Just what is the relationship between games and life? Do games reflect real life or are our lives becoming more and more influenced by games? These are the questions Baris Ozistek considered in his session at Casual Connect Europe.
Baris Ozistek: CEO at Netmarble EMEA
Baris is CEO of Netmarble EMEA as well as board member of StatersHub, the largest acceleration program supporting startups in this region. Baris has also been President of Turkish Digital Games Federation and a board member of Turkish Information Technologies Foundation.
In this session, Baris used several of Netmarble’s successful mobile RPG titles to illustrate how gamification is becoming more and more intertwined in our lives. As he pointed out during his session, games are no longer just entertainment and are certainly not simply for children. Games have now expanded to include such things as the Nike app for running which not only tracks your progress, but also allows you to compete with others. Baris emphasizes that, just as we have short and long term goals in life, games do the same, and offer rewards that depend on the efforts we make.
To learn more about the similarities between games and real life, watch the video of this session below.
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For more insights from Baris, see this article from Casual Connect Tel Aviv 2016.
“Every student should have their own learning environment with which they are interacting, and it adapts to an individual student’s pace,” Marko Suvajdzic stated. He continued talking about gamifying education during his session at Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014.
Marko Suvajdzic has maintained his passion for games through more than 17 years in the games industry and over a decade in academia. Now the associate professor of Digital Arts and Sciences, and the director of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida, and CEO and co-founder of Organic to Digital (O2D), he remains optimistic, “I can call myself entrepreneurial, or disruptive, or visionary, or strategic . . . but all those things come from my sense of optimism. I look at the world around me and automatically think of ways to make it better, improve it.” It may be through making a new video game, changing members on a production team, volunteering, or coming up with a better way to do something, but all these flow from his optimism. He exclaims, “Let’s love life!”
Marko Suvajdzic, Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of the University of Florida and CEO and Co-founder of O2D
Although Suvajdzic has received many awards for his work and has many moments in his career that he cherishes, he constantly looks forward to the next project. It is this attitude toward creating something new and constantly innovating that drives him from day to day. He insists, “I cherish the challenge and love to create something new.”
Paving His Own Way
Nine years ago, Suvajdzic started his own game studio, something he had long believed he would do. He used his personal credit card for this boot-strapping operation, and for the first few years, they focused on building the team and working on internal processes all while doing a lot of outsourcing work. Because he has had opportunities to work with some amazing minds, he feels an obligation toward them in the way he runs his company. He considers what Andrew Keen, Rob Folup, or Lon Clark would ask about what he is doing and what choices they would make. While he believes in the decisions he makes, he pays gratitude toward those who have helped him grow and learn.
With a drive for learning as well as gaming, Suvajdzic began teaching in 2004.
With a drive for learning as well as gaming, Suvajdzic began teaching in 2004. He had lived in San Francisco through the 1990s and realized the city was far ahead of the other US cities in digital art and design. The USA was ahead of most of the world in digital production as well, he discovered. When he returned to Belgrade in 2002, he decided sharing his knowledge was absolutely imperative. In 2005, he founded the first college department for Computer Art and Design in the country. In 2013, he began collaborating with the University of Florida, promoting video games and entrepreneurship in their programs. “It is all very exciting!” he says.
Teaching Through Gaming
Suvajdzic is attracted to free-to-play games because of the ease with which new games can be experienced, with no upfront commitment. On the other hand, he detests having his children ask him to pay for upgrades or in-game purchases, when the game is one he knows will lose its appeal in a day or two. So he uses them as a teaching experience to explain about “a hook” and how games are made to motivate a player to buy things at certain points in the gameplay. But yes, he still does buy upgrades for them.
The most important development coming in the games industry, according to Suvajdzic, is using games for purposes other than recreation, primarily education.
The most important development coming in the games industry, according to Suvajdzic, is using games for purposes other than recreation, primarily education. He recognizes that students today expect learning to always be fun, challenging, and meaningful. There is already some movement toward gamification of education, but the future will involve much more than that. “It will transform how we encapsulate the knowledge and pass it on to the next generation of humans.”
In his time away from work, Suvajdzic has a wide variety of interests. He hikes, rides horses, bikes, plays the drums, practices karate, and works with his black labrador, certified as a Therapy Dog International. He also enjoys time with his two children. His ten-year-old son, Nesta, is particularly passionate about gaming, so Suvajdzic encourages him in spending hundreds of hours in the O2D studio where they play games together, talking about plot, characters and progression. Nesta is also learning PhotoShop. And amidst all this, Suvajdzic still finds time to work on his PhD in Theory of Arts and Media.
