Serious Games and Gamification
New tools to bring people together
Question #1
Which of the following does a game need?
a) A goal, rules, feedback, and voluntary participation
b) A goal, rules, voluntary participation, and a good story
c) A good story, rules, feedback and voluntary participation
Question #2
Are gamification and serious gaming the same thing?
Question #3
Can serious gaming only be done online?
How did you do?
Which of the following does a game need?
a) A goal, rules, feedback, and voluntary participation
Are gamification and serious gaming the same thing?
No
Can serious gaming only be done online?
No
Serious Games vs. Gamification
Serious games
A game with an ultimate goal other than pure entertainment
Gamification
The application of game mechanics to other activities to
encourage engagement or elicit a specific change in behaviour
Serious Games vs. Gamification
Serious Games
Gamification
Uses intrinsic motivators
Uses extrinsic motivators
Provides experiential learning that has meaning for
players and provides an opportunity for mastery
Provides no deep or sustainable learning; once
motivators are removed, behaviour usually reverts
Creates a safe space (the magic circle):
- have difficult conversations; and
- safe to fail
Elicits a specific and pre-determined behaviour
change
Uses fun to motivate people to do something they
would not normally do
Uses basic game design techniques to encourage a
specific and pre-determined outcome in a non-game
context:
- Goals through rewards;
- Feedback through points; and
- Competition through leader boards.
Want to play?
Identify examples of where I have used gamification and / or
serious games
Write these down and we will come back to them at the end of
the session
REStrukt™; Resilience
Guiding Principles
Engage all of the community.
Encourage shared ownership and responsibility for the built
environment and social infrastructure.
Empower key leaders already in the community to develop and
leverage opportunities.
Educate the community and responders to ensure a place-based
approach that acknowledges the complex and integrated nature of
risk.
Setting the scene
In 15 minutes your community will be hit with a disaster
Your community has all the knowledge and resources needed to
respond to an emergency
Can you work together and apply this latent potential (knowledge and
resouces) to become resilient?
The other tables are neighbouring communities who will also face a disaster; it might be the same disaster
or a different one. Can you be more resilient than them? They have the same resources and knowledge you
do, the same players at the table? What will they do? What will you do?
Set-up
• Everyone select a character at random, if it is a character you
identify with, change with someone else
• Everyone should take four resource tokens (pennies)
• Place the coloured tokens (pennies) on the game sheet. You
will use these when you decide what guiding principle an action
aligns with
Instructions
ACTIONS
• You get points if you actions are implemented
• You have 4 tokens you can use to vote on actions
• You can only vote on an action once
• An action requires 3 tokens to be deemed implemented
• Your community has enough resources to implement 9 actions
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
• Your community should try and implement at least 2 of each Guiding Principle
• Use the coloured marker when you implement an action to indicate which
Guiding Principle the action fits with
There is no right or wrong way to decide
how you will implement actions
Who will survive?
• Take a moment to write down the actions you have
implemented
• Spend the break walking around and seeing how other
communities did
• Who do you think will survive and why? – Open discussion
How did you do (individually)?
• Add up the individual points:
• Did anyone get no points? Who were you?
• Did anyone get four points? Who were you?
• Does this change your mind about who you think will survive?
How did you do (community)?
• Use the scorecard to track what you implemented and which
principle your actions fit
• Circle those that were implemented
• Tick the actions where the guiding principle was correctly identified
• Note what you thought the action was when your incorrectly matched a
guiding principle to an action
Wait! There are two additional principles that I didn’t
highlight in the set up …
Traditional Principles
Embed your response actions and opportunities in areas that
you have control over.
Engineer plans and priorities, relying on experts and decision
makers.
Disaster!
Pick a disaster card – read it to your table
Scoring
Use the guide to add up the points your community scored.
Add an additional point for every guiding principle you correctly
identified and implemented.
Declare a
disaster
9 – 15 points
Survive
Resilient
16 – 21 points
22 – 27 points
Dialogue
• What was the impact of the event on each community member?
• Did you push for certain actions? Why?
• Were some actions easier to implement? Why?
• What could you have done differently? Why?
• Do you agree with the four Guiding Principles and that building
resilience before an event could be helpful?
Learning
Serious games vs Gamification
Serious Game
Asking quiz questions
Gamification
Identifying winners of the quiz
Asking people to track serious games vs. gamification
REStrukt
Asking teams to compete against each other and
ranking who they thought would win
Any other examples?
Serious games vs Gamification
• Both serious games and gamification have a role in public
participation and dialogue
• Understanding what your outcomes are will allow you to choose
the right tool
• These are not easy add-ons, but take a lot of time to develop
properly
Serious games can create a safe space for open
discussion around contentious issues; especially
on topics that are emotive or where people bring
ego to the table.
Creating spaces to help us listen to, and learn
from, each other
Tabatha Soltay
www.TabTalks.ca