Why it’s hard to Win at Gamification
It’s a long read but really worth reading. It both deflates the gamification hype, discredits the hype spindoctors and at the same time makes sense of gamification and it’s rewards.
Nick Heath really get’s it:
Yet according to experts in the field, early attempts at adding game mechanics to everyday life suffer from a fundamental misconception about what actually makes games fun, and a failure to grasp the amount of time and money needed for successful game design.
He also puts his finger on the problem with gamification, what happens when it goes wrong. When you fail at most design what happens is that the intended profit doesn’t appear. When you fail at gamification what you release is a broken experience turning people away. He also lists an example or two of how pointification is doing this today. Though to most game designers the problems these implementations face are basically really badly done game design.
Ending with a great quote by Deterding:
“The general question to ask yourself is whether, in terms of scale, the amount of work that game design requires is cost-benefit efficient?” he said.
I’ll be reading up on Deterding and posting his work over the next few days.
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