Games form a huge part of our life, from shooting angry birds to crushing candy, constructing worlds in Minecraft to trading monsters in Pokemon and rallying troops in Clash of Clans. We love to play games, as they give us excitement and drive curiosity.
Gaming can also make us feel more accomplished when difficult challenges or personal objectives are achieved. And there is also the feeling of learning something new associated with it.
Games are described as high-octane learning machines that encourage people to experiment, develop strategies and learn new skills. And when the power of games is applied to accomplish things outside of the gaming industry. It is called gamification.
Games are explictly designed to improve quality of life and prevent suffering and create real, widespread happiness – Jane Mcgonigal
Gamification takes elements of what people love about games and applies them outside of traditional gaming environments. These game design elements are used to improve people’s engagement, motivation and retention in activities.
The technology has the potential to motivate and engage people to complete tasks just as they would have been done in a game. It adds elements of games to activities that are not considered to be games but it does not turn the activities into a game.
Hence what exactly is gamification?
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What is gamification?
It is described as adding interactive game mechanics into nongame environments, that plays on people’s competitive instinct which in turn increase participation. The goal of gamification is to increase engagement, collaboration and interaction of consumers, employees or partners.
Tools that are often incorporated in the gamelike design are virtual rewards such as points, payments, badges, discounts and gifts to drive more action. There are also achievement status indicators such as friend counts, retweets, leader boards, achievement data and progress bars.
It is a way of incorporating gaming-style incentives into everyday activity. Hence real-world tasks are made game-like to motivate people to engage or achieve goals. People are incentivized to keep engaging by ranking up points and receiving rewards for ongoing activities.
Imagine gaining points and achievements or receiving rewards every time you perform a task at school or at work. Or what if you are allowed to do tasks freely using your creativity and full potential just like in a game. That’s what gamification is about.
Some game elements that are used in gamify environment are:
- Points – used as an indication of progress in sports, reward cards and video games.
- Badges – display achievement just like for service in the military or star on school reports.
- Leaderboards – used across sports, sales teams and in general life to display competitive ranking or winners and losers.
These are just some simple elements that may seem pointless but in reality, they’re a lot more than what most people think. The goal of gamifying a situation is to motivate someone to do something.
Gamification is a process of using game thinking and game dynamics to engage audiences and solve problems – Gabe Zichermann
Why gamification is becoming important?
Compelling gamified experiences can tap into users’ emotions. Hence, gamification strategy capitalizes on this to influence and motivate users’ behavior. The user can be customers or employees of a company.
It provides users with interacting directives and feedback through gaming style that leads to accomplishments of goals and objectives. When they engage they receive immediate feedback and are guided toward new achievements.
As human beings are mostly reward-driven and search for instant gratification, users received some kind rewarded while achieving objectives, which in turn made them engage more.
Everybody desires the feeling of winning something, even if it’s something seemingly small. Customer engagement is incentivized through rewards programs based on their activities accomplishment.
The use of gamification within an organization is to increase the company’s performance. The objective can be anything from making more sales or performing more tasks within the organization in a gaming style.
According to a 2018 report, 85% of global employees are disengaged. The game-like system makes employees’ tasks more transparent, clear and easy to follow. An employee can see progress on performance, receive immediate feedback and connect easily with co-workers.
Many industries are introducing gamify content in some way. Some of the major areas that use the system are education, training, healthcare, marketing or sales teams. The business value of gamification is not limited to just participant engagement, but it also produces lots of data.
Analyzing these data collected from gamify environment is important and can point out flaws or changes that can be made in the business activities. It can also indicate what is working or not in the system.
Every employee or customer interaction gives a better sense of where a participant is spending their time and what activities drive interest. The engagement provides insightful data that can influence marketing campaigns and performance goals.
Complicated tasks can also be made more fun through gamification. If the users are having fun then they are more likely to retain information and complete task without stress.
Games and gamification both can lead to high levels of learner engagement and motivation – Karl Kapp
GThese serious game also allows for more practical applications, where instead of simply reading about an activity or subject, the user is participating in a learning process. And Feedback is provided in real-time to inform the user if they are doing well or not.
Competition is another value of gamification. People strive to be the best and with gamification, the user is motivated to outperform their competitors. This makes the user work harder to achieve favorable results.
Impact of gamification
Gamification has made deep impacts within important industries like education, healthcare, recycling, financial services, eCommerce and many more. Its market size is projected to grow from USD 9.1 billion in 2020 to USD 30.7 billion by 2025.
There are a lot of factors driving the market’s growth. Including rewards and recognition for employees based on their performance results which increased engagement and productivity. Also, lucrative offers to the customers and consumers yield higher returns on investment for companies.
A gamify system can reward customers when they refer the company’s products to other people. Which in turn drive more sale for the company and reduce marketing cost at the same time.
According to a survey from Talent Ims, in 2019, 79% of employees claim they were more motivated and gained purpose at their workplace because of gamified activities.
From the research, 85% of employees say they’ll spend more time on gamified software. And 97 % of employees aged more than 45 claim gamified activities improve the quality of their work. Also, a lot of start-ups say they will incorporate gamified activities in their strategy.
Furthermore, 69% of employees intend to stay with a company for 3+ years if they use gamified activities. And 93% of the marketer say they love gamification. By 2025, gamification in the workplace will find a wider appeal to millennial employees, a generation that has experienced life on computers and video games. (trainingjournal.com)
Future of gamification
Even if gamification has already entered a lot of industries, it is still in its infancy and has a lot more to offer. At present, it is seen as a solution to combat disengagement and provide innovative approaches to existing problems.
But technology is opening up new opportunities for gamification. The advancement in augmented reality, virtual reality, head-mounted displays, machine learning, laser scanning, biologically integrated systems and the 3D gaming worlds all hold enormous potential for the technology.
These technologies are receiving a lot of investment and tech companies are willing to make them an essential part of everyday life. Gaming consoles and other devices come equipped with VR headsets designed to improve the user experience when playing games or watching videos.
Furthermore, big retail companies are betting on such technologies to revolutionize shopping experiences. Where they can exhibit products in virtual showrooms and allow customers to try products from the comfort of their homes.
With these advancements, virtual space can be created through gamification. Once mature it can drive a paradigm shift and be used as a tool to face social, environmental and economic challenges.
People will be able to use gamify content to shape their skills and behaviors which would allow them to become the person they want to be. People will be able to live in two worlds, the virtual one and the real one.
The future of gamification will be an integration of the virtual world and live performance using head-mounted gadgets and other physical and biological integrated systems. This will permit gamification technologies to be used for behavioral change.
Gamified experiences will radically enhance skill acquisition, motivation, engagement and learner achievement tracking. The gameworld designs will completely change the way people think and behave.
Accordingly, this can enable users to identify target behaviors associated with success. And also, corporations around the world can use the technology for safety training and a variety of other tasks.
For example, ExxonMobil safety training uses virtual reality gear where trainees simply had to put on a helmet and headphones and use controllers to perform hazardous operations.
Hence, the virtual world is being made more reactive with a lot of scenarios. In the future, people will be able to engage more without having to leave their houses.
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