Topic Exploration: Gaming

Topic: Gaming

Facilitated by: Tia, Alvin, Tiger, Sherrie

During this lecture, I learned a brief history of gaming and how gaming is prominent in society today. We learned about esports, strategy games, video games, controversy from gaming, and gamification.

The first activity we did in class was a collaborative rock, paper, scissors game. You play RPS against someone and if you lose, you cheer your opponent during their next game and if you win, they cheer you on instead. This cycle repeats until there are 2 opposing teams until there is an ultimate winner.

The second activity we did was forming sentences as a class. We split into 4 groups as nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. We would form sentences and add our own filler words. In the end, we voted for the best sentence: Wearily, the wrinkled yam flies quickly.

I really enjoyed learning about how we can implement gamification into our own projects. I originally thought gamification was about turning something into a game, but it’s more about implementing game elements into an existing system. It was interesting hearing about how big the esports industry has gotten over the years. We’re really in a world where gaming has become a career and gains more viewership than some professional physical sports.

Now, I have a better understanding of gamification and I’m interested in adding some of those elements into my own prototypes to make is more engaging. But it’s also important to avoid overwhelming the user because sometimes too many “game” features are distracting or annoying.