For the second week of the Y&R Kickstarter program I’ve chosen to back The Written World. This project is described as a multiplayer storytelling game which lives on the Internet. 

You had me at storytelling game. I’m a big believer in both of those concepts, so when they are combined I’m always intrigued. The Written World is the brainchild of Simon Fox of playlab London, Toby Green, Anna Fogg and Shelly Lozdon. The game itself is too textured and detailed for me to explain here, so I encourage you to read the Kickstarter page, but the underlying concept delivers an innovative approach to narrative and gameplay. Here’s the video:

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There’s clearly been a tremendous amount of thought put into this, and that’s one of the key lessons of game design that I’ve learned. The pre-production time is enormous, both on the creative side and in terms of game mechanics. The Written World creators appear to be expert world builders. Take a look at the design of the game characters:

The Written World Game Character Design

The gameplay is designed around collaborative writing by both “the narrotor” and “the protagonist.” See the run of the gameplay here. Ultimately, nothing in this project feels like a rehash to me, and that’s the sort of project I’m looking to support. This one still needs a bit of your help, so please consider backing this one.

You can also read this interview of Simon Fox by Emily Short for more on the game, as well as these other posts:

The Huffington Post: http://huff.to/rTxstX

The Atlantic:http://bit.ly/vs41oa

Hero by Clicking: http://bit.ly/uPe8nv

So it Goes: http://bit.ly/s9a9uW

Otterjotter: http://bit.ly/vCcJI6

Heading towards an Age of Onlinetenment

Last week Jinal Shah, a Digital Strategist at JWT, shared an essay with her friends titled, 2012: A Year of Digital Behavioral Shifts. It’s a great piece and Jinal puts together a strong case for changing the way we operate online, with a renewed focus on thinking, rather than just sharing, liking and retweeting. She believes this new era is upon us, calling it the age of enlightenment in our digital history. This transformation will be led by:

[...] thinkers, artists and storytellers not programmers and geeks. These are people driven by a vision that’s a bit more individualistic, centers more around exploring the tapestry of human opinions, intimacy and feelings instead of connecting the world into one large immutable being.

And what will this lead to? According to Jinal: a mindful web… systems that:

1. Are designed for constructive debate and dialogue by exposing us to different points of views
2. Are designed for quality and intimacy – not quantity. Where there is less immediate gratification.

It’s a compelling vision and one I wholeheartedly support. But it’s also a big task. The simple truth is that the vast, vast majority of people aren’t interested in changing their behavior. They enjoy the relatively simple gamification elements of Foursqaure and the ability to express their opinions view a digital ‘thumbs up.’  Even when viewed at the micro level, exploring just the world of marketers that both Jinal and I are part of, it’s evident that not everyone is interested in exploring the new possibilities.

And yet, I’m literally inundated by the highly intelligent thinking of people in our industry who are committed to building something better, to thinking deeper and exploring ideas that are challenging. From Tim Stock to Justin Briggs to countless others the issue is how do we build the type of web Jinal is talking about that will not only connect all these great people and ideas, but allow them to be connected in a meaningful way?  How does an idea I write about, say, The Cultural Singularity Paradox connect or build upon an idea like Interdependence, Chomsky and the crowbar by Eaon Pritchard, a winner of Neil Perkin’s Post of the Month Hall of Fame?

I think we still need the ”programmers and tinkerers and computer scientists,” the builders of the web’s Industrial Age according to Shah. We need them to continue to build, but this time to build a web that intelligently connects and combines the work of those that will create the Age of “Onlinetenment” (my term, not Shah’s).

In her book, Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal relates the story of Halo 3 and the collaborative effort to record 10 billion kills by game players. How can the marketing industry create that sort of collaborative effort?  On the subject of games, a subject I’m passionate about, Shah says, “Gaming will have a larger role to play in the age of enlightenment, but perhaps not so overt. It’s job will and should become about elevating the meaning and importance associated with a like, number of friends and followers etc.”

And while that’s important, I think gaming can play a bigger, more important role in a different way. Games can solve bigger problems than improving the meaning of the quantitative issues Shah mentions. Games can be used to rally people (marketers?) to work for a common cause, to unite for a single purpose greater than themselves. That’s something I think we could use. Rather than everyone writing and thinking in isolation, we need to figure out how to write and think together. When that happens maybe we will enter the Age of Onlinetenment.

