Moderated by Colin Cardwell (CEO of 3rd Sense), Gamification Comes of Age was an AIMIA event designed to showcase the success of applied game mechanics.

For a while, the term ‘gamification’ risked becoming a buzzword, because games are usually associated with leisure and casual entertainment. As we listened in the KPMG Auditorium however, it was clear that gamification is serious business, and there were results to prove how it works. The theory has come of age.

What is gamification?

Despite the name, gamification is not all about creating games. It is about applying game mechanics into a non-gaming context to engage the user, and research shows that an engaged customer is more valuable to companies than several unengaged customers. Because of this, gamification often belongs to the UX department.

Today’s user is more resistant toward direct marketing campaigns, and tends to be dismissive of blatant advertising. Gaming is a naturally engaging behaviour that makes the user more receptive to brand messaging.

Moove - Fun has a Flavour

Above: Adconion’s Moove – Fun has a Flavour campaign involved building a massive sculpture using empty Moove milk cartons. These had integrated TV screens, cameras and sound systems to create a demountable AR game platform in public areas.

Case studies

Martin Whelan, General Manager of Consumer Marketing, Commonwealth Bank, presented Investorville and Coinland, both a part of their gamification strategy in educating users on financial literacy. Investorville was a web-based game that gives the player a fixed amount of starting funds. They must then invest in property using real RP data at the time. After some RP data projections, the player can see how their virtual investments pay off in, say, the next 15 years, while dealing with real hypothetical situations like unexpected costs, calculating rent etc.

According to Whelan, Investorville broke down misconceptions and showed the practicality in property investment. Players didn’t need to believe any direct market messaging, because they could crunch the numbers themselves, set investment goals and respond to real situations from the safety of their home computer.

Of the 20,000 users who applied to play online, some 613 loans were tracked to have directly resulted from Investorville, translating to around 413% ROI (this was a conservative figure, since it was not possible to track the loans as a result of players applying for loans outside the game after playing it).

Commonwealth Bank - Investorville

Jennifer Wilson, Director at The Project Factory listed many of the health and well-being gamified apps that her company is involved with:

- ReMISSION: A video game where the hero mows down evil cancer cells in a sci-fi setting. Child cancer patients who played this game were found to be more willing to take cancer medication than other child cancer patients.

- Zamzee: A mobile fitness game, tracking your jogging distance. Features like comparing runs with friends encouraged competitive running.

- Zombies Run: A mobile fitness game similar to Zamzee, but instead of comparing runs with friends, the player is running from a virtual horde of zombies.

Other games ranged from role-playing video games for paramedics, dancing games for the elderly and a choose-your-own-adventure story to teach doctors how to deliver bad news to patients.

Wilson says that “games reduce depression, anger, confusion and fatigue. Failing in a game is still satisfying while failing in real life is not.”

Gamifying stuff

Marigo Raftopoulis, Director at Strategic | Games | Lab acknowledges that gamification requires the marrying of multiple disciplines, whether it be UX, technology, marketing or design. Her company specialises in gamification for the enterprise platform.

“Engaged employees are innovative employees” she says.

Things like staff training, idea generation and other processes can be gamified. For example, her company has come up with the Enterprise Positive Recognition System in the form of a ‘Woo-board’. All it is, is a board where employers and employees can ‘Woo!’ each other for awesome things they’ve done for work and each other.

“One thing gamification doesn’t solve is a bad strategy. Nothing can fix that”.

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First impressions of Lua are kinda meh - I think AS3's strict typing has turned me into an ECMA Script Nazi. In the first few tutorials, I keep finding myself trying to typeset my variables.

Listeners are taking a little effort to get used to, and no semi-colons after each line? This will take a little time!

I blame most of my problems on the lacklustre features of TextMate + Lua bundle, compared with FlashBuilder. There's just no replacement for drop-menu code hints. Huh... that's right, maybe I should download Eclipse and find a Lua plugin instead.

Will post more about my new quest!

UPDATE: got Eclipse running with LUA plugin, but no Corona specific hinting...

G

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A leading researcher on video game theory, she has advised companies like Microsoft, Macca's, Intel and Disney on games, and as added incentive to read her book, Oprah listed her as one of the 10 most inspiring women in the world.

McGonigal recognises that video games satisfy very real human needs. She even explores texts in ancient history for answers to many of our present-day conundrums.

Did you know, for example, that the Lydians coped with an unending famine three thousand years ago by inventing dice and ball games to play every second day instead of eating? They did this for 18 years, not unlike how video games are providing means to escape reality today.

An incredible, humourous and often inspiring read - check it out!

G

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Ahoy mateys!

I'm pleased to present Jake and the Neverland Pirates: Secret Hideout, a browser-based game based on Disney's kids' series.

After weeks of development, I'm convinced that the team has created a best-in-class competition game, designed to encourage sustained audience participation.

Key features separate this game from the pack:

- Episodic, unlockable content: Watch Jake and his mates on TV and listen out for special codes to unlock more items.

- Enhanced gallery experience: Designed to look like a Neverland ocean, populated by islands - users can browse a virtual map in all directions to see and vote for their neighbours.

- Prizes: Win DVD's or even a trip to Disneyland Resort, Hawaii in judged competitions.

See you on the high seas soon!

