During the lectures it was interesting to follow the given exampes - especially the both examples of Volkswagen came up with regarding littering.
The Fun Theory 3 - an initiative of Volkswagen: Bottle Bank Arcade Machine
During the Blockchain Minor last year I got the opportunity to work on a field assignment in corporation with the team behind Project BB - an AI-based beach cleaning robot.
My part in this project was it to look deeper into the gamification part and turning the robot itself in some kind of ecosystem - in the best case using tamper-proof Blockchain technology so the robot with the vision to turn the robot(s) into autonomous beach cleaning instances, working not based on some government fundings, but thanks to people interacting with them, both in terms of feeding trash and playing a trash game to detect new patterns of beach litter.
201911XX_ProjectBB_Presentation.pdf
Yet another example I wanted to show deals with the Verademing Park in The Hague. In the project we dealt with the question, how to create a meaningful connection between people in a park with otherwise relatively isolated communities.
In our concept, we follow a clearly incentive-driven and gamified approach, as you can see in the following video:
While the given examples are much rather showing full ecosystems containing playful interaction in some touch points, than actual playful machines, I decided to set my focus for this challenge into another direction and go to the probably most addicting machines in the industry.
I was always inspired by slot machines in some way. Although I always managed to keep professional distance regarding addiction, it was more the fascination about how sounds and visuals can be used for stimulation, active persuasion and although an interaction might follow a simple, repetitive logic yet invite the users for hours of engagement and fun.
In general I found that these slot machines are not necessarily about the game itself, but the playful interaction made possible by sounds, big buttons and other ingredients. Let's find out what they are in the next section.
Regardless which direction in playful interaction I might be choosing after all, I think this is an interesting starting point as playful interaction should not be about designing a game, but how to nudge people in a playful way.
In the following I want to summarise my findings from the desk research.
Harrigan, Kevin & Dixon, Michael & Fugelsang, Jonathan & Collins, Kc. (2010). Addictive gameplay: What casual game designers can learn from slot machine research. 10.1145/1920778.1920796.
Me playing slot machine in Offenbach, Germany's crime spot Nr. 1
Me in Offenbach, Germany's crime spot Nr. 1
In the report, slot machines are described as being close relatives of casual games, "games that generally involve less complicated game controls and overall complexity in terms of gameplay or investment required to get through a game".