There is a series of gamification workshop by Gbanga in Zurich every second month on the last Tuesdays – if you can figure out the formula when it is taking place an interesting overview to gamification is expecting you. (Workshop Info)

The workshop is on gamifying your products, services and it is using the infamous “Gamification Card Deck”.

The card game introduces several game mechanics and includes hints on what kind of engagements you can create to hook up your users. It is very effective on defining the rules of your game or gamified system. On the other side, unfortunately the cards doesn’t appear to me so effective because it doesn’t include any narrative and/or psychological elements which plays the main role in gamification.

The workshop runs on game creation basis using the cards. However, we all know that if there is no story but mechanical elements, that game is already hard to engage people. (There are some exceptions, like Tetris). You might achieve during the exercise main aspects on gamificiation very well, but what you should not forget is the story is the element that binds it together.