Meaningful Play: Getting Gamification Right

I'd argue that all 'games' are about manipulating attention - its just a question of what means they use to do so. Game design is really a sort of meta-game about designing systems that effect the behavior of players. Consider: Game Mechanics and Mechanism Design ( link ) I'm fully with you on the notion that we shouldn't be manipulating players life like farmville. Johnathan blow put on a great talk about games and the human condition where he covers this aspect quite scathingly: link To completely ignore this aspect is to develop a game with no real-stickyness factor. Money aside, don't you want a game that people enjoy playing? The entire point of an MMO is to have a large reoccurring user-base. There is an art to it, and getting it right can make really powerful games: ▶ this video For board games like chess, much of the appeal for the average player is that you get to sit down with a friend and compete, and in doing so the 'intellectual nature' of the game ends up pulling them in for the long term. Perhaps the answer to the meta-game of stickiness is to create a community around the game in a similar vein to the one from the ants ai challenge's forums. Were I to work on this project, I'd make a strong push toward git-like integration ala the work done behind KhanAcademy's live editor like discussed in this talk: link . - being able to share code behaviors with your team-mates (you are going to implement a guilds system, no?) and encourage discussions about behaviors at

The concept is very interesting.. But this is a bad introduction =( Saw a presentation a while ago that hooked me, can't watch it now, but think it was this one: ▶ this video link

There is so much truth packed into that 36 mins -- so many juxtapositions -- it would take several hours to reference them all. For starters, see Rich Hickey's talk on "Hammock-Driven Development" for more on the "background mind" ( link ), and then see how what Dan Pink is saying about motivation ( link ) and what Sebastian Deterding is saying about gamification ( ▶ this video ) all connect into what Cleese is saying about creativity.