Life is a game, kid!
It all depends on how you play!
There’s a line in Forgetting Sarah Marshall that
made me think:
Matthew: I have a question for you real quick. What did you think of my demo?
Did you get it?
Aldous Snow: I was gonna listen to that, but then, um, I just carried on living my
life.
Everyone’s default is that if nothing more meaningful or
intriguing pops up they will happily go along living their life as normal, without a care in the world.
This is where the challenge stands for gamification, from the
data we have to start manipulating it around game mechanics as we approach end-to-end
life tracking.
The question stands as to how to do this. The answer? Don’t
fear straying away form the blueprint of points, badges and leaderboards as it
needs to mean something to the user, if
not users will quit.
There’s plenty of activity gamifying data (check out the list). The secret is
that gameified data must provide something that is already meaningful to the
user in its own right. Game elements are like an amplifier: There has to be a
genuine sound first, a value, an interest, a motivation for the amplifier to do
any good.
I will leave this post with a thought. What do you do everyday
that can be recorded and made more interesting through game design? It can be
as simple as making
a game out of email.
