The 12 smartest presentations on Applied Game Design.
Imagine if there were an ethical way to wholesomely influence, elevate, engage, motivate and direct the actions of people towards achieving progress toward a particular goal. Imagine if we could make work work.
We can. It’s called game design. And it’s been around for a long time.
All mammals have a natural disposition to play – it’s a survival mechanism. Play is where we make mistakes and learn. It is, as Einstein describes it, “the highest form of research.” “Fun” is often our reward for play – a sensation the brain produces when it recognises that we have effectively invested in our own learning and development (read: survival skills). Play can be spontaneous and unstructured, or it can form (or emerge) from a well designed game (or experience).
Games share an interesting relationship to play. Games are essentially goal-driven, challenge-intensive and feedback-rich environments that can harness and direct our natural disposition to play. However, just because we make something work more like a game doesn’t mean there’ll automatically be play. But oh boy, when we get it right – when we can craft a stirring narrative (goal), design the parameters that focus our efforts (rules) and employ powerful ways to track meaningful progress (feedback) – we can unlock massive motivation, productivity and innovation.
The immense power of applied gameful design is positively darn exciting. Oh, the things we can do! Solve deep social issues, cure AIDS, save lives (<– do check out that link, it's for The Fun Theory's Speed Camera Lottery) and drive progress… game design can be applied to make (everything) work better.
But most people don’t see this, and instead relegate games to the realm of juvenile escapist entertainment (despite the fact that gamers are, on average, 35 years old). They prematurely dismiss them, working from outdated and grossly misinformed stigmas. Some will even go as far as to vehemently eschew games.
And in so doing, they short change themselves from a whole world of possibility and place their future selves at a major disadvantage.
“Bah!” I say. “Bah!”
As part of my epic quest to get everyone playing a better game, I’ve collected 12 of the best videos on game design from the interwebs. Now, no doubt you’ve seen me talk on the topic (at least, a brief snippet of me talking on it – it’s more of an entrée): –
But there are plenty more who think like this – allow me to introduce you to some of the most inspiring thought leaders in this space.
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1. First up must be Dr Jane McGonigal and her brilliant TED presentation on why gaming can make a better world.
Jane is a bit of a hero in my world. If you’re interested, Jane has some amazing side projects, including Superbetter – a game designed around achieving health recovery goals. She also champions Gameful – a secret headquarters for game changers to plot devious plans to make the world work better (like games that facilitate Random Acts of Kindness).
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2. Next up is Aaron Dignan, author of Game Frame. I like the cut of this man’s jib, and the fact that he emphasises the core behavioural side of games, focussing on how experiences are structured. (And as an aside, his characterisation of some of the gamification types as “moustache twirlers” is amusingly apt. You know my stance on gamification.)
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3. My little gamification grumble provides a perfect segue to Sebastian Deterding, a self-confessed grumpy German and a thoroughly constructive critic of gamification and gameful design. Sebastian consistently delivers deep, rigorous insights into the nature of games and play. He almost plays the role of an inquisitor, dismantling rogue theories when marketers get carried away, and bringing us back to our grounded, rational understanding of motivational design. At times he can be (professionally) brutal – but this only serves to help mature the evolution of applied gameful design with rigour.
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4. If Sebastian’s presentation was a bit heavy, you may enjoy Dan Pink’s brilliantly delivered presentation on the surprising truth about what motivates us. While not talking about game design per se, the insights he shares on intrinsically-driven motivation and extrinsically-driven motivation is important, highlighting why we need to be very considered in how we attempt to motivate people to achieve particular things.
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5. Taking things into a deeper and more academic level, no good game designer could go by without a generous nod to the stellar work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and his work on the pyschology of optimal experience. All game designers aspire to create opportunities for optimal experience – a state Mihaly dubs as “flow”.
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6. And while we’re talking psychology, let’s unpack 7 ways games reward the brain – a presentation by author and gamer Dr Tom Chatfield.
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7. And here’s a video for the teachers, parents and politicians who have no idea as to the magic and learning that can happen within game worlds. Will Wright – the same game designer who created Sim City, and who is famous for crafting progressive, open, non-linear and non-violent game environments – shares how he makes toys that make worlds.
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8. At this point, you can probably understand why David Perry asks the question: Are games better than life?
The answer is, of course, no video games probably aren't better than real life. But real life could be a whole heap better if we craft our experiences using good game design.
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9. And as we’ll see, Jesse Schell playfully takes this notion to the extreme, painting an exciting yet somewhat scary image of what the future could be when games invade real life.
(Though I’d like to add all life is already an infinite game consisting of many finite games. What Jesse is actually proposing is not so much about games invading life, but what life would be like if we had easy means of providing rapid game-like feedback in all life domains).
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10. Seth Priebatsch has already begun a quest in this direction, building what he calls a game layer on top of the world.
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11. But we could easily get carried away here. Game design has very real application in the present. In this video, Dave Gray shows us how gamestorming (the art of using game design to accelerate creative innovation) can be used to solve problems and facilitate breakthrough thinking.
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12. And all of this is, really, a tool to make things work better. And by taking inspiration from game design, we can craft environments that enable and empower – like John Hunter’s World Peace Game.
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And there you have it – 12 of the smartest presentations on the web from some of the predominant thinkers in this space. I don't necessarily agree with all aspects of each presenters' content, and you’ll see that we all approach and use game design in different ways – but the unifying context is the same: taking what works in good games and applying it to make things work better in the real world.
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UPDATE! Thanks to the brilliant Kristian Still, of www.kristianstill.co.uk, for pointing out a superb video by Penny Arcade. Alas, I cannot embed it here, but do check it out if you'd like to learn about Gamifying Education.
That makes thirteen! Can you think of any other videos that are missing? Let me know.
You know my bias – let's go beyond the external gamification fruits, and work on the internal gameful roots.
Jason Fox
Reader Comments (4)
I think your missing one of my favourites, certainly its entertaining.
Thanks for sharing your collection.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jdG2LHair0
Sadly, there have been some crazy issues going on between the creative people and the hosts, so I have had some issues tracking it down, but here is one of the series.
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamification
Finally, found it.
How many times can one person get it nearly right
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/gamifying-education
Mate that's brilliant! Thanks for sharing – I've updated the original post to include this one. Love it. Major hat tips in your direction.