The positive effect of a challenging situation is something that a bunch of people have started buzzing about online, and are trying to replicate in non-gaming environments.

What is Gamification?

As we’ve touched on before in regards to WoW or Second Life, the appeal of RPGs (Role Playing Games) lies in the fact that they blur the line between gameplay and real life. Gamification is about collapsing the last frontier and making “real life” as fun as gaming life, especially in very boring/dull/no-fun fields such as science or accounting.

David Helgason, from game development company Unity comments “It’s funny, because [accounting] has to be the most boring field, but I mean that’s the point. You can make it slightly challenging and give people little reasons to sort of play these tax tools — beyond, you know, not going to prison!”

Now, the question is: can we gamify the whole world make and make boring stuff more bearable?

Why People Love Playing Games

Brian Sutton-Smith gives an interesting interpretation of games as the perfect occasion for people to re-enact survival situations and therefore practice their survival skills and instincts, such as assessing risks and opportunities.

Game situations give us a safe, but real space where we can assess strategies of human sociability. Sutton-Smith’s summary is “we ‘potentate’ or die”. Kids, I hope you’re paying attention here, because this is your best excuse to play another few hours of The Sims or L4D2!!

Face Communities and Game Mechanics

Mindbubble and Headbox are evolving and growing. We are continuing to gather loads of users into research and co-creation projects – they’re always happy to earn a few quid or win an iPad in return for their precious participation!

2010 has been a year rich in improvements for our community platform, shifting from a pure online research community to a platform with its own social dimension.

Is gamification the next step towards the future of online communities? Can it be applied to our research communities?

Gamification in the Online Space

To me, in the digital & social space, the theory of gamification may be a bit limited, for the simple reason that:

+ The web, and especially the social web, is based on users volunteering, as opposed to, erm… work.
+ The web is already a massive playground.

Therefore, the gamification of online space has another, more subtle dimension: UX designers are more interested in using game mechanics to keep their users engaged with their website/software, like a permanent & personal challenge (to climb higher!).

To achieve that, users must have:

+ A personalised interest
+ A personalised recognition (by peers and also by the software/brand)
+ Intrinsic constraints, to create a challenging aspect & keep them focused on the app. – a bit like Joshua Porter explains for designers in Week 35 – http://52weeksofux.com/

However there are a few pitfalls to avoid in the design of a platform’s game mechanics:

+ Avoid trolling & grinding: these can happen when users with wrong intentions simply try to over-flood the system by either commenting a lot (more than necessary) or by starting arguments in the conversation.

+ Avoid discouraging “noobs” or users with a lower level of understanding of the online space while keeping “higher level” users engaged (something that Blizzard mastered with the design of World of Warcraft)

+ From a general perspective, adding challenges and ranking will make your users compete against each other in a fierce race to top the leaderboard, which can literally cause damage to the essence/social object of the community.

When the social object is to encourage users participation in market research and co-creation projects, the design of our game mechanics become all the more complex as we cannot risk bias research results by “incentivising” users with points and badges.

Too Much Game Kills the Gamification

With the release of Facebook places, a great competitor to Foursquare in terms of collapsing frontiers between games and reality, mayors, badges and other leaderboards are entering our everyday life, and gamification has become “the new online buzzword”.

But, as Naomi Alderman warns us in her article for the Guardian we must not succumb to the pitfall of gamifying every single activity in order to make it more “fun”: both because you cannot genuinely make a game out of any goal you have to reach, or task you have to perform in life, and also, you cannot always get authentic results by turning an activity into a game.

Because, as Alderman wisely concludes: “You run the risk of losing everything that made the thing worthwhile in the first place”.

So what are the right measures and balance to add a bit of game and engagement to boredom and routine?

As well Sebastian Deterding’s guidelines in the above presentation, there are rules to follow when using gamification and designing game mechanics, for instance:

1. The game itself is not fun. Fun comes from a good design.
Literally, you cannot “add a bit of gaming powder” to the recipe to make an activity or an app more engaging for users. The game mechanics should be designed, prototyped, tested etc, as part of the whole project.

2. Rewards are not achievements.
Once upon a time, companies/brands/bands were giving away free mp3s (indie bands still do it, while huge pop stars got their album leaked!), pretty computer backgrounds or other cool free stuff. In 2010 the reward can simply be points, badges or ranks (that goes with a pretty title you can share on your Facebook profile etc). But this cheap logic of giving points for action isn’t sustainable: accumulating points doesn’t make the users engage (they may be too bored to really start grinding…).

3. Good game design should be built around a well tighten, progressive story.
So what makes users engage? It’s the challenge of improving their result and reaching the next level – Reminds me of doing the same climbing route over again and again until I can’t feel my arms!

To conclude, this quote from Deterding’s presentation gives a perfect illustration on how tricky game design is and how the gamification process should be used carefully:

“It is an invariable principle of all play, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever must play, cannot play.”

