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Gamification

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Gamification is the use of game-thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts in order to engage users and solve problems.[1][2][3] Gamification is used in applications and processes to improve user engagement, ROI, data quality, timeliness, and learning.[4]

Techniques

Early examples of gamification are based on giving reward points to people who share experiences on location-based platforms such as Facebook's "Place" feature, Foursquare, and Gowalla.[5] Some of the techniques include:

  • achievement "badges"[6]
  • achievement levels[6]
  • leaderboards
  • a progress bar or other visual meter to indicate how close people are to completing a task a company is trying to encourage, such as completing a social networking profile or earning a frequent shopper loyalty award.[7]
  • virtual currency
  • systems for awarding, redeeming, trading, gifting, and otherwise exchanging points[8]
  • challenges between users
  • embedding small casual games within other activities.[9]

Applications

As of September 2010, gamification was used by marketers and website product managers as a tool for customer engagement,[10] and encouraging desirable website usage behavior.[7] Gamification is readily applicable to increasing engagement on sites built on social network services. One site, DevHub, increased the number of users who completed their online tasks from 10% to 80% after adding gamification elements.[11]

Business applications for gamification are just beginning to appear as well. RedCritter Tracker incorporates gamification elements such as badges, rewards, leaderboards, and ribbons into project management.[12]

Gamification is used on Stack Overflow, a question-and-answer site for programmers, and on all of its sister sites for other topics (including the non-Q&A career site Careers 2.0). Users receive points and/or badges for performing a variety of actions, including spreading links to questions and answers via Facebook and Twitter. A large number of different badges are available, and when a user's reputation points exceed various thresholds, he or she gains additional privileges, including at the higher end, the privilege of helping to moderate the site. Points and badges do not generally carry over between sister sites, because a user's expertise in one topic (such as programming) may be unrelated to their level of expertise, or lack thereof, in another topic. However, one exception is that a user gains 100 reputation points for linking their accounts on sister sites together, if they have at least 200 points on one of them.

In November 2011 Australian broadcast and online media partnership Yahoo!7 launched its Fango mobile app, which allows TV viewers to interact with shows via several gamification techniques like check-ins and badges. The app also offers integration with social networking sites and live viewer discussions, marking a significant strategic shift for parent company Seven West Media (known mainly for its traditional role as one of Australia's main free-to-air TV networks). As of February 2012, the app had been downloaded more than 200,000 times since its launch.[13]

Applications like Fitocracy and QUENTIQ use gamification to encourage its users to exercise more effectively and improve their overall health. Users are awarded varying numbers of points for activities they perform in their workouts and gain levels based on points collected. Users can also complete quests (sets of related activities) and gain achievement badges for fitness milestones.[14]

Some other applications of gamification include:

  • Employee training programs.[15]
  • Wellness and other personal activities.[16]
  • Financial services websites.[17]
  • Online and in-person shopping.[18][19]
  • Primary education.[20]
  • Extreme sports.[21]
  • Project management.[12]
  • Enhancing loyalty programmes.[22]
  • Science
  • Social Networks.[23]
  • Surveys.[24]
  • Sustainability.[25]
  • Call Center.[26][27]
  • Market Research.[28]
  • Competitive Intelligence.[29]

Experts anticipated that the technique would also be applied to health care, financial services, transportation, government,[30] employee training,[15] and other activities.[31]

Alix Levine, an American security consultant, described as gamification some techniques that a number of extremist websites such as Stormfront and various terrorism-related sites used to build loyalty and participation. As an example, Levine mentioned reputation scores.[32][33]

Microsoft announced plans to use gamification techniques for its Windows Phone 7 operating system design.[34]

History

Although the term "gamification" was coined in 2002 by Nick Pelling,[35] it did not gain popularity until 2010.[36][37] Even prior to the 2002 coining of the term, the field of Scientific visualization, though having long employed 3D, explicitly started mimicking video games since at least 2000,[38] and a Forbes blogger has retroactively labeled[39] Charles Coonradt, who in 1973 founded the consultancy Game of Work and in 1984 wrote a book[40] by the same name, to be the "Grandfather of Gamification." Once the term "gamification" first gained widespread usage in 2010, at first it referred more to incorporating social/reward aspects of games into software rather than interactive 3D or Modeling and simulation,[41] but more recently has retroactively incorporated also simulation; e.g. Will Wright, designer of the 1989 video game SimCity, is the keynote speaker at the gamification conference Gsummit 2013.[42]

In 2010, the technique captured the attention of venture capitalists, one of whom said he considered gamification to be the most promising area in gaming.[43] Another observed that half of all companies seeking funding for consumer software applications mentioned game design in their presentations.[7]

Several researchers have considered gamification to be closely related to earlier work on adapting game-design elements and techniques to non-game contexts. Deterding et al.[2] survey research in human–computer interaction that uses game-derived elements for motivation and interface design, and Nelson[44] argues for a connection to both the Soviet concept of socialist competition, and the American management trend of "fun at work". Fuchs[45] points out that gamification might be driven by new forms of Ludic Interfaces.

