June 10, 2026
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gamification design

Decoding the Psychology of Video Gamers with Nick Yee

Heong Weng Mak12 mins

Last week, we featured Quantic Foundry co-founder and analytics lead, Nick Yee to talk about Quantic Foundry’s Gaming Motivation Model. Combining social science and data science, Nick’s team was able to decipher users gaming behaviors and motivations through the unique framework.

Watch the full interview below to learn about:

  • How Nick’s team designed and developed the gaming motivation model?
  • What was the experience like studying social science (i.e. conducting an academic survey) using social media?
  • What were the most surprising findings when studying the user’s age and gender on their gaming motivation?
  • Did the gaming motivation framework enabled Nick’s team to establish user persona’s of their survey participants?
  • What are the 2 schools of thought in explaining the relationship between data points?
  • How can the gamer motivation framework be applied in the real world, beyond the context of video games alone?

Bonus: Interested to find out about your gamer motivation profile? Try taking the survey here.

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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Getting2Alpha: Accelerate Product Design with Amy Jo Kim

Heong Weng Mak01 mins

Last time, we featured ShuffleBrain creative director and author, Amy Jo Kim to discuss about her upcoming new product design program, Getting2Alpha. By undergoing this step by step program, Amy explains how it can help accelerate early product design through expert coaching and super charged design toolkit. Registrations for Getting2Alpha are now open for only for this week.

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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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Gamification by Design 2: Get Early Access and Contribute

Gabe Zichermann04 mins

Four years ago, we launched Gamification by Design as the first practically-oriented “how-to” book for building gamified apps, sites and systems. In those four years, GbD has helped tens of thousands of people around the world create engagement with customers, employees and society. If you follow such things, the book has been sold out for the better part of two years and copies have sold on Amazon for hundreds of dollars. While that sounds nice, a robust resale market doesn’t benefit the author, those interested in getting started in gamification or long-term practitioners who need a current resource. To whit, we’ve learned so much more about engagement science and how to create behavior change in the years since – there’s just a lot more to say. So, I’m pleased to announce a completely revised and updated Gamification by Design 2.

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GSummit SF 2014 Videos Public Release

Heong Weng Mak01 mins

GSummit SF 2014 was a resounding success and it is thanks to our awesome community. As it is our mission here at Gamification Co to proliferate the latest and greatest knowledge about the gamification industry, we have begun releasing all of our videos from GSummit SF 2014.

We’ll be posting each of the new releases on our blog but if you want to get each of them immediately, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get each video as they come.

To kick off our video series, we have Brian Burke, Research Vice President at Gartner shares his thought why organizations need to re-evaluate how they engage and motivate their key communities and what lies ahead for the future of gamification.

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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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victor manrique

Victor Manrique on Teaching the World Gamification Design

Ivan Kuo01 mins

Victor Manrique is a prominent gamification community member, author of EpicWinBlog, and professor of Iversity’s Gamification Design MOOC (also free!) who joined our weekly Gamification Revolution webshow to talk about teaching gamification design to the masses. He is joined by Gabe Zichermann to talk about his experiences teaching and discussed:

  • Differences between game design and gamification
  • Philosophies behind teaching a gamification Design MOOC
  • Learning other disciplines to strengthen gamification
  • Balancing game design

And much more! Watch their full interview below to get all the talking and be sure to join us this Thursday for our next episode featuring Sascha Goto of McKinsey to discuss his work in bringing gamification into IT Management. Click through to get show reminders!

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will wright gsummit

Will Wright on Gamifying the World: From SimCity to the Future

Ivan Kuo22 mins

One of the most phenomenal experiences of GSummit SF 2013 happened with Will Wright’s keynote talk. As the creator of SimCity and countless other games and simulations, Wright’s talk goes deeply into games’ and their effect on us as humans in society and what that means for gamification in the grand scheme of things.

He touches on the lessons can we take from games — and decades of experience designing for fun — to create engagement for large audiences with complex models and issues? How can we make simple everyday interactions more compelling and use them as teachable moments to energize society? Can everything really be fun — and what are the secrets for balancing detail and simplicity? Check out Will Wright’s full talk as he re-imagines how the world becomes a more fun and engaging place, sharing his vision for the future and powerful design insight.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get our latest gamification videos and talks. You can also download a copy of this presentation by downloading it here.

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gsummit global

Achieving Customer Engagement with Gamification – GSummit Global Webinar

Ivan Kuo31 mins

As a part of our ongoing GSummit Global event, we’ve been having webinars with our esteemed speakers about gamification and engagement! A few weeks ago we were joined by Livecube co-founder, Aaron Price, Air Canada’s Director of Loyalty, Ian di Tulio, and United Capital’s Vice President of Strategy, Gail Graham to have a panel discussion about their thoughts on designing an effective gamification system.

We also have two upcoming webinars with our speakers on November 18 at 1 PM ET and December 3 at 10 PM ET – please visit gsummitWEB.livecube.com and check it out!

