#museed

Here is an excerpt from our recently released Gamified whitepaper.  You can read or download the entire article here.

Sep 28th, 2016 10:01:56am

Human beings are natural game-players. When left to our own devices, we often make games out of boring tasks. Children naturally make games out of found objects, and adults create new games all the time to give themselves a challenge: counting the tiles on the ceiling of the dentist's office or inventing a version of 3D Tetris for putting away the holiday ornaments.

One of the oldest board games recorded, 'senet' was played in Ancient Egypt. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

In 1990, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term "flow" to describe the state of becoming lost in game-play, a natural human condition. We often lose a sense of how much time is passing and forget about the "external world" when experiencing "flow." It's worth noting that this is similar to the description many visitors give when immersed in their favorite museum exhibitions.

"Every flow experience…provided a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of transporting the person into a new reality. It pushed the person to higher levels of performance, and led to previously undreamed-of states of consciousness."

– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Good games can't be too easy, nor too hard, but rest in that sweet spot where we're being challenged but not discouraged. Psychologist Lev Vygotsky called this the Zone of Proximal Development2, but it could just as easily be called the Goldilocks Principle.