Soyons sérieux, jouons! (5/5) : Le jeu est l’arme de la subversion Agon, le conflit : c’est l’une des quatre catégories employées par l’écrivain Roger Caillois (en compagnie de Alea, le hasard ; Mimicry, le faire semblant ; Ilinx, le vertige) dans sa classification des jeux pour spécifier leur nature. Mais l’Agon possède aujourd’hui une résonance particulière dans le jeu car il devient lui même une dimension du combat. On joue pour se préparer à la guerre, pour gagner un avantage dans le débat d’idées, pour convaincre des clients. Désormais, le jeu est utilisé par l’armée, les publicitaires et bien sûr les militants pour établir un pouvoir sur le monde réel. Le jeu sert à faire la guerre Le jeu sérieux n’est pas né dans les écoles ou les entreprises, mais au sein de l’armée américaine. L’armée américaine a donc constaté que, parmi leur panel, ce moyen de recrutement était le plus efficace auprès des jeunes de 16 à 24 ans. » « Conscientiser » le joueur Le second mode, la contestation, remet au contraire en question un système de valeurs. Rémi Sussan
Not motivated? Make a game of it - Page 4 Michael Pusateri is a 43-year-old senior vice president at the Disney- ABC Television Group, but he still doesn't eat his vegetables. So in October he joined Health Month, an online game that allows him to compete against 16,000 other users in striving toward his goals — which include cycling 80 miles a week and going on a weekly date with his wife. When he made progress, he earned life points and raised his ranking. When he failed, he lost points but could ask other players to take pity and "heal" him by giving him virtual "fruit." The game prepared him for his first triathlon. "My wife has been after me for years to eat more fruit and vegetables and bring my lunch to work, and it was, 'Next week, I'll do it next week,'" says Pusateri, an avid video game player and father of two. Companies such as Health Month have begun to harness people's innate craving for competition to turn the world into one giant virtual summer camp. Games with a sales twist have existed for years.
Social Gaming And Career Opportunity Platform Gild Hits 100K Users Gild, a TechCrunch Disrupt startup that combines social gaming with career advancement, has hit a milestone after three months open to the public. Since its launch at TechCrunch Disrupt in September, more than 100,000 professionals have registered with GILD to compete in competitions, interact with peers and employers and advance their careers through certifications and job opportunities. Gild allows job hunters to submit their resume to professional opportunities like any other job posting site but adds a different twist. The companies posting jobs set up competitions, like ‘Brain Buster’ programming puzzles and job-seekers complete these challenges on the site, receive their scores, and are ranked accordingly. You can engage in multiple competitions to help boost your chances and Gild will let you improve your profile by completing certification tests and other challenges.
As websites become games, understand the trend with the Gamification Encyclopedia 11 January '11, 03:20pm Follow One of the biggest trends we’ve seen on the Web in the past year has been the growing “Gamification” of websites and online services. From Foursquare to Get Glue and and services like One True Fan and even, er, The Next Web, it seems that badges and leaderboards are everywhere right now. In order to explain this, San Francisco startup Gamify has launched an in-depth Gamification Encyclopedia. Still a work in progress, some sections of the site are under development but its 197 articles are a really good read, with lots of examples of the many different game mechanics, design elements and user features that make up a ‘gamified’ service. With Gamify set to soon launch its platform to help build ‘gamified’ Web experiences, this is undoubtedly a stunt to drum up some interest but it’s a very useful resource and well worth reading if, like most The Next Web readers, you have a strong interest in Web trends.
