Social Media and Games

Observe gamification "in the wild" and report back here. 

Turning work into play is may not be easy at first. Turning work into play can be challenging for a lot of people. However, it benefits people because they can get people to train themselves on how to successfully perform a task. As I was reading the article online, I noticed that Helgason was talking about using technology to create a simulation where people learn to perform a task or explore a real life environment. This is important for potential employees to know because it can help them get a job and maintain it for a long time. Helgason was explaining the process behind gamification and how it works in a society. The way it works is that a person would come up with a task that is important enough to do as an every day routine. This every day routine would turn into a prototype which would be mapped out. Later on, this would turn into a game where you would have to complete the task in an interactive way. Completing this task would be challenging because you would have to complete the task correctly and make sure it is consistent in the game space. I thought that this was a good idea to do for people because people could go beyoud doing a routine. They would play with it further until they got better at it. Completing an online task will also indicate whether that particular participant is capable of getting a job or obtaining a particular skill set in life. This is serious business and it can be used in a good way when people start up their own businesses. Turning an important task into a game is better than having people complete a regular task every day because it will get them into the habit of reacting quickly to key points and tips throughout the game process instead of actually thinking about doing the tasks physically.

I also watched the video online as well. Jesse Schell said some great things on games out there. I want to explain what he was talking about. He started talking about Facebook and how it was unexpected to the public. In my own opinion, the game industry does have tools that were totally unexpected to the public like twitter and the physical games out there. I believe that it is a good thing to have unexpected tasks out here in the real world because these tasks or products would make millions of dollars in a mass market. These tasks also start to become a reality and you can do many things to create a progress report for a company. It seems like people are starting to create online companies and events where the work is completed online without the physical help. Employees would have to complete a tutorial on how to do the job as a routine. Employees would be evaluated on whether they do the job right the first time which is interesting. I know that this would make sence and it makes the working environment a better play for everbody out there. So, gamification in the wild is successful and it will help people maintain a skill at all times.

Gamification that I have noticed in the wild of the real world was in the operating system design of Windows Phone 7, which is a fact that Microsoft admits and proudly states as a considerable element. It seems that Microsoft's overall plan was to get users interested in their line of phones with an unique interface that is unlike the others that are commending a sizable amount of the mobile phone market. The positive of the gamification experience offered is that the user can attain different game-influenced objects like badges and achievements, while using smaller causal games that are build right into the operating system. It is interesting to see something that people use everyday become something that is starting to feel like a game. A negative element that I have noticed about the gamification is that some of the needless add-ons that are more for attention getting are sort of a distraction in reality, especially for adults who could care less.

I will start off saying that the Jesse Schell presentation was pretty interesting and I actually couldn't take my eyes off it for the entire 30 min which is pretty impressive.  He brought up a lot of very interesting thing's and it really does make you think about it all.  I think he is right about the way these tactics are going to become implemented into our lives.  What he said was almost like the book Feed that we read but more about the gamification of everything.  Giving people points for brushing their teeth is just an epic idea because we all know that it would without a doubt give people insanely better hygiene.  I also think he brought up a good point about the fact that our lives are practically recorded and documented now and new generations will be able to physically see what we did that it may cause us to rethink what we do and try to better ourselves.
 
Gamification in the wild is basically a lot of what he is talking about in this presentation.  If done correctly it can be great for businesses and also beneficial to the consumers.  However, if these types of things are created by the wrong people or even by people with bad intentions this could be catastrophic.  Similar to the Feed lets just say that some huge organizations end up being the primary control of these point reward systems, achievements or whatever method would be sucking us into doing things.  It would be an easy way to just control everyone and the flow of everything the way that they see fit.  An example he used was if you drink dr pepper several days in a row you get bonus points, so lets say that pepsi dominates this system and all you ever get rewards for is drinking pepsi products, coca cola would have no choice but to go out of business because very few people are going to pay attention to something that is not rewarding them in a reward based society.  So in other words these systems if not controlled properly and fairly could cause huge shifts in what we do, what we eat, what we buy, how we dress and even what we think.  This of course is more about the future.
 
