OpenRA also has a new release

OpenRA is a Free Software recreation of the famed Command & Conquer engine, and it aims to support and enhance all Westwood games originally built upon it, namely Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, and Dune 2000. However, unlike most engine remakes, OpenRA isn't a simple 1:1 recreation with a little streamlining here and there, as the project also aims to optimize and rebalance the gameplay for purposes of online multiplayer. The project has recently released the latest stable version, fixing a lot of bugs and adding plenty of new features, as seen on the following release trailer:

Interestingly enough, in order to play all the games supported by OpenRA, you are not forced to own an original copy of any, given that all three ones were released gratis a few years ago. Though the package comes without any of this data, it immediately invites the player to download it from the project's own repositories, thus making all the games readily available to play.

The campaign mode is still not fully supported by OpenRA, with only some missions available for playing and no cinematics support at all, but we can only hope this will change in the future. In the meantime, you're free to enjoy all the supported games in skirmish mode, or play online against friends. So here's to the OpenRA team, and keep up the good work.

Code license: GPLv3

Assets license: Free-as-in-beer (available gratis, but still subject to copyright, as the C&C franchise is still intellectual property currently owned by EA)

Official website

Source code (Github)

YSoccer out of Beta

Since football is all the rage right now - unless you are hiding under a rock then you can't have escaped the World Cup - then a little bit of football game news seems appropriate!

The game formerly known as Yoda Soccer has left beta and been unleashed upon the classic pixel soccer game world as YSoccer.

YSoccer version 14

If you never played Sensible Soccer, then you may not yet get what the fuss is all about - if that's the case then you should download it and give it a try!

Sadly football games are a little under served in the open source game community. Bygfoot and Eat the Whistle are quite playable, if a little raw. Project Football is almost a game. Open Football and Open World Soccer never quite got off the ground.

Project Football looked great but was last updated 4 years ago

YSoccer stands out amongst them and deserves a bit more attention than it probably gets.

EDIT: I feel I was a little unfair to Open World Soccer. If you download 0.5 (the most recent release, from 2010) you can see it is quite close to being a playable game. It is by the same guys as YSoccer and was originally an attempt to get away from the proprietary language that YSoccer is written in. You could even say it was intended to be a full port of YSoccer from Blitzmax to C++ (the author suggests so).

Shabbat in Berkeley, Back in Israel

Gamification conference post still to come. Here's the rest of my trip:

I spent shabbat in Berkeley around the synagogue Congregation Beth Israel. The area was pleasant and suburban. The shul does not arrange places for visitors to sleep (there are many every week), but they arrange meals. The couple Ruchama and Avraham Burrell took me for Friday night meal. They invite any stray travelers for shabbat meals, as they have been hosting people for over twenty years now and they consider it a life mission of sorts. Contact me for details.

Another couple hosted me for shabbat lunch. At both meals I ran into souls who had gone through, or were in the process of going through, difficult times: who had MS, who had been (in the past) homeless in San Francisco, who were estranged from their families, whose mother had recently died but who had no support network for grieving and no connection to a Jewish community (this was her first time in a synagogue). They were offered community, support, and meals.

At shul, they said psalms multiple times for the three boys who went missing and appear to have been kidnapped by Hamas.

BART took me to the airport on Sunday morning and the trip home was uneventful, which was surprising for me. Even the TSA agents who patted me down were more relaxed than the ones in Philadelphia.

OpenXcom hits 1.0

We have previously mentioned OpenXcom on several occasions before, but now the massive UFO: Enemy Unknown engine reimplementation project finally hit the long-awaited 1.0 mark, and they decided to celebrate by releasing this lovely trailer that sums up quite well the insane amount of detail and improvement put into the project over the course of 4 years. I'll let it do justice by itself, but not without thanking all the contributors for raising one of the most acclaimed DOS-era strategy classics from the stagnating swamps of buggy unsupported legacy releases and platform incompatibility.

On a final note, the engine is, of course, free-as-in-freedom, though it relies on original game data of proprietary nature. You can download OpenXcom here, and buy an affordable digital copy of the original game on Steam, or somewhere around the web.

Code License: GPLv3

Assets License: Relies on original proprietary data files. All new original art assets included in the OXC package available under CC-BY-SA

Official Website
Source Code (Github)

The Both (Aimee Mann and Ted Leo) in Concert

I saw The Both in concert at the Great American Music Hall, with the opening act Nick Diamonds (Thorburn) of Islands.

Nick Diamonds of Islands

Nick and his accompanist were interesting. He plays indie rock. It was hard to hear the lyrics because the mics were too low; the music and melodies were pleasant; they were not catchy hit songs, but they also sounded like they were not trying to be. I think his music would be best at an acoustic house concert. Nothing in the arrangements stood out, and without full access to the words, it was just ok (he also performed a number of covers).

The Both

Aimee Mann is famous for her hit song Voices Carry from the band 'Til Tuesday in the 1980s, after which she has had additional success as a solo artist (Academy and Grammy awards, though no other top ten hits).

I know less about Ted Leo, but his guitar playing was very good. The two spent a lot of time bantering and telling stories with each other and to the crowd (too much time, I thought, though they were funny). The crowd knew a number of their songs, collectively and individually. Their melodies and arrangements were exceptionally good, and their play (including a drummer) was tight. Everything they played could be a hit record. Like with Nick, the mics were low and it was hard to hear the singing; what I heard was serviceable. I'm inspired that Aimee Mann still rocks out at age 54, but she doesn't (can't?) belt it out like she once did in the above video. I was pleased she played the one song I knew during the encore.

Meanwhile

A description of the gamification conference is in the works.

The rest of my SF trip has not been notable. Pier 39 is so over-commercialized and so touristy I would compare it to visiting a web page that contains nothing but (mostly irrelevant) splashy and shallow advertisements. Shudder. I saw some sea lions that looked depressed.

