Comments about O'Reilly Media Gamification by Design:

Today, we are aware that certain web games are successful because their developers knew how to engage their target players. This is because they applied very well the human aspects when playing pastime and puzzles in the traditional way.

This book starts showing us why people plays and what purpose they want to get, so we need to identify what kind of users our application will have: Socializers, Explorers, Achievers or Killers? So, how can we develop web applications in a manner our end users can enjoy it while working with it, even if it is not a game?

This book is an introductory path for understanding the mechanics of how people gets motivated with playing a game again and again and extending those concepts to more varied fields like health, knowledge and customer support. Those core concepts are points, levels, leader boards, loyalty, rewards, badges, social experiences and game mechanics versus game dynamics. Chapter five is very valuable because it covers twelve game mechanics that we can adapt for our web application user experience like collecting, delight, gifting, leading and fame.

The book finishes showing us a programming project which applies many of the aforementioned gammification concepts for a forums web site.

This book is very good to start designing web applications with games metaphors. A drawback I found is: How to gammify an application intended for the internal enterprise staff? This question is not clearly answered or inferred.

Note 1: By the time of writing this review the web site recommended by the authors http://GamificationU.com is not longer available. I think the new site is http://www.gamification.co/.

Note 2: This book was reviewed as a part of the O'Reilly Blogger Review Program (http://www.oreilly.com/reviews/)

Comments about O'Reilly Media Gamification by Design:

Authors have done an excellent job of introducing gamification to a novice reader. More than anything else, the book is very thought provoking and opens your eyes to the world of games around you!

Cheers!!!

Comments about O'Reilly Media Gamification by Design:

The author describes every element that finally makes a game and how thes game mechanics elements can be used in site development.
Interesting to read. Nice examples and exercises reveal the subject.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Gamification by Design:

The idea of using games and such to help engage people with learning a product or idea appeals to me. On of my favourite apps on my iPhone is Mind Snacks (http://mindsnacks.com/), a fun application that aids learning Spanish through a series of games.

It was interesting that the blogger review program is it's own game. Completing a level in this game is doing a review. I have to complete levels to be able to do more reviews.

Gamification by Design is well written and easy to understand. It does a good job of presenting the key ideas of Gamification. The use of real world examples showing what people have done is great. There's even some real code showing how a forum being enhanced with Gamification. The code examples and examples of interactions with gamification services complete a good book. It was an exciting eye opening read that I thoroughly enjoyed. I was able to get a good introduction to the theories and principles behind gamification, and ground these in reality with the code and examples.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the book to someone technical wanting to learn about gamification.

[this book was reviewed as a part of the O'Reilly Blogger Review Program]