Every week until GSummit SF 2013, we’ll be unlocking some special content from last year to give you a preview on what to expect this April 16 – 18.
Byron Reeves of Stanford University discusses his research on how people react to games and his fascination towards games emerging in the enterprise:
Image by MridulRaj
A research team from North Carolina State University recently submitted a study for publication in Computers in Human Behavior stating older adults that played video games showed an improvement in health versus non-gamers.
If the case for non-physical rewards (see SAPS) as a motivator still hasn’t convinced you of its effectiveness, you might want to look at Boston’s government mobile app that will allow Bostonians to improve city services.
Released in 2008, Citizen’s Connect allows local citizens to report issues like broken signs and potholes to make sure they are fixed quickly. According to SearchCIO, this effort is in part of Boston CIO, Bill Oates’ desire to create an active communication loop between citizen and workers to ensure city problems are solved.
The use of gamification is slowly gaining traction in the enterprise sector as the corporate workforce is warming up to the ideas of blending fun and engagement into the workplace. Unsurprisingly, this similar scenario is occurring within the education sector as well. Recent groundbreaking developments such as the use of collaborative platforms and massively online open courses purposes has redefined the traditional sense of education and teaching methodologies. With all this in mind, it leaves many to questions like how do we make sense of these developments, what does it mean for the future of learning and how does this affect the enterprise realm. However, fret not dear readers, as GSummit has an amazing line up of speakers to address these hot topics; here are some of our top picks for education gamification sessions.
Chrome Experiments is touted as a showcase to demonstrate creative experiments using emerging web-technologies like HTML5, Canvas, SVG, and WebGL. According to TechCrunch, a new experiment has just emerged from Google Japan that will enable you to turn any desktop website into a 3D maze that could also be controlled by your smartphone.
Food fights in the cafeteria are usually not well-liked by adults. Virtual food fights that promote education about food, health, and wellness is a totally different story.
Fooya is a third-person, single-player food fight game meant to replicate the childhood activity. FriendsLearn recently used KickStarter to raise money to expand the game with a multiplayer expansion of the current single-player version which will be titled Fooya with Friends.
Game based learning resources are available free of charge to students at every level. According to Starting Point, Students today spend almost two hours per day on video games. Educators are understandably interested in getting a piece of that action, and that action can be found at the University as well as in the public television sectors.
Every week until GSummit SF 2013, we’ll be unlocking some special content from last year to give you a preview on what to expect this April 16 – 18.
Tricia Gellman of Data.com describes how gamification empowers communities and enables self-governing reward systems:
It is estimated that by 2016, there will be $2.5Bn directly spent on gamification alone. It is no secret that gamification has attracted the interests of many venture capital firms and various investors. For the “g” word that became hot in 2010, becoming a billion dollar industry may not have been the initial expectations.
We’ve recently shared a comprehensive overview on how games can help healthcare in 2013. We’ve found a few more ways how gamification is affecting the health landscape through simulation learning, inspiring new health insurance programs, disease management and more.
The Gamification Revolution is the only live gamification webcast featuring Gabe Zichermann and fellow gamification experts every Thursday at 1 PM EST/10 AM PST/1800 GMT. Join us and have all of your gamification questions answered by these experts.
This past week’s guest was veteran game designer and current Creative Director of Jawfish Games, Tadhg Kelly! In this week’s episode Gabe and Tadhg discuss what motivational design means from a game designer’s point of view and how that applies to gamification. They also advise startup Commitchange, on how they could improve their design to promote more civic action.
Be sure to catch this week’s episode featuring BankersLab CEO, Michelle Katics, on the gamification of finance!
You can now catch the Gamification Revolution every Thursday at 1PM EST/10 AM PST/1800 GMT.
If you weren’t sure where the future of fitness technology was heading towards, let the 10 winners of TechStars’ new Nike+ fitness startup accelerator give you a clue: it’s going to be all about gamification and the quantified self.
Nike and TechStars first announced the launch of their digital fitness startup accelerator program in December 2012 to find startups that will help people lead more active lives. As of yesterday, they have officially picked the 10 lucky startups that will participate in their inaugural 3 month class. Each startup will receive $20,000 in funding, a workspace, and mentorship from big names like Foursquare Co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, TechStars founder David Cohen, and Nike’s VP of digital sport, Stegan Olander. TechStars will receive a 6% stake in equity of each of the companies in exchange for their support.
Prior to the 2012 elections, MTV was working on new ways to better engage US citizens to be involved in the American democratic process. With support from the Knight Foundation, MTV conceived Fantasy Election 2012, an online game which gave users a new way to hold electoral candidates accountable while being rewarded for getting involved in the electoral process.
Every week until GSummit SF 2013, we’ll be unlocking some special content from last year to give you a preview on what to expect this April 16 – 18.
Jon Radoff, CEO of DisruptorBeam, explains what problems gamification can appropriately solve and how games are unique in that regard:
What makes receiving a badge for completing a task so exciting? Why does seeing a progress bar almost full make us itch until we finish it? Gamification—the combination of game-design principles and elements—implements cognitive psychology and decision-making theory as its scientific foundation. If gamification were stuffed shells, science is the shell, and everything else is stuffing.
