then they are immediately provided with the opportunity to apply that learning. "Learning games" provide deeper fulfillment, where gamification often plays to urges for instant gratification. "What happens when people learn like that is they have an investment in the learning itself, and it's not simply a matter of jumping through hoops or getting through a requirement, but it makes the player invested in the act of learning," says Gordon. And it's not for that reason alone that publishers should realize the distinction between gamifying and creating games. Over-gamification, if you will, could have negative results. Gordon thinks people are savvy enough to recognize when game mechanics are being employed to manipulate them. Gordon speculates that publishers could have success by creating new kinds of experiences with the content they deal in. For example, a current events publisher could create a game where players "piece together various bits of information in order to create a meaningful whole in a way that you don't necessarily do when you're a passive reader. It's about creating different kinds of experiences so when a player goes through it, they think, 'Aha, I never thought about it that way.'"This type of use of games in publishing can be seen as not just a way to prompt desirable behavior from readers to help your business -- like LinkedIn did to encourage us to populate our profiles -- but to create new products. The structure of a publisher's game, like Civic Seed, could motivate people to learn content, seek information through exploration, and take new actions. PE

Publishing News

This Is Not An Article About Gamification

Denis Wilson

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Denis Wilson