Showing posts with label game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label game. Show all posts

Friday, January 27, 2012

When will we see gamification in government?

Gamification refers to the practice of making non-game activities more like games by incorporating achievement-based reward systems.

Under gamification, using government examples, when your project or mission is complete you might receive a 'completion badge' (such as a letter from the Secretary, an Australia Day Award, or a medal). Or when you attain a higher level of proficiency in a particular skill you'd receive an 'achievement' or rise on the 'leaderboard' (such as a bonus or a promotion).

From the examples above, there's clearly already aspects of gamification at work. Rewarding achievement, success and skills acquisition is a standard part of business and forms the basis of merit-based advancement systems - not just games.

However the gamification process involves a much greater level of achievement-based recognition, than has commonly been used in organisations.

Rather than six-monthly and annual reviews and awards, gamification is based on rapid, but less valuable rewards for achievements as they occur.

This is an effective behaviour modification approach, as both the gaming and game industries would testify to. Rapid gratification means that patterns of behaviour are reinforced at a deeper level, resulting in a greater likelihood of the desired behaviour being repeated.


Gamification has begun to have a significant impact on a number of businesses. Online badges and achievements are the basis for the success of services like FourSquare and contribute indirectly to the success of services such as Facebook and Twitter (through the size of your friends list and the frequency that people respond to your posts).

They are also widely used by airlines (frequent flier miles) and supermarkets (shopper dockets and petrol discounts) and have promotional uses in many other industries (scratch and win tickets and similar).

To-date these gamification tools have been primarily deliberately used for marketing purposes - to influence customer behaviour (although mostly for commercial purposes and extremely rarely in government communication campaigns).

However with the announcement of the addition of achievements, badges and a leaderboard to Microsoft's Visual Studio coding community, it is clear that the shift to using gamification for training and employee management is already beginning.

Where will this go in the future in government and in business I wonder.

Will employees begin receiving achievements for completing specific courses and mastering skills their employers wish them to master? Perhaps even one for joining the company, and one for each year's service?

Will there be leaderboards based on standardised performance on specific tasks (brief writing or timeliness of ministerial responses - using an algorithm that compensates for frequency and complexity of briefs)?

Will these achievements, badges and leaderboards begin to influence promotional prospects or pay rates - even holidays (turn in five badges for an extra week of leave)?

Will organisations take on the example of armed forces, who already issue achievements and badges to motivate and recognise achievements and where leaderboards do influence access into elite units and specific roles.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how far gamification will go in government, and in business. However the experimentation has already begun.

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Thursday, August 12, 2010

Targeting Gov 2.0 apps development - US government combating child obesity with Apps for Healthy Kids

The mash-up (or Apps) competitions we've seen in Australia thus far have been broad and largely untargeted. Governments have released a bunch of public sector datasets and invited developers to create a bunch of applications related to that data for their jurisdiction, but without a highly specific goal or purpose in mind, other than creating applications that add value to the data.

The US, which leads Australia in this area of Gov 2.0, initially took a similar approach. However it has now moved to a new level - Apps competitions focused on individual campaigns, themes and issues.

One such example is the Apps for Healthy Kids competition which, quoting from its website is,

part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation. Apps for Healthy Kids challenges software developers, game designers, students, and other innovators to develop fun and engaging software tools and games that drive children, especially “tweens” (ages 9-12) – directly or through their parents – to eat better and be more physically active.

The competition, which has received over 90 entries, requires developers to use a specific government dataset of information to develop a game or activity focused on a specific audience and campaign goal.

The prize money, $60,000, is a fraction of what it could cost a government Department to develop this many concepts to production level.

The winning entry will be used by the government for 12 months at no license cost and then reverts to the entrant's control - perhaps to become a saleable product or even be licensed by the government for ongoing use.

Besides the value of the winning application, there is substantial public relations value in holding the competition in the first place. It raises awareness of the issue, engaging people in either creating and voting for entries, or simply supporting the initiative through the 'challenge supporters' mechanism.

This type of targeted crowd sourcing approach has many different potential applications for governments from local through to federal levels. Many different issues and campaigns could provide fertile ground for these types of apps competitions.

Note that despite our current lack of targeted apps competitions, Australia isn't that far behind the US in crowd sourcing. There have been examples of online video competitions, design competitions and other approaches designed to encourage the community to engage with and produce content that can be used for the public good.

Below is the introductory video for Apps for Healthy Kids:

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Thursday, July 29, 2010

Google launches Student Voice mock Australian election for high school students

Google has launched the Student Voice initiative, whereby 15-17 year old Australian students will be able to vote online in a mock election reflecting the current Federal election.

The goal is to help these students learn more about elections and also provide a perspective on how Australia's future voters (who will be eligible to vote in the following Federal election) may vote.

The launch has been supported by videos by Julia Gillard and Bob Brown.

I applaud Google for launching and managing this initiative, however it distresses me that no Australian organisation has tried to make something like this a reality. It is a shame that we are relying on a foreign-owned company to broaden Australian democracy, while Australian companies, institutions and other organisations sit on the sidelines and do nothing to support democracy in this country.

Also interesting is that this approach involves online voting. Today's high school students are already likely to expect to be able to vote online in real elections and the Student Voice initiative could further reinforce this expectation.

Perhaps, over time, this type of initiative will be a trigger that encourages Australian governments to support online voting (with appropriate security in place).

Certainly this initiative could help Google position itself as a potential provider of online voting facilities in the future. I would also expect to see them rolling out similar Student Voices in other jurisdictions over time, after using Australia as a guinea pig.

Student Voice launch video

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Sunday, February 28, 2010

How governments can use gameplay to educate and upskill a community

I'm a big fan for the use of gameplay to encourage people to explore concepts, test ideas, build skills and model behaviours while generating awareness - however it is a tool that I have not seen exploited anywhere near to the extent it could be in government or most commercial organisations in Australia (and yes I have some ideas....)

The World Bank is about to launch a very interesting online game, Urgent Evoke, that encourages people to 'make a different', solving real social problems around the world - in a simulated form.

To quote the game's blog:

This is not a simulation. You are about to tackle real problems.

Food security. Energy. Water security. Disaster relief. Poverty. Pandemic. Education. Global conflict. Human rights

Welcome to the Evoke Network. Welcome to your crash course in changing the world.

To understand how this game works and the value it provides, see the Episode 1 video below.

EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.


The game launches on 3 March (but is open for preregistration now) and will offer a series of challenges - the first involving an imminent famine in Japan. Missions and quests will be available to help solve these challenges and if it is like previous alternative reality online games of this type, players will be required to research, explore real (and fake) websites, video and other material, following trails of clues to find a solution.

People who complete all of the 10 challenges in 10 weeks will be able to claim the honour: Certified World Bank Institute Social Innovator – Class of 2010.

Top players will earn online mentorships with experienced social innovators and business leaders from around the world, and scholarships to share their vision for the future at the EVOKE Summit in Washington DC.

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