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The role of challenge in gamification.

The role of challenge in gamification.

Arkadiusz Siechowicz, CEO of Gamehill – winner of 2018 Outstanding Gamification Award talks to australian expert Dr Zac Fitz Walter.

You will get the answers to the following questions:

Is Gamification for short events only?

What drives people to engage in games and gamification?

The role of challenge in gamification.

How to convince your boss to introduce gamification?

 

 
 

– Hello everyone

This is another of our interviews of gamification Europe conference in Amsterdam. Who is with us? If you could introduce yourself.

– My name is doctor Zac Fitz-Walter. I have Phd in gamification.

– Phd in gamification!

– that’s right

– I used to teach as well at the University Queensland University of Technology now I practice gamification as a consultant and as a trainer.

– and you are from ‘Down under’ aren’t you?

– I’am from ‘Down under’, so Australia. You couldn’t tell by the accent

– Doctor Zach, flew over here from Australia to share his views on gamification your experiences, both academic and business. My first question to you some sceptics say: That whole gamification is sort like an event like today event that we can gamify can you actually do gamification long term and how you do it.

– gamification long term depends on the design. I like to look back at the video games and if you look at video games, classic video games like Mario for example they do have an end point you have a goal like to rescue the princess for example in Mario what’s interesting games themselves don’t really sustain long term engagement there is an end point. I think that gamification can be used like that as well where you get people motivated to begin with but then the most important thing is, once you have gamification people are engaged with whatever you want them to do if you can turn that into a habit then that works quite well looking at gamification as a great strategy to get people engaged initially and then adding all the mechanisms to keep the habit going.

– So talking about the mechanisms in our world of gamifiers there is this infamous PBL points, budgets, leaderboards these are the three great mechanism to work with but if you just limit yourself the three it doesn’t work long term our famous award just arrived thank you so much Chris it added a bit spice to the scene back to the question because it’s very merit, dense conference it’s a proper conference of professionals back to the question of points, badges leaderboards what else brings engagement in gamification

– I think that one thing that we often listen or do talking about and that’s why game is so engaging is challenge so having some kind of challenge to overcome to complete is really important again if we look at video games we play them not because we get points, budgets and leaderboards all the time. We play them because they set a challenge how can I use Mario to run and jump and overcome the obstacles and enemies in order to achieve the goal that I have so challenge is one another think we need to look at I think point, budgets, leaderboards have worked in particular when peopple are not motivated to begin with when there is no motivation whatsoever looking at extrensic rewards can help but if you want to promote intrinsic motivation or you want to create something that I think is going to be interesting you need to add that challenge

– you mentioned challenge and obstacles; it’s amazing how putting restrains actually excites people

– that’s like the game of golf. Golf would be very boring if you would just pick up the ball and put in the hole. So we give people a club and put the hole ages away put all the obstacles we make the golf harder and this makes it more enjoyable

– And again this game is just a bunch of restrictions basically you play, you have fun strangely enough I always ask this question let’s assume that someone watching us is already convinced I like gamification but I work in a organisation in which not  everyone believes in gamification or even understands it well if you could just give few tips on how, what to say about gamification how to convince people that it is worth their effort

– the main think is to start small if you could make considerable change some kind of little gamification intervention  and share result from it that’s a good starting point. Having result and goals perspective of gamification but also from motivation and psychology it depends how you frame it we look at games that are motivating for reasons this reasons are based on motivation and psychology games provide challenge, autonomy, mastery we look at those thing that makes games engaging and referring back to those

– I really liked that idea start small and provide some initiall results you get some traction and trust and build up on that

– and it doesn’t have to be digitall it can be papper based or a award like this

– it’s amazing. Do you know that this award is actually gamified?

– yes?

– to some extend. Because there is a hidden treasure in is there.

– I didn’t notice. What’s the treasure, can we see it?

–  I will show you

– just play with it ok let me try to open it carefull

– it’s fantastic isn’t it

– that’s a little treasure hunt and you can see his face there is joy there suprise joy that’s how you do gamification all the tiny bits of excitment here we just add them under award thank you so much for this short chat. Pleasure meeting you I hope we will stay in touch we will leave link to all your blogs,

profiles in the material thank you so much

– thank you

Gamification implementation areas? Learn more:

From our consulting partner Westhill