Gamification

V Simpósio de Ciência, Inovação & Tecnologia – IF Sudeste MG - Campus Rio Pomba

Economia Verde, Sustentabilidade e Erradicação da Pobreza

19 a 23 de Novembro de 2012

MODALIDADE: “Estudo Orientado”

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Gamification for Professionals in the Development Area of Electronic Games

Ana Cristina B. FARIA (1); Alex F. da Veiga MACHADO (2); Emanoel FREITAS(3); Priscyla dos SANTOS(4).

Instituto Federal de Educação Ciência e Tecnologia do Sudeste de Minas Gerais – Campus Rio Pomba,

ABSTRACT

A recent practice is becoming very common among marketing professionals, educators and vendors in general. The theme is also quickly gaining the favor of researchers in the field of games, since some basic knowledge of the game designer are prerequisites for a successful gamified activity. The objective of this work is to bring a definition for the gamification and its characteristics, identifying the professionals behind the innovation, the role of game designer and if this is a possible new area of work for the professional in game development.

Keywords: gamification, game design, game elements.

1. INTRODUCTION

With digital inclusion, easy Internet access and the fever of social networks, all digital activities are becoming more and more automatically interactive, even more with everyone having a computer in your pocket with the mobile era.

The gamification is the concept that came to make many different areas professionals keep up with all these interactivity and promote their interests. The whole time people are getting scores by visiting sites, medals for places to visit (great example is the application "Foursquare"), increasing its status (receiving several "Likes" in the social network) these techniques are used to increase people's interest, its origins came from the games and are commonly called "elements of games."

The use of such specific knowledge of game development raises the following questions: If this concept is so popular and is being used for various purposes as entertainment, economics and educational which will be the professional best suited to successfully increase the engagement of common activities, this will be a new work area for games developers?

In the following topic will be presented works related to this article, such as elements used in gamification, and serious games. Also presents the description of the features that a professional needs to act in the area. Soon after, describes the types of existing professional and finally the conclusions.

2. GAMIFICATION (GAMIFICATION X SERIOUS GAMES)

V Simpósio de Ciência, Inovação & Tecnologia – IF Sudeste MG - Campus Rio Pomba

Economia Verde, Sustentabilidade e Erradicação da Pobreza

19 a 23 de Novembro de 2012

MODALIDADE: “Estudo Orientado”

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To reduce the effects of stressful daily tasks and make them less tedious and frustrating, professionals from various fields are using the same techniques that game developers use for their products become more attractive.

Gamification is the use of techniques and elements of games, along with the 'game thinking' (reasoning used in games) and game design in a context outside of games (applications in everyday life) [Deterding, et al. 2011]. Its goal is to make a common activity more fun, engaging and interesting as well as causing the user a positive experience, reaching the end proposed by the application area (marketing, education, manufacturing, finance, etc.).

According to Deterding et al. 2011a and Deterding et al. 2011b by being very recent, gamification retains few academic studies about it, the term and its practices began to become popular around 2010, although it is already highly valued by vendors and professionals who want to innovate their products.

It is common for researchers have a confusion between gamification and other existing concepts. One of them are serious games, games that are, digital, and designed with a definite purpose, which is not mere entertainment, and makes possible the experience in tasks that are unable for reasons of safety, cost or time [Susi et al. 2007].

Differently from the gamification Serious games are games, complete with purpose: to teach, simulate, among others. While the second is the gamification of a task that turns any activity in the real world, into something more interesting using elements of games (score, reward, and achviements etc..) Outside the context of games. It is noteworthy that as the gamification is used outside of gaming, an activity gamified can not be considered a full game [Deterding, et al. 2011a].

With the right knowledge and if handled correctly, these elements can model and define the user's actions, persuading them to behave in a way that predefined by the designer of the system [Deterding et al. 2011b; Lockton et al. 2010].

2.1 Elements of games in Gamification

Figure 1 and 2: Some Game elements which can be used in gamification.

The great advantage of games is given why people do not play for financial incentive or social reasons, they play for pure entertainment, they want to have fun [Ahn and Dabbish 2008]. As is done in games when we gamified an activity, it must be projected to have the desired effect, there should be an application design, much like what the game designer does in games, with the same tools, but in real life.

V Simpósio de Ciência, Inovação & Tecnologia – IF Sudeste MG - Campus Rio Pomba

Economia Verde, Sustentabilidade e Erradicação da Pobreza

19 a 23 de Novembro de 2012

MODALIDADE: “Estudo Orientado”

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These tools, called elements of games, are numerous, and each has its advantage and particularity. But according to [Deterding, et al. 2011a] we can classify them into five layers according to their main features, these being about:

 Game interface desgin patterns:

Standard