Ask HN: What are the best resources for learning about gamification? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are the best resources for learning about gamification?

37 pointsjeffmjack8 comments

Could be a book, series, article, podcast, blog.. anything :)

I can recommend the Gamification MOOC run by Prof. Kevin Werbach at Wharton:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/gamification

You're in luck, next session starts August 15 ;)

Sorry if this is too impractical, but you might look at gamification as an application of general principles of human psychology and decision making. Some interesting books in this area are "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg (which deals with motivation and habit formation), "Nudge" by Richard Thaler, or "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

thats a great persepctive, can you elaborate a bit, I have read "the power of habit", but the summary of thinking fast and slow. Are you pointing to the clue, action and reward steps. I know you were just commenting, but I am a nerd for this type of stuff and would be interested in your original thought....

Thinking Fast and Slow is generally about research in the "heuristics and biases" school. When we make decisions, we don't always think completely rationally, but rely on approximations and rules of thumb that simplify the task we have to perform. Our decisions can be influenced by context that tells us which approximations we should use. (I guess I'm thinking of priming & anchoring effects. If you ask, "is the average redwood taller than 8000 feet? How tall is the average redwood?" You will get larger estimates than if you first ask "is the average redwood taller than 50 feet?")

I think gamification is sort of a way to change your users frame of mind while they engage with your product. Kahneman doesn't really talk about games, but he does talk about ways of influencing behavior by affecting a person's state of mind.

I listed "The Power of Habit" first because I have a feeling that games have more to do with rewards and cravings than they do with judgement and decision making (more the topic of Thinking Fast and Slow). But both books relate to how we can steer decision making.

* Aside: I googled "priming anchoring" and got a result about UI design also mentioning loss aversion, another topic from Kahneman's book. http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/03/how-anchoring-o...

Fun fact: your users will hate losing badges even more than they like earning them. :)

Badgeville's Wiki is pretty good - https://badgeville.com/wiki/

Awesome.

Short and practical book: Hooked how build habit forming product

I second this book, there is also an audio version.

I have emailed the author a few times, he has been very helpful.

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