Author: Yu-kai Chou

5 Great Serious Game Platforms For Corporations

Morf Media Serious Game Platform DesignCourtesy of Morf Media

Many of you probably love to play games for recreation and entertainment. But as I have mentioned in my other posts, they can also be used to enhance and enrich educational experiences. These are called serious games.

The combination of learning and fun is a potent force in today’s corporate world. To generate innovation and maintain competitive edge, organizations need to align themselves with market changes, both domestically and globally. As far as processes are concerned, this means that employees must adapt by continuously learning new skills and sharpening their abilities to solve problems- just doing the job in the same routine fashion doesn’t lead to the same growth.

Traditional ways of teaching often mirror conventional classrooms. These include lectures with whiteboards, hand outs in the form of quizzes and surveys and instructional videos. Most people passively react to such formats. Participants may remember terms and information and they may be able to pass certain tests but this can offer a false sense of comfort as their ability to apply their new knowledge to actual, real-life problems remains untested.

Besides training team members, there is also the challenge of educating and training clients. Clients often need to have a deep level understanding of how a particular product works. If there are enormous technical complexities, the information can be particularly daunting and frustrating- not very good for maintaining a happy customer base.

And in addition to employees and clients, corporate decision-makers also need to maintain regular learning initiatives to understand the perspectives and preferences of their clients. And with these insights, they must continuously make decisions to develop their products so that they are relevant to the needs of their customers.

All these objectives require effective learning where information is quickly assimilated in order to be applied for the best possible results.  Very little time can be afforded to make transitions from conceptual knowledge to astute action. This is where the power of games can make a huge difference.

Here are five companies (in no ranking order) who are dedicated to developing software and platforms that optimize learning experiences through game mechanics.

Continue reading 5 Great Serious Game Platforms For Corporations

Finally. The First Full-Day Octalysis Gamification Design Workshop

Gamification Workshop

This Workshop is officially over and a huge success. Read about it here!

If you have been frustrated that all my talks, my videos, and my blogposts are all cover the same basic foundations of Octalysis, and really want to learn more about deeper level Octalysis and Gamification Design, this is your opportunity.

This is the first public full-day workshop dedicated for Octalysis and is meant to really get attendees to be able to design sophisticated motivation and engagement systems in the realms of product design, marketing, culture design, healthcare, and education.

This workshop will also be the first time ever I will be teaching how to design an experience using Level 4 Octalysis, something that is powerful and ensures that each component of the experience is optimized through motivation.

This Workshop is officially over and a huge success. Read about it here!

Both Online and In-Person Workshop

This workshop will be in dual mode. It will have a small and limited in-person workshop in San Francisco, accompanied with an Online Live version that is concurrent with the In-Person. It is obviously much more interactive in-person, but we will utilize tools to allow online attendees to watch both me and the slides, ask questions, and possible voice in questions for everyone to hear.

Topics covered are: Continue reading Finally. The First Full-Day Octalysis Gamification Design Workshop

Future of Gamified Education (Slides)

 

Gamified Education for a better future

In case you missed in, last month I was in Norway doing a speech for the University of Adger on Gamified Education.

Many of the slides you will find similar to my past presentations, but there are some twists and turns that fit better into the education aspect.

Also, my slides also dive into my content of Lifestyle Gamification, which would be the topic my second book “10,000 Hours of Play” focuses on.

Some Insights in Gamified Education

I actually think there are some great insights that came out when I was creating these slides, including how education shifts our intrinsic motivation to learn into extrinsic motivation to get the “acceptable grades” (which are different for everyone, how educators will likely become facilitators and cheerleaders instead of teachers in a world where students can get more information than what the educator knows faster than she can say it, and how education should reward students for who they are and how they are unique, instead of shame them for who they are not.

Creating exams that students are dying to take

One of the key things here, is that many educators believe there is a lot of Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment in the current school and grades system. However, if that were the case, students would feel extremely excited when there will be an exam, because that would be a new opportunity to feel developed and accomplished!

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Students (even good students!) abhor tests and do it just because they have to. Very few people look forward to tests.

If we successfully gamify education, then “assessments” will be seen as an exciting opportunity for students to unlock new materials and skill-sets instead of always being a drag.

 

Personal Project Launch: WherePark

Answer to the question: Where Did I Park?

Hey guys,

On the side of hectic Gamification work, my friends and I have been working on an iOS app that I really needed, and I felt that more people in the world could benefit from.

Since while I’m driving, I’m often in meetings on my phone, and at the end of the meetings, I often don’t remember where I parked (yes, this is one of my handicaps), and need to waste precious time finding my car.

All the solutions in the market either require purchasing a $100 hardware with Bluetooth enabled, or require the user to manually pin her location whenever she parks.

With WherePark, there are only three steps:

  1. Download WherePark
  2. Forget about it for a few months
  3. Open the app when you can’t find your car, and it knows exactly where you parked

This is still a minimal viable product, and it doesn’t have any Onboarding, Gamification, or social sharing, but it works and works extremely well for outdoor parking.

We are also working on on-door and garage parking, but that will take a little longer.

If you have a few seconds, I would highly appreciate if you download WherePark from the iOS App Store, try it out for a few days, and give us some feedback.

Look forward to it solving some real problems! (At least it’s been solving mine)

Can Playing Video Games Increase Your Intelligence?

From the perspective of a conventional grown up, video games may be fun but they are a waste of time. They cause young men and women to sit on the couch for hours on end staring at a screen, completely immersed in another world devoid of all useful (i.e. productive) benefit. Players become addicted to these games while slovenly sliding into obesity, overall laziness, and unproductive lifestyles. They might even become aggressive and antisocial. Gasp!

However, if you have been following this blog, you are probably well aware by now that there are many examples where games are being used for good and healthy purposes. Other game designers have noticed this as well: brain games for the elderly may indeed have many benefits. In general, for every negative in life, there is usually a positive, a silver lining so to speak. It may not be immediately obvious but if you dig around a bit and look at it from a different perspective, the benefits can usually be found.

Although video games are a form of self indulgence, they often provide unique and engaging environments that train players to think fast and resourcefully. With the right design and mechanics, they can facilitate learning and tap into diverse levels of cognitive thinking and problem-solving in ways that are not as easy to achieve with books and other forms of media. Research has recently come out investigating the positive potential of video games to better harness our cognitive capabilities to shape the brain in new and powerful ways.

Exploring New Ways to Harness Video Games

Last year, Nature published an article by two researchers, Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester and Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who were exploring new possibilities within game development to improve mental functioning, learning and to even strengthen emotional intelligence.

Their work was welcomed with open arms- Bavelier and Davidson even led a meeting at the White House attended by entertainment media experts and neuroscientists to discuss applications in interactive technology to better understand brain functioning and to enhance the overall well being of individuals, young and old alike.

Within the Nature article, they implored game designers and neuroscientists to develop new types of games that would improve overall psychological health. They specifically were keen to focus on these areas:

  • Behavior
  • Lowered anxiety
  • Heightened attention
  • Empathy

While game enthusiasts and proponents of gamification believe in the power of well designed applications to do extraordinary things (e.g. enhance enterprise efficiency and creative learning for kids; garner tangible support for charity causes; and even help rescue teams with natural disaster rescue efforts), it is exciting to see that the scientific research community is also embracing the idea of redefining society’s negative perceptions of games by advancing innovative design. In doing so, they are coming up with some interesting results on the ability of games to increase intelligence (within specific areas). Here are a few examples:

Continue reading Can Playing Video Games Increase Your Intelligence?