Sea lions

Chinatown is funky if you dig Chinese groceries, but similar to what I saw in Sunset. Downtown is unremarkable and has lots of homeless. The one kosher restaurant is ok but overpriced. The area I stayed in, near the freeway entrance/exit, is bare and impoverished.

The only other moment of interest was a short trip to see my friend L'vannah and her baby. She lives in a gorgeous home in San Carlos.

L'vannah and baby

The view from her backyard

Think Your Game is Educational? Here’s How You Can Prove It

GlassLab's Evidence Centered game Design (ECgD) assessment engine can prove scientifically if your game really helps players learn [1]. Alternatively, it can help you redesign your game so that it does. That makes GlassLab’s approach to playification different: rather than construct games to provide education, they discover and elicit education from within existing games.

GlassLab’s assessment engine can be hooked into video games using an API on a variety of platforms. Players’ choices while playing the game are sent to the assessment engine, which provides multiple views into the metrics generated during each game session. Each player’s performance can then be assessed to determine if they are actually learning.

On Monday I visited Zynga’s San Francisco HQ in the company of Tamas Makany, a learning designer at GlassLab Games. GlassLab is a non-profit put together by the Institute of Play, Electronic Arts, and other entities interested in the intersection of digital games and education.

Creating the right hooks requires not only the API, but also the assistance of GlassLab's learning experts and statisticians to:

• Identify what students are supposed to learn.
• Construct metrics to measure that this learning process is actually taking place.
• Identify (or create) the game mechanics that provide these metrics.

For GlassLab's own games, they also design the user interface and experience and provide assistance to teachers to help them implement the games in the classroom.

GlassLab currently has two games. The first is a modified version of SimCity called SimCityEDU that GlassLab built using the actual SimCity code under license. The game provides multiple missions that start SimCity at specific states and require students to handle specific problems, such as how to reduce carbon emissions in their city while still providing the city with sufficient power. The second game is Mars Generation One: Argubot Academy, an original game from GlassLab featuring squabbling Martians that requires players to assess whether and how much certain sentences support an argument. The Martians then simulate a debate using the players’ arguments as weapons.

Both games are built to teach lessons based on Common Core educational standards.

[1] ECgD is based on the principles of evidence centered design, a methodology that ensures that what you think is happening is really happening.

Day 3: Two San Francisco Festivals

The first was Union Street Festival. This was a festival like any other, with light entertainment, local and chain food stands, and local and chain artisans. Mostly local. What made it San Francisco, or California, was the high proportion of products and services that are new age, artisinal, fair trade, vegan, gluten-free crystal, yoga, etc. People were very supportive of "kosher", too; though much of what they sold wasn't kosher, the idea of kosher in California is apparently new-agey, like gluten-free and hand-sourced.

The second was the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair. This festival is more like retro hippieville than like actual hippieville. Many vendors were posers making a lot of money selling generic products (like tie-dyed shirts and stuff) to tourists, but some of the people and products looked authentic. There were drugged out looking guys lolling about on the street and the smell of hemp was pervasive. The music was raucous, and the bands were actual bands of the sixties/seventies or bands that played similar music.

The Union Street Festival had items like cold-brewed coffee, soy kale shakes, and light brunch foods, in addition to barbecue and beer, while the Haight-Ashbury Fair was mostly barbecue and beer.

I walked back from HASF through the park.

Plaque dedicated to Allen Ginsberg

Sign reads: Herbs to help you feel happy, healthy, horny, and naturally high

In today's Haight-Ashbury, the freaks and the pigs mix comfortably.

Haight-Ashbury

Duck and turtles in Golden Gate Park

Boats on the lake in Golden Gate Park

Gamification: Adding Fun

This is my fourth post on gamification and motivational strategy (see Adding Purpose, Adding Autonomy, and Adding Mastery). A successful strategy can use some form of gamification, as well as other tools, to develop and enhance motivation from within.

In this post I present how to provide opportunities for fun.

A gamification process is empty if the process is not compelling. Adding points and so on must be complemented with fun. Too many gamification procedures leave this as an exercise for the reader. They tell you to add fun, but they don't tell you how to do this. "Make sure it's fun! Tweak it until it is!" [1]

You can create fun in a gamification system by luck; I wouldn't rely on it. Odds are high that luck won't be on your side and your system will fail, as most do.

You can create fun by stealing a tested game design from an existing game and slapping a new theme onto it with some gamification extras. This is a popular choice for many designers, and it has the benefit of presenting game mechanics that requires little or no further explanation to its users. The drawback is that the original game is also accessible to the player, and probably already has a bigger fan base (their friends already play it), so they will probably only play with your system if they are forced to (or the theme is killer).

Alternately, you can create fun by designing and testing a good game. For this you need a game designer who understands fun. First time game designers often fail at fun. Successful, proven game designers have a decent track record for creating subsequent games that are also fun. Once you know how to find fun, you are more likely to find it again (not always, but more often than people who never find it in the first place).

Any design for fun requires extensive play testing with a wide variety of people types. Different people have different ideas about what is fun. Don't expect the same interest in a particular activity from the CEO, the graphic designer, the call center operator, and the 8th grade student.

The elements of fun include the following:

• Socializing: Many people's idea of fun is sharing time and conversation with family and friends. A game can be a backdrop against which they socialize. Either the game itself becomes a topic of discussion (such as humorous party games) or it simply keeps the hands occupied and fills in the pauses in the conversation. Winning or losing might be entertaining but irrelevant to their motivation for playing. Examples: parties, meetings, cooperation (less serious), eating or drinking, downtime.
  
  You can build social activity into gamification by having competitive or cooperative activities that do not require the players' undivided attention while they complete the tasks. Play can be set during group activities, such as a meal or "fun day". Interaction is key.
• Entertainment: Entertainment can be be either thoughtful or mindless, such as Sudoku, Candy Crush, YouTube, gossip, conversation, action/adventure movies, fantasy, and so on. Dramatic entertainment can be fun even when it is serious or poignant (though perhaps not when it is morbid).
  