James P. Carse finite and infinite games (1986)

cardboard heads simulating a packed room at Minibar, London

Over the next few weeks Face Wired , Face social media planning sister agency, will be speaking at a couple of workshops and seminars in London and Milan. If you are around and want to catch up, here’s the low-down.

The first one is a two-day workshop at Multimedia Management series hosted by Mediaset and IULM University in Milan, where we will be talking about Social Media Monitoring, Data Visualization and Social Media Planning. Access to this series is unfortunately closed but if you are in Milan and want to talk to us give us a shout or DM me on twitter @abc3d

The second one is Open Business “Web Business Toolbox” in London, where the focus will be more on Social Media Strategy for web companies and startups in general. This series is open but the organizers told me it’s already sold out. However there’s time (apr 14) and someone might drop out so if you are interested do sign up to the waiting list.

Also, this coming Friday is Minibar time again, the monthly face to face for internet professionals in Shoreditch. The coming one is all about Augmented Reality. We will be there enjoying presentations from Micazook, Worksnug, Augmented Planet, Ambient Industries. And having a few friday beers. If you are planning to make it, make sure you RSVP on meetup. See you there.

End of Face wanders bullettin.

Following on from the success of our Web 2.0 Women forum earlier this year we thought it was about time we opened up another hot topic for debate. The last Face Forum revolved around the key question ‘Do Brands Need Agencies?’ On the 18th of November we have been joined by friends, experts and clients at the Groucho club to discuss what it takes to stay relevant and true to your consumers, how to engage the crowds in research innovation and planning and what are some of the tech trends for 2010 and beyond. Here’s a quick summary:

Relevance
The real-time social web has changed the way we communicate giving us the tools to get and share information at a pace we have not experienced before. This has made the web the richest insight field we have ever had. How can you harness the power of the world wide wave for research, brand planning and brand engagement? What are real-time research and adaptive brand planning? And how can they help your brand stay relevant?

Crowds
Barely a day goes by without a website, campaign or competition cropping up, promising to harness the collective wisdom of crowds for the benefit of brands. Peperami even ditched Lowe to ask the crowds. But is bottom-up really enough? When did crowdsourcing cease to be a means to an end and become an end in itself? Join us to discuss a hybrid model where crowd-sourcing and co-creation are used as complementary methodologies.

Trends
We asked 3000 19 to 25 years old young adults about their consumption habits, media and tech diet. The Forum will be the place where we present our latest Techtribe report, uncovering youth trends that will soon start migrating to other audiences

It was a great night! Here’s the presentation that kick-started the discussion, join in and tell us what you think

It seems like every day more and more of the sci-fi technology from the movies is coming to life. Remember in Terminator when Arnie can recognise objects just by looking at them? Yeah well that sci-fi dream is now coming true. It seems like the sky is the limit, the digital world and the real world are colliding to create a new type of technology called augmented reality. This new “cyborg” technology allows users to see a live display whilst merging computer generated graphics over the top. Currently being put to the test in numerous different applications augmented reality is going to lead a huge wave of new technology and could potentially change the way we lead our day-to-day lives.

Confused? Scared? Excited? Arnie??? Fear not Headbox has done the research and we have put together a top 5 of the forthcoming augmented reality applications that will be flying your way soon…

5) TwittARound – An iPhone application that will show you where the nearest tweets to you have been made!

Beware of what you post, soon people around you can see who you are after you have tweeted. More Info.
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4) Stargazer – An application from Google that tells exactly what you are looking at when you are…well… star gazing!

This application builds upon Google Sky and identifies constellations and planets in the sky when your pointing your phone towards the heavens. So next time you are out star gazing you will be able to tell your Casseopeia from your Capricornus! More Info.

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3) Sekai Camera – As you would expect Japanese developers are getting involved with their creation… Air Tagging!

Tokyo-based smartphone app developers Tonchidot have come up with Sekai camera application. It allows users to “air tag”, basically tagging things in the real world. For example local restaurants can be tagged, and when pointing your camera at the restaurant, you can see menu’s and reviews. Didn’t enjoy a meal? Leave your comments floating in this augmented universe and warn potential customers to stay away. More Info.

2) Nearest Tube – This very clever application lets you see the world and the tube through your phones camera.

Unbelivably the Nearest Tube application shows you where the nearest tube station is and also when you point your camera at the ground it shows you what lines run underneath you. No more endlessly walking in circles looking for a tube station! More Info.

1) Layar – Pretty much the most forward thinking augmented reality application out there!

Currently only available in Holland but soon to be rolled out in several other European companies, this wonderful application rolls everything into 1. The world around you is merged with the digital and on your phone screen, you can see nearby ATMS, cafe’s, clubs, homes for sale (like the video above), job listings, etc, etc, etc!!

This is one of the few augmented reality applications actually available for use on mobiles phones at the moment and shows that what was once just in the head of the Terminator is now in circulation in the real world. More info.