Page 31 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2014

AC/E digital culture ANNUAL REPORT 2014GAME THINKING AND MECHANICSGamification, as the term is understood in Spanish, consists of the use of game thinking and mechanics to solve problems in non‐game contexts.The concept arose in the USA towards the end of 2010 but, despite quickly reaching Spain, it would take another couple of years before it became a tendency causing great excitement, being adopted in areas such as customer commitment, employee performance, personal development, learning and innovation.This new discipline aims to take the best ideas employed in the world of games to encourage desirable behaviours in organisations and institutions, thereby achieving people’s participation.While it is true that, to begin with, gamification was mainly associated with the accumulation of points, medals and positions on classification tables in non‐ game contexts, it has now generally been accepted as a tendency that aims to use games to solve problems.In this it is like previous concepts related to games in other contexts such as serious games or advergaming, the question is whether they belong or not to this new sphere.Above and beyond the various opinions raised by those involved in this new discipline, the market is adopting gamification as the name of the tendency to use games for problem solving regardless of the greater or lesser number of characteristics inherited from the game and video game industries and the solutions achieved.Whatever the case, the important thing to understand is that gamification is a tool to encourage desired and necessary behaviour towards our proposals to generate participation andAC/Ecommitment amongst the publics for whom it was devised.But what is behaviour? Behaviour is how people interact with the medium so some examples of behaviour in the cultural sector could be to consume music, visit cultural spaces such as libraries and museums, devote more time to reading or go to the cinema. Or even to recommend or invite friends to participate in these activities through social networks.WHERE WE ARE HEADING: DIGITAL TRENDS IN THE WORLD OF CULTURETHEME 3: GAMIFICATION, GENERATING COMMITMENT TO CULTUREGamification consists of using game thinking and mechanics in non‐game environments to encourage people’s participationThe main idea ingamification isto use elementsincorporated ingames whichentice people toplay, and notstop playing, toenthuse and motivate the public at large to adopt these other behaviours that our culture needs.Gamification is certainly a very transversal tool and can be applied in very different environments, from a company’s customer loyalty programme to platforms encouraging the sustainable use of energy resources. And why not? So that people make known, consume and participate in our cultural activities.While the present time is one of great expectation throughout the world for gamification, it is also now that the first applications and results are appearing of applying game techniques in these non‐game environments, something that is generally done as a project in innovation.CAPTURING NEW AUDIENCESOne of the main challenges in the cultural sector is to attract new audiences to the various proposals there may be. Capturing the attention of new audiences and making them participate in the CURRENT PAGE...31