And here we are again, to unravel another week, another quest, another level!
Last time, we’ve talked about the spectator and his/her importance to the implementation of a successful gamification model. We’ve concluded that the spectator is important to validate the success of the quest and will also allow for a good “player” to build his/her audience.
This week’s topic is about self-perceived authority on the leveling system and complementary quests. Don’t miss it!
This idea may surprise you, or not even a little bit. But sometimes people get into games – in this case multiplayer games – just to interact with others. These people seek the social aspect of the game, or just want to see other people playing.
Ok, but what’s the purpose of the spectator in the process? How will this person improve our approach on gamification? Well, bridging this process with video games, we can easily understand how these people can help out.
A game follows a set of rules. These rules control the environment with which you interact, validating your actions and therefore evaluating your results and evolution, and granting you a new level if it’s the case. In real life we don’t have yet a way to control the environment with which you interact or even a way to track your evolution in the gamification process. You have to, in some way, get all the data and evaluate it by yourself. Continue reading
From what we have talked about until now, we already have some clues about what we need in order to implement the concept of gamification.
We already know we need:
But this just shows an iteration of it. Effectively structuring gamification should imply creating a meaningful chain of events so that it is not just a one-time venture. Otherwise it would seem to be a bit meaningless, don’t you think? Continue reading
What’s up, everyone? Things are rolling at a steady pace for us at True Life Game. There are a bunch of things we want to share with you guys: what’s different in the Journal; ideas for video content; the official True Life Game forum; what we see when we look out of our window.
We have decided to split it in two different subjects, on two separate days: Weblog Posts and Concept Posts.
Every Monday – Weblog Posts: It is the journal per se. It’s what you are reading right now. We will update you with our developments and plans, on a more behind the scenes approach. We will also tell you what we have done in the previous week and what our plans are for the forthcoming week. Everything directly related to the team or to the work done and planned on the True Life Game project will reach you via a Weblog Post on Mondays.
Every Friday – Concept Posts: As we work on the concepts involving this project, as we research new and cool ways to apply gamification (or anything interesting, really) to real life, as we discuss and share ideas regarding whatever motivates us, there is a flow of information that we put into paper. Digital paper – we love the trees!
In other words, we get lots of raw material to work on. We grab all this information and transform it into what we call a Concept Post. Basically, it is our way to transmit our vision about everything related to Gamification. While this is only one of the branches of the long term vision of True Life Game, it gives, both the team and the community, hints on how optimize the use of gamification concepts in real life. This way we all can work on the backbone of an awesome idea.
This is something we have been discussing for some time now. We plan on creating some video content to publish as True Life Game on a few video sharing platforms. We have two main goals with this: a) expand our community beyond the Facebook borderlines; b) reach out a broader audience, by providing another format besides the text-only we have been doing so far.
We have some ideas regarding this. We believe you will enjoy them! But, as always, you are encouraged to send us your suggestions.
We are not sure exactly when we will start with this format, as we still have some technical issues to solve first. We will keep you posted.
Yeah! We have one now! It’s new, fresh and lonely… but we expect it to grow as the community gets more engaged with both the project and its concepts. So, come on in, say hello and start throwing questions and suggestions at each other! And at us. We envision this forum as the place where amazing ideas will hatch and be nurtured by an awesome and dedicated community. In ten years we will look back and say: “This is where it all began!”
We are not the only ones researching and working the concept of gamification. As we have said before, this concept is being applied on several areas for some years now. But we see an opportunity to make it even bigger, greater, more fun. That is our work at “home” – the True Life Game project.
When we go to our window, we see a lot of other cool projects working on gamification. Last week we have talked a bit about Nike+. Another project that comes to mind is Duolingo, a language learning platform based on gamification. These are just two great examples of what gamification can do for people.
This week our Concept Post will be about the multiplayer mechanics and a few ideas of how we can apply them to a gamified environment. As in games, multiplayer can be either about competition, cooperation or both. Our opinion is that there are great advantages on both, as long as there is fair play and fun involved!
How can we apply gamification in real life scenarios? Well, Nike already does it with Nike+ in one of their specialization environments: running. Nike wants people to move, so they have created a system where people can track their accomplishments. For example, you challenge yourself to run for 2 kilometers. And then comes the end of the week…
– You did it! Awesome, now you can aim higher in next week’s challenge and get that rush from accomplishing something you have considered difficult. It’s a great feeling, and you know it!
– You have failed! Well, no need to feel bad about it! It means you must try harder next week because you know how awesome it will feel when you beat the challenge!
In both cases you are looking for that feeling of accomplishment, the choir of angels inside your head praising the hero who crossed the bottomless pit to the other side. Something you considered as impossible before. Continue reading
There is a lot of talking about and around gamification, but…
Until now there is not an all-round approved designation for what is gamification, so we will just explain our own view of it. Gamification is the concept of applying techniques used in games to improve the motivation and engagement of a person in a daily or/and monotonous task or in learning a new skill, easing the initial effort regarding the learning curve of that specific skill. Continue reading
It’s been a busy week! Working on some graphical aspects of the website and setting the pillars to start growing our community. We have already started the latter and we have gathered around 300 people in our facebook group. That’s the birth of a community, alright!
Also, we wrote down some important ideas regarding the concept of gamification. We will update the Special Report during the weekend to reflect a few improvements and some additions.
Our team page is already updated and now you can know a little bit more about us. Besides, Assunção has been in Genoa, Italy, so we have been meeting and discussing our tasks through Skype. Once she has returned to Portugal, we could finally meet up and take a bunch of photos!
Hey y’all! This is our first journal entry and the official start of this joint-effort in shaping a better world for everyone.
Day Zero! And a very long one at that… finalizing all the stuff necessary to launch the first usable versions of both the website and the Special Report. But there’s still a lot more to do! We are excited to begin this adventure and we hope to build a lively and engaging community that will help us to get the job done in the best possible way.
For now we are defining the base on which everything else will be built upon. In the meanwhile, if you haven’t done so yet, go get your free Special Report. Read it, digest it… Among other things you will understand that you are an important part of this project. Your feedback is very valuable for us and for the rest of the community.
But as it stands right now you have no way to voice your ideas and opinions! So that’s one of our top priorities right now. In the meanwhile you can use the comment box below to give us some quick feedback. We are eager to hear from you!
Happy year of 2014!