Transformation of the game worlds

High technology gave us not only smartphones, tablets, Wi-Fi, YouTube and tunnel syndrome. They are gradually changing our way of life, providing access to all sorts of knowledge and current utilitarian information almost on the go. We can afford not to remember many things, the knowledge of which was previously considered, if not obligatory, then at least befitting every normal person. Why memorize, when our services search engines, filled to the eyeballs with answers to all questions. What is worth only the proliferation of cell phones, dramatically changed our ideas about communication as such. True, for the same reason, cellular devices have become hellish devices, because of which we have to be in touch all the time ...

With the development of computers and gadgets, the quantity and quality of entertainment that they provide us is growing. Of course, one of the most popular forms of entertainment are all kinds of games. The very first computer games appeared in the 50s of the 20th century, soon after the invention of computers as such. What to do, it is human nature to play. This is one of the main ways of obtaining social skills and knowledge of the world, which we use in childhood. And the love of games, most people sneak through the years, often hiding under the various masks of "adult" lives. Engry Byrds, Solitaire, Farm, Contra, Sims, Ruler, Wow - I'm sure each of us will find something of the above to be at least very familiar, if not very close. And how many already forgotten old games agitated our mind and occupied our time and thoughts in childhood?
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The modern generation of 30-year-olds in their young years was still quite actively playing the traditional "analog" games, but with the proliferation of computers and game consoles, they were actively involved in electronic games. What can we say about the 20-year-old generation, whose childhood was at the end of the nineties-the beginning of zero, when the availability, range and quality of games grew immeasurably. And we still play, despite the presence of our own children, employment at work and the fact that, it seems, adults and accomplished people are fond of “toys” not at all in status.

Many of us subconsciously perceive games not as a useless pastime, but as an integral part of our life. We play, and are not going to give up on it. And no matter what the advocates of a "serious attitude to life" claim, games can really be effectively used not only as a means of entertainment, stress relief and time killing, but also as a tool that improves the efficiency and quality of various kinds of "serious" activity. It is estimated that we spend 3 billion people / hours per week on computer and video games . As the saying goes, "your energy would be good for good."



The one who owns the minds of 20-30-year-olds, owns the country. And such a stratum of people, in any state being the bulk of workers, employees, specialists, has a significant impact on all sorts of processes taking place in society. Therefore, it is not surprising that, in general, the attitude of these people towards games began to influence such fundamental and serious areas of human activity as business, education, and even the army.

The process of introducing game principles into the education of children, students and soldiers, into marketing and advertising, into the performance by employees of their official duties, is called “ gamification ” (or “ gaming ”). The essence of gamification is that the involvement of people in solving various tasks occurs in a playful way: setting goals, encouraging achievements, visualizing processes use the principles, mechanics and dynamics of games. And today we would like to tell you a little about gamification trends and new areas where Her Majesty the Game penetrates.

Education

Perhaps, this area is not only the most loyal to gamification, but, perhaps, even needs it in part. Moreover, education can be considered a pioneer of gamification, teachers started using games as a means of learning for a long time, however, almost exclusively with children of lower grades. The fact is that with the traditional method of teaching, in which the assessment of achievements is based on a point system, students do not seek to gain knowledge and self-improvement. Nothing motivates them to this. The overwhelming majority seeks only not to be punished, that is, not to receive bad or too bad marks. In other words, the average student comprehends science only at the level at which the marks given do not create problems with parents and teachers. In the case of giving the learning process a form of the game, a number of goals are achieved:

• No boredom . The process itself is more interesting and exciting compared to the dull sitting in the classroom and the silent listening of teachers. The game helps to get rid of one of the main negative factors - the dullness of the learning process.
• Without fear . Game mechanisms usually do not imply punishment in case of failure (similar to a bad evaluation). It helps to get rid of the fear of doing something wrong when trying to solve the problem.
• Motivation for self-improvement . The student is not afraid to try various solutions, because they do not punish failures, they just do not award them: for example, no prize points are given, or any in-game items. As a result of the lack of fear of punishment and, as a result, of the fear of experimenting, the learner is motivated to learn the necessary skills as soon as possible or to study more thoroughly the theoretical material necessary to solve the problem. However, in order to use the mechanism of self-improvement, it is necessary to construct a process so that the learner can learn from his mistakes.
• Visibility progress . Usually in games we can at any time find out how much we need to gain “experience” or resources to reach the next level, unlock some skills, weapons, and so on. People are arranged in such a way that it is important to see the goal of our efforts. This psychologically significantly facilitates the process of achieving our goals. Therefore, a clear indication of the current position on the way to the implementation of the tasks laid out in the training game allows you to save the motivation of the “player”.

