Social Talk Gamification
With games becoming more and more accepted as a cultural form, the notion of gamification is gaining traction as well. Gartner put gamification on its hype curve and Google trends is showing the online diffusion of the topic around the world. Influential game designers, academics and marketers have helped to attract attention to the idea that game elements and game mechanics can make a difference. Some say, “reality is broken”, others argue that what is missing from many products and services is “fun”. Global companies as SAP, Cisco, Accenture, Dell, Adobe, Microsoft and Google are early-adopters of gamification elements and have implement leaderboards and badges in their products and services. At the same time, within academia, but also among practitioners there is a pushback against the current application and understanding of gamification. They call gamification bullshit, “exploitationware” and despise shallow implementation of game-like elements.

The on-going discussions on the ethics and implementation of gamification, what it is, what it is not, and what is should be, are the starting points of this social talk. First, one could argue that gamification is indeed a hype, which limits proper implementation. Second, one could debate that effective gamification applications and strategies are quite rare. The social talk participants have experimented with projects for major national and international companies and will draw from experience to discuss the challenges of gamification. Third, what are the limits of gamification? You can gamify running, a visit to the museum, and financial services as pensions, but where does it stop? And finally, there is the question of audiences. Will everybody be willing to invest time in gamified experiences?
Biography
As a consultant Jeroen van Mastrigt helps companies to develop vision & strategy in regard to applied game design & gamification and creative social innovation in general. Furthermore Jeroen is chairman of the Dutch Game Garden, an incubator & game industry accelerator. In the past he Jeroen was full-time professor at the HKU for which he developed a research group in Applied Game Design and Europes first Bachelor and Masterprograms in Game Design. Jeroen was also partner and co-founder of GX (web enterprise content management).