  You can include entertainment by splicing in entertainment media (adding sound or movie clips), by creating dramatic stories around which to hang your activities, or by providing simple, non-challenging game play with well-build, accessible achievements, levels, and bonuses.


• Aesthetics: Many people's idea of fun includes aesthetic or sensual pleasure: art, music, film, eros, food, nature, and other such things. In gamification contexts, this also includes well-presented graphics, pictures, or sounds.
• Recreation: Many people's fun includes sport, exercise, vertigo (swings, balancing, alcohol), and so on to be fun, while others find these to be work or painful. Many people don't have the necessary abilities to partake in these kinds of activities.
  
  You can include recreation with any activity that requires your body to participate, from treasure hunts, to races, to physical touch (use with caution).
• Challenge: See my post about adding mastery. Despite what you might have understood from reading Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun, challenges are fun for some people at some times, but not for all people at all times. Challenges are the best fun for personal growth; our brains are wired to see and solve safe problems. But many people simply don't want to expand their brains, especially after they have spent a day already using them at work or school. For these people, challenges are not fun.
  
  Example challenges include puzzles, pattern matching tasks, trading, auctioning, racing, cooperation, and competition.
• Humor: Comedy, laughter, funny or inappropriate graphics, pictures, or sounds. Most people describe comedy, pratfalls, or anything else that makes them laugh as fun, or having fun. Examples: humorous stories or characters, funny roles or costumes, ridiculous challenges.

You can remember these elements by their acronym: SEARCH.

[1] Some gamification proponents claim that acquiring points is inherently fun. This ill-conceived notion might lead to a short burst of interest from someone who discovers a "game-like" system in a non-game context, but this interest will quickly fade (all the more so as gamification becomes more ubiquitous). Worse, a person lured into a "game-like process" that is not fun can feel betrayed, demotivated, and disappointed, leading to the exact opposite of gamfication's intent.

Day 2: San Francisco Shabbat

Shabbat was quiet. I was invited to daven Carlebach on Friday night, which was nice. Dinner at the Rabbi's house. Lunch was given by someone at the shul. The rabbi and his wife know the family that my nephew married and were at the wedding (as was I). The guest speaker and his wife knew me (or at least my parents) since they live in my old neighborhood in Beit Shemesh. I'm no longer even surprised by things like this. The eruv does not extend to the ocean or to Golden Gate Park, and I didn't feel like  bothering the guy who owns the house to keep the key for me.

With not much to do in the afternoon, I wandered around until I came to a laundromat that had some magazines around for people waiting for their clothes. One was a New Yorker with a lovely story from Nathan Englander: What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank [PDF]. Shabbat was out so late that there was not much time to do anything (leastwise, when you have no one to do it with).

Day 1: Sunset District San Francisco

Sunset District in San Francisco is beautiful. I was expecting "urban"; it looks like England small-town urban, not big city urban.

This morning, with little jet lag except for a head buzz, I left my AirBnB apt on 31st and Lawton and walked to the Safeway on Noriega to buy groceries. Despite rumors to the contrary, the supermarket has everything kosher I could possibly need, except meat. It is possible to find thousands of kosher products in pretty much any supermarket across America and Canada without any difficulty. The only problems will be meat and wine (this supermarket actually had kosher wine, as well as some Hebrew National hot dogs).

Dropped off the groceries and walked down Lawton to the beach. All of the houses are pastel and pretty. The streets are clean. The air is foggy and chilly. Birds chattering, little in the way of traffic, and everyone drives very slowly. At least half of the population appears to be Asian (Korean or Chinese, I'm guessing). On the streets with stores (Irving, Noriega), store after store has signs in both English and Chinese, with hundreds of Asian-style restaurants and Asian food markets.

Sunset District, Lawton St looking from 31st Ave

Street names are etched into the sidewalk. Street signs have house number ranges on them.

 

The beach was nearly entirely deserted with the odd jogger or two. It's clean and expansive.

Off the end of Lawton is the Pacific Ocean

One of my only fellow life forms on the beach

There were red rose singles dropped on the beach every thirty feet or so. Was this due to something happy or something gone awry?

I walked north and crossed over to Golden Gate Park, also very lovely in the corner that I saw.

Entrance to Golden Gate Park

In the park

I tried to get a SIM card in a Verizon store, but they don't sell SIM cards, only phones with plans. While waiting in line I struck up a conversation with a mom and teen who were buying a new iPhone 5S to replace their two year old iPhone 4S; the only way to renew their plan is to buy a new phone, apparently. I was already considering whether to spend money to replace my own tired one, and was looking at picking up a Samsung Galaxy S3 from Amazon. When I asked, they said that I could just have their old one for whatever I felt, since they would probably toss it out otherwise.

Sad. It's weird how these phones cost a huge bundle if you buy them unlocked but since they are given out for free with service plans they become valueless.  Even programs that encourage you donate old cell phones often just recycle or safely dispose of the materials in them (which is better than having them dumped in a landfill, I suppose).

I picked up a SIM from T-Mobile.

I also checked out the synagogue I will be visiting this shabbat. They are setting me up for dinner and having a communal lunch, as well as hosting a rabbi-in-residence.

Shabbat shalom.

Day 0, continued in Philadelphia, San Francisco

  The room for Catholic worshipers at Athens airport.

The room for all other worshipers at Athens airport.

The re-booked flight had kosher food for me, but not the guy next to me who didn't think to ask for it (like me, he knows that airlines need 24 hours notice to supply kosher food, but apparently it doesn't hurt to ask even with only 8 hours notice). The flight was fine.

I watched The Way Way Back. A shy and awkward boy goes to some place for the summer with his sister, and his mom and her new boyfriend. He hates his mom's boyfriend, and he makes some unrealistic personal progress over the course of a few weeks. This is an unexceptional movie that doesn't have anything new to say. It was mild cliche entertainment, but not at all compelling. Like these movies do, it had a few ok scenes.

