selected productions serious games interactive 2006-2011 © serious games: press start to play now...

Selected productions Serious Games Interactive 2006-2011 ©

Serious Games: Press start to playNow is Digital, 15th June ‘11

Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, PhD

CEO, founder Serious Games Interactive

Gamification

My Background

• MA Psychology• PhD Games & learning• Mixing industry & research

European Research projects: SIREN, PlayMancer, Vistra & GaLa

Computer games• Global Conflicts-series• Playing History-series• +20 games for clients

Serious Games Interactive (SGI) was founded in 2006 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Covered in most major news outlets and won numerous awards.

Develop serious games that combines playing, learning, communication and story-telling.

We are a cross-disciplinary team of 18 people with strong roots in research.

Range of different client: Amnesty, Unicef, Kaplan, WWF, The Danish National Museum, World bank, LEGO and European Schoolnet.

Company background

What is serious games…

”A solution that use game mechanics and game technology for

more than entertainment"

What is gamification…

”Integrating game dynamics into a site, service, activity, community, content or campaign, in order to

encourage a certain behavior, attitude or skill."

What this is about…

Serious games VS gamification

Serious games are about developing new, finite and unique solutions based on game mechanics

VS.

Gamification about developing new structures and incentives around existing experience.

Serious games VS gamification

Product vs. meta

Ex.: School - Learning games vs. incentive activity structuresEx.: Health - Rehabilitation game vs. weight-loss app

Ex. Corporations - Onboarding game vs. customer service tool

Agenda

Why games matters?Why gamification now?What is gamification Who have done this?How to get started?

Game industry growing fast…

EUR 15bn EUR 30bn

1990 2000

EUR 75bn

2010

We invest 3 Billion hours every week in playing games

Everyone…

Source: Mr. Toledano

Agenda

Why games matters?Why gamification now?What is gamification Who have done this?How to get started?

The attention economy

Gamification signals a greater shift… Fight for attention & relevance

Need for engaged usersNeed for user permissions

Getting more creative in user interaction

The pre-history of gamification

Cash incentives

1900s 2000s1980s1930s

Coupon codes

Loyalty systems

Virtual rewards

Cost and status

Source: Gabe Zichermann

Value

Cost

The power of computers…

Read… Listen…

View

Representation – we can really only ‘show’ things

Simulation –We can represent, track, interact and manipulate

Doing & experiencing

Why gamification now?

•Digitalization & Virtualization constantly increasing.

•Tracking, feedback and reward structures easy to embed.

•Games are increasingly becoming omnipresent

Agenda

Why games matters?Why gamification now?What is gamification Who have done this?How to get started?

What is gamification…

”Integrating game dynamics into a site, service, community, content or campaign, in order to encourage a certain behavior, attitude or skill."

Haven’t we seen this before?

Cybernetics

Behavioural

economics

Control

theory

Behavioural

theories

Behaviour

change

Game theory

Sociology

Psychology

How gamification can work

“A game is a pastime with formal and predefined set of rules for the progression of a game session, with built-in and quantitative

definitions of success and failure.”

- Jesper Juul

ActiveChallenge

Win condition

Rewards

Achievement Social status

The key rewards (they overlap)…

Status

Access

Power

Stuf

f

The most effective reward and it cost designers nothing. Taps into social nature of people.

Powerful for progressing people and support status. Eg. VIP access to special areas or voting.

Effective incentive comes in many shapes like kicking people, voting for changes etc.

Both be virtual and material. Both can free or costly. Probably the least effective incentive.

How gamification work

Experience systems

Short- and long-term

goals

Rapid, frequent feedback

Other people

Rewards for effort

Uncertainty

Source: Tom Chatfield [2010]

When it works…

Pitfalls

•Everyone = no-one? It’s difficult to engage everyone - women, elderly, hip-hopper, casual, hardcore etc.

•Pseudo victory: Rewards are not achievements - it needs to be meaningful. Not just 'badgification or pointification'.

•Participation bandwidth: Need to be interesting and engaging enough to draw people away from something else.

•Unintended consequences: When you engineer behaviors you may make mistakes that leads to unforeseen results.

•Undermining intrinsic values: By providing external rewards for something that should be intrinsic you risk undermining inner drive.

Agenda

Why games matters?Why gamification now?What is gamification Who have done this?How to get started?

Case: Eksperten.dk

Case: British American Tobacco

Case: Ribbon Hero

4 months after release+100.000 Downloads+120.000 Challenges played

Microsoft Office seen as innovative, interesting and cool.

Source: Microsoft Office Lab through Gabe Zichermann

Case: Speeding control

Case: Nike+

Case: Farmville

Case: Car dash boards

Agenda

Why games matters?Why gamification now?What is gamification Who have done this?How to get started?

First steps…

•Identify your target behavior change•Create game challenges around those targets•Create good feedback loops for rewarding right behavior•Create status/achievement system for recognizing winners

A creative process that requires understanding users, games and business..

• It appears to be working

• We have always been doing this

• But its more triggy than it appears

• Now we have identified it’s more powerful.

Bring the engagement to the product – not the other way around

The Wrap-up

Contact details

Serious Games Interactivewww.seriousgames.dk www.globalconflicts.euwww.playinghistory.eu

Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsenwww.egenfeldt.eu

sen@seriousgames.dk