Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps [Paperback]

Gabe Zichermann (Author), Christopher Cunningham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 2011

What do Foursquare, Zynga, Nike+, and Groupon have in common? These and many other brands use gamification to deliver a sticky, viral, and engaging experience to their customers. This book provides the design strategy and tactics you need to integrate game mechanics into any kind of consumer-facing website or mobile app. Learn how to use core game concepts, design patterns, and meaningful code samples to a create fun and captivating social environment.

Whether you're an executive, developer, producer, or product specialist, Gamification by Design will show you how game mechanics can help you build customer loyalty.

• Discover the motivational framework game designers use to segment and engage consumers
• Understand core game mechanics such as points, badges, levels, challenges, and leaderboards
• Engage your consumers with reward structures, positive reinforcement, and feedback loops
• Combine game mechanics with social interaction for activities such as collecting, gifting, heroism, and status
• Dive into case studies on Nike and Yahoo!, and analyze interactions at Google, Facebook, and Zynga
• Get the architecture and code to gamify a basic consumer site, and learn how to use mainstream gamification APIs from Badgeville

"Turning applications into games is a huge trend. This book does a great job of identifying the core lasting principals you need to inspire your users to visit again and again."
—Adam Loving
Freelance Social Game Developer and founder of Twibes Twitter Groups

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Gabe Zichermann is an author, public speaker, serial entrepreneur, and the foremost expert on the subject of gamification. His book, Game-Based Marketing (Wiley, 4/2010) has achieved critical and industry acclaim for its detailed look at innovators who blend the power of games with brand strategy. Zichermann is also the author of the Gamification Blog at http://gamification.co and chair of the Gamification Summit and Workshops.

Christopher Cunningham is a software architect and developer who helped found ChroniQL, an early gamification solution; beamME, a mobile social application; and TrekMail, a breakthrough mobile email/text application. Christopher has deep expertise with agile development processes and distributed team management.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (August 19, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1449397670
• ISBN-13: 978-1449397678
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.4 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #178,537 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > Computers & Technology > Mobile Phones, Tablets & E-Readers > Programming & App Development

More About the Author

GABE ZICHERMANN is the chair of the Gamification Summit 9/15-16 NYC (GSummit) - where top thought leaders in this burgeoning industry gather to share knowledge and insight. Zichermann is also an author, highly rated public speaker and entrepreneur whose book, "Gamification by Design" (O'Reilly Media, 2011) looks at the technical and architectural considerations for designing engagement using games concepts. His book "Game-Based Marketing" (Wiley, 2010) achieved critical and industry acclaim for its detailed look at innovators who blend the power of games with brand strategy. A resident of NYC, Gabe is a board member of StartOut.org , advisor to a number of startups and Facilitator for the Founder Institute in Manhattan. For more information about Gabe and gamification, visit the Gamification Blog at http://gamification.co.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 63 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre Primer, Overselling his brand a bit much. November 13, 2011

By M. Forr

Format:Paperback

As a UX designer working on various websites and mobile apps I found the first five chapters useful in my design thinking but I also found a the coding and platform chapters to be weak and kind of sleazy.

Before I write anymore, I want you to know that I'm not going to critique Gamficiation Theory here as that has been done well enough elsewhere. I just want to talk about the book :)

So the first five chapters of the book are useful and meaty enough to get you on your way. For instance, it provides some compelling arguments to think about your analytics in terms of 'levels' and 'experience points' in order to see what they are accomplishing, even if you don't expose the information to them. Moreover, the first five chapters gave me enough to work with to implement some gamified elements into my next project. There's also a supplemental workbook PDF on the authors website that compiles all the exercises found in the book which I could see using at a project kickoff.

That being said, I do have some complaints about this book. First, I feel like the author was selling his website GamificationU a little too hard. In order to download the aforementioned workbook I had to fill out a contact form and in order to get the 'advanced' movies the author provides you have to follow him on twitter. If you ask me it feels a little too sleazy considering I've already paid for the book. If I really want to be on the mailing list or to follow you, I would.

My second issue has to do with "Chapter 7: Coding Basic Game Mechanics". I applaud the author for including a chapter that walks us through the code, I really do. But given the current rapid development of rails he should have forked the project on Github and been more thorough with his documentation. As such, I'm still trying to get the environment setup and running...I'll report back on that when I'm done.