In the present we are really starting to see gamification of things become more popular but in smaller baby step ways, what I would call a test run.  Bonus reward cards and bonus credit cards have been something that we have used and have been around for a really long time.  They use gamification in a sense but not in a way that is as appealing as the more modern things that are taking off.  Foursquare is a good example of a very new type of gamification that people love.  They took what people do all the time, which is being somewhere and made it a game.  Make sure you pull up your application and check in whenever you are somewhere and let your friends know where you are and you will get points for doing so.  You get bonus points for more places checked in within a day, achievements to unlock and some businesses even have offers so that when you check in you may get a free appetizer or discount on a product. 

I was trying to observe gamification in the wild and was able to see a couple of different examples of how certain elements of games have been implemented into the real world. One instance of this was training exercises at hospitals. My mother is a nurse and she told me that they have simulation that they "play" that help them to prepare for various situations such as a patient coding. Everything was done on a simple interface, but it was more or less a game that they would play at work. The Helgason article reminded me of this when they were talking about the military using different training games or Unilever creating training packages for employees. 

With regards to the video, I witnessed a game that my Dad plays that is similar to the virtual pets in a way, however not with pets, but with beer. The Miller Brewing Company puts a code on the inside of every 30 pack of beer. This code can be submitted on a website and you earn points for this. Once you save up enough points, you can buy a prize like a hat, a grill, or other interesting items. This game is a way for Miller to sell more beer and get people hooked. I know that it works because my Dad now buys the same beer all of the time so he can enter these points and eventually buy something with them. I think that other companies do this as well like Coca Cola via the bottle caps.

I think that it is important to implement games into real life as much as possible because it can make boring tasks fun, but the video made it evident that this practice can be taken way too far. It reminded me of Feed when he started talking about all of the advertisements popping up in your REM cycle. I think that is too much gamification, but it wouldn't surprise me if the corporate world ends up doing something like that in the near future.

There is not much worse than a game designer who can't play by rules, but I just failed to play by the rules. I managed to post examples of Gamification in the wild in 2 different places rather then here, where they are supposed to be placed. Ah well…

First posting is what I consder a very creative form of gamification. A local effort, Super Art Fight (link http://selfloud.net/cosc407/links/super-art-fight) and the actual site http://www.superartfight.com/ . When I orignally posted this I just thought it was something that others in the class would enjoy, and that is was peripheral to the class. On futher consideration, it is really an intesting form of gamification. This group has turned what is an essentially solitary and uncompetitive act, drawing, into a public competition. They have created a form of competitive drawing as pro wrestling. The rules, like pro wrestling, are very loose, but the end result is turing art to game. Much like pro wrestiling, audience participation is also central to the "game". Audience members submit subjects for drawing beforehand, and become the judges of the winners in the competition. Its great fun, and if you are curious I would suggest getting tickets in advance. Super Art Fight 9 packed just shy of 450 people into the Ottobar in January. That is almost full capacity for a pretty big club. Next time might sell out, which is sort of insane.

Next posting is here http://selfloud.net/cosc407/members/sabotagegigante/activity/4559/ – minor note, attempts to delete a link (as mentined int the post) fail, you do loose the points though.

Lastly a ARG game promoting Coke
http://selfloud.net/cosc407/members/sabotagegigante/activity/4560/
Using an exploration metaphore to draw you into the world of Coca Cola – straight out of Feed, there is even a twitter account for the creator of Coke where "he" will respond to questions.

