Over 95% of our youth plays videogames. This huge wave (the next generation) can be mastered through gamification, because they understand games and therefore game mechanics. They live it, eat it, breath it and will embrace gamification! Roughly 50% of the current internet population plays social games. The rest? Well I am certain they play other games. It is fair to say that everybody plays. That’s why gamification is a very powerful tool! Gamifier.com gains knowledge about this phenomenon and shares it with the world. Feel free to explore Gamifier.com and find out if it fits your needs!
There are lots of definitions about Gamification The one from Oxford Dictionaries explains best: “The application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service: gamification is exciting because it promises to make the hard stuff in life fun.“
Gamifier.com uses its own simple definition: Make things FUN by adding game-elements.
A short and understandable definition. To put this in the right perspective it is very important to understand what fun implies. The formal definition from Johan Huizinga on Wikipedia is: FUN is the enjoyment of pleasure and an absolutely primary category of life, familiar to everybody at a glance right down to the animal level.
Fun can be found in many things. Reading a good book is fun, accomplishing something difficult is fun, exploring new stuff is fun, achieving your goals is fun, socializing is fun, etc, etc.
Gamification brings fun into our daily routine and therefore is a very powerful tool!! A gamifier can make that happen. Using the plus 4 method a gamifier will find the game-factor of any given entity and create pure fun with it. As a result the entity (websit, school, organization, etc) will perform better. Throught this blog I want to inform you about Gamification trends and give my opinion about important matters. Please read the latest posts:
Gamification got swagger
Never thought that I would use the word “swagger” in a subject of one of my post, but I did. Couldn’t think of a phrase that would be more appropriate. Watch the video and find out why. A famous US rapper called “Camillionaire” talks about his experience with gamification to engage his fans. I listened to him talk passionate about his business and how gamification works for him. This is a must see video for everybody that is involved in the entertainment industry. Not only does Camillionaire talks the talk he most definitely walks...
read moreThe urge to play is in all of us
At six November 2012 I had the pleasure of giving a talk about gamification at the Games for Health Europe conference. Realizing that a lot of people still don’t know what it implies, I decided to give a presentation about gamification in general trying to inspire people. According to the reactions I achieved my goal. One of my topics is: “gamification should imply fun.” Still there is a lot of confusion about fun, it is a much broader concept than most people think. Fun is, according to Johan Huizinga (a Dutch historian and one of...
read moreSix reasons for educational change!
Knowledge is the biggest value humans have and still we let our educational system go down the drain. A lot of talk, no change! We need to understand that change is needed to improve education. The solution lies beyond the knowledge of teachers. Gamification can change this landscape and improve the system. But it will only work if it is done right! Start building high quality educational games. Apply gamification as a shell around those games. Teachers need to write down (or gather) what pupils need to learn, nothing more, nothing less. A...
read moreGamification of sex!?
Will we have Sex+ next to Nike+ anytime soon? Is there no privacy left? Apparently not! Well at least youngsters in Sweden don’t mind sharing their “under the sheets” performance. Proves that we live in a world that becomes more transparent every day. Is this a bad thing? In this case: “no!” This brilliant campaign made young people aware of the danger of not having safe sex. The Stockholm County Aids Prevention reached beyond their goal. They promoted safe sex in a really original way that appealed to the Stockholm youth. Although...
read moreRevealing interview
Douglas Stewart picked my brain and put his findings on paper in this revealing interview he did with me. I talked about the concerns I have with the movement, where my passion comes from, how I want to promote a better vision about Gamification and what it means. About two weeks ago Douglas asked me if I wanted to do an interview with him and if I needed to prepare it. I said that I want it to be a spontaneous conversation preparing it would spoil that. So here is the result, I hope you enjoy it. Horst Streck is a well known and respected...
read moreDutch government gamifies job hunt
An organization of the government (UWV) that takes care of unemployed people recently launched a job interview game. This organization wants to reach out to youngsters with a low and medium education, because this is the group with the highest unemployment rate. With the job interview game the government wants to improve 5 skills. Every skill consists of a ‘fun game’ that motivates the player to go on playing. After a while this turns into a serious game with concrete targets: the set-up of a CV, writing a business network plan or making...
read moreMake things fun
Gamification of software has my focus, but I just love it when I encounter samples of gamification in real life that make me laugh. This is one I just needed to share with you. The marketing effect this machine has is huge! It’s a new way of doing marketing, that is fun for business and consumers. It really fits my definition of gamification: “Make things fun by adding game elements to achieve...
read moreGaming in the Classroom
Gaming is increasingly changing once sterile classrooms into interactive places of learning: From Social Media to QR Codes and Serious MMO’s, the pressure is not only teachers and parents to understand how to integrate the best elements of Gamification into educational pursuits, but also on developers as the market of game education explodes! via Infographic: Gaming in the...
read moreThe new normal
Interesting numbers! Gamification is here to stay, that’s for sure. Question is: “in what form?” We are just at the beginning of our journey. For now we know achievements, badges and rewards work. But the intrinsic motivation is more important. We need to find the game-factor of an organization and this will lead us to the intrinsic motivator. Check this interesting article: How Gamification is Becoming the New Normal | Engine...
read moreIt’s in our genes!
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...
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