For me, 2011 was the year I discovered games. Not in the football, baseball, basketball sense, or the Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Dungeons & Dragons sense. No, games in the marketing sense. While Oxford may have chosen “squeezed middle” as the Word (words?) or the Year, for me it was “Gamification.” I’m not particularly a fan of the word, but it was the one that seemed to stick. And while it may seem trivial to argue semantics – game theory, gamification, game mechanics – it actually is important to try an understand what these terms really mean. We’ve seen what happens when the marketing industry grabs an idea and runs with it, we end up with people still talking about “viral” videos more than two years after the word was ‘debunked.’

I’m by no means an expert in this territory, but I did have a decent amount of exposure to the ideas and people who are leading this industry forward, and it is indeed an industry.  From working with Badgeville to speaking on a Gamification panel at Social Media World Forum, I was able to really begin to understand the science and art of games and develop an appreciation for how challenging it is.

If you work in marketing communications it’s likely you’re going to hear a client, a vendor or a colleague mention games and one, or several, related terms. The first step to understanding this area is understanding some of the fundamental terminology. So, with that in mind I wanted to give a brief primer on three terms that are often used interchangeably or incorrectly: Game Design, Game Mechanics and Gamification.

Game Design

Let’s start with this as it is the most important, most complex and least used of the terms.  Game design encompasses all aspects of creating a game.  It is the skeletal framework from which everything hangs. People tend to throw around the word gamification to mean creating the game, but that’s incorrect. Here’s the definition from Wikipedia: Game design, a subset of game development, is the process of designing the content and rules of a game in the pre-production stage and design of gameplay, environment, storyline, and characters during production stage. The term is also used to describe both the game design embodied in a game as well as documentation that describes such a design. Game design requires artistic and technical competence as well as writing skills.

Game Mechanics

Game mechanics refers to how the game works. It’s about the interplay between the game and the player. What happens when a player takes an action? What does a player see or hear?  Again, from Wikipedia: Game mechanics are constructs of rules intended to produce an enjoyable game or gameplay. All games use mechanics; however, theories and styles differ as to their ultimate importance to the game. In general, the process and study of game design are efforts to come up with game mechanics that allow for people playing a game to have a fun and engaging experience.

Gamification

In essence, gamification is the act of adding game elements to something that doesn’t inherently have them. It’s probably the most misused term, thrown around as a shorthand for Game Mechanics or Game Design. The fundamental misunderstanding is that you can just add a points system, or award badges, and you’ve successfully added gamification to your site/product/service. Here’s the Wikipedia definition: Gamification is the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. Typically gamification applies to non-game applications and processes (also known as “funware“), in order to encourage people to adopt them. Gamification works by making technology more engaging, by encouraging users to engage in desired behaviors, by showing a path to mastery and autonomy, and by taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming. The technique can encourage people to perform chores that they ordinarily consider boring, such as completing surveys, shopping, filling out tax forms, or reading web sites. Available data from gamified websites, applications, and processes indicate potential improvements in areas like user engagement, ROI, data quality, timeliness, or learning.

Think of the relative importance of these three ideas with this graphic:

Understand the Importance of Game Design

I think we’re going to see a lot of companies try to tack on gamification elements this year without truly understanding its role. Game Design is the core issue. That takes a lot of time and consideration and without it, you’re going to find yourself struggling to understand why people tired of your ‘game’ after one of two sessions.

Here’s three books I’d recommend if you want to learn more about this (and trust me, you do):

The Art of Game Design, A Book of Lenses, by Jesse Schell

Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal

Game Frame, by Aaron Dignan

© 2010 The Strong®

This week Millward Brown and Dynamic Logic (Disclosure: Both agencies are part of WPP, as is my employer, Y&R) released a report called, 12 for 2012: Top 12 Digital Predictions for 2012. Usually I find these sorts of predictions reports fairly weak, but this one struck me as being pretty spot on. In some cases they provided new insight into ideas I was already familiar with, in other they presented ideas that were new to me. Either way, it’s worth your time to check out. Between now and Christmas I’ll give my thoughts on each of the Predictions presented in the report, starting right here with #1: Gamification Unlocked: Big Brands become even more playful.