I interacted with four TSA agents at PHL. Number one was ok. She checked my passport and boarding pass and sent me to the disrobing line.

Number two put me on the side when I opted out of the porno-scanner. She called the third agent to come and process me. She was friendly.

Number three apparently didn't hear number two's call for pat down; after two minutes, I asked who we were waiting for and had to get number two to call number three again. Number three took my bags off of the X-ray machine conveyor belt and put them onto a different X-ray machine conveyor belt that was currently not in operation (so that my bags weren't holding up the line).  He then began reciting a legalese script about what he was going to do and with what part of his hand he would touch my niggly bits and do I have any sensitive parts, etc. When I interrupted him and said I was fine and he should just go ahead, he RAISED HIS VOICE, told me in douchebag mode (angry, aggressive, assertive, threatening) that if I did not let him finish, he would have to call other agents over to continue the procedure. I told him to go ahead and continue the script, and he started the spiel over from the beginning in loud douchebag voice. After he was done, including the chemical test for bomb residue, he walked away.

I began putting on my shoes and belt, etc, when TSA number four, suddenly noticing me from about ten feet away, RAISED HIS VOICE in douchebag mode and yelled at me that I CANNOT PUT MY ITEMS ONTO [second] X-ray machine conveyor belt and I must remove them immediately. While struggling with my belt, I started to say that I wasn't the one who put them there, but I didn't get out four words of this before he raised his voice EVEN LOUDER like a policeman about to shoot me and told me that I cannot place my items there and I had to get them off of there immediately. Wow.

You can find basic kosher items like drinks, nuts, fruit, and cookies in the Philli airport.

A moving K'nex sculpture at Philadelphia airport.

The flight to SFO was half empty. The captain came out and informed us that 4-5 people had to move from in front of the wing to behind the wing for the plane to be able to take off. [1] Then we would all have to move to the right side of the plane if the plane need to make a right turn. [2]

SF: As usual, I am still moving blindly through life when it comes to making good decisions. I decided to take the Shuttle service from SFO to my AirBnB place, because I was late and I thought it might be faster (and easier than navigating a train and a bus and some walking at this time of night). Mistake, I think. The guy drove no more than 25 miles an hour, usually less, and I was second to last one off. He also ignored the instructions given to him by his guidance system and the dispatcher (I saw him delete all of these from his little pad before starting) and then got lost and drove in many circles. It took an hour fifty to get to my place.

The AirBnB place, which was the cheapest place anywhere near the SF Ortho synagogue, appears to have been a fantastic win. The guy running it is a Korean guy (I think he runs it with his wife, too), and the place is awesome. All I needed was a clean bed. The place is clean, pretty, has it's own entrance, linens, TV and cable, fridge, breakfast, washing machine and dryer, Wi-Fi, etc. It's totally like a BnB. And did I mention cheap?

36 hours travelling. Tired boychick.

[1] This is true.

[2] This is not so true.

Day 0, continued in Greece

You might wonder why, on my flight from TLV to PHL to LAX to SFO I am posting a picture from the Athens international airport that says "Welcome to Greece".

Apparently, a number of people smelled fumes on the plane out of TLV and got sick, including the lovely Bahai girl sitting next to me on our unexpectedly short flight. She didn't throw up, but she felt close to doing so.

So we diverted to Greece and had to collect our luggage (I don't have any checked in) and rebook entirely new flights. We landed in Athens at 2:00, they let us off the plane at 2:45 (after emergency medical people dealt with some of the sick 'uns) and then we queued up at the US Airways ticket counter. By 5:00, about 10 people had successfully booked new tickets, with hundreds more waiting in line. I know they woke those two poor US Airlines people to come help us out, but 30 minutes per person is just a tad slow. No one has had any sleep or eaten since Israel.

Lucky for me, some woman in line called the US and re-booked her ticket directly with the US Airways ticketing office and then gave out the number to others to do the same (she even lent her phone to me to do this, since mine doesn't work here). So, while the line is still going and probably will until, oh, July, I am already re-booked. Another 15 minutes of cajoling the airport workers, and they also opened boarding lines for those of us who had re-booked, so we could get our boarding passes (US Airways won't open any lines until 3 hours before the flight; they can't check in luggage yet, but I don't have any haha). And we got a 15 EUR voucher for food (or, in my case, cans of coke I'm guessing).

My new tickets skip LA entirely and go straight to SFO from PHL, arriving 2 hours later than the original itinerary. So instead of 7 hours in LA, I now have 9 hours in Athens, but it's all in the airport. I was planning on buying a Ready SIM in LA, which is not available in SFO, so I'll need an alternative plan.

Vote now on Linux Game Awards for the PotM July 2014

You know the drill ;)

For those a bit slow: yes you can vote for multiple projects... So lets share the love a bit and not only focus on a single title (you know which one I mean).

Otherwise: If you have great ideas how the award could be made even better than it already is (yes we know, this time the nominations are a bit random), comment below.

Day 0: Destination San Francisco

And I'm off on another crazy trip. This time to SF for the GSummit gamification conference. I will be returning on June 15/16.

I'm flying into SF 6 days before the conference in order to recover from the jet lag; from experience, it is a waste of time for me to fly half way across the globe in order to sleep through a conference the next day.

I never really thought about visiting SF, so this is somewhat of a surprise to me. I have a few planned activities, and a few days where I'm just going to "explore". At the con, I hope to learn more about what real people do with gamification: how much business is going on, and how much is just hype. Theory is one thing; practice is another. I will attempt to report all of this to you, my faithful reader.

My first flight is a bit of a killer: TLV to PHL to LAX, 7 hour stopover, and then on to SFO.

Yehuda

Gamification: Adding Mastery

This is my third post on gamification and motivational strategy (see Adding Purpose and Adding Autonomy). A successful strategy can use some form of gamification, as well as other tools, to develop and enhance motivation from within.

In this post I present how to provide opportunities for mastery, the third of the three pillars of sustainable motivation according to Dan Pink.

