Podcast 12: How to get started with gamification?

Welcome to a Question of Gamification a podcast where gamification expert An Coppens answers your questions. Hi, and welcome to this week's a Question of Gamification. This is An Coppens your show host, and also the chief Game Changer at Gamification Nation. This week's question is, how can you get started with gamification? Now, for me, that's a double question in one. For some people that means how can I get started for building a career in gamification? And on the other side is how can I get started and put gamification into practice for my organisation? So those are very frequently asked questions we come across. So to tackle the first one, how can we get started in a career in gamification? Well, the first thing I would say is to look to become an intern. Ask organisations like my own, and see if you can, first of all, translate an existing regular game into something that can be used for businesses. That's typically how I asked interns to apply for positions within Gamification Nation. The other thing to do is to start reading up and start following the main people that have shaped the nature and landscape of gamification. More and more degrees and master's programs offer and include an element of gamification. So if you are studying game design, that is for sure, fantastic grounding, and look for those organizations or those Institute's and universities that offer gamification as modules, as part of masters, or degree programs. I know in the UK, there's a number of universities, like for example, Coventry University has some elements of gamification and game design as part of Surrey University, Birmingham, there's a number of them. So do your research and find out from those of us working in the industry, how did they get to where they are now? So to share my career track into gamification, so first of all, I always wanted to be a game designer. So as a kid, I was really obsessed with puzzles and crosswords and was making games from when I was the age of seven or eight years old. And so if you have that passion, then you probably have a good inclination that it might be something you want to do. Then look for a career in game design. My parents told me at the time, and this is many, many moons ago, that game design was not for girls and there was no career initially, you know, you better get a real job. So I guess I took a normal degree. I studied international marketing and I also added a degree or an MBA in change management to it. And then only in the last 15 years did I add a diploma in game design, and I studied everybody that was a somebody in the early 2000s, 2010's. So, at that time, Gabe Zicherman was a key speaker, and I think a lot of his work in terms of books ond courses. He had a number of courses on Udemy, were excellent, and I would still recommend that you visit them. The other person I studied and read most of the works from was Mario Herger. And he had a course called Enterprise Gamification on Udemy. So another one that I pretty much absorbed. And then Yukai Chou, who I mentioned in last week's question of the week, who I did always level one, two, and three, Octalysis framework certifications with and then I read extensively all the books of the likes of Andrzej Marczewski research that came out and at the time, the biggest research was coming out of Canada and the `work from Lennart Nacke and Gustavo Tondello. I quite like and I still follow both guys. I've had the pleasure of meeting everyone at the stage of the various organizations and often spoken on the same stages, the Coursera course by Kevin Werbach. I mentioned that last week. Also useful materials. In terms of the learning space, a number of people to mention are Karl Kapp and he has courses on LinkedIn. And he also has a number of books on gamification and on Game Design and simulations. I highly recommend his field book in gamification is probab...