The Gamification of Life

Okay, okay, I know this blog is getting a bit Gamification heavy AND I also promised the next post would be a very serious one that went into more detail about non reward like gamification, but it isn’t – yet – so there.

The reason for this blog? Well, it is currently about 3am and I have just changed my daughters nappy whilst trying to feed her. I set myself the challenge to change her, in her Moses basket, whilst feeding her. I basically gamified the process to make it more entertaining to my sleep deprived brain. However, it got me to thinking. Whenever people talk about gamification, it is normally related to some kind of technology based solution. Make it into a video game, add rewards and achievements to their online profile, that sort of thing.

of course, real life can be gamified just as easily. How many times have you set yourself a challenge like “I will finish this report before I have that 20th cup of coffee” or “If I can get to the end of the week without any junk food, I will have a bar of chocolate”. Weight watchers have been doing this for years without the need for technology. I wrote a while back that we all use gamification from birth, it is how we learn. Well, why stop. A task is boring if there is no reward.

Gamifiy your day by rewarding yourself in little ways. Challenge yourself to follow three interesting people on twitter. Give yourself the task of helping at least two people on you internal social network. All of the game mechanics and dynamics that we speak about in gamification can be used in day to day life. Just in those three examples I use Discovery, pride and productivity.

Think about how you use these things in day to day life. If you do it, you can bet others are doing it. Now think about how you may be able to use that information. Consider that a project is not that dissimilar to a gamers quest and that people like to think that they are achieving more than they may actually be. You can use that to engage and influence their behaviour – all you have to do is play the game.

Now, I set myself the challenge to write that blog about game mechanics and dynamics for next week. If I do, I will eat chocolate. Lots of it.

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4 thoughts on “The Gamification of Life”

  1. Great thought and what I think it touches on how different aspects of digital are directly transferable to real life in effect taking the first steps into blurring it all into life.

    the Internet is still young but I wonder how many kids actually makes the distinction between online and offline and how many take gamify the two across each other

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