It’s a full-length video, so grab a snack and watch the full 1 hour discussion below:

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john hendricks boombox

Boombox’s Approach on Designing Gamification Campaigns at an Agency

Ivan Kuo11 mins

We first heard about digital agency Boombox when we attended Adweek’s Science of Gamification panel to hear what prominent agencies had to say on the efficacy of gamification. We decided to invite Boombox CEO John Hendricks to come back on our own show to circle back on some of his ideas and to tell us about how he approaches gamification design for his agency. This is a great episode for anyone looking to offer gamification consulting and design services at their own company.

Check out the full video below and  Be sure to catch our next episode on Thursday, November 14 at 1PM ET/1800 GMT, where we will feature Livecube Co-Founder Aaron Price as our next guest.



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jesse schell at gsummit

Jesse Schell: Games Will Lead the Future of Engagement with Pleasure

Ivan Kuo22 mins

In the 21st century, it turns out that the principles for designing videogames have become the principles for designing everything. In this talk, Jesse explains why “gamification” is only the tip of a much larger iceberg that is influencing all of society, and he will go into some detail about best practices for using pleasure to improve the motivational design of a wide variety of experiences.

Key Takeaways:

  • Gamification” is about the creation of pleasurable experiences for the purposes of improved motivational design.
  • Pleasure is powerful, complicated, and contextual.
  • Five important keys to improving motivational design are appeal, engagement, effortlessness, uncheatability, and disembarrassmentation.

Watch GSummit SF 2013 Keynote speaker Jesse Schell in his full talk below. Be sure to also subscribe to our YouTube channel to get the latest videos from GSummit SF 2013 as they’re released. You can also download a copy of this presentation by downloading it here.

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yu-kai chou gamification revolution

Yu-Kai Chou on Octalysis and Gamification Design Principles

Ivan Kuo11 mins

The Gamification Revolution is the only live gamification webcast featuring Gabe Zichermann and fellow gamification experts every week. Be sure to catch our next episode on Thursday, October 17 at 1PM ET/1800 GMT, where we will feature GSummit Global speaker and Nissan’s Creative Director of GT Academy, Karl Dunn

Remember you can participate in the show if you sign-in and RSVP! Signing in will allow you to receive show reminders, ask questions, and even join Gabe and our guest for a live question.

In last week’s show we had prominent gamification community figure, Yu-Kai Chou to join us on our show. They spoke about Yu-Kai’s Octalysis gamification framework, long-term effects of motivation with white hat vs black hat gamification, and a discussion into why “serious games suck”.

Watch the full interview below:



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levelup

Startup Gamification: What’s in an MVP?

Gabe Zichermann311 mins

The one question I get asked over and over again by startups is: at what point should I include gamification? My answer has evolved significantly over the past four years.

Every year, I teach hundreds of people how to use gamification to raise their customer and employee engagement through my live, hands-on workshop series. Hundreds more also earn their design certification through the Engagement Alliance’s online course program. In the years since I’ve been teaching gamified design, I’ve found that about 30% of my students are startup founders, product managers and UX designers trying to figure out how to apply powerful game mechanics to their breakthrough ideas. I also co-direct the Founder Institute startup accelerator in NYC where 80 aspiring entrepreneurs work with me on getting launched and gamifying each year.

What I’ve learned from all these interactions is that there isn’t a cookie cutter solution that would work for every new project. However, there is a pattern of best practice that has emerged that – when combined with a good gamification design education – can produce superior results. I’ve taken to calling it the 3Ps: Progress, Points, and Prompts.

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zombie technology

The Zombie Technology Elimination Project: Gamifying The Destruction of Old Software

Mike Finney49 mins

Zombie Technologies are real. If you’re a software developer, a Zombie Technology (ZT) is that old technology you used long ago to create yesterday’s awesome solutions. Yesterday’s glory is a memory, yet the product lives on and it’s using a ZT.

I am leading an internal employee engagement enhancement project to make the conversion of old zombie technologies to new technologies more fun and more likely! Normally the conversion process is inherently behind the scenes and painful. In Mary Poppins style, a spoonful of zombies helps the work go down.

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jon radoff on the gamification revolution

Applying Game-Design Principles to Gamification with Jon Radoff

Ivan Kuo02 mins

The Gamification Revolution is the only live gamification webcast featuring Gabe Zichermann and fellow gamification experts every week. Today we’ll be looking at last week’s guest: Karl Kapp, Professor/Consultant at Bloomsburg University and Gamified Learning Veteran.

Be sure to catch our next episode this Thursday, September 5th at 1PM ET/1800 GMT, where we will feature Jeff Atwood, the esteemed man behind Coding Horror and co-founder of StackOverflow. Remember you can participate in the show if you sign-in and RSVP! Signing in will allow you to receive show reminders, ask questions, and even join Gabe and our guest for a live question.

Regardless of where you might stand on the gamification versus game-design debate, each side has many lessons to offer to the other when you consider differences in their design. This week we brought on Jon Radoff, CEO of DisruptorBeam, to give us his input on various facets of gamification design as a game-designer. We take deep looks into story narratives, feedback loop lengths, and many other game design theories as it relates to gamification.

Catch the full video below:



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