Gamification: Work hours? Time to play the game!!

Editor's Notes

• #3: Gamification is the process of taking something that already exists – a website, an enterprise application, an online community – and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation, engagement, and loyalty. Gamification takes the data-driven techniques that game designers use to engage players, and applies them to non-game experiences to motivate actions that add value to your business.
• #4: Yeah … they can be like this
• #5: But work hours can also be the time when we play the game. This is Triple H, the wrestler – also known as “The Game”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T03q3l10ARw This is a glimpse at a bigger wrestling reference, so bear with me.
• #6: This is one of my original inspirations about this presentation – a video essay from the video game critic Total Biscuit on what defines a game. I took inspiration from the points that he brought up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bvX4hzqcqcPS: Actually, the hottest inspiration for my presentation was a previous presentation on the Innovations in Software Test Automation (ISTA) conference from 2013 – two shmucks from SAP presented a topic they called “Let’s play the game of testing”. Basically one had a nasty dialect from the city of Dobrich and the other one was a bozo :D.So not only did they present poorly, but I did not agree with the way they presented points, achievements, leaderboards and IDE gamification plugins as easy-peasy means towards big benefits.Shortly after I gave my presentation, I found out that as soon as those two guys moved to another team, their previous team scrapped all gamification practices that were established, so a small victory for me here. Yay! 
• #7: Following the trail of articles related to gamification on Wikipedia, I encountered a very cool part related to the elements of playability – they are the ones which are measured in order to determine how good the gameplay of a given game is. Let’s see if these elements can be applied to work in an IT company. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gameplay#Playability
• #8: Do you get satisfaction from your work? Examples: When you get a successful build of your project; When all of your tests pass; When you are able to fix that damn bug.
• #9: Do you get to learn something while at work? Examples: - Practices: How to debug efficiently under IE 10; Technologies: Node.js, PowerShell, Swift; Processes: business, technological and intra-company.
• #10: Do you get to be more efficient at your work? - When you are able to get the job done in less time than expected; - When you get more work done in the same time span; - When you get to do more and better work done for less time.
• #11: Do you get to immerse in your work? Examples: - When you are able to trace the process of writing code, building it, packaging it into an installable package and delivering it to the customer; - When you have 5-6 debugging tools open and you are searching high and low for the cause of that damn bug
• #12: Do you get to be motivated (more) at your work? Examples You know that this release is going to be AWESOME! You can fix that damn public bug that the customer has found; You know what to do to create a new feature in the product.
• #13: Do you get emotional at your work? Examples: - One of your most dreaded bugs regresses on Friday - But you fix that bug and check in  - … and you break the build … and it’s 11:30 p.m. – breaks your heart, doesn’t it?
• #14: Do you get to socialize at your work? Examples: - “Bro, I can tell you stories …” - “DUDE! THE COOLEST THING JUST HAPPENED!!!!1111” - “I need Pesho from Team A to do X, Tosho from Team B to do Y so that I can do Z and we can form VOLTRON!!!11”
• #15: “Gamification is the process of taking something that already exists – a website, an enterprise application, an online community – and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation, engagement, and loyalty. Gamification takes the data-driven techniques that game designers use to engage players, and applies them to non-game experiences to motivate actions that add value to your business.”This is taken from the company Bunchball’s definition of gamification.It’s true, it’s measurable, but it’s also what I DON’T like – cold efficiency being measured without regard to the players.You can take a look at their product’s showcase reel and see how “real and authentic” the actions and reactions of people being exposed to that form of gamificaiton are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD6z1RwNgSM
• #16: Ah, StackOverflow – the epitome of gamification in the “Business to Customer” subsector (the other one being “Business to Employee”). It exemplifies the core mechanics of gamification that are meant to increase engagement in the activity – in this case asking questions and giving answers. If you take a moment to look closely, you will see that this guy is really into the whole deal! He has so much going on his profile page.Let’s start with the first one …
• #17: Points: Tangible, measurable evidence of my accomplishments Used to keep score and establish status or accumulated to purchase virtual or real goods. Earn points through activities, sharing, contributing, or by creating something useful to others. In the case of StackOverflow, points are used to measure “Reputation” which is a very appropriately named quantity. It shows to other people how reputable this guy and his questions and answers are. If you see his name on a page you are visiting, you will immediately devote his text – question, comment or answer some time, because his reputation score will lead you to that belief. Also, you can see that this guy has 107 accounts in various hubs, part of the StackExchange universe. Some of those accounts have a really high reputation score. This means that he is engaged and his engagement is being appreciated by the communities.That happens because although some amount of points is acquired automatically, you get the vast increments only from other people – if they approve your content (question, comment or answer) are good enough for them.
