Michael Wu, Ph.D. is Lithium's Principal Scientist of Analytics, digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and group behavior in online communities and social networks.
Mi...
Updated 6 months ago
Version 7.0
Blog Post
Hello Glenn,
Thank you for stopping by and commenting.
You bring up a good point. Incentive systems and gamifications are not easy to tell apart if you are not a trained professional game designer. The reason is that the two are not mutually exclusive. Some incentives sytems are designed with gaming attributes from the ground up (these are valid gamification), and others are not (these are just plain old incentive systems).
The best way to distinguish a plain old incentive system from Gamification is to ask couple of questions
1. What gaming attributes did it use?
2. What gamer profiles/persona does the incentives target?
3. Does it drive behavior reliably and predictably?
If the answer to all three are yes, then it is likely that it is a gamification. But keep in mind that these are not definitions, so getting 3 yes do not guarantee it is a gamification, and missing some of them does not guarantee them to be a plain old incentive system either. These are merely a set of diagnostic questions. You should always check back with the definition to see if they are indeed gamification or just incentive systems.
I will keep your suggestions in mind. Maybe when I have the bandwidth to write a book, I will include more examples. And of course, I will sure some of them here on my blog too. ;-)
Thanks again for the comment. I hope this helps for the time being. See you next time.