Play?: Videogames and Gamification

The concept of gamification refers to the implementation of gaming mechanisms in user experience designs, thereby transforming a task into a game play. The idea is to draw the attention of the participants towards the task in the form of games, in order to accomplish the task with fun which makes learning easier (Koster, 2004). This is similar to adding points to the LinkedIn profile completion task for example.

The mechanism of gaming in it, whereby the network awards points according to the user’s information levels triggers the innate desires within a person to take the task as a sort of competition, which is important as well as entertaining. Thus, the sole purpose is to create challenges and then distribute rewards depending on the completion of those challenges. (Deterding, 2011)

Some of the advantages of gamification are its tendency to give direction and leadership to the workers, who work towards a common goal with a self constructed strategy just as in games. It encourages the participants to put in a better effort by inducing a sense of competition, whereby one can be left behind, just like in video games (McGonigal, 2011). Gamification empowers communities and brings people together through social networks or in work places. Apart from uniting the crowd, it gives them an objective and purpose, which justifies their existence. This Crowdsourcing is one of the biggest promises made by gamification. In management free companies, gamification gathers the input of the hundreds of employees towards a desired output by the means of collaborative tools.

While there are positive effects of gamification some of the negative examples of this theory is the phenomenon of edutainment, an idea that developed recently, where schools started educating people through the means of entertainment. This form of digitized education left the students without knowledge of core skills. (Zichermann, 2011)
References:

• Deterding, S., 2011. Meaningful play: Getting "gamification" right. Google TechTalk. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGCPap7GkY [Accessed 06 December 2013]
• Koster, R., 2004.  A theory of fun for game design. Phoenix, AZ: Paraglyph Press.
• McGonigal, J., 2011.  Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world.  New York, NY: Penguin Press
• Zichermann, G., 2011. Gamification by design: Implementing game mechanics in web and mobile apps.  New York, NY: O' Reilly Media.