Gamification can take place in both structured and unstructured environments. The way this site works with its point system and achievements is an excellent example of a structured gamified environment. Another example is the Sony rewards site, which actually reminds me of the Jesse Schell video – on the site, you can play trivia games and fill out surveys to get rewards points, which can be used to help gain entries in contest or redeemed for a variety of goodies. But wait! There's more! If a user gets a sony credit card, they can get a points bonus, and points earned for correctly answering trivia is doubled! In addition, you can earn 1 point for every dollar spent on the sony card. But there's even more incentive folks! If a cardholder spends money on SONY products, they get THREE points per dollar spent! And if they buy the item from a sony store (sony style), they get FIVE points per dollar spent. All of this allows them to get more rewards and participate in more events, which in turn leads to greater incentive, until the positive feedback loop reaches infinity.

There are also more subtle examples of gamification in the wild, and these are usually more unstructured or created on the spot. Helgason notes that by treating things in a game-like manner, people can become more motivated and tasks will become easier to complete, which can be great in some cases. For example, I know someone who wants to get more in shape, so he treats exercise like a game, and "levels up" when he can do x amount more of a certain exercise (like 5 pull ups without stopping gets you to level 2, being able to do 10 gets you to level 3, 20 to level 4, etc). Sometimes people will get rewards for themselves in other ways – like some kids can get their parents to get them a toy if they do well in school – the simple system of effort and rewards, failure and frustration can lead to gamifiying almost any experience.

As for "good" and "bad" implementations, I'm not sure if you're referring to the quality of the implementation or the results of it, but I think the results and moral aspects of it are more interesting to focus on – if the example Schell portrays comes about where the corporations make the entire world gamified, but in such a way that best suits their interests (this reminded me very much of Feed by the way) then I think it would be an awful place to live in. It would be a world in which free will would be drastically reduced, and I think people would constantly be torn between doing what they wanted to or doing what would give them the most amount of points. However, in a better implementation, the way rewards were presented might be more flexible and inspire others to do good . . . or so Schell says. My one MAJOR problem with this is that people will only become extrinsically motivated to do good things, and while they'd still be doing good things, I feel like there is something that cannot be replaced about the virtue of doing a good deed simply because it feels like it was the right thing to do.

I was having a hard time seeing gamification in the wild but around the 5th time I had checked to see how my numbers were doing at work, I realized that the prospect of keeping track of employee numbers is a form of gamification.  Where I work, there are a few things that you should be striving for with each transactions: reserves for games, subscriptions to the magazine, and conversion rate for the free rewards card or from the old paid sub to the new paid sub (a free conversion).  You can track individual numbers but what really matters is the percentage.  So if you do one transaction with everything in there, you're golden.  then at the end of the week, numbers are posted and if you get the most in a category, you get the yellow highlight and if you did the worst in a category, you get the dreaded pink highlight.  So because I hold contempt for a lot of my fellow employees, I end up obsessively checking my numbers when I feel like I've gotten enough to the point where I could be first and it's that obsessive drive that, according to corporate and proven through my actions, will sell the crap they want us to sell.

I feel that this is both a good and bad form of gamification, depending how you look at it.  In terms of accomplishing what it is was put in place to accomplish, it does a great job.  Even looking at it from the corporate point of view it does well because since it was put i place, people end up selling more because they don't want to be called out for being the worst.  However from a customer stand point, that's more corporate crap that you have to put up with and even though I hate it as much as the customer, I still want that yellow highlight because I've got the be the very best that no one ever was.  Well, it's really I just don't want to be fired for slacking but hey what ever works, right?

I'm not sure if it's gameification exactly, but one thing that I know of that revolves around points is the point based award system used by grocery stores like Giant.  I'm not sure of all of the details, but from my understanding you gain points everytime you pay for groceries, and I believe those points can be used towards future purchases.  There's a similar one with buying milk, though I forget at the moment where this deal exists.  Basically, if you buy five or six jugs of milk, you get your next one slightly cheaper.  Both of these ideas were the only ones I could think of that would fit the idea of the course.