• #18: Goals: Short- and long-term goals to achieve Missions or challenges give users a purpose for interaction, and educate users about what is valued and possible within the experience. The StackOverflow bounties system works like this: You see a question without an answer and regardless if you are the asker or not, you can place a bounty on that question. Thus, from that point on anyone who gives an approved answer, will receive your bounty – an amount of your own reputation points. You are sacrificing some of your earned score in order to receive something in return, hence making reputation score a virtual currency of sorts.
• #19: Badges: Evidence of accomplishments An indicator of accomplishment or mastery of a skill is especially meaningful within a community that understands its value. Often used to identify skills and expertise within a group. Badges in StackOverflow are given automatically – they are basically milestones that you achive when you accomplish something – either once or after many repetitions. In the instance of the “Great Question” badge, the question has received praise from other people several (100 or more) times. Badges are all pre-existing so they are given at equal terms to anyone in the community who accomplishes the appropriate milestone.
• #20: Leveling Up: Status within my community Levels indicate long-term or sustained achievement. Used to identify status within a community and to unlock new missions, badges, activities, and rewards. StackOverflow gives an increasing amount of privileges to people who have earned sufficient quantities of reputation.Each privilege is bound to a title like “trusted user” which in turn bound to a given amount of points.
• #21: Some gamification tools that people can try at work: https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/The+Continuous+Integration+Game+plugin https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/33b0242d-7158-4d39-9a01-0a08cf7c28bd https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.madgnome.jira.plugins.jirachievements https://github.com/jonasswiatek/strokes http://www.mda4eclipse.com/2012/10/chocolate-driven-development.html http://blog.balfes.net/2013/01/08/gamification-for-coders-how-cool-would-this-be/ https://prezi.com/3jk_ctc4axir/gamification-of-software-development-process-enforcing-agile-common-best-practices-on-a-continuous-integration-environment/ https://coderwall.com/welcome
• #22: The key factor of gamification is to deliver on each element of playability – to make work feel like a game. Games however are voluntary and fun. If gamification is not applied properly according to the current context, the game mechanics can turn into even more chores and busy work.People will then be burdened by them because it will simply be more work piling on top of more work.Just like the little guy on the picture, instead of playing, they will be grinding for points (“grinding”, get it?) which will lead to burnout and that’s no bueno for anyone – just like the sparks are heating the grinder’s power cable – it will just lead to bad things in the end. Takeaway: There are various game mechanics that you can apply in order to enhance the strength of the employee-to-business or customer-to-business interaction. Some of them will work better than others – you need to observe people’s reaction to the gamification you are applying so that you can re-adjust your approach in order to maximize the benefits from it as well as strive to eliminate playbor.
• #23: http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_keil_a_manifesto_for_play_for_bulgaria_and_beyond Incorrect application of game mechanics is not the only solution. Games are not only about them. Fun and great experience also comes from the act of playing, regardless of what the game is.The man in the picture is Steve Keil, a British entrepreneur who has had observations on the way work and playing are done. In his TED presentation he elaborates on the fact that work and play are not mutually exclusive. He also talks about how Bulgarian society lacks an attitude of playfulness because of our recent past. Really thrilling stuff – do check out the video.
• #24: Steve mentions the term “the baba effect” (the grandma effect) – it’s basically when us, Bulgarians are schooled by our elders to be cautious, skeptical and wary of new things because we can either fail or be scammed. Unfortunately, as a nation we have recent history – starting from approx. World War I - of being lied to, bullied and double-crossed by people with who wielded promises and power.The communist regime taught our parents and grandparents that in order to do work, you need to be serious – games and play are frivolous activities which have no place in a hard worker’s daily task list. Hence, a stark contrast has come into being between the work environment and real life. You would find gruff and stern attitude in the working class – all the way from the busy clerk to the unapproachable god-like “big boss”. As I read about other nations’ work-life balance, I see that this is actually a problem with other nations as well. Japan and Korea for instance.http://www.playmanifesto.org/blog/mind-control-get-your-tinfoil-hats-now/PS: An interesting topic is also presented in the post from his blog – there’s a discussion on a Bulgarian middle-aged man’s suspicions-filled reaction towards Steve’s presentation. The comments to the post are also worth reading .Everything is in English so you should have no trouble reading it.
