Gamification

Like every great opportunity (or not-so-great opportunity), it all begins with an idea. So do games. You have an idea to create an experience for a group of gamers; you create a theme and prescribe elements (artifacts, etc) that define the game.

In practical terms, the amateurish approach to designing games looks something like:

• think of an idea

• try it out

• keep changing it and testing

• create a points board and make sure everyone knows there can be only one winner.

Yet this is what lean startup prescribes and what real game designers do. (psst...see the relationship between game design of entrepreneurship concepts and lean startup? You're eating your own dog food because you're using the same techniques you're teaching to your students and thereby modeling the behavior you want them to emulate.)

Of course there's more to professors like us designing games using lean startup principles. When adapting management theories and constructs into games, designers (we) should be especially aware of the definitions, relationships, boundary conditions, and limits to those theories and constructs since they will become inherent in game play and what students learn. Games that we design that lead to certain breakdowns or conflicts provide opportunities for us as researchers and teachers to explore and explain why those breakdowns occurred and to either explain them as design flaws or as definitional flaws in those particular theories or constructs.

How about an example? <I'll provide one here shortly, suggestions welcomed profcraigarmstrong@gmail.com)