Gamification 2013: A conversation with Neil Randall

It’s the classic cry of parents trying to pry gaming consoles from the hands of kids everywhere: ‘Stop playing so many video games. You’ll never find a job some day if you waste all your time on that.’

Sorry to break the news to mom and dad, but Prof. Neil Randall is living proof that it ain’t necessarily so. He’s spun his lifelong love of words and games into a dual career at the University and Waterloo, where he’s an associate professor of English and director of the groundbreaking Games Institute. He’s also co-chair of Gamification 2013, an international conference that will play out at the university’s Stratford, Ont. campus from Oct. 2-4.

We caught up with Prof. Randall to ask about the conference, get his take on Canada’s place in the global gamification arena, and figure out how an English prof lands a super-cool side gig designing board games.

Q: What do you hope will make Gamification 2013 unique from all the other gamification conferences out there?

A: Most of the gamification conferences have been focused primarily – and understandably – on industry applications or sector applications of some sort. This is aimed primarily at a merger of those kinds of interests but also the academic research component. We wanted to have (a conference) that focused directly on gamification itself, then merged academic research with industry research as well as non-profit research.

So in that sense, it’s very much a university-style conference. But it also brings in the industry element and the other people who are out in the field, actively creating gamification systems for either their companies or their organizations.

Q: Where does Canada stand today, in terms of its place in global  research in gamification and commercialization trends? 

A: Canada has always been something of a hotbed for video game creation for a long time, proportionately larger than other countries you might expect. So it makes sense that we can become leaders in the gamification world because it’s part of the same thing, in a sense. But I think it’s a tougher competition to become leaders in the gamification world because it’s not the same set of skills.

The skills we’ve developed as video game developers – which is a strong engineering, computer science and art and animation skill set – aren’t necessarily what you need to get started in the gamification sphere. That’s because gamification can be much simpler than the video game idea (process). Since (gamification) is not restricted to the video game creation kind of skill set, that means it’s open to more designers and developers. Of course if you have a larger population like the U.S., they have a lot more people (than Canada) who can do these things. That’s what the competition problem is for us.

Q: Which industries in Canada could use a bit more of a push to incorporate gamification into their development, design or commercialization practices?

A: Based on what I’ve heard and what I surmise, the industries that Canada must do well in are healthcare and education. The reasons I’m saying those two is because we pour a ton of money into them. So if we want to create ways for our populace to stay healthier – from helping them work through rehab programs to helping them work with disabilites or with just sheer fitness aspects – it makes enormous sense for us to find every possible way for Canadians to stay healthy. That’s where I believe the gamification and game worlds can help.

The education (area) is also crucial because we have an enormous commitment to publicly accessible education. So we need to develop systems that keep people engaged and learning and allow for the kind of competition we need in the fields of innovation and all the big industry fields out there. I also think there’s some interesting work to be done, too, in Canada with gamification of retail. We tend to be a nation of shoppers, particularly indoor shoppers because, of course, it’s hard to shop outside in February. So it seems to me to be a natural (gamification) field to go into.

The other one is the area of big data. It’s a huge part of enterprise-level development. We are committed to the digitization of all sorts of things. I think we can help people, through gamification, navigate some data and structures that are kind of underlying everything. We seem to be big players in those areas. I think they need a push. But I think they’re getting it, it’s already getting happening.

Q: We have it on good authority that besides being a member of the university’s English faculty, you’ve also designed board games. How does an English professor get an awesome gig like that?

A: [Laughing] The simple answer is that I’ve been a game player for life, an intense game player. And then I decided to get into designing board games as part of a hobby that I did before I was a professor. From the standpoint of the English professor thing, our English department at Waterloo is just different from any other English department you’ll ever find. We have a program that’s based in the area of professional writing but it has become something that’s much more of a digital media sort of program. So we’ve been (active) with the digital media thing for going on 20 years.

I’ve been working in that area on everything from web design to app design and all sorts of things. It became a natural sort of thing for me, because of my interest in games, to start looking at this growing field of games research, primarily video game research. But for me, the board games aspect was always there.