Making Work into Play

In this skill-building keynote, games researcher and author Aaron Dignan discusses how to integrate gaming principles into work life. Gaming has had mass market success, and as Dignan explains, games have a fun, addictive and satisfying nature. Games are in fact not frivolous at all but are nature's learning engine. Dignan then goes into the principles of creating a great game, which can then be applied to businesses in order to make work interesting.

Principles such as how games create a wanting, a need to seek out and complete a task. While the other is how games create a state of flow. This concept is that when the challenge is high but the skills are low then games form an anxiety, but low challenge and high skill games become boring, but games that find a balance and force people to be on the top of their game create dramatic sense of flow.

After discussing these principles, Dignan provides practical behavioural games that can help solve business issues. One of the examples is Mike Monteiro meeting tokens that attempt to turn long winded inefficient meetings to make them short and productive.