Gamification: Notes from Baltimore Parlay

I attended Baltimore Parlay, a gathering of Baltimore UX practitioners last night. The focus was a discussion of the Gamification of UX by Neal McDonald, a game design professor at UMBC.

He covered a bunch of interesting research and results from the last 10 years that have studied how games can actually improve performance in a number of dimensions, including delaying senility, as well as some of the elements of why games bring pleasure… and potentially addiction.

A few interesting tidbits:

• Jane McGonigal is the current guru of the value of gaming. Learn about her book Reality is Broken, watch her TED presentation and her Colbert interview among other things.
• Cow Clicker is a Facebook game by Ian Bogost created as a joke and a dis on other Facebook games, particularly Zenga games like Farmville. All you did was click a cow every 6 hours to earn points (“mooney”) and upgrade your cow – including spending real money to do so. And you could buy upgrades. 50,000+ still play it, even after a bovine rapture that only left the shadows of the cow to click.
• UsTrendy.com allows you to curate your own fashion line, assembling a line of clothing and accessories based on existing items at stores, photos, or your own designs. The community votes on the what they like and would be willing to buy. The best lines are actually produced and sold. Hundreds of fashion lines have been produced, and it’s phenomenally successful. Think Kickstarter meets Barbie.
• Eurogames (designer board games) are all the rage (and I guess have been for a while; guess I’m clueless). BoardGameGeek.com assembles information about them (as well as other types of games). These games have non-traditional gaming mechanics including less direct competition between players, no randomness, and you can’t be eliminated.

Enjoy.