My third and last issue, Chapter 8: Sponsored by Badgeville. This is new for me as I've never seen a chapter flat out sponsored and written by a third-party vendor in an O'Reilly book. Their service actually doesn't seem that bad but the author should have written the chapter himself if he felt it was so good. So the result is that it either feels like this guy doesn't mind pushing Badgeville on his readers or that he was lazy.

If you're looking for a book to get you up to speed on gamification and working it into your UX Design, give this a read. Just don't be surprised by some of the other parts...

58 of 64 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars There is not shortcut to understand Gamification in one book and this one is no help either! September 17, 2011

By Andreas West

Format:Paperback

You want to have a textbook to install Gamification for your own services, programs or company? Motivated by all the hype about how Gamification is the solution to get an almost lifelong customer engagement and many returning sales? You want to copy the success of Zynga, Nike+ and Groupon (note the absence of Foursquare in this list as I think it's rather a bad example of Gamification)? You want to find the secret recipe in just one easy to read book?

Why not buy and read the newest book from the "foremost expert on the subject of Gamification"? Well the title of this book by Gabe Zicherman sounds like the perfect solution for your motivations above, right? Well, I have bad news for you, there is no easy shortcut to understanding and implementing successful principles of Gamification for you! Nor is this book gonna help you in achieving all that is promised on the outside of the book. Ever heard of "No pain no gain?". That's right, as I will tell you here right away that you have to do it the hard way, buy and read a minimum dozen of books (some reading list provided later) and even then it's not guaranteed you've found the secret recipe.

So safe your 14.10 US$ (strange that Amazon is already cutting the price on a newly book almost in half, unless it's not a bestseller, right?) and invest that and some more dollars into various other books with more insights, more practicable tips, more take-aways than this book. Save yourself from the pain to read through some cheap advertising of the services of Badgeville.com as there are many other companies that offer the same service as them - at least two others start also with a B in their company name (hint). Save yourself from being mislead on some of the important topics of motivation (intrinsic vs extrinsic), psychology and game design as the author didn't manage to either explain them correctly or, as Sebastian Deterding hints in his review, shows a dangerous piece of pseudo-knowledge!

Go to a local bookstore where you have the chance of unwrapping this book and read randomly inside to see if the claims are right, make yourself your own picture of the quality of this book (the look inside of Amazon can't give show you all)

Still find my review not convincing enough to give only one star? Want to get more in-depth details about why this book is only worth one star? Then go on to read Sebastian Deterdings full review, an excellent, very long post about why Gabe Zicherman's new book deserves just one star eg it just uses copy & paste from other people's (read: Amy Jo Kim) public available presentations without even giving proper reference, not even mentioning of devoting a full chapter of advertising one Gamification companies services [...] in chapter 7 of his book:

[...]

For those that find the review of Gabe Zicherman's new book to long, jump to end to read Sebastian Deterdings conclusion and to read the copy&paste proof of "Chapter 2: Player Motivation" and Chapter 7

Sadly, like many other reviewers said too, the concept of Gamification is really intriguing and can be a difference maker in your marketing efforts, but isn't that easy to be achieved. Ignoring intrinsic motivation and just focusing on extrinsic motivation is giving you a short, hyped-up experience where your program is going to die much quicker than it was hyped-up in the beginning. I for one haven't fully mastered Gamification as indeed just reading one or two books from the self-claimed "foremost expert on Gamification" isn't providing you a shortcut to understand Gamification fully, it requires ready and understanding a variety of different books from Motivation (Daniel Pink eg Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us) to Game Design (Jesse Schell The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses, Raph Koster A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Jane McGonigal eg Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World) to Psychology (Johnmarshall Reeve eg Understanding Motivation and Emotion) as well as reading through the various excellent and free available online presentations (like Amy Jo Kim, Sebastian Deterding, Michael Wu eg)

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Feels like an ad for the authors website March 10, 2012

By Andrew Hamblin

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The whole book reads like an add for the authors website. The book wasn't totally useless, but the "ad-like" tone was unacceptable for a product I paid for.