I have previously described my research that results in the creation of the Groups of Gameful Design Elements. If you’re not familiar with it yet, I highly recommend reading the three-post series starting with the one linked in the previous sentence. In my work, I have found this model very useful for gameful design. Knowing the different groups of elements that users enjoy easily allows me to consider adding elements from different groups into my designs. This way, I can guarantee that the design will have something that is enjoyable for everyone. But recently, someone asked me about how to ..read more

Currently, there are many new applications being developed in the “Web 3.0”, which means that they store data in a decentralized way using blockchain technologies. One trend is that of “play-to-earn” games. It is an interesting idea. Because the game objects are on the blockchain and can be exchanged for other currencies (such as crypto coins or real money), there are many opportunities to integrate the game’s economy with the real world. However, one characteristic of play-to-earn games that I’m not sure I like is that it feels that they make the players work instead of play. Players are not ..read more

Although I have been writing on this blog for several years now, I had not yet attempted to provide a definition of gamification because we already had plenty of definitions out there. But our community was recently challenged by Andrzej Marczewski to re-discuss the existing definition of gamification. So, I am taking the opportunity to provide my own thoughts on the matter! It seems that the challenge is in providing a definition that is academically correct (i.e., it is based on the latest research theories) but is at the same time simple enough to be used by non-academics. I believe that i ..read more

Nota: Esta é uma tradução do artigo original Hexad: A Player Type Framework for Gamification Design, escrito por Andrzej Marczewski. Traduzido por Gustavo F. Tondello em julho de 2021. Outra metáfora do design de jogos muito mal entendida, mas super-utilizada em gamificação é o modelo de Tipos de Jogadores de Bartle [1]. A seguir, uma tentativa de criar algo similar aos tipos de jogadores de Richard Bartle, mas para sistemas gamificados. Como Citar? Referência ao capítulo sobre os Tipos de Usuário Hexad no livro Even Ninja Monkey Likes to Play (formato APA): Marzewski, A. (2015). User Ty ..read more

  Several research studies have been showing that personalized gameful solutions can lead to higher engagement and performance. However, personalized gameful design faces two challenges: deciding how to select game elements and activities that are appealing to different users, and deciding how to adapt the experience to each user. In this talk, Gustavo reports on the latest research and his own experience designing personalized gameful solutions. To solve the first challenge (design), he shows how to use the classification of gameful design elements, the gameful design heuristics, and t ..read more

Last week was Gamification Europe 2020, an amazing forum to exchange experiences and learn from what everyone is doing in the gamification world. On the first day of the conference, I gave a talk about Personalized Gameful Design. If you missed it, you can check below the slides I used for the presentation and watch the video recording.   There were several interesting questions from the audience! But unfortunately, I did not have time to answer them during the talk. So, I wanted to share my answers to these questions here in the blog. Q: How you ensure that students playtest early in t ..read more

  In this interview Pete Jenkins asked Gustavo about his many researches and experiences with gamification. We dived into User Types and Player Traits and when to use them, took a look at Goal Setting Theory with Gamification and then got into the practicalities of using gameful design elements to personalise your gamification design. Gustavo Tondello is a co-founder, gamification consultant, and researcher at MotiviUX and a Computer Science instructor at the University of Waterloo. With a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction, Gustavo developed and published several methods and tools for ..read more

  We’re delighted to tell you about our keynote speaker Gustavo Tondello. His talk Personalized Gameful Design will be on the Learning and Education day of Gamification Europe 2020. We had a chance for a quick interview with Gustavo about what he does and what we can look forward to in his talk ..read more

In the latest article I published at Frontiers in Computer Science, titled Validation of User Preferences and Effects of Personalized Gamification on Task Performance, I studied how users would react to being able to customize their gameful experience. Additionally, the study also showed that task performance improved for the customizable application in comparison to the generic one, with some caveats. In the study with 252 participants, we asked them to classify between 50 and 100 images by typing as many tags as they could think of for the image (e.g., balloon, sky, clouds, blue, etc.). Exa ..read more

  This week’s article brings a detailed review of some of the research about points and rewards in gamification. I started by thinking about points, but then I found it hard to separate them totally from rewards as they are often presented as a form of reward. So, the article talks about them both. In the article, you will find: A table describing eight different types of rewards; A table describing five ways to use points effectively and one way to avoid; A review of what three psychological theories say about rewards: operant conditioning, goal-setting theory, and self-determin ..read more