Personally, I am a book worm and if I’m not careful I can easily lock myself up and just consume book after book (quite helpful during a pandemic).
Because of my interest in books and consuming knowledge in a variety of fields I have found that some books are immensely valuable. I even go back to some books regularly.
And well, some books have a really good marketing concept which made me buy the book in the first place but don’t hold the value I was looking for.
Therefore, I am sure I can shave off some of your time when it comes to identifying helpful books, instead of you having to do the research which books are valuable, aka reading a lot of them yourself and getting disappointed.
Valuable Books About Gamification
Now when I started my journey and experimented with gamification in my career, I had no idea where to start.
I wanted a resource which discards all the history and additional topics about gamification and just gives me a framework to use. I also wanted to understand why so many gamification projects have failed and what I need to do so that my gamification projects succeed.
Now there are a number of books out there teaching about Gamification, but the one book which helped me immensely and which I still go back to when tackling a gamification project is the one from Yu-Kai Chou titled “Actionable Gamification”.
The benefit of this book is that it gives you the must know facts and a concrete framework that incorporates elements of behavioral psychology.
In addition, the book outlines more than 100 game elements which you can use in your project, but it lays them out in a structured way so you don’t lose track on when to use which game element.
For example, it would explain that in designing good gamification you might want to consider if your story touches upon the human drive of epic meaning and calling – you know like fighting crime such as Batman.
The book then outlines what needs to be considered, what game elements work best with the human emotion or drive you want to spark and how these fit into the big picture of your project next to other core drives.
Important side note: I recommend the book version and not an audiobook because you will absolutely need to have access on the visuals in the book.
The book is also quit fun to read because Yu-Kai Chou brings in his quirky personality which made me chuckle a couple of times. You can find the book on Amazon: Actionable Gamification – Yu-Kai Chou
