A Few More Definitions for Your Gameful Life Glossary
Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game. — Michael Jordan
It is only reasonable to start a game glossary with the definition of games. Thus, let’s do it.
Definitions
A game is (in its first three definitions by the Oxford Dictionaries):
1. “An activity that one engages in for amusement or fun.”
2. “A complete episode or period of play, ending in a final result.”
3. “(informal) A type of activity or business regarded as a game.”
Game design, when it comes to the first two — I would even say all three — definitions of games is a multi-dimensional discipline:
“The design and production of games involves aspects of cognitive psychology, computer science, environmental design, and storytelling, just to name a few. To really understand what games are, you need to see them from all these points of view.” — Will Wright in the foreword to Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
Even though the world of games and game design is complex, there are several main components that are easily understood.
These are: goals, rules, feedback system, and voluntary participation.
Let’s recall the purpose of turning life into fun games. It is to give you a tool that you can use whenever you need help to uplift yourself and make your path, whatever you do while moving forward, brighter.
And since it is often considered that games are created to generate fun and happiness, then it is quite logical to borrow their elements and bring those into real-life situations to make life more fun and joyful too.
This approach is called gamification. Here is one of its definitions:
“The use of concepts and elements that make games engaging and enjoyable, in other areas of work or life in general.” — Andrzej Marczewski, Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Unicorn Edition
This intention of gamification is precisely why I think it complements awareness and kaizen so well in creating a happy way of life. Because it presents the opportunity to use game elements to make our lives more “engaging and enjoyable.”
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.
Self-Gamification is about making our lives happier
Here are some of the definitions of Self-Gamification:
- Self-Gamification is the art of turning our own lives into games.
- Self-Gamification is the application of game design elements to our own lives.
- Self-Gamification is a self-help approach showing us how to be playful and gameful.
- In Self-Gamification, we are both the designers AND the players of our self-motivational games.
During the discussion I had with the gaming community on serious games and Self-Gamification, I became aware for the first time of an aspect of Self-Gamification that I experience several times a day as I practice it. Someone commented that games, in general, are created to generate emotions.
I also discovered this thought by Yu-kai Chou:
“Games have no other purpose than to please the humans playing them. Yes, there are often ‘objectives’ in games, such as killing a dragon or saving the princess. But those are all excuses to simply keep the player happily entertained inside the system, further engaging them enough to stay committed to the game.” — Yu-kai Chou, Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards
That’s when I saw clearly that,
- Self-Gamification is about creating uplifting emotions for ourselves and keeping ourselves “happily entertained” with whatever comes our way in our lives.
And here is one more characteristic of Self-Gamification:
- If we look at what we want or have to do as a game, then the drama around those activities falls away.
At this point, I would like to repeat the good news for you. You don’t have to study game and gamification design in detail if you don’t want to — although you might have a lot of fun and discover valuable information by doing so. You are already the perfect self-motivational game designer for yourself, because, as many compassionate and brilliant people have said, you are the perfect you. “You are enough,” as Ariel and Shya Kane, Elizabeth Gilbert and many others often write on social media.
The other reasons for you being your perfect self-motivational game designer are the following:
You can learn how to look around and see yourself, the world around you, and how you react to it, with interest but without judgment. You don’t have to push yourself towards the end goal as you might have done before, but let your life progress by small but steady steps. You can absorb various ideas and apply them incrementally to your life.
How do your favorite games inspire you?
Think of your favorite games, or those that come to mind first. What elements are the most fun in them?
For example: Are they about sorting different objects into rows? Or about defeating monsters? Is it perhaps a strategical game where you have to build up resources to go on a mission?
A note: If you are a game designer then you might think of the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) framework here. But if you don’t have anything to do with game design, then consider anything that attracts you to the game or games you are thinking about now.
Take a notebook and a pen or your favorite device and app and answer the question above.
From Self-Gamification Happiness Formula: How to Turn Your Life into Fun Games.
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P.S. Feel free to share your answer in the comments. I’d love to read it. To keep in touch, subscribe to my newsletter, Optimist Writer.
About the author:
Victoria is a writer, instructor, and consultant with a background in semiconductor physics, electronic engineering (with a Ph.D.), information technology, and business development. While being a non-gamer, Victoria came up with the term Self-Gamification, a gameful and playful self-help approach bringing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification-based methods together to increase the quality of life. She approaches all areas of her life this way. Due to the fun she has, while turning everything in her life into games, she intends never to stop designing and playing them.