Competence vs Mastery

Interestingly, the equivalent pillar in self-determination theory is "competence", which is on the same scale as mastery but not necessarily at the same level (competence only implies that one has basic control). A lack of competence in your work can be de-motivational, but this is frequently overcome by other motivational elements, such as status, power, and perks. All other things being equal, people are happier when they can perform tasks at which they are competent, or can practice tasks in order to gain competence.

Performing with, or gaining, mastery can also be motivational, but I don't think it is as ubiquitous. Many people I know are happy to avoid the problems and challenges that come from attaining mastery. Gaining mastery involves an opportunity cost of non-challenging activities such as watching television or posting flames on YouTube. Still, if a person must anyway devote time to something (school, work, etc), the opportunity to obtain mastery can provide a unique happiness.

Mastery of What?

Adding an opportunity for mastery requires you to identify the aspects of the task people will want to master. No one is dying to master buying things; giving out points for each purchase is not going to trigger a quest for mastery (it may trigger purpose, depending on what is being purchased). Similarly, no one is interested in mastering clicking on your sales brochure, tweeting your praises, or commenting more frequently. If you try to sell these as challenges to be mastered, you will invoke only contempt from your audience (or shame, at best). Mastery is for intrinsically interesting tasks that must be learned or performed.

To return to a previous example, if you want to sell the task "memorize bible verses", the mastery component will focus on a) memorization ability, b) textual understanding, or c) final grade. While these may look the same on the outside, they are all different skills. For memorization, the student is mastering the skill of memorization. For understanding, the skill is knowledge and understanding. The final grade is likely going to test either memorization or understanding. However, if the student is motivated by a grade, and not because of the desire to be a better memorizer or learn the material; this is not mastery, but purpose.

Gamification vs Playification

When you add points, levels, etc to a task, each point can provide quick, progressive, and positive feedback about a level of accomplishment. This "rewards" the brain on some level, not as some external award given to incentivize but by providing a milestone that reflects what you have accomplished (Nils Pihl and others). The hope is that the frequency, clarity, and immediacy of the feedback encourages you to complete tasks, or to perform additional tasks just like them.

When you add play elements to tasks, you make them more fun and more free. For creative tasks, this provides a less intimidating space to master a task; people given play and/or freedom (autonomy) will have space and time to do more than what is simply sufficient, allowing or encouraging them to pursue mastery. For work that is enjoyable intrinsically, this kind of playification is generally not required.

A well-designed gamification system requires you to complete a task within a certain time frame, or at least to check into the system on a regular basis, in order to provide a continuous stream of feedback.

Challenge Types

There are four types of challenges. Challenges are the obstacles to a task that require mastery.

1. You versus yourself: speed, stamina, strength, calculation, courage. As your body and mind tackle challenges, they strengthen, making future versions of the same challenges easier.
2. You versus a system: solving puzzles, finding solutions in complex situations, creating or fixing mechanical objects.
3. You versus other players: competition, politics, relationships.
4. You versus luck: spectating, gambling or risk taking.

Consider each of these types when designing for mastery.

You should already know the important research on flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. To summarize very briefly, too much challenge is frustrating and too little is boring. Flow is experienced in the happy middle.

And you should already know player type research, such as the ten player motivations [PDF] proposed by Nick Yee. To summarize very briefly: what drives one person doesn't drive another, and what drives one person today doesn't drive that person tomorrow. You may want to achieve a high score in a well-designed game, relax, learn, hack, beat or compete with other players, socialize, or whatever. A game that wants to appeal to more than a narrow segment must provide something for multiple types of motivations, some of which are not mastery.

Competition and Winning

If a player is competing against someone obviously better or worse than them, there is little competitive motivation. If there is a leader board, but a player will never, ever be on it, it usually provides no motivation. An exception to this is, for example, a group challenge to move your company from near the bottom of a heap to somewhere more respectable, whether in math literacy or recycling.

The very concept of "winner" can be problematic. It makes everyone else a loser, for one. If someone is really good at many things, but not the best at any one thing, that doesn't make him a loser. Certain people are particularly good at risk taking and looking flashy, but not as good at providing constant day to day quality service.

There are many ways to address these problems: Multiple winners that are based on anyone achieving a certain amount. For example, instead of "the person with the most points wins", use "anyone over 50 points wins". Multiple levels or types of wins: "50 point win", "100 point win", or "green win" and "blue win". This turns the single activity into multiple activities that occur in sequence or parallel, giving everyone continual motivation. Reset leaderboards at regular intervals, and make systemic winners ineligible to compete on them (give them other mastery tasks to perform).

The above is just a small sampling.

Can you think of other ways to provide a space for mastery in non-game environments? Comments are welcome.

Gamification: Adding Autonomy

This is my second post on gamification and motivational strategy (see Adding Purpose). A successful strategy can use some form of gamification, as well as other tools, to develop and enhance motivation from within.

Let’s consider autonomy, the second of the three pillars of sustainable motivation according to Dan Pink. Autonomy means giving people freedom to make meaningful choices.

Goals vs Processes

Granting others autonomy does not come easy to people who want to motivate, whether they are teachers, parents, clergy, or managers. Setting a goal is not the same thing as defining the process of achieving the goal, yet goal-setters often fall prey to the temptation to control every aspect of how the settee achieves the goal.

You may believe that your process is the coolest thing in workforce management, or the most efficient means of producing results, but the stricter and less leeway you provide for a person to achieve a goal, the more dehumanized and demotivated they feel. An imposed process tells the actor that he or she is a cog in a machine that, if at all possible, should be replaced by a robot.

Furthermore, the goal that you set is often not really the goal you want! For example, the teacher whose goal is to have her students memorize a list of bible verses should consider carefully if that is really her goal. Perhaps her goal is really for her students to understand the verses' meaning and to have the ability and motivation to learn bible. I’m not arguing for or against memorization, but a teacher would do well to remember that memorization is a methodology, not a goal.

