Meaningful Play: Getting Gamification Right

Google Tech Talk January 24, 2011 Presented by Sebastian Deterding ABSTRACT Foursquare, GetGlue, Nike+, Badgeville: From reading news to fulfilling your hearts' desires, more and more "gameified" applications and "gamification" vendors doll out points and badges to users, promising anything from increased user engagement and retention to plain mind control. While some hold that adding such game elements to non-game applications opens a new decade of design, others criticize current implementations as shallow "pointsification" and overselling of a new digital snake oil. What lessons do games really offer for user experience design? Which criticisms are valid? And what can designers interested in "gameifying" an application do to steer clear of the worst pitfalls? In this talk, researcher and designer Sebastian Deterding provides an overview of the current gamification movement, its most troubling blind spots, the motivational powers of games, and how to design for a playful experience that is truly meaningful to its users. Sebastian Deterding - Sebastian Deterding is a user experience designer and game researcher at the University of Hamburg, Germany, where he currently pursues a PhD on the motivational psychology of gameified applications. He speaks and publishes internationally on gamification, social games, and the social contexts of video games at events such as the Gamification Summit, Gamescom, reboot, Playful, or DiGRA. His work has been covered by The Guardian, the LA Times, The New Scientist, EDGE Magazine, and Fast Company's Co.Design. He co-hosts the Gamification Workshop at this year's CHI conference in Vancouver. Web: codingconduct.cc Twitter: @dingstweets Google TechTalks are designed to disseminate a wide spectrum of views on topics including Current Affairs, Science, Medicine, Engineering, Business, Humanities, Law, Entertainment, and the Arts. DISCLAIMER The views or opinions expressed by the guest speakers are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Google Inc.