June 9, 2026
Headlines

Heong Weng Mak

Gamified Tutorial For College Courses Pre-Registration

Heong Weng Mak03 mins

The New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering is a comprehensive university of engineering, applied science, and technology. Its 150 year history of education makes it one of the oldest engineering schools in the United States. With campuses in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai it is also a multi-cultural, global institution.

When the NYU Polytechnic changed their course registration procedure to a more self-service approach, they hoped it would lead students to take more ownership of their course of studies. Whereas before the students would be presented with a schedule and entered into courses by university staff, students would find and register for classes themselves through the new gamified tutorial system.

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Improving Personal Financial Management with Gamified Mobile App Jojonomic

Heong Weng Mak04 mins

If you were listing five subjects that seem impossible to gamify, you probably would list personal finance first. Singapore-based start-up Jojonomic thinks it has cracked the code with its new financial management application, offered as what its CEO and founder Indrasto Budisantoso says is the antidote to the very low level of financial literacy in the company’s target geographic market, which is South East Asia. The goal of the gamified mobile app, according to Budisantoso, former CEO of Groupon, is to facilitate personal finance management by minimizing the number of screens that a user had to work through in order to record transactions and by making it fun.

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New Research Suggests Fitness Games Improve Long-Term Health

Heong Weng Mak04 mins

If someone gave you the chance to claim a reward in exchange for boosting your physical activity, would you do it? It turns out, a lot of people are taking up that offer, apparent in the growing number of examples of games in health finding a place in businesses. But executives at companies considering such programs might wonder whether they work. New research suggests that not only are patients participating in games, this participation is also leading to measurable improvements in health.

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Improving Your Business English With Wall Street Journal’s Newsmart

Heong Weng Mak04 mins

On the theory that the best way to learn “business” English is by reading the Wall Street Journal and other publications of Dow Jones & Co., the WSJ has launched an online video-driven educational program called Newsmart. A subscription based service, Newsmart proposes to use game based learning to teach business English to non-English speakers by exposing them to actual WSJ articles and videos drawn from the general areas of business, finance and technology news. Once the learner has read or viewed the media, she is guided through an array of exercises intended to test comprehension and to both teach and improve vocabulary and grammar. A beginning user is also offered the opportunity to self-test on a TOEFL interface presumably to assist the student in determining the proper entrance level.

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GeoQ: Game Based Training Tool For First Responders

Heong Weng Mak05 mins

Few environments present training challenges more difficult than those encountered in disaster management. The elements of any particular disaster – including location, severity, duration, the extent of damage to infrastructure, and existence of any continuing threat – are unique. Even so, and regardless of the exact nature of the event, one thing is certain: public agencies and first responders need immediate access to accurate data regarding conditions in precise locations. That not only allows the correct first responders to be deployed to the places where they can have the most impact, but it also reduces the confusion inherent the same conditions being reported by different people in different media.

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Exploring Travel Experiences with Shangri-La Hotel’s Love Journey

Heong Weng Mak04 mins

In 2010, Chinese e-commerce behemoth Ali-Baba decided to take steps to increase sales in the period between the October Golden Week holiday and Christmas. Ali-Baba knew that November 11 was already viewed as “singles day” and had been a special shopping day since the 1990s, presumably because the two “elevens” in the date roughly translated into “only one” and appeared to be “bare sticks” or singles. Single-handedly, Ali-Baba turned November 11 into the world’s biggest online shopping day, easily eclipsing the sales revenues generated by Black Friday and Cyber Monday, traditionally the biggest shopping days in the West.

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Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Walking Through Gamification with Andrzej Marczewski

Heong Weng Mak02 mins

Last week, we feature Capgemini solution designer and author, Andrzej Marczewski to discuss his newly released book, “Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Gamification, Game Thinking & Motivational Design”. Andrzej’s new book serves as a guide to using gamification as well the theories and concepts on which gamification is built upon.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:

  • What was Andrzej trying to address in his new book that was previously missing in other gamification literature?
  • How does Andrzej vision of user player types differ when compared to Bartle’s version?
  • Is it possible to develop a test to discover each player style and subsequently merge them together?
  • What are some of the barriers one has to overcome in order to get “buy-in” for Enterprise Gamification inside corporate organizations?
  • What are the recent developments for gamification across Europe?
  • How does Andrzej respond to companies who explicitly states they want gamification but in actuality want a game?
  • What is the origin story for naming the book title?

Special Bonus: Catch Andrzej Marczewski and Gabe Zichermann at the Gamification World Congress 2015 by entering special code “dopamine” to get a special 25% discount on tickets!

Watch the video, listen on the audio podcast or subscribe to our iTunes channel below. Be sure to catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution.

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Write Smart: Gamified Writing Tool for Government Employees

Heong Weng Mak05 mins

In 2010 President Obama signed the Plain Language Act. This act requires all federal agencies to use clear and effective language that the public can understand easily. The intent is for the government to stop using jargon and overly complex sentences that make it difficult for the everyday person to participate. The act lists no less than 30 specific rules and several other guidelines that are now required of government employees. Unfortunately the task of training them has been less than successful up to this point. Mike McClory, a professional working on writing training said “Five years later, only about one government employee in 10 has even heard of the law, and very few have participated in any meaningful plain writing training.” So McClory and his colleagues are introducing game based training in the skills of Plain Writing.

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Developing Literacy Skills with Video Games in Education

Heong Weng Mak06 mins

Games in education are nothing new. Because of their strategic nature that they share with subjects such as math, reading and writing, games have been used in the K-12 curriculums for decades. What is new is the use of a specific type of game for these subjects: the video game. This is especially the case with language arts. Like comic books, video games (including computer or PC games) in language arts curriculum have been controversial over whether they’re appropriate learning tools. This is because of the violent and seemingly trivial subject matter that video games have been stereotyped with. Besides this, its very graphic nature, moving pictures, has connoted the video game to be as mind-numbing as television has typically been made to seem. Like TV, the video game has been turned into an enemy of the traditionally more academic medium: the book. But these stereotypes are being broken more and more each day. Video games are showing capability of teaching the necessary literacy skills kids need to survive both in their studies and in the workplace later in life.

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Virtonomics: Business Simulation Platform for Education

Heong Weng Mak05 mins

Virtonomics is a strategic online business game that gathers over 1 million players worldwide. A virtual economy, fully populated by sentient people – businessmen and businesswomen, entrepreneurs, university and college students and overall smart individuals forming a friendly, business oriented community since the game was released in 2006 , December 11. Players are keen to share their knowledge and experience, explain how to implement successful business strategies and grow your company exponentially.

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T-Mobile Gamifies Corporate Travel With Points2Points Platform

Heong Weng Mak04 mins

Corporate travel is a necessary, but expensive, part of doing business. It’s made all the more expensive when employees don’t follow corporate policies intended keep travel costs at a minimum. T-Mobile used gamification platform, Points2Points to boost employee engagement in corporate travel policies. The effort not only improved compliance and saved the company money, it also ended up supporting the planting of trees in a part of the world damaged by deforestation. T-Mobile learned that an environmental reward can be a great employee incentive.

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Gamification Research in Poker Suggests Artificial Intelligence Applications

Heong Weng Mak04 mins

Part of what makes Texas hold ‘em poker intriguing to watch is that it’s a game where some of the cards are visible to all – both the players in the game and any spectators who are watching. This type of poker is what’s called an imperfect information game – all the players know different pieces of information about the elements in play. This kind of thinking has implications for technology, Slate reports.

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