As for good or bad representations of gameification, I'm of the same opinion that we had when we were debating if Facebook was good or evil.  I believe that any kind of institution is not inherently bad, unless the person creating the institution plans to use it for their own evil purposes.  I find the best example of this idea in the mover Gamer.  The bad guy in that movie creates these two different "worlds" with the same purpose: to have control over people (and their money).

On the other hand, I find that the medical program Visible Body defintely has positive value in it.  This could allow for a 3D diagnosis of a person, assuming that the program was properly fitted with accurate medical data.  Visible Body has the potential to save lives, and if that's not a good thing, I don't know what is.

I went gambling recently and that is when I discovered that casino gamify the experience. Whenever you spin the reels on a slot machine you earn points. All that is required is a card associated with the casino. The card can be used at table games as well. The points can be used to get things at the shop at the casino, or at the restaurant at the casino has. If the casino has a hotel and enough points are available you can use them with the casino's hotel. The more points you earn the more benefits become available to you.

As far as implementation of the point system, the casinos have done a bad job. Jesse Schell has the right idea with what casinos should do with their machines and gambling in general. He said that if the machine does not pay you money, that it should pay you virtual money. They should make the pay of fake money obvious to the player which may make people not care if they aren't paid real money and be happy with fake money if they can find an appropriate use for it. The point system they have is not obvious and no one really care about the point system. The point system barely influences how people play. If the machines did more with the point system such as paying a cash amount if you get a certain amount of points, or just advertised the idea a little more, people may care.

Once gamification occurs right, life may become like what Jesse Schell says it will. The only problem with his hypothesis of the future of gamification is oversaturation. Trends and times change which Jesse acknowledged, but ignored with his hypothesis. If everything he mentions becomes gamified people will get sick of the idea of gamification because they will overexposed to the concept. Once that happens people will need a new motivation toward doing things in life. Jesse presented the question of why the idea of real has caught on and he said the answer was that we were overexposed to fake. His hypothesis will be no different from any other trend.

at first i didnt know what to talk about. i skipped on the gambling, and im not receiving any chevos for doing my taxes or using the same grocery store every week, and that was when i saw my twitter feed and started smirking. like i said in class, since i named a company in a tweet, they were offering me a 1000 dollar gift card. they were trying to encourage me to talk more and more about them in the hopes of increasing their sales. in a non corporate world this is the same as facilitating a bribe. this represents the dark side of gamification. instead of harmless chevos, actual money was up for grabs. and just like walmart on black friday, we will do anything for a sale.

my second good example was another twitter thing. by making a positive statement after a light smashing i somehow doubled my followers. in a way. that positive result for being positive is in itself a gamification. if i want to keep getting more followers, im going to be very careful with my criticism.

personally im finding gamification as an interesting accident. as long as their is careful planning in all aspects of it, it can be easily assimilated with no draw backs. very hard to do in our present world.

now for the second assignment

first read this weeks vgcats on tf2 gamification ( if your late to the read you may need to hit previous real quick. they dont have their links setup until the next comic is posted)
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/

and this is what i read
http://gamestudies.org/1101/articles/moore

i definately agree with the idea of adding individuality in any form humanly possible for a videogame. and hats were an adorable / slight compulsive item for team fortress 2. but then after 6 monthes and getting their community completely hooked on hats. they announce the manco store.

http://www.teamfortress.com/mannconomy/FAQ/

in classic valve fashion they kept parts of it free to keep their audience from uprising, while at the same time encouraging them to spend money in the hopes of furthering this very same individuality. eventually we go from having the positive and slightly more diificult to read version that we see at gamestudies and now its become what is depicted in the vgcats cartoon.

personally, i like valve, they are the best company in game design to work, and their finicancials this year prove it ( worth over 10 billion). but gabe newell is starting to annoy me. Everytime he goes on tv or on online hes constatnly changing his opinion on matters or announcing a new change because valve is not making enough money this quarter.

http://playstationlifestyle.net/2009/08/15/gabe-newell-apologizes-to-ps3-owners/

the only reason why left for dead 2, manco store, and several of the other products have been green lit lately was because valve was looking for a activision esk guaranteed hitter. they dont care about inidivuality. pretty ironic to think about considering how half life 2 and portal  are both some of the most original game design systems the world has ever seen. people are still singing songs about a cake that probably disgusting (its surrounded  by metal and most likely has mold at this point).

in the end  im begining to think valve needs to fix their image. their entire success is because of their communitites love. if they lose that love, they lose  their only lifeline when a major title is not in development.

