A Gamification Engine Architecture for Enhancing Behavioral Change Support Systems

This paper presents a gamified framework designed to offer behavioural change support and treatment adherence services to people living with Dementia (PLWD), their caregivers and medical/social professionals

Gamification Design with a Domain-Driven Engineering Approach

Companies use a variety of methods and processes to improve the quality of their services, which, in turn, would increase the satisfaction of their users and hence their popularity. One of the enhancements that have been used in recent years is known as gamification. With the benefit of being virtually independent of business types, one of the goals of gamification is to solve user engagement issues. Even so, companies fail to achieve their goals after instantiating gamification into their services, and one cause is related to poor gamification design. The main objective of the developed project was to acquire and develop a possible solution to this problem through the use of a specific set of methods, technologies and the Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) approach. In this sense, in-depth research was done into previous gamification applications and other previous attempts to solve the problem at hand. Several gamification concepts were analyzed, gathering as much data as possible about the subject before the conceptualization of the solution’s domain through an MDE approach.As empresas usam uma variedade de métodos e processos para melhorar a qualidade dos seus serviços, o que por sua vez aumentaria a satisfação de seus utilizadores e, consequentemente, sua popularidade. Um exemplo do mesmo que tem sido utilizado nos últimos anos é conhecido como gamification. Com o benefício de ser praticamente independente dos tipos de negócios, um dos objetivos de gamification é resolver problemas relacionados com a interação entre o serviço e o utilizador. Mesmo assim, as empresas não conseguem atingir os seus objetivos após a adição de gamification nos seus serviços, e uma das causas está relacionada a mau design de gamification. O principal objetivo do projeto é desenvolver uma possível solução para o problema através do uso de um conjunto específico de métodos, tecnologias e da abordagem Model-Driven Engineering (MDE). Nesse sentido, uma pesquisa rigorosa foi realizada sobre aplicações existentes de gamification, como também sobre outras tentativas de resolver o problema em questão. Vários conceitos de gamification foram analisados, de forma a reunir o máximo de informação possível sobre o assunto antes da conceituação do domínio para a solução através da abordagem MDE

Augmenting the Task of Exercise Gamification: An Expert View on the Adoption of a New Technology for Deploying Existing Virtual Environments in Virtual Urban Exergames

Exergames commonly denote serious games and gamified systems that were developed for the sake of improving health and exercise adherence. One of the recent trends in exergaming are urban games. They are defined as “highly interdisciplinary digital games which root in such diverse fields as architecture and urban planning, healthcare sciences, and serious games research” (Knoell et al., 2014). Besides having various ‘physical benefits’, such as promoting movement patterns, urban exergames have the core task of psychologically motivating players to exercise more and inspire them to be physically active. While offering an innovative and an immersive way to exercise, urban games come also with the typical drawbacks which outdoor exercising generally has (e.g. being dependent on good weather and intimidation problems for obese people). A possible solution would be simulating urban games for indoor exercise. On top of augmenting the sedentary game input to a motion-based one, designing and developing 3D environments for virtual urban games is not an obvious task and it takes a vast amount of knowledge, time and budget to create a realistic world with a “tremendous appeal and a powerful attraction”. To bypass this challenge, we introduce in this work a new technology for accessing and gamifying existing game environments. Furthermore, we validate our approach by presenting the results of a qualitative research that we have conducted with the help of gamification experts and exergame designers

Using gamification to incentivize sustainable urban mobility.

