For additional coverage of the local impact the electronic games industry has on Greater Madison, read the June 2018 issue of In Business magazine.
With at least 25 electronic game design studios in the Greater Madison area, you could say the region knows a thing or two about the business of gaming.
Local gaming experts also have some things to say about gamification, or the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g., point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity.
The immense popularity of video games has prompted a number of efforts to bring gaming principles to other facets of life via gamification. Business seems like a natural fit, but only if it’s done right.
Games as a medium are great — broadly — at three things: they are great at expressing identity, expressing actions, and expressing systems, notes Dan Norton, founding partner and chief creative officer for Filament Games. “So that means games are great at giving you a role or purpose, a set of actions that you can do and master, and a set of rules that you can grasp and master.
“From that super-quick summary,” Norton continues, “we can map onto business and ask the same question — what aspects of business are relevant in terms of understanding a particular role or perspective? What aspects of business are relevant in terms of understanding a particular skill or skills? What aspects of business are relevant in terms of understanding a system or ecology?”
However, Norton isn’t so sure that gamification is having an impact on businesses, at least not yet.
“When we use the term gamification here at Filament, we usually mean things like scores, badges, avatars, and leaderboards,” Norton explains. “These are all reward systems that games use to support users as they engage in the ‘core’ mechanics of the game — the things that the game is asking the player to actually do and get good at.
“So those reward systems are good, but they’re good in terms of supporting a core piece of interaction, which would be the actual game itself,” says Norton. “When you divorce those reward systems from any actual interaction or engaging activity, you don’t actually succeed in merging ‘playfulness’ with your banking tool or time-logger. Instead, you’ve added a hollow shell to an activity that’s just as tedious as ever.
“The ‘real’ gamification is about examining that core activity and asking questions like how is this activity important? Or what’s interesting about solving this problem? Or why does doing this matter? Then we’d take those answers and build custom gameplay that encapsulates what actually matters about the content. Then, and only then, does the suite of external rewards like scores and badges make sense because they are now used to highlight the anatomy of an interaction that matters.”
User interaction is foundational to all of game design, says Justin Beck, CEO of PerBlue. “Think of the psychology of the design, and even just achievement-oriented stuff — you have to communicate progress. Take the most boring thing, like data entry of insurance applications. You want it completed, so having things designed [for the user] so it’s step one. Okay, you complete that and now it’s two more steps to full completion. That kind of game design thinking applies to everything. Anyone who’s really trying to streamline a process could really benefit a lot from tapping into some of the elements of game design.”
Critically, notes Beck, it’s not just about the dashboards; it’s about the community building built on shared information that can take place inside a team.
“Team-based features inside games creates instant community building and part of that comes from here’s all the different missions, here’s where everyone is ranked, here’s where people are doing well and here’s where people are doing poorly, here’s where they need one resource versus another,” Beck explains. “I think we’re starting to see the corporate world running more ‘open books.’ This goes beyond gaming; it’s more of a cultural thing taking place inside of progressive environments. Companies are becoming more open internally and they’re seeing improved motivation, improved results, and workers can now skip middle steps and jump right to the conclusion because someone along the line can now see more data and say, ‘none of this makes sense, why are we doing this, let’s just skip and go to the end.’
“Maybe it’s more millennials in the workforce who pushed to have access to more information so they’d have it all from the get go, but it’s creating more open environments for business,” Beck adds.
Gamification doesn’t get everyone so excited, however.
“On a personal level, I hate that expression,” states Tim Gerritsen, head of studio, Fantasy Flight Interactive. “It oversimplifies a very complex subject and can be really overused to take what would normally be an enjoyable experience and make it a chore. Not everything needs to be ‘gamified,’ nor should it be. I think where it aids learning, or makes the tedious seem bearable it has real utility.
“However, when overused, it can make potentially very serious issues seem trivial, or have a fake corporate-speak mentality that can make workers feel less connected to their work or business rather than more,” Gerritsen continues. “I’ve seen strong uses of this technique to allow students to improve their learning or children manage chores more effectively, but I’ve also seen it applied in soul-crushing fashion in corporate settings and that’s where I take exception.”
Michael Beall, the director of Gear Learning at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, agrees that the term is often misused. “One important distinction is that game design is different from gamification. Gamification can be part of game design, but it’s more specifically the adding of game-like mechanics to non-gaming environments. I happen to be a big fan of gamification, in that it can be leveraged to promote or encourage learning.
“It all comes down to psychology and understanding that meaningful play, like many things in life, is subjective,” Beall adds. “Once we understand models of player types, like Bartle’s taxonomy of game player types, it’s easy to imagine nearly limitless possibilities for gamification.”
(Continued)
Reality-world applications
Beyond applying gaming principles to business practices, gaming devices and technology can also become business resources when implemented correctly.
“Virtual reality is definitely the place with the most growth potential; however, it’s important to note that the audience for that platform hasn’t yet arrived,” notes Shaun Nivens, CEO of Lost Boys Interactive. “Until the audience grows, which will likely come over the next three years as hardware prices come down, it’s not a very safe space for businesses to bet on, unless they are well funded and ready for a long haul before revenue catches up.”
Where Nivens sees VR devices being especially impactful is in their ability to immerse users inside a virtual world that blends increasingly seamlessly with the real one.
“The most exciting thing about game design, in my opinion, is that it is a powerful medium for sharing experiences across a broad swath of humanity,” says Nivens. “Like storytelling, games are one of the primary methods that culture is transferred across generations and territories. Shared stories are shared experience, and shared experience is empathy. Games go one step further, allowing players the chance to interact, learn, and experiment in a story-like setting. Few things teach empathy like the chance to imagine or even realize yourself in someone else’s shoes. Games that push the envelope, that develop characters, settings, and circumstances that are ‘outside’ of our own personal worlds — those are the games that I like and that I strive to be involved with when possible.”
Beck actually describes himself as a bear when it comes to VR for gaming, but he’s more optimistic about its broader potential.
“I think VR is going to see more growth and have some pretty cool days, but I really don’t think it’s ever going to be a big thing in games,” Beck opines. “I think it’s going to be more effective in medical and other professional ecosystems. VR is a great tool for simulation.”
Augmented reality, or AR, a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view, is another gaming technology that might have even more business applications than VR.
“Currently I see AR having the greatest impact in non-gaming applications for training and education,” says Gerritsen. “With AR, you can learn a new skill quickly as you have instructions overlaid as you perform a task. I see applications for legal use, architecture, and personnel training, as AR allows you to combine the real world with digital augmentation to create a unique experience. Right now, however, that technology is somewhat limited. As the technology improves, I see there being more and more ways for us to create very unique entertainment experiences that combine your real-world setting with imaginary elements.”
“I believe AR will revolutionize how we train people for all kinds of tasks, and it will affect us all both professionally and personally,” states Nivens. “Even today we find a lot of tasks that used to require an expert — car maintenance, plumbing, small engine and electronics repair — can be taught to wide audiences via video. To expand that experience to an augmented training session, where the work or task can be simulated and practiced, and where trying again and again, failing, and getting better, can be done without consequence or even just cleanup and resetting the stage, that alone will be a huge step forward for every level of society.”
Click here to sign up for the free IB ezine — your twice-weekly resource for local business news, analysis, voices, and the names you need to know. If you are not already a subscriber to In Business magazine, be sure to sign up for our monthly print edition here.