• #25: It’s funny, because we, Bulgarians, are not like this. Our literature and history are full of recalls of our hard working AND playful attitude. This is something which can be found in all nations – from folklore dances and songs to everyday jokes.So, the second part of my thesis on gamification is the playful attitude.I’ve put the World Wrestling Federation (now Entertainment)’s logo from their “Attitude” era here on purpose.As it turns out, during that era – the late 90s and early 00s – the WWF’s shows exploded in popularity.It’s also the period of time when my generation, here in Bulgaria, watched it the most. Me and my brother have cherished memories of that time – heck, we still keep our “The Rock” and “Kane” t-shirts :D.There’s a video series called “Monday night wars” which presents the buildup, development, impact and aftermath of the ATTITUDE era – I encourage you to watch it because it’s full of useful life lessons For me, personally, the ATTITUDE era was when everyone in the show had a strongly-represented character and the way wrestlers interacted with each other – often improvising and trying their best at their work of fighting actors. Playing the game by their own rules. Showing ATTITUDE!!!
• #26: So we can then take this regular situation in which Johnny is showing Timmy that the code of the former has a bug.Johnny could just go, point a finger at the monitor and say that the code is broken and that Timmy is a noob.Johnny can now return to his desk and leave Timmy to ponder as to what exactly happened and what the problem really is.Timmy may also start questioning his own skills because of Johnny’s comment. Now, that wouldn’t the situation much, wouldn’t it?
• #27: Let’s apply some playful attitude AND good will to the situation.  Johnny can show Timmy that there is indeed some sort of a problem in the software. He can also express his observations and suggestions if Timmy doesn’t have an initial idea about what could be causing the problem.At the very least, Johnny is trying to help Timmy solve the problem by lending him ideas or if we can put it in gamer’s terms: casting the Arcane Intelligence buff to Timmy. 
• #28: Playful attitude can be applied to teams as well  I have a personal history with the Counter Strike – my first job was as Customer Support. We were all young lads in our 20s there and Counter Strike was well known to us, so the CS abbreviation was a no-brainer  Also, there’s a wordplay here in Bulgarian: customer support has the playful alternative of “customer-fighting department”. Trust me, it sounds cooler in Bulgarian :D The football team: there are already many metaphors to football in office culture. Usually its one of the first things that pops up in the minds of people when higher-ups are doing pep talks about winning and team play. Also, this attitude is bolstered that many IT companies have their own football team. Heck, apart from an amateur league, there’s also a league for amateur teams from IT companies!The third panel is a screenshot from the official video to the song “Warriors” by the band Imagine Dragons. The video depicts the hyperbolized quest of a League of Legends (a team-based arena game) to make it to the finals and win. However, if I am so bold, I would substitute the fact that they are playing a game on their computers with the proposition that they may be coding up a software product or anything else for that matter. Any team chasing a big goal experiences the perils of such a quest so why not visualize and associate it with this video? 
• #29: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-glseQAA6Fs http://www.slideshare.net/PeterSabev/ekip-39924515<Unfortunately this slide is about a Bulgarian thing – an fellow of mine (Peter Sabev, on the picture) organized an IT conference in his hometown of Ruse and was also a presenter at that conference. His topic was “How to create a perfect team with imperfect people”.I’ve added this slide in order to promote people to take a look at a cool presentation that’s a part of a cool conference which is NOT happening in the capital of Sofia.There are so many IT conferences and events in Bulgaria, mostly in Sofia that there’s even a website for tracking them - http://iteventz.bg/.Anyway, in the previous slide I was speaking about the playful attitude within a team. So in this slide I’m making a side reference to Peter’s presentation about building a team in the first place.Sorry, but the presentation spans across 116 slides, is entirely in Bulgarian and touches upon a lot of points so I cannot summarize it here :-/>
• #30: You can also apply playful attitude towards your daily tasks and chores.Seeing as how we’re working in the IT industry, there’s a lot of creativeness and thinking involved, you can have the attitude/notion of visualizing your work with fantasy art.In this case I’ve chosen images from the collectible card game “Magic The Gathering”  In the leftmost picture you can see that the guys is piecing a puzzle – much like architecting a new project, eh? The guy on the right is having a burst of arcane knowledge – may be he just read through the docs and code of a very cool project and he is currently blow away by how much things he’s learned.The guy in the bottom is displaying the magic he’s capable of – may be someone told him that he cannot fix a very specific bug in the project. Looks like he’s about to prove that other guy wrong 
• #31: First person shooters are very immersive so personally I take inspiration from them when I need to visualize something cool when I work. Let’s say I’m debugging some code – I like envisioning the UI of a military shooter just because it helps me get distracted from thinking too much about the problem and focus on looking for the solution.
