Is Your Life Just One Big RPG?

Posted on by Judy Unrein

My husband sent this video to me this week: a recording of Carnegie Mellon professor, author, and former Imagineer Jesse Schell talking about the future, game design, Facebook, and lots more at DICE 2010. There are several ID implications here, but one that speaks to me most initially is about motivation.

As a trainer, I often fell for the idea that if I was giving out prizes, trainees would only value them if they were “valuable”. But in fact, mere measurement does change behavior, and the oddest things can motivate us: achievements in WoW (most of which give nothing), virtual prizes (like clipart of a car that I saw one webinar presenter give out this past week), or simply seeing a full row of green checkmarks because we got 100% on a quiz.

There’s lots of stuff to discuss here. Watch. Tell me what you think.

(Alternately, view in parts on YouTube…)

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  • http://onestoptrainer.bogspot.com Chet Stevenson

    Well…. For all of us “Nerdy Nerds being Nerdy”, it sounds plausible. I don’t know that I want to have everything I do tracked by the government though.

    As it relates to training, I think it comes down to motivation. It has to somehow have an impact on their personal lives to make a difference. At least that seemed to be the commonality in his presentation.

  • Judy Unrein

    Chet, that’s a good point… I think the system he was describing does tie those motivational “points” back to tangible rewards… but I have to question if that’s why awarded points actually make a difference in people’s behavior.

    @wwickha1 and @usablelearning and I have been tweeting pretty furiously this morning and share your concern about government tracking (and personally, I would find the constant *ding!* very annoying, as well). ;) Here are a few articles we’ve shared for anyone who wants to read more about the motivation side: http://nyti.ms/8ZMQNW and http://nyti.ms/8ZMQNW http://bit.ly/cVDezF.

    And if you’d rather delve into the privacy issues, here’s one more down that path: http://bit.ly/cL5m8u. Enjoy!