Much to the chagrin of our legal counsel, we wanted to assure that every Certified Baxter had an equal say in the goings-on of our fledgling effort. What if, the esteemed esquire cautioned, voting resulting in a work-mucking tie? Would Veep Biden swoop in and resolve the impasse? Bah, we said. Lawsuit, he said.

So, because we take our fun-loving principles seriously, we compromised accordingly:

Resolution of Voting Stalemate

For any action, decision, or event that requires vote of or approval by Members holding a Majority Interest, if the vote results in a vote where a Majority Interest does not exist in support of or in opposition to the action, decision, or event, the Members agree that the vote will be resolved through the following means:

Where the Members’ votes are divided into two groups, each group of Members shall nominate one Representative.

The Representatives of each opposing group of Members shall play each other in three (3) total head-to-head games of Ms. Pac-Man.

After three games, the Representative with the highest total cumulative score, inclusive of all games, shall be granted temporary executive and directorial power to take (or not take) the action, make the decision, or cause the event to occur (or not occur) as he or she sees fit to decide. All Managers and Members shall abide by that decision.

The games of Ms. Pac-Man shall be played on the same standing arcade cabinet, concurrently (in two player mode) at a time and location of mutual agreement—such agreement shall not be unreasonably obstructed or withheld.

Both Representatives must agree to the fitness of the particular Ms. Pac-Man cabinet before head-to-head play begins, and are permitted one (1) one-player practice game in order to determine that it is functioning properly. Should either Representative reasonably assess that the game is malfunctioning, he is required to state so before head-to-head play begins, at which point both Representatives agree to relocate or postpone to a reasonable location or time, respectively.

Representatives are forbidden from deliberately interfering with each other’s play in any way, including physical contact, unreasonable noise, deliberate distraction through cigarette smoke, liquids, etc.

Should play be interrupted, the Representatives agree to tally the score of their last complete game and resume as circumstances permit.

Where the Members’ votes are divided into more than two groups, each group shall likewise nominate one Representative.

The Representatives of each opposing group of Members shall play three (3) one-player games of Ms. Pac-Man, in sequential round-robin format, with each representative playing one game in a row. All other aforementioned caveats apply.

If a suitable Ms. Pac-Man arcade cabinet cannot be located, the Representatives shall agree upon a reasonable alternative Ms. Pac-Man platform, such as a cocktail table unit, console, or emulator.

If a suitable alternative Ms. Pac-Man platform cannot be located, the Representatives shall play Missile Command.

… which, based upon the look on our lawyer’s face, might not exactly withstand legal (or investor) scrutiny.

(photo from the spiffy Rotheblog.)

Overcoming obstacles, trial and error, and having to make meaningful choices are some of key tenets found in games. As Ian Bogost puts it, “most games require some non-trivial effort to play. Challenge and effort are often cited in definitions of games, as is a tendency toward meaningful interactivity.” What is more, as NYU’s Jesper Juul has noted, “failure is central to player enjoyment of games …. However, it is notable that failure is more than a contrast to winning – rather failure is central to the experience of depth in a game, to the experience of improving skills.” By relating failure both to a capacity to learn from mistakes, and to develop one’s skills so as to further enjoy the game, Juul identifies constructive failure as a key reason for why we play games. [As an aside, it turns out that I make a lot of mistakes when playing games, so reading Juul's paper was a big self-esteem booster for me. You can imagine how it felt to learn that all my game-related failures were actually a good thing!]

Given the centrality of failure to creating deeper, more engaging games, I find it puzzling that articles that purport to explain how to “use game mechanics to power your business,” stay well away from addressing the fact that mistakes can and do happen in the real world. The generations of gamers that are now firmly entrenched throughout all levels of society are perfectly primed to be the most responsive to games that incorporate mistakes into their structures, so why aren’t we seeing applied games being built with failure in mind?

Bogost writes about two elements of social games that disturb him: compulsion – exploiting human psychology in order to elicit particular actions (actions which make companies money), and optionalism – as he writes, the, “gameplay in social games is almost entirely optional. The play acts themselves are rote, usually mere actuations of operations on expired timers.” Another way to frame these features is to think of them in terms of how they relate to failure.

In games like Farmville or services like Foursquare, behaviors that are rewarded are entirely compulsive. In the frame of these games, “failing” is akin to not completing. In foursquare, failure literally isn’t even an option. Although a user can “lose” her mayorship, being stripped of status is not generally of any real consequence. Check in some more, you might get the badge back, but since the game never ends, if you ever stop checking in you lose.

