Tech stakeholders and analysts generally believe the use of game mechanics, feedback loops, and rewards will become more embedded in daily life by 2020, but they are split about how widely the trend will extend. Some say the move to implement more game elements in networked communications will be mostly positive, aiding education, health, business, and training. Some warn it can take the form of invisible, insidious behavioral manipulation.

studio630:

The Future of the City: Crowd-Sourcing & Gamification of City 2.0

By Kyle Rogler, Studio630

This summer Google will install a 1-gigabyte internet speed cable in Kansas City, which is a hundred times faster than the average broadband cable. This new asset will help revolutionize Kansas City’s technology infrastructure, but no one knows exactly how to utilize it to its fullest potential. James Moore proposes a novel idea which could generate interest back toward the city through crowd-sourcing and gamification of urban design.

Read More at ThisBigCity

smarterplanet:

How Three Businesses Scored Big with Gamification | Entrepreneur.com

Ready or not, gamificationReady or not, gamification is taking the business world by storm.

For anyone unfamiliar with gamification, it’s the application of game-like elements such as challenges, points, badges and levels to business and other nongame websites. An estimated 70 percent of the top 2,000 public companies in the world will have at least one gamified application by 2014, Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc. predicts.

Patrick Salyer, CEO of gamification platform Gigya, believes there are two keys to success with gamification. “One is making sure that all gamified elements are inherently social,” he says. “That is, don’t restrict engagement to the internal site community. Award points for activities that reach users’ social [networks] to bring in referral traffic.”

The other is to focus on rewarding activities that create value for your businesses. “For example, award points and badges for behaviors like subscribing to your company’s newsletter, checking into your store or sending coupons to friends,” Salyer says. “Gamification is not about haphazardly throwing badges across your site.”

Love the word or loathe it – Gamification made the short-list in Oxford Dictionary’s 2011 “Word of the Year.” Each year Oxford University Press comes up with a Word or Phrase of the Year. The 2011 winner was Squeezed Middle, but gamification made the short-list of words for the U.S. selection. Gamification was among words including Tiger Mother, Fracking, Crowdfunding, and Clicktivism. Visit Oxford Dictionaries for more information about the Word of the Year.

RedCritter is a Dallas-based startup that is succeeding at the gamification of software development in a way that no one else is. But this is just the beginning, RedCritter CEO Mike Beaty told me last week when I wrote about his company here on Technology Review.

Beaty was able to reveal that the next products he plans on rolling out will gamify customer relations management and sales — which is how the now-mighty Salesforce.com got started. He also hinted that the future could hold much more. In general, he implied, there is no reason that gamification can’t be expanded to countless areas of white-collar work.

emergentfutures:

IARPA Commits $10.5M to Develop Gamification for Intelligence

Late last week, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA, it’s like DARPA for spies) announced a new contract of $10.5 million to develop “serious games” that include training for US intelligence officers. Along side projects designing the future of silicon chips and predicting the future by analyzing public information, the new program, dubbed the Sirius Project will use game mechanics to train and evaluate intelligence officers on their ability to accurately analyze key information.

Full Story: Gamification

(via Gamify your entire life with Onefeat - TNW Apps)

So how exactly does Onefeat work? From extremely easy missions (take a self portrait), to missions that require a bit of digging at home (find the oldest object in your room) to missions that you have go out and about to complete (shoot a great example of street art), there’s a huge variety of tasks to complete.

addingthefun:

Brilliant interview with the great designer Keita Takahashi.

Brings up nuggets of wisdom like

“Gameplay isn’t just inside the game; everything is the game. Everything should be part of the fun.”

Why can a game designer design play grounds? Why would they want to?

Because everything is the game. Simply a brilliant summation of Gamification.

Ett av Gartners viktigaste bidrag till omvärldsbevakningen av teknik är Hype Cycle analysen. I den senaste analysen har nu bl a även Gamification fått sin position. Enligt analysen befinner sig området på väg upp mot toppen av uppblåsta förväntningar, där det sedermera kommer att överexponeras, hånas och dala ner i antingen glömska eller verklighetsanpassning och gradvis insteg i vardagen.

(via Gartner Adds Big Data, Gamification, and Internet of Things to Its Hype Cycle)

Att åstadkomma beteendeförändringar som främjar individers och hela samhällens hälsa är en av de stora utmaningarna i morgondagens samhälle.

Att förändra beteenden är svårt. Att förändra sitt eget beteende är inte så lätt heller. Man skulle kunna tro att det är lättare att förändra sitt beteende när man riskerar att förlora något som t ex sin hälsa eller sitt liv. Tyvärr visar en överväldigande majoritet av studier att enbart insikten om konsekvenser oftast inte räcker för att förändra beteendet - oavsett hur allvarlig konsekvensen är! Vad som däremot fungerar, och som vi ser runt omkring oss hela tiden, är socialt tryck eller små direkta och till synes meningslösa belöningar.

Syftet med gamification inom sjuk- och hälsovården är att genom enkla spel och spelliknande mekanismer forma ett beteende som åstadkommer läkande, förbättrar hälsan eller förebygger hälsorisker.

Den ökande tillgången till ständigt uppkopplade datorer och smarta mobiltelefoner parat med vår ökande benägenhet att fylla all vår dötid genom att spela små engagerande spel och en ständig jakt efter små upplevelsekickar skapar goda förutsättningar att försöka förändra beteenden genom gamification.

Detta håller på att skapa en trend inom hälso- och sjukvården. Tydligast syns detta inom de mer teknikfokuserade områden inom sjukvårdutvecklingen.

Läs denna rapport från 2011 Mobile Health World Congress för att se några exempel på vad man håller på med.