TechnologyAdvice provides coverage content on teaching and training games, strategic employee engagement software, and customer loyalty programs and much more. Clark Buckner, the online events manager from TechnologyAdvice, shares the first installment of their Business Technology Whiteboard video series and talks about the advantages of using badges in this article.
Whether you like badges or not, badges are ingrained in some of our oldest traditions. Karate belts, Boy Scout merit badges, and even Army Medals are all forms of badges. It’s easy to misuse this technology, which is why it’s become a target for criticism. It’s possible to use badges to represent something meaningful, like something that truly advances a career.
The Benefits of Badges
Badges are often the best method for engagement because they allow users to visibly display their achievements. Other methods, such as leveling up, typically aren¹t as obvious, and lack the social component and distinction of a badge. Even though other rewards can require the same amount of effort to attain, they often can’t be displayed or shown to other users as easily. Badges can create visible channels through which users can show off achievements. They also help motivate other users or participants, who see these rewards and are compelled to attain their own.
Another benefit of badges is the potential to dramatically improve engagement with users.
Another benefit of badges is the potential to dramatically improve engagement with users. Often times, they create a goal that may take weeks (or in some cases, months) to achieve. This effort makes the badge much more rewarding than something such as employee of the month, which can be a one-off award or given for unclear criteria.
Two excellent examples of companies that implement badges well are Khan Academy and Codecademy. They are meaningful because they’re tied to progress. Answering five skill questions in a row correlates to improvement in a certain subject. It is immediately clear how Khan Academy or Codecademy badges relate to a larger goal, i.e., becoming more knowledgeable about a certain subject.
Advantages and Disadvantages
One of the best advantages of badges is that oftentimes they are stepping stones to some larger goal or purpose (i.e. becoming an expert coder with Codecademy). Because they are symbolic of progress, they are commonly linked with hard work. By seeing your hard work every time you log into your profile, it’s possible to stay motivated. Badges are also great for brand awareness. Because users have worked so hard for badges, they often share them on social media and help to promote their own hard work as well as whatever company allowed them to feel that sense of accomplishment.
One of the best advantages of badges is that oftentimes they are stepping stones to some larger goal or purpose.
One of the disadvantages is that badges can be used too often. Sometimes, websites give you a few badges just for signing up. Since it often requires little work to join programs, these badges aren’t as indicative of hard work as other badges that can take weeks or even months to achieve.
Setting It Up
The best way to develop a strategy for implementing badges is to look for a space where employees or users need to complete actions that benefit not only businesses, but also benefit them. Ultimately, if users or employees feel engaged and excited by the badges that have been created, then they’re much more likely to continue to work hard in order to improve.
Typically, the most difficult problem with setting up badges as an engagement method is determining what badges can add the most value and actually motivate users to stay engaged. Usually the best way to implement badges is to look for inspiration as to who has correctly created engaging software or programs that keeps engagement levels high.
In conclusion, badges come with both advantages and disadvantages that need to be navigated according to your goals. Before considering this implementation, consider your end users and determine what steps need to be taken first before bringing in the use of badges.
For more information on badges and a road map to utilize this valuable set of tools, visit TechnologyAdvice’s free guide to gamification to learn more.
The business was developing serious gaming and gamification activities within their digital agency, so he and his partner made the switch.
Alban Villani, Managing Director at Forever Young Creative, started off interested in the animation and cinema industries, but soon discovered many similarities between what he was doing and the game production process. He had learned to manage creative and technical teams with a strong ROI focus as a result of being in charge of a digital advertising agency since 2008, so felt that he may be able to handle the work that was recently starting at Forever Young Group. The business was developing serious gaming and gamification activities within their digital agency, so he and his partner made the switch. Now he stays in the industry because he finds creating games a breath of fresh air compared to their typical clients’ requirements. He enjoys every day at work as he meets and interacts with amazing people. But if Alban were not involved in this industry he would be opening some other new start-up company.
Alban Villani
The release of Forever Young Creative’s main game was a tremendous challenge for Alban, primarily because they were working on it in parallel with their core activity of digital advertising. This required many hours of extra work while their revenues were shrinking. He emphasizes, “You must stay focused in order to survive.” However, he was excited to announce the release of their new game, Clash of Words, during the summer of 2013, which will be cross-platform and fully social. They also expect to announce a publishing partnership with a major regional player in June 2013.
As Alban stays focused on his work, he sees Asia becoming the defining market in mobile gaming. While there are impressive gaming companies in the US and Nordic regions, the mobile consumption in Asia is particularly exciting, especially since many Asian regions, such as Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, are just getting started in the mobile market. However, he considers that the excitement surrounding HTML5 is a short-sighted analysis of where the market is heading.