You will not harm your children, students, or employees if you discuss the reasoning behind your process, asking them what they think about it, and considering alternative methods to reach their goals. When people are engaged in what they are doing and have a say as to why or how, they will be more engaged. This is the first step toward creating autonomy.

Gamification vs Playification

Straight gamification's aim is to inspire a specific behavior. Gamification attempts to motivate a person to choose to perform a specific task by adding a small amount of reward to this choice. Simultaneously, they punish NOT choosing the desired task by virtue of not providing a reward for it. In this way, gamification attempts to narrow the desire for choices outside of any pre-defined ones [1]. As such, it is poorly suited for fostering autonomy.

Playification's aim is to promote autonomy within a specific context. The word "play" is equivalent to the word "freedom"; for example, a latch that "has play" moves around freely in its socket. Similarly, a person who can play is free to explore. There may be no extrinsic reward, but there is also no punishment for playing. If the required goal is incorporated into the play process, playification can increase motivation towards that goal by providing a more enjoyable process.

Gamification can motivate simple procedural, non-autonomous behavior, while playification can motivate creative, autonomous behavior. But turning simple, procedural tasks into creative, autonomous tasks also increases motivation, and often you can design for both.

Game Design

Not all choices are meaningful. Game design has a lot to say about meaningful choices. Here are a few examples.

Number of choices

Choices that have only one good option are not meaningful choices. For example, a multiple choice test offers choices, but typically all but one of the choices is wrong.

Obscuring the right choice by making it complicated also does not provide a meaningful choice. In many games, a single option is best, but it takes a lot of math to figure out which one. This simply serves to bog down play while the player works out the solution (or the player gives up and chooses randomly).

Providing too many options produces the opposite problem but the same frustration, since the player must spend a lot of time before he or she can make an informed decision.

The correct number of choices is between 2 and 7 (give or take), depending on how hard the choices are to evaluate. More than 7 choices tends to overwhelm [2]. The depth of the choices and the time spent evaluating them should be commensurate with their importance.

Order / subset of choices

Choices about the order in which to perform a series of mandatory actions are mildly meaningful. It’s nice to be allowed to choose the order in which to perform certain tasks, allowing you to tackle the difficult ones when it suits your schedule. However, autonomy becomes constrained as tasks are completed and fewer choices remain.

A choice that allows you to select only a subset of available tasks – allowing you to skip certain tasks or entire categories - is often a meaningful choice, especially if it opens the door for negotiation (either with the task-setter or with the other students or workers). Dividing housework chores is a classic example of this.

Informed choices

The information available when making a choice determines the skills required to make that choice. With no information, your choice amounts to luck. A little information provides odds calculation, aka gambling. A lot of information provides room for tactics and strategy. Complete information requires calculation.

Choices made by luck are not meaningful. For example, if you can choose to work on project A or B, but you can’t know what the projects are until you decide, the choice is not meaningful.

Choices made by gambling are marginally meaningful, though they may be entertaining. For example, if you’re offered a choice of a new teammate, and all you know is that one is a Java programmer named Sue who comes from New York and the other is an app developer named Ted from El Paso, you know only enough to take a gamble.

Tactical and strategic choices are generally meaningful, though they may not always work out.

Choices made using complete information are always meaningful if you are really free to make the choice. The choice “work or get fired” is not a free or meaningful choice (that’s a choice with only one good option); the choice “either write this specification or program an installation script” is.

Note that information that exists, but is too unwieldy or too time-consuming to obtain, has the same effect as information that does not exist.

Opportunity cost and value

Most choices involve an opportunity cost: if you choose one thing, you lose out on all of the options that you didn't choose, unless these options are saved for you for later. Opportunity costs present meaningful choices of assessing value.

Some of the best choices involve assessing value, for example: learning; discovering workable solutions from seemingly equal options; managing resources, such as time, money, equipment, or people; or managing risk.

Play

Real autonomy is the freedom to customize, personalize, self-distract, and develop your own plan. Of course, too much play can lead to nothing getting done; that's why games, as opposed to free play, have rules and goals. The goal-setter and settee can work together to provide as much autonomy as possible while remaining focused through a shared sense of purpose.

Straight gamfication tools are not specifically suited for adding autonomy, but will come in handy when I discuss adding mastery in the next post.

Comments are welcome.

[1] Gamification can provide brief moments of autonomy, such as allowing you to choose how to redeem points you have collected. These kinds of choices do not substantively affect the tasks you must perform.

[2] This is slightly different with regards to creative freedom. Creative freedom thrives best on an infinite palette limited by a few guidelines. For example, "do anything" is hard to deal with; "draw a tree" is empowering.

Gamification: Adding Purpose

Early success stories in gamification have created a gold rush, which in turn has prompted bold claims about how important and how easy gamification is. This in turn has and will lead to the usual backlash, when gamification implementations don’t deliver. Gartner asserts that 80% of up-and-coming gamification systems will fail, either due to misconception, misapplication, or misuse.

How can you ensure that your gamification system will succeed? By building motivation, not tools, into the core of your strategy. A successful motivational strategy uses gamification, as well as other tools to develop and enhance motivation from within.

Let’s consider purpose [1], one of the three pillars of sustainable motivation according to Dan Pink.

Some tasks can feel like they have no intrinsic purpose, such as tasks performed within the context of a system that someone else controls but doesn't explain, or repetitive manual tasks performed day after day. For example, a teacher may have trouble motivating students to memorize bible verses. Factory line assembly workers may find no meaning in packing boxes eight hours a day. The students or workers in these situations may think that their tasks are meaningless, because they were never told, or can’t remember, the task’s purpose.

In these cases, don’t just reach for gamification. First instill, or re-instill, intrinsic purpose.

Some proponents of straight gamification maintain that game elements alone create purpose: the students and the worker will be more motivated to fulfill their tasks when they receive points and badges for completing the tasks, or because they can rise on a leaderboard. Their argument is that games motivate, so making a task more game-like motivates. In some cases, and with some people, this may work (for a short time). But be wary.

