The Bulgarian participants in the training course on Gamification- ¨Play the Way" just came back from Czech Republic. Play the way lasted 9 days during which they created games and learnt multiple tips and tricks about games... Now, it's time for them to give us a beautiful feedback of their experience.

Cvetelina Semerdjieva :

In the training course Play the way, organized by Inspired org. and partnered by Active Bulgarian Society, and financed by Erasmus +, I as a youth worker had the opportunity to understand how to create and apply educational games in my work.

Let me tell you about my metamorphosis and experience in gamification.

On the first day, after we met each other, of course by game, we had the opportunity to set our clear goals. We did that by creating avatars, which contained our personal aims and ambitions for this course. Also, through the three trials of the most imaginative game - Colorblind, we understood how does the Kolbs circle work in education.

We spend most of the second day outside, actively building our team. By playing different games, we showed each other empathy, support, care, and respect. I will never forget how the whole team was happily screaming with me when I finally went through the magic gate. Also, this was the day, we tried to create a small game for ourselves.

On the next day, we were busy with understanding what are the 7 elements of gamification, and played some amazing games outside that showed us these elements in practice. We ended the day with one very important and meaningful discussion in which every one of us, explained what should one game contains.

The first half of the fourth day was for self-reflection, which for me was very helpful. After the all activities, knowledge, and emotions of the previous days, we saw inside us, understand how meaningful it was, and even added new goals in our avatars. I loved how we received important feedback during the process, and we were flexible to make significant changes in our personal and team learning process.

After that, we were ready to work hard, to explore and compare the problems in the labor market in all the team's countries. You can't even imagine how hard and important was this task for us because we pointed some common problems, but also we saw some differences. Our goal was to create educational games that gain and develop some key competencies, which will help youth in the labor market.

And this was the best part, we work hard, we were brainstorming, we created, we tried, we changed, we gave feedback, we support each other, and of course, we played a lot, but this time our games!

And if you ask me, why I feel a metamorphosis, I can tell you that this was the best experience in my life. Every day I learned something new, I learned how to be an active listener, how to give meaningful feedback, how to respect, how to work in a team, how to support people around me, how to give gratitude, and of course how to create impactful games.

Deya Doneva :

Did you know that it is impossible to give a definition of the word GAME that holds true for any game? Give it a try!*

This, among other things, stirred up my curiosity during the Play the Way Training Course that took place between Dec 3rd and Dec 10th 2021 in the Czech Republic. It is very difficult to convey just how impactful this training was. In the same way that the magic of a board game shared with friends can hardly be explained to anyone who was not there - so the magic of this course touched and transformed the participants in ways I can only hint at.

The aim of the training was to acquaint us with the concept of gamification and guide us through the process of designing and facilitating an educational game for a group of players. Since I had no previous experience, this pushed me to step out of my comfort zone and learn through trial-and-error. I had to overcome a lot of scepticism, doubt, self-imposed limitations and insecurities, but I must say that I had tons of fun doing it. I would recommend the experience to anyone who wants to connect with themselves and others, learn about teamwork and leadership and is not afraid of making mistakes!

*Note: What is the definition of ‘game’? It makes sense to say that it is a competition, that there are rules, points, teams, winning and losing, etc. However, due to the huge variety of existing games, exceptions can be found for each element. Check out Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: “There is no characteristic that is common to everything that we call games; but we cannot on the other hand say that ‘game’ has several independent meanings like ‘bank’. It is a family-likeness term. Think of ball-games alone: some, like tennis, have a complicated system of rules; but there is a game which consists just in throwing the ball as high as one can, or the game which children play of throwing a ball and running after it. Some games are competitive, others not. This thought was developed in a famous passage of the Philosophical Investigations in which Wittgenstein denied that there was any feature — such as entertainment, competitiveness, rule-guidedness, skill — which formed a common element in all games; instead we find a complicated network of similarities and relationships overlapping and criss-crossing.

Zhulieta Ivanova :

I decided to participate in this course, as I had already developed interest in the topic of Gamification in the Boomerang project in Greece a few months back. There, through playing and creating games, we became more aware of the issues in the labour market and our own professional strengths and areas of improvement. But I wanted to find out more about game design and learn how I can use games for educational purposes.

The project turned out to be what I expected and more. The program for the 9 days was intense and packed with playing games, theory on Gamification, reflecting on what we had learned each day, creating our own games, testing them ourselves and giving feedback on what can be improved. Now that we have created the games, they will be used in the youth exchange program which topic will be on Youth Employability. I am grateful and fascinated, that we learned so much on this course about Gamification and that we had the opportunity to not only create games, but also have those games implemented in another project.

As I mentioned earlier, the program was made in such a way that we could both experience games, reflect on them, try to design ones ourselves then test them. If we look closely, we will see that the project’s development followed Kolb’s learning cycle (concrete experience>reflective observation>abstract conceptualization>active experimentation>concrete experience). Through this non-formal education practice, we were able to gain solid knowledge and skills on game design to help us in our areas of work as youth workers. Thanks to the facilitators, and the games that we played, now we also have a toolkit of games and energizers we can use as well.

The game that me and my teammates designed is called Puzzle of Power and focused on the importance for young people to gain various working experience, gather transferable skills, focus on improving themselves, and not be afraid of trying out different jobs. The topic is important because we believe that often, there is societal pressure on young people to have a successful career by 30, and this is prone to discourage youth to take on jobs, where they don’t think they can have a career later. This may increase unemployability in youth in EU countries, where there is a lot of demand for young skilled professionals and not enough skilled individuals. At the same time, there is also demand for service jobs and jobs with no experience needed, but youngsters may avoid working them because they are not considered prestigious. The game itself starts with the participants being divided in 3 groups, and each group’s people must answer a total of 10 personal and professional development questions. Every question answered opened the opportunity for participants to search a puzzle piece hidden somewhere in the room. Every group must find a total of 10 puzzle pieces and then compile them. In the end participants realize they should be working together and gather all puzzle pieces for the puzzle to be whole and to make sense.

Another topic that stuck with me after the training, were the 7 elements of games (story, clear goal, clear rules, flexibility, rewards, accomplishments, and feedback). During the Christmas holidays, I had the opportunity to play a few board games for the first time. Every time a person would start explaining how the game is played, it worked for me to ask some pointed questions, keeping in mind those game elements. To understand the basics and details of the game, I would ask for example: “What is the goal of the game?”; “Can we focus only on the rules for a second?”; “How do I know if I am doing something right/wrong in the game?”; “What do I get if I choose to do x?” and so on.

Overall, I am very happy with the training course and my participation in it. I gave it my best and gained a lot of practical experience and learning out of it. I intend to use gamification in my work however I can, because it seems to be a lot easier to learn something new through games and having fun. Play comes naturally to us as human beings, and even if we had forgotten how to do that, it is never too late to start playing again!

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