Time should not only be perceived as minutes, seconds or days. In #gamification we see time as a lot more than that.

For instance, the fact that a player has a set number of attempts to overcome a challenge is one thing (which does define the time), however, what if you say “the first to accomplish”.

Time doesn’t have to be set as a number of days, although using normal time might be the easiest thing, in #gamification it just refers to how long, how many times and/or when can the players play.

As I said before, turns are a great way to set the time for a challenge. We will all take turns to attempt this, but with the following order.

When you use this #gamemechanic, make sure you are FAIR in how players earn their turn. If it’s a random thing (alphabetical order by last name IS random, nobody chose theirs), make sure everyone has at least one try. You can then offer a sudden death for all those who overcome with the same results or just define the winner by performance.

Turns based games are often slower than others. You have to wait in line for the guy in front to attempt and if there is no time limit to his turn it could be days before your chance. If you are using the “first guy to make it” mechanic and I know I can do it, but the guy in front gets it first even before I attempt it, then it will feel really unfair (you even think he knew before or had help)

Make sure when using turns EVERYONE gets a shot at it, at least once and each attempt is equally fair for all (or at least all players can have the same level of ability before attempting).

One thing is the order in which you attempt and a very different thing is how many times you can try to overcome.

Not much detail to get into, but make sure, as always, to make it fair for everyone. If you are giving three attempts, EVERYONE either gets them or has the ability/possibility to get as many. If you earn attempts depending on performance, make sure it’s available for all and it’s not harder for some.

This #gamemechanic does refer to time as literal.

How many seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years does the player have to master the system or overcome a challenge.

Easy to think about it that way, how about thinking a different thing that most people forget:

What is the FASTEST they can do it?

When I started gamifying my classroom, I thought my players will take the whole semester to finish my challenges (ha!). Little did I know about the power and impact #gamification has on high school students. Two months in my players had eaten ALL the content I proudly prepared for the semester and I had no way of feeding their content demand as fast.

The result?

My system collapsed and had to resort to old practices to level the class… sad right?

I learned that defining your time limit BOTH ways is crucial for a system to be successful.

Set boundaries to the time players CAN and HAVE to finish. This way you won’t be surprised by some players saying they went through all the content overnight when you wanted them to go through it for five weeks.

So where are the players playing? Is there a board? An app? A website? An imaginary place on their heads?

Yes, the last one is real, although you would have to define some BOUNDARIES on to what is acceptable, however when thinking of the SPACE where the players play, there are no limits.

Thanks to technology and creativity, players can play through and absolutely ANYWHERE. Don’t restrain yourselft.

Now, in terms fo #gamification and #gamemechanics, we’ve separated three that include each other somehow, so basically you would need to define all three (not hard at all)

Easy, normal or hard mode are pretty much the easiest way to explain this mechanic. The stage is not physical but environmental. It refers to the type of field the players are in.

An easy way to resemble is the Ice stage vs the Lava stage of a game. It’s not just about difficulty, but about what abilities the players will need to overcome the challenges.

When you offer the players different stages of growth they will try to play where they are best at. So we could make the stage the class the players are in. People often think math is the hard class and art the easy one, but what if we put the same strict rules in both classes. Players who are good at math will think the Math class is easy while art is really hard and others might think P.E. is the hardest.

As long as rules apply to all players equally, the difference in difficulty will not be the STAGE itself, but the preference and abilities of the players.

Now, talking about difficulty would be another thing: If the difficulty level increases, the system should be harder no matter what STAGE you are on (or maybe the stage is not a change of environment but a new challenging level)

Remember to balance it for all players. Here are just some tips on how you can define your STAGES:

• The environment can be related to the difficulty but it’s not forceful.
• Difficulty increases the challenge for all fields and players regardless of the environment.
• Stage is defined by the abilities players need to overcome the challenge(s).
• Always do your stages by reverse engineering from the abilities point of view, this will let you know how hard or easy and what moment is good for the players to be faced against such challenge.

It could literally be a field. Like in sports. However the point is that this is the BIGGER SPACE where the players deposit DATA.

The field is where they literally the place where they play and interact. EVERY SINGLE place where the players can play: the street, the room, the office, the website, the blackboard in a classroom or all of the above.

Think of the field as the playing board. Think big and creatively. There is no limit on where can data be input.

In Dungeons and Dragons, game masters usually put figurines on a board with squares to represent the position of the players, same with chess or pretty much any BOARD game, however the FIELD in Dungeons and Dragons lies within the Game Master’s notebook where he has planned almost every scenario and every PLACE the players will be. So the board can be just squares, but it’s not the field. The field, is the world the players are in.

So, how will you track the progress of the player? How do you know if you are winning on chess? How do you know how good you are performing?

The pieces are the tools that will tell the player where they are. In more technical terms, they are tools used to track player’s progress. I know, all #gamemechanics are that right? Yes and no. This refers to a more “physical” element that will show the players their position.

Now, each piece can have their own set of rules (mechanics) and at the same time each piece will give a different piece of data to both, players and system.

I said before that these three #gamemechanics are connected to each other and its most likely you will end up defining all three always. The reason is as follows:

You can’t have a stage without a field without pieces to track where and how the players have grown through it. In a classroom the pieces might be the student standing in front of you (the player) but they could also be those little cardboard pieces you gave them to track their progress.

The virtual currency is not a piece in the field (unless its part of the mechanics), but the hat that tells you where you have to pay rent is. That way, the piece tells the player everything they need to know at that specific moment. The card of the property explaining the amount of money to be paid is another piece in the board.

 You put the pieces in the field and let the players feel the stage.

The player must have a set of mechanics applied directly to her. All other mechanics we’ve checked apply to the system and the player interacts with the system, however there are elements, that will give each player a simple way of knowing where they stand.

Using a tutorial is somehting that each player must be able to do completely on their own. Guiding the player through a part of your system where she won’t need to interact with anyone else but the system is one of the best (if not the best) wayof bringing the players through the On-Boarding phase.

Games are learned by playing them. Let your players PLAY. Even if it’s not a game (ask @RomanRackwitz what it means).

Tutorials shoudl be FUN-ny. They have to be serious but entertaining. Remember the player willbe alone in tis short trip and it must offer a sense of progression

What happens if the players are beign followed without them knowing?

Leadership is a form of art. It is impossible to fake it. People will only follow others who they believe they deserve. We all do. Seth Godin explains leadership fantastically in his book Tribes. Everyone has the ability to create a movement and lead it.

When players have this ability within the system they will be able to have followers (YES, just like Twitter). It’s not the type of relationship that interacts every second with others, but being followed is a powerful motivator for most players.

Ah, fame. It makes people fight for attention all over the place. Imagine a classroom where grades are defined by how high the reputation of the players is? How about we base that reputation on the perception of the quality of the work each player produces.

Suddenly players will have to deliver GOOD work instead of “just right”.

Reputation is a great way to have players identify each others’ “general” ability. It doesn’t have to be  number and it definetely shouldn’t be domething specific but known… Something like “We know Ursula is the best at…[whatever]”.

Usually rating is expressed in stars (yes, cheeky, I know), but the point is to express their skill related to others. Even though it has something to do with other players it’s still something that defines the player on its own and its a great reference for new players to know where they stand and other players stand.