G

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We are often encouraged to ‘play’ in the marketing / advertising space to create bigger and better ideas. How do we create a playing space for professionals?

What does it mean?

To me, playing is synonymous with experimentation, which implies a high degree of risk.  I think a team that encourages playfulness must never shy away from failure, and more importantly they should learn from the inevitable mistakes.

Take for example, figure skating. One of the most spectacular Winter Olympic manoeuvres is what is known as the ‘triple axel’, whereby the athlete leaps into the air at speed, spins three times, and lands. This move is notable in the fact that there is no safe way to practise the triple axel without actually trying it on ice (whilst wearing a pair of razor-sharp skates, mind you). The athlete would have theorised, then practised and fallen repeatedly before perfecting the trick which can take years of training. ‘Playing’ in a sense, is like practising the triple-axel, where the likelihood of failure is higher than success, but the reward potential is great.

As an industry of professionals, our clients and our assignments determine what I call are 'mission critical' jobs. Clients such as financial institutions, medical or legal firms often have little or no room for error - and as a result discourage 'playing'. But even so, it doesn't mean we can't create spaces for people to play.

Operation Blackout

White’s ‘Operation Blackout’ was an example of creating a playing space. One day, one brief, zero clients. All of a sudden, the main concern for risk is removed, and everyone is given a chance to try something that they have never attempted in the past. Answers to questions like ‘how much preparation should I do before making a presentation?’, ‘how little product testing can I get away with?’ and ‘which team member can think on their feet?’ became immediately apparent.

Identifying Opportunities to Play

Often, especially since one of our main clients is a bank, we can misinterpret opportunities to play as mission-critical jobs. It is up to us to communicate to stakeholders and team-members to identify the times where experimentation is accepted, and to be just as prepared to learn from mistakes, as celebrating success.

Creating a Playable Environment

Creating a culture of identifying and learning from mistakes rather than making a witch-hunt every time something goes wrong requires a team that trusts and respects each other. The rewards to constant experimenting and learning is a stronger and more confident team, and greater potential for cutting-edge work.

G

We are often encouraged to ‘play’ in the marketing / advertising space to create bigger and better ideas. How do we create a playing space for professionals?

What does it mean?

To me, playing is synonymous with experimentation, which implies a high degree of risk.  I think a team that encourages playfulness must never shy away from failure, and more importantly they should learn from the inevitable mistakes.

Take for example, figure skating. One of the most spectacular Winter Olympic manoeuvres is what is known as the ‘triple axel’, whereby the athlete leaps into the air at speed, spins three times, and lands. This move is notable in the fact that there is no safe way to practise the triple axel without actually trying it on ice (whilst wearing a pair of razor-sharp skates, mind you). The athlete would have theorised, then practised and fallen repeatedly before perfecting the trick which can take years of training. ‘Playing’ in a sense, is like practising the triple-axel, where the likelihood of failure is higher than success, but the reward potential is great.

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Are you ready to go BONKERS?

I'm proud to launch Bonkers the Clown for Android!

Using the same addictive formula we know and love from Zombie Ninjas, our talented Scotty Nolan has reskinned the entire game with his Clown-ification of the game, which I must admit is very fitting!

Making his musical debut is Paul Fiore, and he kinda helped out with some copy too... even though the game was not available on his iPhone.

It's free! Download it (and 5-star it!) if you have an Android phone!

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With the issue of SOPA and PIPA headlining the USA agenda this week, I think it's appropriate to step back and question what we consider 'original ideas'.

All too often, we give credit to apparently 'original' ideas, and lose sight of the fact that all ideas continuously influence and inspire each other to create new ideas.

TWA's Operation Blackout early this month proved that even the broadest brief can spawn two or more almost identical ideas from completely different teams, and this happens because we are colleagues from the same industry, with similar experiences and sources of inspiration.

http://www.whosampled.com/ is a site where you can listen to popular music from artists like Lady Gaga and Kanye West draw inspiration from foreign or historical music. Sure, some of them will credit their source material, but as for the majority...

Garry

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https://market.android.com/details?id=air.au.com.escapetheory.ZombieNinjasGame

The development cycle from Flash to Android is now complete

Still to come:

- Sounds

- Music

- Leaderboards

- Sharing on Facebook

I will make another post when the game is complete with music, sound and a working leaderboard!

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The Standing Committee of Attorneys-General decided a few hours ago to introduce an R18+ rating for video games in Australia, in line with films and television.

With the exception of NSW which has abstained from the vote, all states and territories have agreed to implement the rating at some stage, and NSW is likely to follow after a separate meeting.

If you didn’t know, Australia is one of the few countries that do not possess an R18+ classification for video games.

This means that games rated Adults Only in the USA or Europe (like Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead 2 and Mortal Kombat) are refused classification and can’t be sold here.

What this meant was that some games (Left 4 Dead 2) are edited and released in Australia with toned-down violence to meet the MA15+ rating.

Other games are barred from entering the country since the developer refuses to edit the game (Mortal Kombat).

The worst scenario however, is that big budget games (Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto 4) are given preferential treatment, and reclassified as MA15+ with little to no edits in order to sell here. Year 10 students end up playing games that are meant for adults only.

Luckily for us, the end to misclassification looks near, and we adults can soon play the same games that the rest of the world is playing, while ensuring aussie parents know the difference between games for children, and games for adults.

Yeah!

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