Sustainable urban mobility is an important dimension in a Smart City, and one of the key issues for city sustainability. However, innovative and often costly mobility policies and solutions introduced by cities are liable to fail, if not combined with initiatives aimed at increasing the awareness of citizens, and promoting their behavioural change. This paper explores the potential of gamification mechanisms to incentivize voluntary behavioural changes towards sustainable mobility solutions. We present a service-based gamification framework, developed within the STREETLIFE EU Project, which can be used to develop games on top of existing services and systems within a Smart City, and discuss the empirical findings of an experiment conducted in the city of Rovereto on the effectiveness of gamification to promote sustainable urban mobility

Languages of games and play: A systematic mapping study

Digital games are a powerful means for creating enticing, beautiful, educational, and often highly addictive interactive experiences that impact the lives of billions of players worldwide. We explore what informs the design and construction of good games to learn how to speed-up game development. In particular, we study to what extent languages, notations, patterns, and tools, can offer experts theoretical foundations, systematic techniques, and practical solutions they need to raise their productivity and improve the quality of games and play. Despite the growing number of publications on this topic there is currently no overview describing the state-of-the-art that relates research areas, goals, and applications. As a result, efforts and successes are often one-off, lessons learned go overlooked, language reuse remains minimal, and opportunities for collaboration and synergy are lost. We present a systematic map that identifies relevant publications and gives an overview of research areas and publication venues. In addition, we categorize research perspectives along common objectives, techniques, and approaches, illustrated by summaries of selected languages. Finally, we distill challenges and opportunities for future research and development

Konzeption und Entwicklung eines DSM-basierten Gamification Authoring Systems zur Unterstützung hochschulischer Lehre

Vorliegende Arbeit hat das Ziel eine Systematisierung zu erstellen, die eine effiziente Konzeption und Implementierung von spielifizierten Lehr-Lerneinheiten für und in die Hochschullehre ermöglicht und diese Systematisierung prototypisch umzusetzen. Hierfür wird zunächst der aktuelle Stand der Forschung zu Gamification in der Hochschullehre aus inhaltlich-struktureller und motivationspsychologischer Perspektive erfasst. Darauf aufbauend wird eine Domänenanalyse durchgeführt, welche aus einer Dokumentenanalyse und Lernplattformanalyse besteht, mit dem Ziel, etablierte Domänenkonzepte zu exzerpieren. Die daraus gewonnenen Erkenntnisse dienen als Basis für die Konzeption und Entwicklung einer domänenspezifischen Modellierungssprache als Teil des Domain-specific Modeling Ansatzes. Die Umsetzung weiterer Bestandteile des Ansatzes, wie einen Designer, der es erlaubt Modelle auf Basis der Sprache zu erstellen, einen Generator, der erstellte Modelle in Code transformiert, sowie ein Learning Management System, in dem die in Code vorliegenden Modelle zum Einsatz kommen, werden ebenso detailliert. Weiterhin wird eine Evaluation beschrieben, bestehend aus einer qualitativen Feldstudie und einem Abgleich von Anforderungen. Darüber hinaus werden potentielle Einsatzgebiete für die entwickelten Artefakte beispielhaft aufgezeigt

Systematic Review of Gamification Research in IS Education: A Multi-method Approach

Gamification refers to the use of game mechanics and game dynamics in non-gaming environments and contexts. Gamification is increasingly gaining attention among system designers across various industries especially in education due to the benefits associated with its implementation. The adoption of gamification in information systems (IS) education is promising for engaging and motivating students to complete their degree programs. Call for research in this area is particularly on the increase in the IS field. Accordingly, we need to organize the aggregation of research in this area and use common terminologies to promote progressive research practice in the field. In this paper, we use a multi-method approach to systematically review existing research on gamification in IS education to identify common terminologies, identify trends in topics studied, highlight understudied areas, and, thus, present opportunities for future research. The multi-method approach combines classical systematic review method and social network analysis to provide additional insight into the knowledge structure of researchers involved in the gamification of IS education. This review also highlights possible interventions that can improve student retention in IS education through the design of effective gamified courses

A gamification framework demonstrating a complete cycle of vehicle driver performance evaluation

Training through a gamified environment motivates the users in achieving optimal outcome and reduces the complexity of learning by adding factor of entertainment in it. The deployment of serious games in automotive industry is a major leap in technological grounds, as it\u2019s a best way to inculcate safe driving patterns to reduce the fatalities and enhance resource usage which includes car accessories and fuel. The Ph.D. thesis represents Gamification platform aimed to Green Mobility and Safe Driving