Meaningful Play: Getting Gamification Right
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it as a thoughtful take on doing gamification and game design well.
What it is
A Google Tech Talk by Sebastian Deterding on gamification. It looks at what points and badges get wrong and what lessons game design offers for non-game applications.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2012 to 2014.
What Hacker News said
Recommends espeed · 2012-04 · on “John Cleese on how to be creative”
There is so much truth packed into that 36 mins -- so many juxtapositions -- it would take several hours to reference them all. For starters, see Rich Hickey's talk on "Hammock-Driven Development" for more on the "background mind" ( [LINK] ), and then see how what Dan Pink is saying about motivation ( [LINK] ) and what Sebastian Deterding is saying about gamification ( [this video] ) all connect into what Cleese is saying about creativity.
Recommends gizzlon · 2012-07 · on “Gamification: The Art of Attracting and Keeping Users”
The concept is very interesting.. But this is a bad introduction =( Saw a presentation a while ago that hooked me, can't watch it now, but think it was this one: [this video] [LINK]
Recommends ultimape · 2014-11 · on “Screeps – the world's first MMO sandbox strategy game for programmers”
I'd argue that all 'games' are about manipulating attention - its just a question of what means they use to do so. Game design is really a sort of meta-game about designing systems that effect the behavior of players. Consider: Game Mechanics and Mechanism Design ( [LINK] ) I'm fully with you on the notion that we shouldn't be manipulating players life like farmville. Johnathan blow put on a great talk about games and the human condition where he covers this aspect quite scathingly: [LINK] To completely ignore this aspect is to develop a game with no real-stickyness factor. Money aside, don't you want a game that people enjoy playing? The entire point of an MMO is to have a large reoccurring