Many people do not find points added to a boring or hated task to be motivating. It is better to inspire purpose from within the task and then use the gamification elements to enhance the participants’ experience. This work may have to come from outside of the gamification system. The gamification system can then add reminders about purpose using well-designed texts and images that inspire during the process.

The teacher understands the benefits of what she is teaching, whether it is a benefit for her students specifically or for society in general. She should communicate this purpose to her students. She can give them inspirational talks and achieve buy-in. She should explain what the point of learning the verses is; in fact, she can ask them to come up with their own reasons. She can provide good cases studies, examples of people who know this information and the good results that came out of it. She can provide fun, involving activities such as role play. The students should come to internalize the lessons as something from which they will benefit. Gamification can then build on that purpose to help the students measure their progress.

The manager can create meaning by reminding the worker on a regular basis the importance of his task: for example, that the box will protect valuable equipment and make happy customers. The manager can reaffirm the assembler’s importance to the product and the company and the benefit that the product serves in the world. Where possible, the manager can add autonomous or playful elements to the work flow (more on that later). Salary and benefits are also meaningful, of course, albeit external. A worker instilled with some purpose will be receptive to a gamification system that adds additional motivation to his job.

Gamification works best when it boosts and clarifies what is already meaningful. Gamification that properly builds on purpose provides feedback about progress; it does not simply reward progress. When gamification only adds an external reward, it had better be damn rewarding, because the player is not going to simply forget if the actual work is meaningless.

[1] Or relatedness in self-determination theory, although relatedness also includes social connections and working for a noble cause.

Gamification Pros and Cons

Note: This post assumes that you already know what gamification is, how it is usually implemented, and basic theories of motivation.

The arguments for and against gamification are aimed at all three gamification philosophies; and it's often hard to distinguish for or against which philosophy the argument is directed. The proponents of one philosophy may join outsider deriders of gamification to argue that the other two philosophies are irrelevant, counterproductive, or bad.

Let’s take a look at the arguments for and against gamification.

PRO ARGUMENTS

Leader boards, badges, points, and missions are proven motivators, in and of themselves. You don’t need – in fact, you don’t want – a game designer. "If anyone tries to sell you a game designer to design your Loyalty 3.0 program [gamification + data crunching], you should run away screaming." – Rajat Paharia, Founder and CPO of Bunchball Inc.

If there is a task that you have to do anyway, wouldn't you rather do it and have fun at the same time? If there is a product or message with which you might be tempted to engage, wouldn't engaging with a game system be an additional motivation to do so? Furthermore, once you have engaged with a game system and the other players who use it, you have invested in earning non-transferable rewards and formed a social group, which induces loyalty and encourages repeat visits and engagement.

Case after case demonstrates that game reward systems work: Warner Bros, Chiquita, SAP, Foursquare, Nike, Starbucks, Bluewolf, LiveOps, Ford, Microsoft, Verizon Wireless, and so on.

People love fast, immediate feedback from systems that have historically been silent. People love conquerable challenges and goals, and they love displaying badges. These kinds of indicators provide intrinsic motivation, such as feelings of accomplishment and success, competition, and interaction with a community.

Yes, there is a problem with a leader board in that only the people who are near the top are really motivated to keep competing. To address this, you can have your leader board display only the area around the current player, so that players are only in competition with others who are doing about the same as them: a localized leader board effect.

Points are a way of feeling proud about the task you have accomplished. Badges are a way of sharing your accomplishment with others to receive social status and support. Games help you do what you want to do anyway, but are having trouble doing because the task is too big, or you’re too isolated, or you can’t see the results immediately. Well-designed games focus you in the right direction and give you the immediate feedback you need to motivate you to succeed.

Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer was on the right track: Work is what you’re obliged to do. Play is what you want to do (actually, "what you're not obliged to do"). Making everyday tasks more fun turns work into play. By fun, I mean the type of fun that motivates people to play games for hours at a time: progress, challenge, competition, problem solving, instant feedback, and so on.

Adding play to things that are not already play, like filling out tax forms or waiting in line at the DMV can and should make life more enjoyable. Furthermore, for play tasks, people spend more time and talent and are far less likely to give up when faced with obstacles. Thousands of people freely solve complex tasks in a playful environment, while paid tasks that feel like work lead to less output and worse results.

CON ARGUMENTS

At best, gamification that serves a corporate interest doesn't serve your interest. At best, it treats you like a mouse in a Skinner box. There is only so long that people are willing to push a lever to get a pellet. In gamification's case, it’s not even a pellet, it’s a virtual pellet. If companies replace good service, lower prices, real value, and attention to quality with virtual rewards, customers will eventually figure out that they are getting less for their money.

Gamification cons customers with illusions, essentially tapping into people’s gambling mentality. Gamification is tempting and engaging to players in the same way that lotteries are; for players, it’s a pyramid scheme. The best people get to the top the leader board, and earn real prizes, but 99% have no hope of getting anything out of the system. Examples given by classic gamification proponents always focus on the people who are winning or topping the leader boards. Sure, pyramid schemes work for a while, but eventually everyone not at the top gets frustrated.

For the companies that want to implement gamification, it’s also an empty hyped up gold rush fad with promises of big rewards based on the few companies that succeeded with it. The first companies succeeded because of the element of surprise; people were excited to find games in unexpected places. As more and more companies offer similar programs, players will tire of it. Who needs 50 points on 50 leader boards at 50 different stores? Social networks were a big rush too, and now only a handful remain.

Points and rewards handed out in a gamification framework are not integrated into the task. In games, you get points for actually doing something, not just for clicking or signing in. Points in video games are tied to in-game bonuses that help you play more and accomplish more (xp => levels and skills, bucks => equipment). This is a positive feedback loop. Points that are earned externally to this loop simply motivate people to game the system to get points, not to do the tasks.