Cubeduel Launches Social Game on… LinkedIn? If you haven’t yet played around with Cubeduel, do it now. It won’t make you any smarter, but it’s an oddly entertaining way to browse through your coworkers from years gone by in a hilarious, cage match format. Cubeduel is an unexpected opportunity to evaluate head to head match-ups that you just wouldn’t see in the wild. Evaluate a certain number of duels and you get to see your own score, as well as those of your co-workers. But what I find most fascinating about Cubeduel is that it was built on the LinkedIn API. At this point, we don’t know. But let this be a gentle reminder to all of us entrepreneurs. Innovation can come in all shapes and sizes. Food for thought. Jobs 2.0: Data-centric Jobs for Generation Y: Online Collaboration « While some may say that Generation Y are slackers, I think they’re just waiting around for the next crop of interesting jobs. Well, good news, 20-somethings, the new fall line of jobs is here! You’ll note that most of these jobs center around one thing: data. Gen Y (which I prefer to call Gen A, for “Analysis”) will be the first generation entering the workforce that have the skills to apply measurement and analysis to everything. They’ve been counting calories on their iPhones, anxiously trying to raise their Klout scores and driving their follow counts on Twitter. Data is the new black. Content Monetization Manager (Department: Production) There are an incredible number of ways to monetize content coming onto the horizon. Webmaster 2.0 (Department: Marketing) Pretty much no one has the title of “Webmaster” any more. Amplification Manager (Department: Marketing) As social media evolves and expands, it also becomes more diluted. Employee Mechanics Designer (Department: HR)
With RewardVille, Zynga Will Pay You To Play Its Games "Gamification": A Growing Business to Invigorate Stale Websites Rajat Paharia is a new breed of business consultant. For a monthly fee he promises to invigorate stale websites by turning them into video games. Visitors become players. If they perform certain tasks, such as commenting on articles or e-mailing links to friends, they earn points or badges. Paharia's company, San Jose-based startup Bunchball, has performed more than 50 online makeovers for NBC (GE), Playboy, and other large websites. "Our customers don't want to be game designers," says Paharia, 40. Video game designers have spent the last few decades perfecting the art of making their products addictive. Bunchball, Badge-ville, and other game consultancies charge clients as much as $10,000 a month to bring game features to their sites. Online Loyalty The business of engendering online loyalty through gaming techniques is fast becoming as significant as the real-world loyalty industry, which builds rewards programs for airlines, hotels, and credit cards. It's a neat trick—if it lasts.
How Can We 'Gamify' the News Experience? One of the biggest emerging conversations over the past year in Silicon Valley is around “gamification.” Simply put, this is the idea of applying game mechanics, particularly those found in videogames, to all sorts of non-game experiences. After following this conversation for many months, I’ve come to believe that over the next decade gamification will profoundly reshape the way we experience the web, to the same degree that social media and networks redefined the web last decade. To that end, I’ve been thinking in the broadest terms what that could and should mean for how we can reinvent digital news. To carry this thinking forward, I’m announcing the launch of a new project: NewstopiaVille. First, I want to get the concept of gamification on the radar on every news organization so that it becomes a central part of their discussions as they continue to push into digital media. Second, I want to build a prototype of a fully gamified news experience. About Gamification Virtual Goods
BranchOut Tries to “Gamify” Career Networking on Facebook: Tech News and Analysis « I recently pegged LinkedIn as a social media company to watch in 2011, but a (relatively) new kid in town, BranchOut, is using social gaming tactics to take on the career-networking giant. BranchOut’s app launched last summer, but CEO and founder Rick Marini told me that over the next week or so, the company plans to roll out game-like quizzes — and, later, badges and leaderboards — geared towards helping users further their careers. How? The service’s Connections feature enables users to connect to other Facebook users outside their network of friends. BranchOut targets three constituencies: career networkers, recruiters and sales professionals looking for leads. BranchOut soaks in and displays two degrees of Facebook friends (i.e., friends and their friends) and any company information they’ve posted. Marini figures he can leverage Facebook’s nearly 600 million users with their existing friends networks to gain ground against LinkedIn’s 85 million users.
What's The Difference Between Game Mechanics in the Enterprise and Good Management? We covered the emerging trend of gamification - the application of game mechanics outside of games - in November. A few enterprise vendors, such as Moxie and Rypple, are starting to incorporate elements of gamification into products. Constellation Research analyst and co-founder R "Ray" Wang has identified five engagement factors for gamification in the enterprise: intrigue, reward, status, community and challenge. But aren't these common elements of a good workplace, with or without the idea of "gamification"? First of all - why apply gamification principles in the enterprise? Training Collaboration and knowledge sharing Customer loyalty programs Ad network optimization Virtual goods and currencies. I can see the applications for customer-facing programs, but how well will internal programs work out? Intrigue is obviously the hard part. When we covered gamification before we quoted Margaret Robertson: That problem being that gamification isn't gamification at all. Photo by andi.vs.zf
Buzzword Watch: The Gamification of Work Gamification, according to Wikipedia, is " is the use of game play mechanics for non-game consumer technology applications." Our own Audrey Watters defined game mechanics as a "rule-based system for scoring, setting goals, and allocating rewards." A related idea is the "Gamepocalypse," Jesse Schell's hypothetical future in which everything is gamified. Wikipedia emphasizes consumer applications, but the enterprise is not exempted from the gamification trend. But will it actually make work any better? ReadWriteWeb guest blogger Ethan Stillman wrote that "Having a game mechanic integrated into your product is effectively a launch requirement at this point," referring to consumer applications. Writing for the site Hide & Seek, Margaret Robertson points out a fatal flaw in so-called "gamification": That problem being that gamification isn't gamification at all. Robertson writes that "gamification," as it's currently practiced, would more accurately be termed "poinstification."