The problem with this is that compelled behaviors don’t teach us anything about the actions themselves, for example, like whether there is a better way for us to do things. Rather, they teach us that the only path to success is conditioned response to incentives. What many of these ‘games’ are, then, are beautifully stylized positive feedback systems. These systems offer no nuanced player experience. Every player either buys into the point structure, or they are left on the outside. These games don’t seek to engage their players, but rather to incentivize them to perform particular actions.

Obviously, points do work as incentives for some actions. We all want credit cards with points, and when done right a point-based representation of participation on a website can be engaging and fun. But there is a great opportunity, and need, for games that facilitate learning in the workplace, not just with a points mechanism, but with something deeper. Learning leads to people doing a better job, being more productive, and being more satisfied with their jobs: In short, everybody wins.

As more organizations attempt to bring game mechanics to the wider world, one of the central challenges that to be faced will be in how to make mistakes mean something. Making mistakes isn’t good; learning from them is, and key to missions like making the workplace more fun is making it a place where mistakes can be both made and learned from.

To quote again from Juul, “that failure and difficulty is important to the enjoyment of games correlates well with Michael J. Apter’s reversal theory, according to which people seek low arousal in normal goal-directed activities such as work, but high arousal, and hence challenge and danger, in activities performed for their intrinsic enjoyment, such as games.” If games are to be used to make things like work more fun, we need to start by creating workplaces in which it is ok to take risk – to take on challenges in which success is not assured. There will be failure – lots of it – but with these mistakes will come an environment that rewards true learning and development of its participants, rather than rewarding a predetermined series of actions.

Guest Baxter Mathias Crawford is a researcher at the Institute for the Future, and part of the team behind Signtific Lab, the massively multiplayer thought experiment. His current passion and research is in the art and science of game design.

The announcement of Epic Win, an upcoming iPhone application spread across the Internet last Friday, was heralded as a new way to make every-day tasks more enjoyable and compelling. Epic Win takes traditional elements from RPGs – quests, XP, rare loot – and layers them over the demands of daily life, with the expectation that the application will inspire us to “Remember that birthday card, send that email, or drag ourselves to the gym on a regular basis.”

As Jane McGonigal mentioned on twitter, Epic Win isn’t the first to attempt to apply lessons from RPG design to everyday chores. Chore Wars, which launched in 2007, “lets you claim experience points for household chores. By getting other people in your house or workplace to sign up to the site, you can assign experience point rewards to individual tasks and chores, and see how quickly each of you levels up.”

Since the details of how Epic Win sets experience point values for goals, or structures larger quests, its not possible to comment on their application. Chore Wars, therefore, is an excellent starting point for a discussion of what works, and what doesn’t, when companies try to make applications that leverage ideas from game development.

Points and Badges Don’t Mean Games

On the New York Times Bits Blog Nick Bilton notes that, “Everything seems to have a game element to it these days.” I’ve written elsewhere about the dangers inherent in the ever expanding number of external incentives that are springing up to encourage behaviors as diverse as frequenting specific restaurants, to watching particular television shows. The common thread for most of these services is that the “game element” implemented consists of mapping points to a pre-set list of activities. When the user completes tasks they are given points, which are further rewarded by badges for meeting certain levels, or for certain behavior patterns.

An eloquent critique of these systems is offered by Game Developer and Georgia Tech Professor Ian Bogost, in his Gamasutra article “Persuasive Games: Schell Games“:

“[W]ho cares about deliberation if we get the results we want? If achievement-like structures can get kids to brush their teeth or adults to exercise more, why does one’s original motivation matter?

Because to thrive, culture requires deliberation and rationale in addition to convention. When we think about what to do in a given situation, we may fall back on actions which come easily or have incentives attached to them. But when we consider which situations themselves are more or less important, we must make appeals to a higher order.

Otherwise, we have no basis upon which to judge virtue in the first place. Otherwise, one code of conduct is as good as another, and the best codes become the ones with the most appealing incentives. After all, the very question of what results we ought to strive for is open to debate.”

In this light, it seems odd that a single person’s to-do list would benefit from an application that provides pre-defined levels points and virtual objects for, e.g., sending emails. Undoubtedly the reason why I’ve, for example, not gone to the gym is based on factors such as my level of fatigue, the other tasks I need to complete, or because I’ve already gone four days in a row. In short, it is a dangerous practice to layer incentives on top of actions without taking into the reasons why I haven’t just completed my to-do list in the first place.

