This week Techcrunch published the article ‘Gamification is Dead, Long Live Games for Learning‘.
The post is written by Michael John, Game Director of GlassLab. GlassLab and its mission are well supported and worthy, but Mr. John could have made his point without oversimplifying, demonizing, and dismissing the concept of gamification.
The headline is catchy, but the article shows a distinct lack of understanding or appreciation of what is actually meant by “gamification”. It’s possible that the author just doesn’t like the word and feels it carries negative connotations — for example, the use of shallow and manipulative mechanics.
John’s disdain is palpable as he is “accosted” on the topic at GDC and forced to “drive by a gamification billboard every day on his “Silicon Valley commute.” “As a game designer” it was “painful” for John to listen to the “Education World” talk about gamification.
On the positive side, Michael John is 100% correct in promoting “Games for Learning” and I love the examples. As a former history teacher with a graduate degree in education and many years in the games industry I fully agree in the power of Games for Learning — the more fun, engaging and playful, the better. I wish for Michael John and GlassLab to flood the education system with fun and powerful learning experiences.
Here’s the thing: Games and gamification exist along the same spectrum, or at least are complementary. Why argue that one has to die to feed the other?
John’s negative characterization of gamification echoes the criticism that many career game designers have for the concept. For game design purists, “Gamification” is the evil cousin of “Free to Play.”
From their perspective, both pursuits compromise the integrity of the art form, destroy fun, and exploit the consumer. While there is no shortage of bad examples that validate this point of view, there is also professional defensiveness and preciousness involved – i.e. “leave game design to the game design professionals”.
I hope educators are more open minded, because involving and empowering educators and the education world in the games for learning movement is key to its success. And words and attitudes are important.
Beyond his visceral reactions, the author oversimplifies gamification by stressing only the application of simple extrinsic rewards like levels, points, and badges. He expresses pain at hearing educators rhapsodize about “gamifying” education, and seeing practitioners flood the market with “drill” style games layered with extrinsic rewards. A few points here:
1) Of course shallow gamification is not a winning strategy; if you want to see how much deeper the design elements of gamification are, check out this page on Mario Herger’s Enterprise Gamification Consultancy web site
2) Not every learning task lends itself to deep games. There are also plenty of rote tasks (multiplication tables, state capitals, vocabulary, language learning) that can be made more fun through a simpler application of gamification – PBL’s and a “spoonful of sugar” have their place
3) Education has benefitted from game like reward systems since long before the word gamification was coined. Extrinsic game reward elements in the form of stars, tangible rewards, and class status have been used by clever teachers ever since there were classrooms. Games and simulations have also been used in the classroom long before the gamification or games for learning movement.
Clearly extrinsic rewards (like Points, Badges, and Leaderboards) are just the tip of the iceberg of gamification. Community and gamification expert Amy Jo Kim covers this nicely in a post entitled “7 Gamification Myths, Debunked.” Kim’s Myth #3 is: “Gamification = Points, Badges, and Leaderboards”.
Gamification is, fair to say, a poorly understood word and concept. When practiced well, gamification is very effective and generates positive and powerful results. However, the word itself is admittedly awkward.
Spell check tries to change “gamification” to “ramification”. “Ramification” feels like spellcheck’s commentary that it’s about ramming game mechanics into places they don’t belong with negative ramifications. The wonderful Amy Jo Kim of Shufflebrain thinks that the word gamification will fade away and eventually just become essentially system design. Other excellent pros like Gabe Zichermann fully embrace the term and it’s professionalization.
So there is a context to the controversy of the title. Nevertheless, the commentary and text is misguided.
Gamification expert Mario Herger’s comment on the article in line on Techcrunch is: “Comparing Gamification and Games for learning is a little bit silly. Gamification is not about learning, it’s about engaging, measuring, entertaining and yes, also teaching. It’s like you’d say “Cars are dead, long live motorbikes.” You’d just reduce cars to what a motorbike can do. In fact, gamification can do way way more.”
Using another car analogy to complement Herger: Chrysler made some very bad cars in the 1970’s — that doesn’t mean that cars should be abolished, just that Chrysler needed to make better cars or go out of business.
John alludes to Raph Koster’s “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” in supporting his point of view. Interestingly, “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” is the first book on the required reading list of many Quora commenters interested in the field of gamification. We are all on the same page here!
Clearly fun and intrinsic motivation based on inherently gratifying experiences like gaining competency and autonomy (i.e. learning), are most desirable. It is a key goal of gamification.
In short: “Shallow Gamification of Education is Dead, Long Live Well Designed Gamification for Education.”