• #32: Seeing as how Java2Days is a Java-centric conference, let’s have that same visualization for Eclipse as well  Sorry – I couldn’t find a good-looking dark theme for Eclipse 
• #33: Here are some personal examples of playful attitude: The photo on the left is taken right before the MUFFIN Conference (IT stuff again) – I got a t-shirt in the promo bag the other day from the sponsors and I really liked the logo.I also knew that people don’t always socialize that much with people that they don’t know at such events and the pauses can be boring as heck because people are just talking to their friends for the most part.Thus I decided to make a turban and wear it for the entire duration of the conference – a full day. It was an experiment to see how would people react to such looniness. As it turned out, most guys were just looking at me all puzzled, girls were slightly frightened (? I don’t pretend to understand women much :D), but the people who knew me burst in laughter as soon as they spotted me and that wasn’t that hard to do :D The hand is basically what I do in front of the web camera on our morning scrum meetings with our colleagues from the Copenhagen office. It’s just that sometimes I don’t fit in its field of view so I improvised. Lemmie tell ya, it really makes the meeting more fun without any extra effort. The first time I did this, the guy on the other side told me “Bobi, can you repeat what you said, because I couldn’t hear a word you said over how ridiculous that hand puppet was :D”The final picture was when there was a photoshoot for an official clip for Infragistics. It was the first time I spontaneously did the turban, affixing the company name and hoping that I would get to be a random guy in one of the pictures/frames. As it turned out, I didn’t make it in the official video, but I made it to the Infragistics page on Jobs.bg – the best job site in Bulgaria: http://www.jobs.bg/company/56836 – just scroll to the bottom ;)
• #34: Playful attitude is all fine and dandy, but it just any other nice thing can be taken too far. There are times where playfulness has to be set aside and things have to be taken seriously. It is then when looking to make jokes and poking fun can be treated as lack of understanding, commitment and focus on the matter at hand. The game mechanics applied in gamification are objective – they are set and apply in the same way to all participants.The playful attitude, on the other hand is subjective and unlike game mechanics, it varies from person to person. Takeaway: Applying a playful attitude is more natural than game mechanics. It’s also subjective which can make it an unique experience for everyone. Playfulness can be a great icebreaker in professional relations because it helps bond people. For me, it also helps me get through doing things that I don’t like or find boring. I also get really uneasy when being in an office – the white walls unnerve me. It also has to be applied with care, because there are matters that need to be taken seriously – like meeting with a corporate representative or handling a critical issue.PS: An example of playfulness not making sense is the “brony” – it’s a neologism which comes from the animated series “My little pony” and the fact that grown men (20-30 year old) are the ones that like the show a lot. So much that they identify with the ponies and integrate that with their “bro” subculture. The point here is that the “brony” subculture can be OK to some extend – it’s just that when fans go too far with the silly/playful attitude, one cannot take them seriously or entrust them with responsibilities.Reference:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronies:_The_Extremely_Unexpected_Adult_Fans_of_My_Little_Ponyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brony_Talehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Little_Pony:_Friendship_Is_Magic_fandom
• #35: In this slide I present the StarCraft gamer WhiteRa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ZcdelXizw) and I read the quote from him out loud.I repeat the last sentence three times for added emphasis  Then I repeat the takeaways from both gamification via game mechanics and playfulness with the idea that just like WhiteRa is a professional gamer – a master of working with game mechanics. He is also renowned for his great attitude as a player and that makes a world of difference.In conclusion: game mechanics can amplify people engagement – they need to be objective and just.Playful attitude can help bring more fun to otherwise unfun work activities and it can help people bond and as a result, work better together. A word of caution to both approaches – when applying either one, observe how people are reacting and adjust your approach in order to keep to keep the uplifted mood, efficiency and fun factor for everyone you are working with. More GG, more skill! 