To this end, one of the most important things that Chore Wars does differently than the recent crop of real-world games is that it puts the game’s player-community in charge of what actions are rewarded, and what value particular actions have. By allowing players to co-develop objectives, and giving them the opportunity to compete, or co-develop strategies, with other players when completing objectives, the game’s system does not rely on rote completion of tasks in order to get points. Instead, players can negotiate “what results [they] ought to strive for,” – which, I think, is where the true power of bringing games to real life lies.

When applying RPG dynamics within companies, it is all too easy to draw up a list of tasks, corresponding XP, and badges, and call it a day. What we learn from Chore Wars, however, is that in order to meaningfully use these mechanics in the workplace it is essential to involve employees in helping set the objectives and rewards for quests.

So, will it be more like Foursquare or Chore Wars? I am very interested in seeing where Epic Win falls on the Gaming the Real World spectrum.

Guest Baxter Mathias Crawford is a researcher at the Institute for the Future, and part of the team behind Signtific Lab, the massively multiplayer thought experiment. His current passion and research is in the art and science of game design.

“Greed is bad,” says Conspiracy for Good, a curious blend of ARG and multimedia participatory storytelling from Tim Kring and Co. And they have the fictional proof!

It’s been interesting for the Baxters to compare Conspiracy for Good with our previous effort, Evoke, because on many levels they are, well, the same dang thing. Evoke was surely not the first social innovation game (nor clearly will it be the last), but as the category sees more and more entries we’re able to better understand where the true innovations lie, how the mechanics of interaction enhance the experience, and the role of storytelling (and suspended disbelief) as a super-engagement gravity well.

To that last point, Conspiracy for Good places itself on an interesting point of the fiction / non-fiction spectinuum. Its central storyline — that greedmongering megaglobalcorp Blackwell Briggs is soon to “enslave” the citizenry of the UK by appropriating CCTV systems for nefarious means — is just close enough to headline fodder to be believable-ish. And though its very format (and a few overt disclaimers) make clear that the experience is a work of fiction, that doesn’t prevent a few whistleblowers from “exposing” the Conspiracy as such. For better or for worse, Evoke sacrificed that suspended disbelief by telling the story through a graphic novel (viva la Jacob Glaser!) set in 2020.

But at least we didn’t didn’t have folks pointing to our cell-shading and crying “fake.”

We find it a bit inconsiderate when folks yap away on their cell phones while on crowded public transportation, but if they’re playing with Megaphone, at least they’re being artistic and inconsiderate. (How very Dada!)

We dig Megaphone for freeing gameplay from the constraints of computer and console, and transforming the mobile device into a game controller. After all, the humble celly is one of The Big Three at Natron Baxter Applied Gaming and is, along with computers and payment cards, one of the most common ways people engage the digital spirit world. The engagement power of their voice-art example seems a bit limited, but it cracks open possibilities nonetheless.

Cheers, you Megamen and Megawomen!

Despite the potential for meaningful idea exchange — unlocking the intellectual capital and proprietary knowledge of the workforce — most KMSs simply don’t encourage employees to share their knowledge. In our experience, these systems fundamentally fail in reconciling convenience and reward. (Putting it mildly, KMSs are ******* inconvenient and unrewarding.)

Sure, any KMS must provide meaningful on-demand content. And it must be customized to the culture and motivation of its users. But game mechanics (and usability best practices) provide a few general insights on improving effectiveness of collecting knowledge by increasing convenience and reward.

We call this evolving list of KMS design principles “Zipline,” inspired by Robert De Niro’s supertechnician Harry Tuttle in the bizarre masterpiece Brazil.

Capture the Flash – Everyone is busy. Even the prospect of keying a 50 word insight is off-putting to a high-demand, high-value employee. Yet, meaningful microexchanges happen constantly. Thus, a KMS should accommodate even the tiniest sparks of genius. Tweets. IM slang. The thumb-gesture that follows “which way is the men’s room?”

Spread it Around – Despite the incredible value of centralized knowledge, it’s infeasible to expect the human animal to religiously transcribe their every knowledge sharing experience. A KMS should reach into the interactions of the organization and capture insights as they happen. This might be a dictation app on the company Bwackbewwy, a simple “promote this” button on an email thread, or a spider that crawls the company forums in search of particularly useful content. Adding content to the KMS should require no more information than generating the content in the first place.

Try Crowdsorting – With an increase in good content comes an increase in bad content. But any good system can separate the wheat from the chaff with a thoughtful rating / pertinence engine. To align these ratings with usability practices, attach the simplest-possible thumbs up / down to virtually everything — and appropriate button-clicks (like closing a window) for rating purposes.