Tasks should be fun and motivating all by themselves. Points are not motivators. External rewards such as points are actually de-motivators. People want to do fun activities; when you add points or other rewards to these tasks, people become de-motivated to do the activities unless they get the points.

Gamification proponents claim that their systems have universal appeal, and give lip-service to the idea that one can’t simply slap points onto activities, but that’s just so they can sell themselves as experts. If you look at their implementations, all they offer, in the end, is points slapped onto activities. They instruct implementers to tailor the system to be fun, but they never explain how to do that. They can’t insist that points are fun, in and of themselves, and then tell you to implement points in a fun way (and then wave their hands when you ask how to you do this). Fun is designed into a system by a game designer.

If you look at the supposed case studies brought as proof of gamification success, they all a) offer real rewards, like cash prizes, which is old school, or b) gained customers quickly only to lose them just as quickly, or c) use playification as their prime motivation, not gamification.

Adding games or play to a non play system is distracting. You're either focused on the task or you’re focused on play, not both. In theory you can do both, but in practice people end up wasting time. Many systems are simply not appropriate for play, and in other systems you just want to get in and out as soon as possible, and not be bothered with added distractions that clutter up the work flow. Not everyone wants to play games; many gamification systems assume you are a video gamer and don’t explain what their systems do or why you would want to use them.

CONCLUSION

The proponents of the three gamification philosophies don't spend much time answering these criticisms; when they do, they answer them in different ways. Straight gamification proponents argue that the system simply works, and they point again to the case studies. Gameful design proponents argue that their systems are built around activities with their own intrinsic motivation; the points they add are therefore meaningful. Playification proponents argue that play can be tightly bound to an activity, and therefore not distracting.

I design games, and I know that games motivate. For me the questions are: How can you best utilize them in ways that motivate long term? What is the ROI of using games and/or play versus traditional methods of motivation? Which approach, if any, is right for which activities?

Gamification, Gameful Design, and Playification

Note: This post assumes that you have already read an introductory article on gamification: you know the definition of gamification and the basic theories of motivation (such as self-determination theory and its derivatives).

The prospect of increased interest, brand awareness, understanding, desired behavior, or loyalty for your process or message is tempting, and within the reach of a properly designed gamification system.

There are three main approaches to gamification: straight "gamification", "gameful design", and "playification".

Straight gamification is importing video game trappings into non-game contexts. Gamification nearly always uses some combination of points (or some other name for points, like "bucks"), badges, leader boards, levels, missions, and so on. This direct approach is based on the fact that a great number of millennials play and enjoy video games. These game elements provide opportunities for mastery, achievement, social comparison, and so on. in non-game contexts, as well.

Opponents of straight gamification argue that most of the fun in games does not come from these elements, so the result is not going to be truly motivating. These kinds of imaginary rewards are only meaningful when they are the result of challenging game play, so they won't hold a player's long term attention. Furthermore, people focused on gaining points are not focused on the message (for example, gamification that promotes recycling may result in a temporary increase in recycling, but won't truly change people's behavior once they get bored with the game.

While these criticisms are valid, proponents of straight gamification are not unaware of the need to make gamification fun and challenging; it's the CEOs and clueless marketers who ask for meaningless point systems who are to blame for poor implementations. Also, the interface is simple to produce, instantly recognizable to many people, and has a proven track record of providing motivation, especially when the content is enjoyable anyway or the players already know each other.

Gameful design, a term popularized by Jane McGonigal, is about adding rewards selectively to challenges that are important and intrinsically rewarding. For example, you know you have to diet, and you feel great when you do, but it's hard; adding gameful design – badges, levels, and so on - to the process of dieting provides an added incentive to make you feel proud and accomplished.

The proponents of gameful design stress achievement and purpose, and believe in adding game elements to important tasks that will help guide us to do what is best for us and the world.

Essentially, gameful design restricts applying gamification to tasks that are purely beneficial to the player (or others), as opposed to straight gamficiation that is used primarily to benefit the designer. Gameful design uses many of the same trappings as gamification; there is no fine line between the two approaches, except with regards to who is designing the system and why.

Playification focuses on bringing the other aspects of play into non-game activities: competition (but not necessarily scores), cooperation, puzzles, physical activity, and so on. Points and badges might be used, but they are not the focus. Instead, the aim is to make non-game activities more fun, in general.

Playification asserts that the play elements contain most of the fun - the most universally enjoyed fun. Even if no one assigns ranks at the end of a 100 meter dash, the play elements (physical challenge, excerise, and competition) contain all of the motivation necessary for people to participate. Even animals enjoy play activities; play spans the entire animal kingdom. It is biological, and the fun is intrinsic to the activity.

In contrast, points elements make no sense without play elements. "You win!" and other imaginary rewards add an additional layer of fun to play, but only to some people, some of the time. "Winning" is a title added to an already achieved success, and a seemingly irrelevant one, unless your enjoyment of success is incomplete without this title.

Play elements are the intrinsic elements that involve autonomy, mastery, and connectedness, whereas points are focused on achievement and rankings (the latter of which is of no motivation to anybody but the winner).

All of the above philosophies have some validity, more or less, and represent different paths that can be taken to add motivation and benefit to everyday tasks.

Yehuda

Mutant Gangland is Free (but only as in Freedom)

Mutant Gangland is a nice-looking, turn-based strategy game that just happened to have all of its code released under the MIT license.

The games graphics follow a classic pixelart aesthetic

This project is attempting to follow the classic Free Software game business model where you share the source but keep the artwork proprietary, which is perfectly acceptable and fine. It currently sells for $3.99 and it's available for GNU/Linux, OSX, Windows, and Android.

So let this be an example to all of the new wave of indie developers. People, share you're freaking source codes under a Free License! Not only you're not losing money because of this, you'll also be getting free revisions and improvements to your own code, and you will be providing others the chance of creating something different with it.

Code License: MIT
Assets License: Proprietary

Official Website
Source Code (Github)