1. On Gamification
Staffan Björk
Gothenburg University & Interactive Institute

2. Who am I?
 Associate Professor,
Gothenburg
University
 Senior Research,
Interactive Institute
 Gamer

3. What do I do?

4. Some aspects of Games
 Rules
 Goals
 Actions

5. 5/38
Some aspects of Games, cont.
 Flow
 Activity requiring skill
 Merging of action and
awareness
 Clear goals and feedback
 Concentration on task
 Paradox of control
 Loss of self-consciousness
 Transformation of time
 Activity becomes its own
purpose - autotelic
Skill
Flow
Difficulty
Frustration
Boredom
Czikszentmihalyi

6. Serious Games

7. Edutainment

8. Origins of Games for Serious
Activities
 Olympic Games
 Communication with
the gods
 The Origin of
Consciousness in the
Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind
(Julian Jaynes)

9. Early Serious Games?
 Ludus Regularis Seu
Clericalis
 Balderic, 12th century
 Bowling
 Heathen Killing

10. War Games and Simulation Gaming
 von Reiswitz
 Kriegspiel, 1812-1824
 Birshtein
 Red Weaver, 1930s

11. Game Theory
 von Neumann, 1944 (1928)
 Economics
 Biology
 International Diplomacy

12. Gamification
 Deterding et al.
 “the use of game
design elements in
non-game contexts”
 James Paul Gee
 Jane McGonigal
 Reality is Broken

13. Thinking too small
 Games
 Gamers
 Gaming
 Typically a focus on
creating or modifying
artifacts
 Games are needed to
game (play)

14. Gaming Activities

15. Gaming Educations
 Snyder
 The Hidden Curriculum
 unstated academic and
social norms
 Miller & Parlett
 Up to the Mark - a
study of the
examination game.
 Cue-seekers
 Cue-aware
 Cue-deaf

16. Gaming Warfare
 MAD
 Von Neumann
 World War I
 Trench Warfare 1914–
1918: The Live and Let
Live System
(Ashworth, T.)

17. Gambling & Stock Trading
 Kelly Criterion
 Thorp & Shannon
 Gambling
 Beat the Dealer (Thorp,
1966)
 Stock Market
 Beat the Market: A
Scientific Stock Market
System (Thorp, 1967)

18. Voting
 Dodgson
 Caucus-Race
 Tactical Voting
 Compromising
 Burying
 Bullet Voting
 Push-over Voting

19. Religion
 Consanguinity
 Indulgence
 Nikah mut‘ah
 Kosher food
 Statistics of sinning
 Wine by gentiles but automated
 Sheitels and Tzniut
 Tirumala Venkateswara Temple
 Von Neumann & Pascal’s Wager

20. Why is this important?
Why is this important to applied IT?

21. 21/53
What is Design?
Buildings
Products
Markets
Institutions
Processes
Artifacts
Opinions
Communication
systems
Transport systems Community services
Festivities
Municipals
Laws
initiate change in
man-made things

22. Typical features of design systems
 States
 Rules
 Feedback
 User goals

23. Definitions of Game and Gaming
“playing a game is the voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” (Suits,
Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia)
”...a game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to
achieve their objectives in some limiting context.” (Abt, Serious Games)
”A game is a form of art in which participants, named players, make decisions in order to
manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.” (Costikyan, I Have
no Words and I Must Design)
”Games are an exercise of voluntary control systems, in which there is a contest between
powers, confined by rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome.” (Avedon &
Sutton-Smith, The Study of Games)
”A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that
results in a quantifiable outcome.” (Salen & Zimmerman, Rules of Play)
”A game is a rule-based formal system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where
different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to
influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the outcome, and the
consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable. “ (Juul, Half-Real)

24. The Next Generation

25. Observations
 Most systems can be interpreted as games
 Most systems can be gamed
 Most systems can be seen as gamified
already
 But not conscious gamification
 problem

26. Takeaways
 Gaming can be seen as a stance towards
doing many activities
 Activities including rules and goals make this easy
 Games are artifacts specifically designed to
encourage this stance through the activities they
offer
 Designers aiming at creating or modifying
activities may benefit from considering users
gaming these activities
 Not considering this may be very problematic…

27. Thank you!
Questions?