June 18, 2026
Headlines

Eric’s High School Experience Makes SAT Studying Interactive

Bianca Gelli05 mins

Eric’s High School Experience is an online K-12 education resource that offers interactive learning tools for those attempting the SAT, seeking ways to improve their high school performance or just keeping up with a lifelong learning goal.

It is a response to the College Board’s call to action after the 2013 SAT report on College & Career readiness revealed that only 43% of students that took the SAT were qualified as college-ready, and that this number had remained virtually unchanged for five years.

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Crowdsourcing GIF Emotional Research with MIT Media Lab

Heong Weng Mak11 mins

Last week, we featured MIT graduate students Travis Rich and Kevin Hu to talk about their gamified crowdsourcing project, GIFGIF. The MIT Media Lab project aims to map out the emotional language of animated gifs using game mechanics to draw user engagement and quantifiable methodologies to gather research data.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:
  • The design purposes for using specific mechanics to drive outcomes.
  • Where they drew inspiration from when building in the mechanics.
  • How the team plans to use gathered data to be used for scientific research.
  • The ethical questions for utilizing a crowd sourcing capability.
  • What possibilities lie ahead to facilitate complex dialogue beyond cataloging gifs.

Be sure to also catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution this coming Tuesday April 15th at 1 PM ET:



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Gartner Redefines Gamification: What Do You Think?

Kevin Shane06 mins

Gamification is considered a relatively new term. As a new term, its definition is in flux and is continually changing. The popular media and different professionals continue to offer different and sometimes competing definitions. As different definitions are offered, it is up to everyday people to accept or reject those definitions.

Gartner, a leader in information technology research and advisory, has recently offered a new definition of gamification. As an industry leader, their definition carries some weight. Gartner redefines gamification as, “the use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.” This is a very loaded definition with very specific implications.

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Case Study: Air Canada’s Gamified ‘Earn Your Wings’ Program

Natalija Knaidele03 mins

In late 2013, Gabe traveled to 15 cities worldwide for GSummit Global, a series of full-day workshops and meetups to bring GSummit closer to gamification fans. As a part of GSummit Global, we also released 10 new webinars and videos by gamification and engagement professionals. We will be releasing them publicly as we keep counting down to GSummit 2014.

First up, a webinar by Ian Di Tullio, the Director Loyalty Marketing of Air Canada. This fast-paced webinar will lead you through the basic features and characteristics of airline loyalty programs, with a neat case study of Air Canada’s own loyalty promotion, Earn Your Wings.

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Connecting Culture and Playful Learning with Jake Orlowitz of Wikipedia

Heong Weng Mak11 mins
as Jake Orlowitz of Wikipedia explained the many challenges faced by Wikipedia editors on the Gamification Revolution webinar. Last week, we featured the grantee to discuss how Wikipedia is utilizing gamification to train potential editors while reinvigorating its veteran editors.
Watch the full interview below to learn about:
  • What inspired Jake to propose and build the gamification project?
  • How Jake convinced the board of directors to implement the project?
  • What game mechanics were utilized to impart core editorial principles?
  • What were the quantitative and qualitative feedback upon implementation of the project?
  • What is the future roadmap upon successful implementation?
Be sure to also catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution this Wednesday April 9th at 1 PM ET:



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Influent Turns Spatial Memorization into a Language Learning Game

Bianca Gelli36 mins

If you’ve ever attempted to learn a second language, you might have found yourself overwhelmed by this apparently daunting task, or even worse, got yourself disengaged because of the dryness of traditional textbooks and lecture formats they are conveyed in.

Don’t give up just yet! There are a couple of game-like methods out there for you to diverge from the traditional learning setting. This year during GDC week, Influent was released. Aimed to be a “Language Game Redefined”, the game enables players to have a self-directed learning experience, immersing them in a 3D house, fully furnished with a rich amount of everyday objects that can be interacted with in the chosen language.

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Google Maps Has a New Pokemon Catching Feature

Ivan Kuo13 mins

It’s no surprise that Google would create an amazing and elaborate April Fool’s joke that would seem so incredibly possible. What is this joke? Google created a game with Google Maps to catch Pokemon. It’s the stuff of every Poke-fanatic’s dream with the potential for a title of Pokemon Master, a fancy business card, and a job with Google.

The best part is: it may be only half a joke. An update for Google Maps has been released and will allow players to find Pokemon with an unlimited amount of Pokeballs while using Google Maps when they explore the terrain.

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Utilizing Octalysis to Boost Motivation with Yu-kai Chou

Heong Weng Mak01 mins
Last week, we featured gamification pioneer and partner of Enterprise Gamification Consultancy, Yu-kai Chou to talk about the various core layers of Octalysis Gamification framework and how it can be applied to real world scenarios.
Watch the full video below to learn about:
  • What is Octalysis Gamification framework and how it came about.
  • The significance of the learning order of the 8 core drivers.
  • Different cultural views on customization and ownership.
  • How context matters in design gamification.
  • Could Octalysis be a framework for human motivation.
Be sure to also catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution this Tuesday April 1st at 1 PM ET:



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Research: Can Gaming Influence Racial Bias?

Bianca Gelli49 mins

Two different experiments were conducted to find out whether white players assigned to play as black avatars made them more prone to develop racial bias against black people. Each study aimed approached this experiment from two angles, testing different types of game play and testing different degrees of immersion. The results were quite interesting…and probably what you’d expect.

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