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

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.

Actually, yes, we do need some stinkin' badges.

When new ideas, theories, tactics and practices are created, it’s not always clear at first the value or purpose or direction they may go. Often many people are thinking along the same lines, independently, and refining the ideas. At some point, these ideas begin to coalesce around an overriding theme and a name emerges so that everyone can begin to understand each other when speaking about a topic. How does an idea get a name? It’s a good question and I don’t know if there is one answer. Why is crowdsourcing called crowdsourcing? Jeff Howe’s Wired article from 2006 seems to have been the inflection point that really launched the concept into the current mainstream (though the concept itself has been around quite a while).

Today the marketing buzz that used to surround crowdsourcing now surrounds another idea, and it’s one that is having a struggle with nomenclature – gamification (or one of many other names). I’m not a fan of the term gamification because to me it says, “let’s take something plain and ordinary and slap some psychological ploys and cheap incentives on top to juice our numbers.”  Game mechanics, game theory, social rewards… all these seem better to me.

I just read an interesting article from Peter Friedman called “A new name for gamification” in which he argues for the term maintainable motivation. He explains that it effectively exposes and expresses the intention of the designer to address a need often felt by both the purveyor and consumer: persistent engagement.

I think that’s a pretty solid way of thinking about it. At the end of the post, there is a video featuring Gabe Zichermann (check out his book, Game-based Marketing)

I think this video, which is long but really engaging, shows the level of thinking that goes into this area. Now, that being said, Gabe seems pretty ok with the term gamification, so maybe I’m trying to make a distinction or argument where one doesn’t exist. I’d be interested in Gabe’s (and your) opinion on this. Is gamification a good term? Should it be called something else? Can it be called something else at this point?

If you’ve been following my blog for the last couple of years you know I’ve written a lot about crowdsourcing (Ed. Note – You can find all my crowdsourcing-related posts here). Even wrote a little ebook on the topic with the help of many friends. The same sorts of conversations and buzz I heard with crowdsourcing I’m now hearing with game mechanics, or ‘gamification’ as it is often called. A term greatly disliked by many people who take this stuff seriously. And that in part is the crux of this post. Terms quickly get thrown about (like ‘viral’) by people who aren’t really sure what they are speaking about.  I’ve already started writing on this a bit, and hope to continue to do so.  I’ll be looking to tap into a wide variety of practitioners and skeptics with the goal of providing an objective and balanced perspective on the subject. Here are two people that I recently had the chance to exchange correspondence with and I thought they both had worthwhile views on the issue. First, a brief note from Brian Solis, principal at Altimeter Group. Brian’s also a driving force behind the Pivot Conference taking place in New York this October (sign up here to attend). I asked Brian about the future of game mechanics and questioned if 2011 was the year this practice went from insider knowledge to over-exposed and misused (jumping the shark as it were):

Brian Solis: Before I can answer, I can’t believe that Happy Days culture is still alive. When will jumping the shark finally jump the shark? I believe that in social media as anything jumps the shark it means it’s starting to take a strong foothold within the mainstream. This is good because that means we, as everyday people, have a say in the direction of new media and how we discover, share and learn. Game theory and gamification hold promise in engagement, personalization, and rewards. It will make for better website experiences, for more enriching exchanges in social and mobile networks, and I believe it will also help reinvent our education system.

So, a very positive spin on things from Brian and I agree with him for the most part. I think there are some lessons from crowdsourcing that we can take though. Not every website or brand is ideal for game mechanics, and it’s important to understand the science as well as the art to getting it right. On that note, I spoke with Laurent Courtines who has worked with online communities for over ten years, first managing and establishing the Sportingnews.com fantasy sports community and for the last five years leading community and social initiatives at AOL’s Games.com. He is the  founder of the Games.com The Blog at http://blog.games.com and can be found musing on the Internet at http://laurent-courtines.com. He was kind enough to answer several of my questions and I thought his responses were worth sharing in full:

Rick Liebling: Two years ago Crowdsourcing was the buzz word every marketer was spouting, now it’s ‘gamification.’ What should marketers know before jumping into this area, whether it’s branded social games or social rewards in a community?

Laurent Courtines: I’ll sum it up in a list form:

1. It’s not easy.
Think it through. Always think to yourself,  will this be fun?  If it’s not fun to you,  it won’t be fun for your audience.

2. You can’t just slap badges on your content and expect people to become more engaged.
Affinity items and badges systems are ongoing.  Once your audience gets a taste for the rewards, they will want more.  Be prepared to support your campaign for a long time.

3. Study!
Play games,  think about what makes a game fun.  Go back to your childhood and think about games you played. What made Monopoly, Shoots and Ladders or Q-Bert fun? Make a list and find the fun.

4. Don’t over-complicate things.
You don’t have to have ALL the game mechanics all at once.  It could just be a leader board for your site calling out the most active participants, or a simple progression bar to show you how far you have to go to complete an order. (LinkedIn is a good example of how great a little progress bar can be. You always want to fill in your profile)
It’s little features that can help a lot!

5. Trust the experts.
As a marketer, trust the game designers and producers.  Usually, they are the real game lovers and understand the game audience much more than you do.  If you have an idea for a branded game, trust the game makers when they say no one wants to play a game with Clorox all over it.  Do simple things like sponsor the game to be ad free for a while (most online games have a pre-roll ad). Give something to the player that they can appreciate.

Overall, I think the game mechanics being added to non-game events are good. We just have to realize that there is work involved.  It’s not a magic bullet and has to have focus.

I think you’re going to hear and see a lot on this topic in the second half of this year. I’m looking forward to following the developments.