As an example of modern educational games, one can cite products of the company Persuasive Games . But the "ordinary" single player games, in addition to the factors described above, do not use the following social mechanisms of motivation:

• Competitive spirit . The desire to be better than others is inherent in each person to one degree or another. However, in order to earn a competitive mechanism, it is necessary from the very beginning to place all students in the same conditions. For example, every quarter or semester begins with the fact that all points and achievements scored by students are reset. That is, each new stage in training must begin with a “zero” mark.
• Collaboration . The process can be structured in such a way that students need to combine their efforts to solve some of the tasks. This does not mean, for example, that everyone must learn different paragraphs. Collaboration is needed only within the game, say, combining the resources received by each student for completing individual tasks.

A vivid example of a gaming system, in which all the above mechanisms are involved, are widespread MMORPGs. Traditionally, unsuccessful or inept player actions in them lead only to a return to one of the points of rebirth. On the contrary, success brings all sorts of "nishtyaki" in the form of various resources and items that expand the capabilities of the game character, "living" in a different world, so very different from our reality with you. All sorts of leaderboards clearly demonstrate the successes of others and encourage "to catch up and overtake America ."

The development of the Internet and the computerization of society have given new impetus to the development of remote education. Today there are more and more projects in which game elements are used to varying degrees. For example, Codeacademy and Code School projects from the front page in a friendly game form invites the visitor to join programming. SpongeLab has created a series of browser games in which anyone can acquire basic knowledge of human anatomy, botany, genetics and other areas of biology. The FoldIt project sets scientific tasks for the player in the form of peculiar puzzles to be collected.

Another approach is demonstrated by the Khan Academy project: the game principle is not embedded in the learning process itself, but in a system of rewards, ratings and statistics. That is, the very presentation of the material and the logic of building the site demonstrate a relaxed, non-academic approach to learning. So far, the site has only a section devoted to mathematics, but the creators promise to pay attention to other sciences.

Business

One of the main directions of gamification in business is the formation and preservation of motivation among employees, their involvement in work. According to American studies, over 70% of employees are not emotionally connected with their job duties. Moreover, about a third of people from this number are experiencing obviously negative emotions from their work. It is obvious that such a detachment significantly reduces labor productivity and, often, is one of the main causes of prolonged background stress. And this, in turn, is fraught with health problems and in various aspects of personal life.



Today, business is trying to use gamification in various fields. For example, attracting staff through games hosted on social networks or on the websites of the companies themselves, gamification of the program training and career development within the company. However, the most important area of ​​gamification in business is employee motivation. The first and simplest level is the creation of a reward system in the form of various awards: badges, stickers, the Red Banner for all sorts of achievements: more calls to customers, documents prepared faster, fewer errors in the code, and the like. However, by itself, such a system can not motivate if the awards are not supported by material incentives: cash bonuses, gifts, sugar, tasty free food, time off, and other pleasant things for employees. After all, we must not forget that people come to work first of all for the sake of money, not games.

Further introduction of gamification to a business can be an internal social network of the company that makes extensive use of gaming principles . Such a network can not be developed from scratch, but created on the basis of a ready platform .

An even deeper level of gamification is the creation of a computer game in which various business processes and the organization of the company itself are modeled. Actually, this is a role-playing multiplayer game. All the mechanics, the registration system of achievements, motivation and development of the "characters" in this game are devoted to this particular company and are inextricably linked with the performance of real duties by employees. A kind of production Sims. Such developments allow in an easy and relaxed manner:

• To visualize all kinds of business relationships within the company, giving a certain general picture of the organization of the whole organization,
• To visually show each employee the range of his duties, current tasks and the degree of their fulfillment,
• To illustrate such a jaded stamp, like "team",
• Stimulate the activity of employees in achieving the goals set in the game,
• Develop and strengthen horizontal communication within the company.

One of the ways to increase employee loyalty is the introduction of gamified programs of care for the health of employees, which encourage sports, proper nutrition and a generally healthy lifestyle.

Companies that have implemented gaming solutions have noted an increase in staff loyalty, a reduction in staff turnover, facilitating and accelerating the process of training new employees, and improving the psychological climate within the team.

