Knowledge management as a prism to better distinguish useful forms derived from or inspired by games or play activities

Abstract

Games, play and, by extension, gamification, or playification activities can be seen as sources of inspiration for the development of many and varied devices. The scientific literature on the subject and the tools, activities, or systems used are in full development and focus as much on the characteristics of the forms as on the characteristics of the components themselves. It therefore seemed appropriate and justified to link these uses to knowledge management. Indeed, each aspect of knowledge management can be associated with one or more categories of serious games, serious play, game with a purpose, game-derived, etc. Knowledge management can thus be used as a model for a meta-analysis of game-derived forms employed within organizations. It seems equally relevant to us to reflexively question the categories of jobs inspired by and derived from games, and to define their main characteristics, as contributions to the strands of knowledge management. A whole field of practice and study can thus be revealed at the intersection of those of knowledge management and forms of devices or professional tasks more or less inspired by games.