Readers of my blog know that I’ve been on Gamification this year, writing a number of posts on the subject. Next year will be an interesting year for this idea and the industry it has spawned. You’re going to see smart, compelling offerings from companies like Badgeville and Scvngr and brands are going to be moving from mere badging or awarding points to more integrated, social programs with real business driving elements. Gamification will no longer be a cute add-on for brands, but rather an integral part of their marketing, and in some cases internal communications, efforts.

The Millward Brown – Dynamic Logic report talks smartly about brands needing to figure out how to make game mechanics more integrated not just with brands, but also with a consumer’s life. It’s critical that brands view game mechanics through that lens. If the incentives and rewards don’t answer the needs and desires of the consumer, but instead only work to benefit the brand, then the initiatives will fail.

Here’s a TED talk from Seth Priebatsch on game mechanics that’s well worth watching:

I was fortunate to meet with Seth yesterday as he gave me a peek into what he’s building at the above mentioned Scvngr. Expect to hear a lot more from Seth, Jesse Schell and Gabe Zichermann in 2012.

For additional thoughts on this subject, check out PSFK’s The Future of Gaming report.

I’ll be speaking at Social Media World Forum today as part of a panel entitled, Incorporating ‘gamification’ into your social marketing campaign and long term loyalty strategy. I’ll be joined by Omar Divina, Director of Sales,Badgeville; Nancy Friedman,  Owner, KidzVuz.com; Rebecca Levey, Owner,KidzVuz.com; and, Esteban Contreras, Social Media Manager, Samsung.

It should be a lively discussion, in this the “Year of Gamification.” I’m a believer in game mechanics, which I define as the integration of game elements into a system, whereas I’m a little leery of gamification, which to me is the act of merely layering game elements on top of an existing system.  I see a lot of social platforms, tools and services which fall into the latter category.

I’m looking forward to hearing what the other panelists have to say as they are all smart folks with some real experience in this area. I’m interested in speaking about how social networks can better use game mechanics for the benefit of community members and the network itself.  I’ll look to post an update later in the day after the event as well.

UPDATE: Great conversation with some really smart panelists. It was good to hear how much thought everyone was putting into their programs and the realization that gamification is easy to do badly. You can really see that a change is coming and future activations will be more nuanced and immersive.  I have high hopes for what gamification can become and will continue to report on what I see happening.

Two topics I’ve written about recently, gamification, and the need to focus on creating (or leveraging) emotion, got me thinking.  How can these two concepts be used in concert?  Is there a way to combine elements of the former with the latter? Before I go down this road, a brief disclaimer: I’m not a fan of the term ‘gamification‘ (and I’m not alone). However, for the purposes of this post I’ll use it just to keep things simple.

If the point of gamification (good gamification) is to drive certain behaviours or maintain motivations then the important question becomes what behaviors or motivations are we trying to drive and maintain?  Right now I think a lot of gamification is centered around button clicking.  Keep clicking to earn points, win badges or gain levels. On many levels this works.  As a marketer and someone who is interested in and aware of gamification it works on me. Check out my badge haul on Osnapz. But as the practice of gamification matures, badge fatigue is sure to set in.  How many (virtual, mostly worthless) stickers, pins and badges can one person earn before they say, “Aw, to hell with it.”? I feel like I’m getting very close to reaching that threshold.

That brings me to the second part of the puzzle – emotion. How can marketers tap into emotion as a way to bring stronger ties to gamification?  How can we create a sub-genre called emofication?*

If I was building a new social platform/tool/service the first thing I would do is allow users to login via Facebook connect. With access to that incredibly rich treasure trove of information I’d look to create rewards that have personal meaning for the user. Photos, jobs, schools, friends, interests (sports, movies, books, music…), birthdays – all of these could be used within a game model that would have a unique and personal connection for the user. Instead of a random music badge with an icon of a music note or instrument, what if the badge was a picture of your favorite band?  Sites often ask you to share with friends – why couldn’t that badge have a picture of one of your friends on it? Two small, simple ideas, but you see where I’m heading.  Rather than get the exact same badge as 10,000 other people, make them (semi-)customized.

I’ve just scratched the surface here, but I think it’s a concept worth exploring further. Maybe someone already has. If so, please let me know in the comments below.

*Yes, I’m sickened by that portmanteau as well. Let’s just call it a placeholder name for the concept and move on, ok?