Do you want points with that?

Before I post up a few more entries, here's an interesting summary (by Travis Ross) of a talk by Jane McGonigal titled "We don't need no stinking badges: how to reinvent reality without gamification".

Jane McGonigal is the author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World and, amongst many other things, creator of the Find the Future game set in the New York Public Library.

She compares the four big ideas of gamification (points, levels, leaderboards and achievements) with the four big ideas of gameful design (positive emotions, relationships, meaning and achievment). She compares the extrinsic rewards that points can give with the intrinsic rewards that the other positive elements of gaming can give. Below is a summary taken from Travis's blog.

Blissful Productivity → Achievement and Accomplishment. Research has indicated that individuals are happier if they have a relative sense of achievement and accomplishment in relation to others.

Social Fabric → Family matters. Relationships matter. Relationships dictate happiness more than any other indicator.

Urgent Optimisim → Positive emotions release seratonin. Negative emotions release stress hormones like cortisol. Over a period of time these actually lead to physiological changes.

Epic Meaning → Meaning. Having meaning in ones life is important. Individuals are happier when there action allow them to self-determine and have an impact on their world

Further posts will explore the positive and negative elements of gamification and also give some examples of how we can use it in our classrooms to hopefully, help foster these four 'superpowers' in our students.