Games as motivation

I am working on creating a game that helps people complete actions in order to improve their lives. For my digital media class I read Jane McGonigal’s book. The book has insights about how to motivate people and how games can improve the quality of our lives.

I have experienced using an alternate reality game to help improve the quality of my life before I read the book. I didn’t realize this is what I was doing at the time. Last spring, I signed up for a Warrior Dash that took place in the beginning of June. I had three months to get in shape for this event. My friend told me about Nike+ and I downloaded the app on my phone. Once I was tracking my miles and times I became motivated to improve my distance and times. That was my first memorable experience with using gamification to motivate people.

After this reading this book I thought about what I could do to help motivate people to do something important. I thought about the Residence Hall Energy Challenge that happens on campus. This is presented to the students in residence halls as a campaign. There is little feedback and students have to pay attention to emails and posters in order to see the whole effects of the challenge. I wanted to make something that was more interactive for students and to give them motivation.

So far I’m working on an alternate reality game called Epic Energy. It can be found at http://bsuepicenergy.com/. The game is open to everyone who wants to join. The purpose is to let people create profiles and log the energy-saving actions they complete. When they post pictures and tasks they complete in real life to their profile they earn points. This website is supposed to help people feel motivated to pay attention to how much energy they use, and give them real time feedback about the differences they are making while saving energy.