I was wrong: A definition of gamification that should make sense to everyone!
I was wrong: A definition of gamification that should make sense to everyone!
I was wrong: A definition of gamification that should make sense to everyone!
By Andrzej Marczewski
November 15, 2021
Summary
Over the years I have realised that this is not much use to most people! I have banged my head against more tables and brick walls that I would care to mention trying to get people to understand "No, it's not about games. Well it could be urm" This comes down to the fact that in the non-academic world, the word gamification, or gamify sits in a series of words that essentially mean to become more of something, or to become it! Take the word beautify as an example.
Whilst we are thinking of the word simply, it also defines simplify as "Make simple".
As we are looking at this from the layperson perspective - I'm throwing in the word game as well, not just game-like! If we go on to define the noun version of beautify, beautification, we would use something like "The process of making something more beautiful".
We don't see anyone defining it as "The process of using elements of beauty in non-beauty contexts"! In the same way, the definition of gamification should be "The process of making something a game or more game-like".
The definition of a word is pretty direct and simple, it does what it says.
So from now on, accepting that I have spent 10 years probably hammering home something considered wrong to the majority of non-experts in the world, I am using the following "Gamify: make a game or game-like" "Gamification: the process of making something a game or game-like" I use "something" here rather than " an experience, service, system, UI, turnip etc" because I am trying to keep it as simple as clients want it to be.
What game-like may contain could be up for discussion, but as far as most clients are concerned, it absolutely covers everything from adding points and a leaderboard all the way up to making a full game - so it should mean that to us as practitioners if we ever want to get over the massive speed bump which is still the word Gamification! Don't get me wrong, from an academic perspective and from a practitioner to practitioner perspective there are still 50 shades of gamification and game based solution design to talk about.
Reference
Marczewski, A. (2021, November 15). I was wrong: A definition of gamification that should make sense to everyone! Gamified UK. Retrieved January 5, 2022, from https://www.gamified.uk/2021/11/15/i-was-wrong-a-definition-of-gamification-that-should-make-sense-to-everyone/