At the same time, it was noted that the age of employees is important: for those who are over forty, the gamification of work processes is mostly irritation and rejection. Therefore, when deciding on the introduction of business gamification, it is always necessary to leave employees with the option to choose so that those who wish can work in the traditional way. On the contrary, 20-30-year-old employees, accustomed to game principles, are much more favorable to such experiments. And the younger, the more important the following motivators acquire:

• Positive feedback on the actions in the game
• Public acceptance
• Status in the group
• Competition with colleagues
• General interest "plot"

Advertising and marketing

Today, the most common types of gamification for attracting and retaining an audience include:

• the creation of small games in which the main object is specific goods and services, or promo games created on the order of any company. This phenomenon has received the name of overlay . Not all experts would agree that overheating can be attributed to gamification, because, in this case, the game is the final product, and is not part of some non-gaming process.
• distribution of various bonuses, badges, titles and privileges as a reward for being active in the use of advertised and promoted goods and services. One of the clearest examples is the company Foursquare . The idea of ​​the eponymous program for mobile phones and tablets is that users mark where they are at the moment (country, city, bar, restaurant, office, park, etc.), and this information is communicated to their friends. However, the main attractiveness of the service lies in the large number of various badges and titles. Thus, authors encourage users not to forget about their program and use it more often, getting new badges and points. In addition, Foursquare works with various companies that provide additional bonuses and discounts to users of this service.

Also a well-known example of gamification is the business model of Mnogo.ru company: by purchasing goods and services from the companies participating in this program, customers receive bonuses that they can later exchange for various gifts.

By the way, since you are reading this text, then you know a certain system in the form of karma and rating , designed to motivate users to create interesting content and is a tool for self-regulation of the community.

The original example of the use of game mechanics is the action to control the speed of cars , launched by Volkswagen. Information about the speed of movement was taken from surveillance cameras, but instead of being fined, the system selected those who best kept the speed limit to participate in the money lottery. This approach turned out to be much more efficient than the usual punitive method, and as a result, the average speed of cars within 3 days decreased by 20%.

Not to mention such a promotion tool as creating and maintaining a community of active fans of products under some brand name. A good example is the activities of ASUS in promoting products under the brand Republic of Gamers . Sponsoring gaming competitions and festivals , the release of devices and components under this brand, which took into account the wishes of gamers, cooperation with professional players and overclockers , all this allowed to form a community of followers of the Republic of Gamers products.

In general, I must say that, in connection with the further development of technology, experts predict an explosive growth in the intensity and breadth of the use of gaming technology in advertising.

Army

In the military, gamification is not used to make life easier for soldiers and to create greater attractiveness for service. No, harsh guys in uniform use gamification with purely practical goals: improving the effectiveness of training soldiers while reducing material and time costs. First of all, we are talking about the tasks and skills, the acquisition of which by the IRL is associated with high costs for fuel, ammunition, depreciation, etc .:

• Primary driver and pilot training
• Training soldiers and officers in combat at the tactical and operational levels

In addition, the army and intelligence services use games to teach all sorts of specific skills, for example, interrogation, fraud detection. Other games help to train specialists in very "expensive" areas, for example, the construction of sea and space ships.

Another point of view

Despite the fact that the elements of gamification are already encountered at every step, such decisions by no means always have a positive effect. Many believe that by itself the distribution of badges and points in no way sufficient to make gaming motivation. For example, game designer and consultant Margaret Robertson makes this point of view :

“What we call gamification, in fact, is the process of getting things that are not the essence of the games, and we give it for the equivalent of experience. Points and badges are as close to games as to websites, fitness programs, discount cards. This is a great tool for interconnecting and confirming user efforts; neither the score nor the icons themselves create the game. Gamification is the wrong word for the right idea. The correct term is ballefication [eng. pointsification]. There are things that need to be gamified. There are things that you need to ballot. There are things that need both. And there are many, many things that need not be touched at all. ”

One of the main mistakes in gamification is considered by many to be the point of view on which users play for the sake of getting badges and points. However, in reality, people play games that entertain us. Points are only an account management method, they are just a minor addition to the game. Elizabeth Corcoran, who worked as a journalist and editor for Forbes, Scientific American and The Washington Post, writes the following about gamification:

“Gamification is not based on intrinsic motivation. On the contrary, it uses the old as the world trick: it gives immediate feedback, spurs a sense of competition and rewards even the slightest progress. Gamification suggests that the user is weakly motivated, at least at the beginning, and uses various incentives to increase motivation. ”

In addition to different views on the ownership and effectiveness of the premium system, there is also a point of view according to which gamification is more harmful than beneficial. For example, Dan Pink (Dan Pink) in his book “ Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us ” points to the results of research that if the task requires even minimal mental abilities to solve, the incentive to solve the problem begins to fall. Therefore, the introduction of game elements can, on the contrary, worsen user productivity. Jane McGonigal, game designer and author of the book “ Reality Is Broken: How Can I Change The World, ” says that after introducing all kinds of leader boards of honor in companies, Employee interest is lost very quickly, especially for those who understand that they have no chance to get on these lists.