Use the Buddy System – A wealth of insights pass between mentors and apprentices, and vice versa. This corporate symbiosis also begets a sense of shared responsibility. By overtly pairing colleagues — and assembling larger teams with coordinated objectives — users are motivated by their feelings of mutual investment.

Make ‘Em Proud – As a matter of framing, KMSs should play to the egos of thought leaders while encouraging the participation of new employees. A thoughtful reputation engine accommodates the lot. Points for every interaction, real-time leaderboards, and tangible goals ignite collaboration and competition. Additionally, closely connecting career development to KMS reputation blends the powers of social and professional recognition. Should meaningful knowledge sharing earn extra PTO? Hell yes!

Keep it Optional – It may seem counter-intuitive, but non-obligatory KMSs better reflect the principles of authentic engagement. At they very least, participation reflects a genuine desire rather than a begrudged requirement.

Watch the Clock – Compelling game narratives blend user-triggered and universe-triggered events, creating a rhythm of engagement. In our previous designs, we’ve broken these event types into “quests” and “missions,” respectively. A good KMS follows suit, offering increasingly difficult challenges to be completed at the user’s pace, as well as daily / weekly “lightning rounds” to encourage mass contribution to a particular topic.

We’ll keep this list growing (and shrinking, when we thrash our own suggestions). In the meantime, sharing your joyous or woeful tales of a KMS will fetch you some shiny +1s, courtesy of the Baxters.

We owe many an insight to the efforts of Jamie Madigan’s The Psychology of Video Games blog, wherein the nimble-thumbed expert bridges brain and BFG, and Immersyve’s Player Experience of Need Satisfaction (PENS) model. For our colleagues and clients current and future, this stuff is required reading.

It’s a shame we haven’t tipped our hat to these thoughtful cats earlier; hopefully this post makes up for lost time.

h/t @kevinsyli

What ho! A Baxter spotting in Australia has us kissing the blarney stone! In the March 25th issue of Melbourne’s The Age, Baxters Nathan and Matthew pull their best Muppet impressions and evangelize Applied Gaming with only slightly less authority. That’s a spicy meat-a-ball!

We’ll post a link to the article as soon as it’s online; in the meantime, enjoy the old-timey scan.

(Cheers to Nathan’s pal Down Under, @smashmiek, who tipped us to the article via Twitpic.)

Gameslinger (and honorary Baxter) Jesse Schell foresees the “Gamepocalypse” — a time when life and game blur into an indistinguishable engagement goo. His momentum-confirming interview is peppered with anecdotes and harbingers of an Applied Gaming future. We have similar visions of the Gamepocalypse, to be sure, but occasionally ours are of the thermonuclear-playground-on-Judgment-Day variety.
 
Perhaps we’ve grown overly sensitive to marketing’s unwanted intrusions (ham-handed games could certainly poison authentic fun with cold-blooded commerce). Or perhaps we watched Wargames at a particularly impressionable age. But we reckon our nihilistic concerns stem from our love of red velvet cake and our dread of game fatigue.
 
Frankly, for as much as we hope to augment work, school, and life with the engagement power of games, we’re incredibly wary of the adverse effects of overconsumption. As with that most lusted after slice of cake — buttressed with berms of buttercream frosting on three sides – sometimes a richly rewarding experience can turn you off to the notion of cake altogether. Seriously.
 
For instance, to say that this Baxter has been dabbling in Words With Friends for the iPhone is to stretch the word “dabbling” far beyond Webster’s intent. She’s a beaut of a casual game and right up my alley. But I found the reward of playing soon supplanted by the anxiety of not playing and then not playing well enough. Indeed, my addictive personality (which I prefer to call “engagement-prone,” thankyouverymuch) glommed on to a Scrabble clone, even, and promptly sucked the fun right out of it.
 
As worker/players enter a new gameplay environment (particularly one that sponsored or mandated by an organization), they might face huge and discouraging disparities between experience players and noobs. Inevitably, in-game payoffs become tedious (designed, as they were, to satisfy short attention spans). And as game performance maps to job performance, with it might come the baggage of work-related stressors. As we are attuned to the engagement power of games, so too are we to their imperfections. When we expand the notions of game anxiety and game fatigue to the scale of the Gamepocalypse, we cannot help but consider the distopia.
 
We hope that our game design principles — such as ambiance and player discretion — make our concerns unfounded. But just in case, we’re playing a game of Stock Up on Canned Goods.