I was wrong … in fact for many years. So, here I am again, talking about tariffs. I’ve been here before, but I usually try to push the idea of a more academic and “correct” definition of manipulation. However, I’ve realized over the years that this doesn’t do much for most people! I hit my head with more tables and brick walls that I’d like to mention trying to convince people “No, it’s not about games…well, it could be…orm…”
This is due to the fact that in the non-academic world, the word gamification or gamify is in a series of words that basically means to become or become something!
take the word Beautifying as an example. The Oxford Dictionary defines it simply as “make it beautiful”. While we think of the word simply, it also defines simplification “Keep it simple.”
Therefore, it makes sense for the average person to look at the word gamify and assume that it means “make the game like the game” or “make the game like the game” (since the game isn’t really in common parlance). And since we’re looking at this from a layman’s perspective – I’m using a word game too, not just a game like!
If we continue to define the nominal version of embellishment, Beautifying, we’ll 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 It should be “the process of making something a game or more like a game”.
And this is where the problem lies for most people, especially those outside the academic world. Defining a word is straightforward and simple, it does what you say. It does not contain caveats or descriptions of what is not included, it is just what the word means, means or does.
You can add how and why, but this may change in different contexts. For example, we can talk about urban beautification.
Beautification of urban areas: The process of making urban areas more beautiful to improve the aesthetic qualities of those who live in them by adding parks and green lands.
In the same way, you can say
Gamification of educational materials: The process of transforming educational materials into a game or more game-like to improve users’ experience, engagement, and completion rates using materials in a scenario-based simulation, with deep gameplay as well as progress markers such as points and badges”
The moral of all this nonsense is that the takeaway after 10 years of trying to explain gamification is that most people just assume that the word is defined in the same way as other words ending in ‘ify’ and ‘ification’, crooked to exclude the main element that They think he’s referring to him! They don’t care that strictly speaking it doesn’t include full games, dots and badges are too simple to be a part of and…blah blah blah.
So from now on, accepting that I’ve probably spent 10 years working on something that is wrong for the majority of non-experts in the world, I’m using the following…
“Gamify (verb)Make a game or similar game.
“Gameplay (Noun): The process of making something into a game
I’m using ‘something’ here instead of ‘experience, service, system, UI, turn etc’ because I’m trying to keep it as simple as the customers want it to be. We can add context and methods after they understand that.
Game-like content might be up for discussion, but as far as most customers are concerned, it covers absolutely everything from adding points and a leaderboard to creating a full game – so that should mean for us practitioners if we ever want to get past the speed bump The phenomenal still word Gamification!
Don’t get me wrong, from an academic and practitioner to practitioner perspective, there are still 50 game colors and game-based design solutions to talk about. However, we are solving problems, not creating them because we feel that the serious games and the game are different and should not be talked about at the same time, or that we should correct the potential customer for not understanding it!
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It was also published on Medium.