It's kind of funny that Helgason mentions TurboTax, because I had literally just done my taxes this year at TurboTax before reading the article.  While it's not the best example of how people have gamified boring activities like taxes, there actually is a tiny bit of it involved.  Not all gamified things necessarily have to have a game-like element to them; in this case, TurboTax is gamified merely by the interface it uses, which pretty clearly draws from games.  The whole point of the TurboTax website is to make you feel like you're getting somewhere while everyone else who's not using the site is buried under paperwork.  They reinforce your progress with flashy, fast-moving loading screens, progress bars, and universally understandable iconography.  I almost felt like I was configuring my computer's hardware settings to play Crysis, in the sense that I moved from one area of the neatly designed forms to the next, and the end result was just as visually pleasing (I get a month's pay in refunds, woohoo!).  I've handfiled my taxes before, and the actual process of filling it out isn't much different, but the clearly lineated progress and ease with which the information can be read make the web experience vastly superior to flipping back and forth through the forms and manuals, not sure of what order I have to file what in.

I definitely see gamification at work all the time.  Our task-tracking database can give us a visual representation of what we've accomplished, what we've still got left, where we should be optimally, among other miscellaneous details.  There have been a few instances where I and the other testers were required to scrub an area for bugs; several of us pulled up the individual bug counts for that task of the other testers to create a scoreboard of who had written up the most issues, purely for bragging rights.  There's also kind of a joke among the producers about trying to stay under the green line.  By this, they're referring to the amount of hours scheduled for work in the milestone period; the estimates for what work will get done in that time are almost always too low and end up causing us to go above the green line.  As a result, they'll boast among each other about how all of the groups they manage only went 10 hours over.  When we start hitting crunch, the game will change to 'try and get under the green line before we ship'.  It's kind of fascinating, really, that almost anything can be gamified so long as it has an easy to understand interface and a clear representation of individual progress.  Sometimes it doesn't even take that; I used to work retail and would make a game out of sweeping the store by trying to make as few dirt piles as possible, which would mean less visible mess for the customers and less work for me to dispose of them later.  I'm currently losing my game of Netflix because my queue keeps getting longer instead of shorter.

As a side note, I don't understand the comparison between Valve and Activision.  It seems more like a diatribe against the Mannconomy than anything else; it looks like part of the assignment was started and then just got off track once Mannco entered the post.

First I would like to say that the image of gamification Jesse Schell presents reminded me a great deal of the Feed. The main reason the presentation reminded me of Feed was Schell’s description of advertisements giving points and keeping track of what you do. This idea of companies using gamification to get more customers reminded me of the rewards/advantage cards many retail businesses have. The one I am most familiar with is the one from Office Depot where I work. The whole point of this card is to get people to purchase things from the store to earn points that you use to buy more stuff in the store. Using a rewards card is not what I would call fun but it does provide the user a sense of satisfaction knowing that if they buy things in a certain store they will be rewarded for it. This kind of gamification also gives the people who participate in it a sense of loyalty to the store it is from because they need to keep going back for them to get the rewards.

I wouldn’t say businesses and corporations using gamification to boost their sales a bad thing, but if it starts to resemble the image Schell portrayed or the Feed that M.T. Andreson portrayed I find that rather frightening.

I think that gamification is a brilliant way to make what most people find dull and boring more interesting. There are many things that I struggle to do, mainly home work and dishes, because they are so dull and boring. I would have no problem with people making a game out of those chores to make them more interesting to do.