Going Deep on Gamification
summary
Argues that slapped-on gamification — points, badges, leaderboards — reduces collaboration and skews behavior; instead design team agency by specifying concrete goals, rules and abilities. Recommends tooling and practices: observability and SLOs, trunk-based deploys with feature flags, shorten lead time to deploy and speed tests (watch for builds >30 minutes), and use ensemble programming to spread knowledge. Measures sit at team level (deployment frequency, lead time), not individual ticket counts, and focus on engine-building so work becomes faster and safer over time.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Gamification introduction
- 2:53Game vs software projects
- 6:22Defining games
- 8:31Gamification limits
- 12:43Gamifying work
- 17:43Game design for teams
- 19:52Striving play in work
- 22:43Games as art
- 25:10Designing for flow in games and software development
- 28:25Goals and abilities
- 29:48Social conflict at work
- 33:42House rules for teams
- 35:50Engine building teams
- 38:17Session design
- 40:44Multiplayer dynamics
- 43:11Heuristics and measurement
- 46:42Value capture dangers
- 49:36Agency and alignment
- 50:39Striving play detachment
- 52:27Measuring team performance
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