The Gamification Report Blog
A lot has been written about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in popular books and articles, but scientists are not so sure such a differentiation exists. There is no part of the brain dedicated to extrinsic awards and another part that comes from within. Dopamine, for instance, is released, regar...
Think of how much you played as a child. You exerted a tremendous amount of energy, and spent as much time as possible, playing games. Why such a commitment? Because it was fun!
Ultimately, we were motivated by "fun," though we differ in our definitions of fun. Our brains have receptors for differe...
With a nod to Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, it’s important to know WHY we are gamifying a program or process before we begin to actually gamify it. If I could anticipate what he would say (at least a few years ago) about the WHY of gamification, I believe Sinek would say our WHY will determine HOW we...
Roughly 10,000 years ago, humans created formalized language. Before then, they certainly communicated, but with grunts and gestures. With language, people could share important concepts with each other, warn about dangers, entertain, and preserve the tribe’s history by telling stories to the younge...
In his seminal work describing flow, Mihály CsĂkszentmihályi discusses the frustration we feel when a challenge is more difficult than our abilities, or how boring a task will be if our skills surpass the challenge. Flow, he says, comes at the balance between challenge and ability. The more skilled ...
What Uber Can Teach Us About Engagement
by Jonathan Peters, PhD
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In an effort to continue the piling-on of Uber Technologies, The New York Times published an article that is critical of Uber’s use of “psychological tricks” to “manipulate” people to drive at specific times and in specific locatio...
Let’s face it, gamifying a training takes a lot of extra work. It’s easy to deliver information in a lecture. Shouldn’t it be the participant’s responsibility to take our information, remember it, and apply it? After all, they are adults. Why is it our responsibility to make it fun and engaging for ...