A Few More Definitions for Your Gameful Life Glossary
By: Victoria Ichizli-Bartels
Tags: Gaming, Self, Games, Philosophy, Gamification

Are definitions that important?

Searching for definitions to understand something is natural. But to turn your life into games, you don’t need to learn game design and gamification in detail.

I do so myself because this world fascinates me and I am curious about various aspects of it.

As I have learned more about play, games, game design, the theory of fun, gamification, motivation, behavioral design, and many others, I have discovered many fascinating facts about games and various areas of their application.

I learned, for example, of the term serious games, which are often defined as the following:

“This group includes full games that have been created for reasons other than pure entertainment.” — Andrzej Marczewski, Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Unicorn Edition

In his both humorous and extremely informative book Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Unicorn Edition, Andrzej Marczewski divides serious games into several types. Here is how he summarizes them:

- “Teaching Game: Teaches using real games and gameplay. - “Meaningful Game: Uses gameplay to promote a meaningful message to the player. - “Purposeful Game: Uses games to create direct real-world outcomes.” — Andrzej Marczewski, Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Unicorn Edition

I was especially fascinated by Purposeful Games and one of its examples, “Genes in Space,” which is

“a space shooter game that uses gameplay to map genomes to help the fight against cancer in the real world!” — Andrzej Marczewski, Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Unicorn Edition

Isn’t that fascinating?

When I learned about serious games, I wondered whether the self-motivational games I designed for myself were serious games. I even asked the gamification community on social media, and got many great and enlightening comments in return. Including from Andrzej Marczewski.

My knowledge about games and gamification increased immensely, also of how serious games differ from gamification:

“Gamification is about taking ideas and elements from games and using them in non-game contexts.” — Andrzej Marczewski, Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Unicorn Edition

Whereas serious games are “full games” and not just the use of some of the game elements.

I had some difficulty understanding serious games at first. I guess that came with the notion that these games were not created with the primary intention of making the players happy. I wondered whether, if most people play games because they make them happy, those environments that are made to stir thoughts and emotions (but not the happy ones) are really games as well?

[A side-note: If you also experience difficulties differentiating between games, serious games, gamification, and others, there is an excellent article by Andrzej Marczewski on this topic.]

The more I learned about games and gamification, the more I grew fascinated with how philosophical and uncertain both topics were.

I will not relate the whole conversation here, because I might lose you on the way. But I will tell you that many of those who participated in the discussion said that yes, my self-motivational games might be considered serious games. Others said that if I were only adding elements of games into my projects and activities, then that would be gamification.

Now looking at that discussion in retrospect and the fact that I turn my life — my real life and all that it comprises — into games, then it most probably is gamification, rather than being a combination of serious games. So the term Self-Gamification is appropriate.

However, one thing should be said here. Yes, sure, it is correct to say that if you decide to turn your personal or work projects, or your whole life, into games, and bring game elements into these projects and life in general, then this approach is gamification. But if naming your projects games increases your motivation and “infects” those around you with the same positivity and enthusiasm, then what you are doing is playing a game, whatever others might say.

Having made such a discourse on definitions, I think I should stop here because I don’t believe you need to dig deep into game and gamification design if you don’t want to.

I often mention that I turned my life into games long before I heard of the word “gamification” and started reading books on game and gamification design.

And so can you. You don’t need to read all the books I refer to before you can start seeing your projects and activities as games. All it takes is curiosity and the question: “How would I design this project to turn it into a fun game?”

You would have come to the same conclusions as me if you had walked in my shoes. Or even if you had a completely different story to me. Jane McGonigal in her acclaimed books and TED talks, Mitchel Resnick in Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play, Ian Bogost in Play Anything: The pleasure of limits, the uses of boredom, & the secret of games, Charlie Hoehn in Play It Away: A Workaholic’s Cure for Anxiety and others came to the same conclusion that games and play can make life happier, healthier, richer, and more fun.

They developed their recipes on how to do that, and I designed mine.

Now, let’s consider Self-Gamification, and the gamification part of it — that is bringing the fun and engaging elements of games into our own lives — a bit more.