Welcome to A Question of Gamification. My name is An Coppens. I'm the chief game changer at Gamification Nation, and the show host for this program. Today I'll give you a health warning. It's a bit of a ranty post or a ranty show, because I read up a lot and I follow a lot of technology newsletters, and funding newsletters, et cetera. A few days ago, one of the newsletters came in and the title read How to Move Beyond Gamification. There was yet another top CEO of a technology company saying how gamification completely stinks and is the world's worst gift to the planet, and you should use game design instead. Intrinsic motivation is essential I found that fascinating, because obviously gamification is drafted and distilled from game design. If you're a game designer or gamification designer who has not studied game design, then I would question what do they base their foundations on? One of the things, and one of the points he went on to make, is that gamification was extrinsically motivated confetti that you put on top of something, and basically game design was intrinsically motivated. Actually I would argue that for good gamification to happen, it needs to be intrinsically motivated all of the time. No negotiation. Whether you're using gamification to aid with a process, or whether you're using it to create a serious game, both with the purpose of improving something to do with work. Ironically, the system that they have designed and the tool that they use is very much a gamified a solution. In some sense it is exactly what we would do for our clients. One thing then that came strongly from the post, is he described what I would describe as good gamification practice. Namely, understanding the motivations of your users. Understanding they can be encouraged one way or another, how they will improve based on what you're offering them. Answer the question: What is in it for me? You have to always answer the biggest question, the, "What's in it for me?" question. Because otherwise, no matter how cool your system is, people are not going to use it. The same goes for games. Where I think games and gamification often diverge is, the level of emotional intensity that they create in their experiences. In most games, the emotional draw is high, the commitment is high, and the risk of losing that is also high. If you drop out of the game in mid play, you lose out. Typically, that's what keeps people playing until the end. In work, you don't always have the freedom to continue working on what you are working on until the end. Sometimes people interrupt you. These things happen. When we look at gamification design, I still believe it's good practice to tap into the emotional experience as well. More and more, we see tools from UX around empathy mapping coming into the gamification space and into the game design space, which I believe is a good thing. Superficial gamification, where you are purely rewarding and punishing based on superficial things, like extra bonuses, badges, points, et cetera. They are good mechanics to use, but if they're not part of a bigger package and if they don't mean anything to the end user, they're bloody well useless.It doesn't take a technical rocket scientist to figure that one out. I do feel that in the industry in general, that people often slam gamification because it suits them. It's good click bait for their articles or titles, but really they're also hurting an industry. Even from within the gamification industry, I see a lot of people knocking what we're all trying to achieve. I think most of the people I know and have worked with are definitely out to deliver something of value, rather than just delivering something that makes them profit or is the next big thing or has been. Because if we look at it objectively, the gamification big buzz has definitely passed, and thank goodness for that!