Gaming for Good: Nothing lights up the brain like play

We've recently become interested in the idea of gamification and the implications it has for effective youth program design. Our afterschool teen program provider peer learning community expressed interest in figuring out how to gamify their programs. 

Our initial reaction was "gamifica….what?" 

Gamification is about figuring out what makes games - especially video  games - so engaging, then applying those principles to work, customer engagement, education, marketing, and other fields.   If you've ever looked at your LinkedIn profile and saw that it said "Your profile is 90% Complete" and turned around and added new content, you have experienced gamification.

We found that using gamification strategies in youth programming mirrored what we know to be sound youth development strategies. The 5 keys to social game design are:

1. Know your players' social styles
• Express
• Explore
• Collaborate
• Compete

2. Design for the three life-cycle stages

          Easy to learn, hard to master…

• Newbies needs onboarding  (welcome + goals + progress + achievable rewards)
• Regulars need fresh content/activities/challenges
• Enthusiasts need exclusivity, recognition, impact

3. Put PERMA into your engagement loop

    Positive Emotions

    Relationships

    Meaning

    Accomplishment 

4. Light the way to mastery with "Progress Mechanics"

As players progress, increase the challenge - This is what designing for engagement is all about:  clear feedback + progressive goals

5. Reward players with power, autonomy and belonging

          Extrinsic Motivators - Task Completion: LinkedIn Progress Bar
          Intrinsic Motivators - Deeper engagement:  Modcloth’s crowd-sourced clothing line
          Crowd-sourced stats - Community awareness:  it feels good to be part of something larger than yourself

Common examples include:  Farmville, Club Penguin and Nike Coach

Here are some interesting examples of gamifcation in the social sector:

Education--Class Dojo is a behavior management tool for classroom teachers

Professional Development- Skillville matches San Francisco job seekers with professional development opportunities through micro-volunteering on city projects. Skillville creates pathways to employment by training job seekers on high-impact city government projects. 

Skill Verification- Open Badges:  Developed by Mozilla Foundation allows you to get online credit for learning and competencies. The picture is a digital badge, a new type of credential being developed by some of the most prominent businesses and learning organizations in the world, including Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, the University of California, the Smithsonian, Intel and Disney-Pixar.  This area is particularly interesting to us in our youth employment and workforce development work.

If you're interested in participating in the development of a new gamification idea or want to follow its evolution, a great source is Gamification Wiki or this slide show on social game design by Amy Jo Kim. If you use gamification in your program or know of other interesting examples of gaming for good, we'd love to hear about them.

Amanda Gerrie & Kim Coulthurst, Partners, Pathways Consultants