Selected productions Serious Games Interactive © Serious Games: Press start to play Kom-dag ‘11, 9 st November 2011 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 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 Product vs. meta Ex.: School - Learning games vs. incentive activity structures Ex.: Health - Rehabilitation game vs. weight-loss app Ex. Corporations - Onboarding game vs. customer service tool

We invest 3 Billion hours every week in playing games Everyone…

Source: Mr. Toledano

Agenda Why gamification now? What is gamification Who have done this?

The attention economy Gamification signals a greater shift… Fight for attention & relevance Need for engaged users Need for user permissions Getting more creative in user interaction

The pre-history of gamification Cash incentives 1900s2000s1980s1930s Coupon codes Loyalty systems Virtual rewards

The power of computers… Read… Listen… View Representation – we can really only ‘show’ things Simulation – We can represent, track, interact and manipulate Doing & experiencing

Agenda Why gamification now? What is gamification Who have done this?

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

The key rewards (they overlap)… Status Access Power Stuff 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.

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 gamification now? What is gamification Who have done this?

Case: Ribbon Hero 4 months after release Downloads Challenges played Microsoft Office seen as innovative, interesting and cool. Source: Microsoft Office Lab through Gabe Zichermann

Case: Farmville

Case: Car dash boards

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 Interactive Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen