2012 draws to and end and so I present a summary of my blogs for the year!
2012 was a heck of a year for my self discovery. I had not realised until now just how many blogs I had written, covering subjects from video games to social media to gamificaiton and Harry Potter. I was also interesting to see that my switch from heavily blogging about Social Media in 2011 to blogging about Gamificaiton was almost total! Not all of it was good, some was plain wrong, but this synopsis of 2012 really shows Read more [...] My year of blogging 2012
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2012 draws to and end and so I present a summary of my blogs for the year!
2012 was a heck of a year for my self discovery. I had not realised until now just how many blogs I had written, covering subjects from video games to social media to gamificaiton and Harry Potter. I was also interesting to see that my switch from heavily blogging about Social Media in 2011 to blogging about Gamificaiton was almost total! Not all of it was good, some was plain wrong, but this synopsis of 2012 really shows Read more [...] 
Anyone who has read a few of my blogs will, by now, be under the impression that I am not the biggest fan of rewards. Well, that is not entirely how I feel. Those that have read earlier blogs may remember something I said - "Rewards should recognise achievement, not be the achievement". I also found myself saying in an email "Gamification at the moment is often nothing more than an attempt to illicit Pavlovian responses to external stimuli". I know, how up myself does that sound - but it’s 
When I was a kid a school (long before Harry Potter had been thought of - and gamification for that matter...), teaching methods generally sucked. A teach stood at the front of the class, dictated out ancient notes and you had to write them down in your exercise book. If you didn't pay attention or did something the teacher did not like, you got a board rubber thrown at your head. There was no intrinsic enjoyment to be had from the learning process; it was all drained by the way we were taught. This 
What follows is an exploration of what happens when you start to map player journeys in games onto Flow theory and then try to bring that into the workplace. Just for fun! It was inspired by Mr Scott Golas after seeing last weeks post on relatedness. It may or may not have any worth, but it has been fun to develop. Click images to see the bigger versions or you can see the presentation at SlideShare
What is Flow and what is the Player Journey?
Mihayi Csikszentmihalyi suggested the concept after 
I have written about this whole thing quite a lot already, but I have some new insights based on things I have witnessed recently.
We know that extrinsic rewards are meant to demotivate people when doing anything that is even slightly creative. So why do we keep seeing them being used in gamification and marketing. On the face of it, that kind of thing works well. Offer a reward and ask people to do something simple. Like this, follow that, +1 the other and you can win a book. Low and behold you 
Another quick one, prompted by an interesting behaviour exhibited by my daughter today that taught me rather a lot about extrinsic rewards.
I have mentioned before the research that has been done on motivation in the past by the likes of Edward Deci and the writing of Dan Pink and more. All of them point to the same thing, extrinsic rewards are bad for intrinsic motivation. The basic reasoning is that at some point, no matter how careful you are, the reward will become the reason to do the task. 
A very quick blog this week, whilst I work on a few deeper ones (possibly)
An argument that is pretty constant in Gamification, is that of Extrinsic vs Intrinsic motivation / rewards. Things like badges, points and even money vs altruism, autonomy, status and more. The general consensus, based on the works of people like Deci and talks by people like Daniel Pink, is that extrinsic motivation is in no way better than intrinsic motivation. The research shows that being almost bribed to do stuff 
Hello all and a very happy Monday to you. As ever, I am blown away by your reactions to my blogs. The Gamification Framework and Resources posts seemed to go down very well. As such, I have added them as menu options with the Evangelist page! I would really plead with you to get into the gamification forums. I would love to be a bit of a place to go to get answers from the community to questions the Gamification world may ask!
On to today's post though. I was in a toy store with my daughter 
Let me expand on this.
A discussion started on twitter when I mentioned in passing to a couple of gamification people, that really gamification is often a benign form of manipulation. It became an interesting chat, fast. I suppose I expected that! However, when you look at the definition of manipulation in the Oxford English Dictionary you get these two definitions
handle or control (a tool, mechanism, information, etc.) in a skilful manner
control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly 
Here is a list of resources I go back to time and time again.
There are many more and if you want to be included, please leave a comment!!
Blogs and Websites
Badgeville Blog
Bunchball Blog
Enterprise Gamification - Run by Mario Herger from SAP
Gamification.org - Brilliant Wiki, now owned by Badgeville
Gamified Enterprise - A blog from the people behind Badgville, but more enterprise focused
gamifier.com
Gamify For The Win - Kevin Werbach's website.
Marczewski.me.uk - My Blog