I just thought you might be interested in how you can stay young. George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) found the solution a long time ago, here it is:

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

He was a wise man, that George. Really wish I could say that I wrote that quote. He actually says: “play and stay young!” You need to know that as soon as this came to my attention, I wanted to figure out how I could make people play in real life. The quote makes sense. Gaming is in our genes and gamification can enhance personal growth! Personal growth leads to a better life, a better life leads to happiness and happy people live longer. Now I made it my guest to make people play, preferable during work to be sure they get a healthy daily dose of game play. The way to do this is gamification, I will explain the term later for those who are unfamiliar with it.

If you ask the previous generation if they play games, you will often receive answers like this:

 “No I never play!”

“Well I play sometimes, but only mind games, those tough ones.”

“I play, but not that much.”

“Angrybirds? What is that? Are they on the menu somewhere?”

In short, they don’t want you to know that they play games. People of this generation in high positions, strongly deny that they play a game once and a while. Except of course for those who work in the gaming industry, like I did fortunately. But gaming is a booming business, meaning that there are a lot of people playing and buying games.

The upcoming generation play games and they are not denying it at all. A lot of them will enter high positions soon, or already did. Seems that they are smart. Why? Probably because they play games as Gabe Zichermann (gamification Expert) explains in this speech.

OK, Getting back to my guest, gamification is hot and not without reason. Gartner predicts a great success for this phenomenon and I agree. For those who don’t know what it is, I will give a personal definition. Don’t want to sound presumptuous, by dropping a new definition in my first blog. But I strongly believe it gives gamifiers, more freedom and that’s what we need. No boundaries please, games and ideas come from our imagination, don’t ever put boundaries around that.

Gamification: “Make things fun by adding game elements.”

Games are engaging, they bind people, they motivate them, sometimes inspire them, it’s all true, but most of all they are fun! With that in mind you can’t go wrong with gamification. Furthermore this definition is short, clear and therefore easy to communicate, which in my opinion is necessary to get the message across.

Picture this: “hi there, my name is Horst I am a gamifier and I am going to make your company, education, business or work more fun!” How can anyone say no to that? If you have a deeper interest please check out other definitions of gamification.

My first close encounter with gamification was about 22 years ago. Yes, you are reading it correctly, 22 years ago!! Not bragging, it’s the honest truth. Need to say that I just recently discovered it during my research on gamification where I got a flashback of the period where I was co-developing software for the Ambulance Control Room located at Amsterdam under the inspiring leadership of Bart Prehn. The software we where building provides the Control Room operator all the information needed to plan Ambulances if accidents occur. In those days it was all text based. During development, my imagination gave me a peek into the future as it now seems. I even dreamed about it. I imagined that I turned the complete application into a game. It wasn’t that hard for me to do. I visualized a map of the city, ambulances on certain spots and accidents occurring. Then I thought: “wouldn’t it be great when an accident occurs I can click on the image of the ambulance followed by a click on the accident on the map. The ambulance would drive to the accident (connected with reality to calculate the real velocity), pick up the injured person (character) and drive this patient to the Hospital, all done through clicks.” In those days nobody would take me seriously. I would probably get fired with a one way ticket to a mental hospital as a bonus. So I kept my mouth shut. If I analyze that crazy idea now, it isn’t crazy at all. If build properly, it will improve:

-velocity, which is highly important

-commitment of operators

-safety, a complete visual of the entire situation

-measurement of employees

-costs, less people can do the job

-fun at work

 Last but not least, the hiring of operators could be done through a simulation of the game. Invite the top three of the game chart for an interview, success guaranteed. Maybe after reading this they hire me now to gamify this application.

I didn’t realize what I encountered at that moment in time. Inspired by this I started a game company a couple of years later. Now 22 years later I found out exactly what this experience really meant and jumped in with both feet and became a gamifier.