The Gamification Report Blog

By Jonathan Peters, PhD
Chief Motivation Officer, Sententia Gamification

A few years ago, I was exploring petroglyphs and ancient dwelling sites in Kakadu National Park in Northern Territories, Australia. In my usual fashion, I didn’t follow a prescribed path, and I didn’t take the time to read any ...

When you mention your intention to gamify of learning program, have you ever run into resistance? Have you ever had a higher-up say, “We’re serious people doing serious work,” or “We don’t pay them to have fun”? (Have you asked to go to a gamification conference, say, GamiCon, and struggled to get i...

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...

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...

Gamification is the use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-game contexts. Let me break that down.

Game Elements:  Think of game elements as a toolkit for building a game. Game elements include game pieces, avatars, rules, scoring points, proceeding to the next level, receiving badge...

What Uber Can Teach Us About Engagement

by Jonathan Peters, PhD

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 ...