Chapter 6
Turning Work into Fun
In this chapter, you’ll learn:
- About the opportunities and risks of gamification
- How games make tasks and goals into fun experiences
- How to apply the techniques of social games to many nongaming experiences to make them fun and rewarding
- How to critically evaluate the content of games and social media experiences
Throughout this chapter, you see ways in which different social games have used elements of games such as imagination, emotion, clear progress and goal-setting to create compelling, fun experiences for players.
How Games Make Ordinary Tasks Addicting
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Samuel Coleridge, “Xanadu,” lines 47–54
When my wife and I moved into our home, we wanted to make it a special place, and one of the ways we did that was to give it a name: the Pleasure Dome. Those who interpret the name as a tongue-in-cheek nod to a hedonistic lifestyle wouldn’t be entirely incorrect, but the more important reference is a favorite poem: Coleridge’s “Xanadu,” where the milk of paradise is a ...