In addition to companies that use the technique, a number of businesses created gamification platforms. In October 2007, Bunchball,[46] backed by Adobe Systems Incorporated,[citation needed] was the first company to provide game mechanics as a service,[47] on Dunder Mifflin Infinity, the community site for the NBC TV show The Office. Bunchball customers have included Playboy, Chiquita, Bravo, and The USA Network.[citation needed] In June 2009 a Seattle-based startup called BigDoor was founded, providing gamification technology to non-gaming websites.[48][49][50]

In September 2010, Badgeville[51] launched at TechCrunch Disrupt SF.[52] Badgeville is backed by Norwest Venture Partners, El Dorado Ventures, and Trinity Ventures, and offers services for gamification, reputation management, and social mechanics. Badgeville raised $15M in venture funding in its first year of operation,.[53] The company has since added more than 150 customers including Oracle, EMC, Samsung, NBC, Deloitte, Rogers Communications, Bell Media, CA Technologies and eBay.

Several other angel and venture-backed companies emerged in late 2010, including IActionable,[54] BigDoor[49][50] and Reputely[55] (inactive as of 2011). {{citation}}: Empty citation (help)

In December 2011 Salesforce.com announced the acquisition of the social performance platform provider Rypple, which uses gamification for employee performance and HR.[56] {{citation}}: Empty citation (help)

In June 2012, CA-based InfoArmy launched a crowdsourced business research platform, which uses badges, ranking, leaderboards, and other gamification techniques to incentivize members to conduct online company research.[57]

Companies

An organization, Gamification.Co, organized the world's first conference devoted to the phenomenon, held in San Francisco in January 2011.[9][58][59]

San Francisco startup Gamify offers a universal[clarification needed] gamification platform.[60][61] Gamify has created the Gamification Encyclopedia[62] to document trends in this topic[63] and, together with the SETI Institute, a contest called the "Gamify SETI & Prosper Challenge" to increase participation in its SETI program through gamification.[64][65]

One company, Seriosity, was created to offer gamification consulting.[20] UserInfuser is the first open source gamification platform provided by CloudCaptive.[66]

In August 2009, Gbanga launched the educational location-based game Gbanga Zooh that asked participants to actively save endangered animals and physically bring them back to a zoo. The game encouraged players to maintain virtual habitats across the Canton of Zurich in order to attract and collect endangered species of animals. Through the gaming component, real-world walk-in customer were created for the client Zurich Zoo.

In May 2012, Gamified Enterprise launched to host news and commentary about gamification for Fortune 1000 companies.[citation needed] It has featured content from EMC, Microsoft, and other notable businesses and executives.

The Khan Academy has been applying some gamification techniques in online education.[67]

Organizations

Business software vendor SAP AG is actively working on Gamification of processes in Enterprise. Recently, a virtual game that represented whole plant as perspective game just one would play SimCity just with the difference that each of the actions happen in real.[68][69]

Besides SAP, also IBM, EMC, CA, Slalom Consulting, Deloitte, Microsoft, LiveOps, RedCritter and other companies have started using gamification for consumer and non-consumer facing applications and processes.[70][71][72]

Other

Gamification has also been applied to authentication. The possibilities of using a game like Guitar Hero can help someone learn a password implicitly has been investigated in [73] Furthermore, games have been explored as a way to learn new and complicated passwords. It is suggested that these games could be used to "level up" a password, thereby improving its strength over time.[74] Gamification has also been proposed as a way to select and manage archives.[75]

Through the nature of gamification as a data aggregator and its growing adoption, multiple legal restrictions may apply to gamification. Some refer to the use of virtual currencies and virtual assets, data privacy laws and data protection, or labor laws.[76]

Critique

The term "gamification" and the practices it describes have received negative attention from game industry professionals, business consultants and executives, academics, and communications professionals. A Stanford professor, in a book on the subject,[20] suggested that the gamification of businesses and virtual worlds is creating an expectation among people that real-life interactions follow simple mechanics, and some disillusionment occurs when they do not.[77]

Some critics dismiss gamification as a buzzword, and note that many of its techniques have been in place for a long time. Other critiques include:

  • Gamification elements are already present in everyday activities such as happy hours, loyalty programs, etc.[78]
  • For business purposes, gamification is invalid, faddish, exploitative, an oversimplification, or a renaming of existing practices.[79][80]
  • Adding to and preying upon the confusion among business decision makers about the meaningful distinctions between games, videogames, social games, gamification, game mechanics, etc.[81]
  • The negative consequences of making simple game-like consumer interactions an end in themselves, rather than designing either high quality games or full product designs.[82]
  • Gamification sometimes misses elements such as storytelling and experiences which are central to what make games effective, or that gamification has mistaken the addition of points for the application of genuine game mechanics.[83][84]

See also

References

  1. ^ Zichermann, Gabe; Cunningham, Christopher (2011). "Introduction". Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps (1st ed.). Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media. p. xiv. ISBN 1449315399. Retrieved 2012-12-10. {{cite book}}: More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  2. ^ a b Huotari, Kai (2012). "Defining Gamification - A Service Marketing Perspective" (PDF). Proceedings of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference 2012, Tampere, Finland, October 3–5. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ Sebastian Deterding, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled, and Lennart Nacke (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining "gamification". Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference. pp. 9–15.{{cite conference}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ Herger, Mario (May. 21, 2012). "Gamification Facts & Figures". Enterprise-Gamification.com. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ Sutter, John D. (September 30, 2010). "Browse the Web, earn points and prizes". CNN.
  6. ^ a b Hamari, Juho (2011). "Framework for Designing and Evaluating Game Achievements" (PDF). Proceedings of Digra 2011 Conference: Think Design Play, Hilversum, Netherlands, September: 14–17. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) Cite error: The named reference "Framework for Designing and Evaluating Game Achievements" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  7. ^ a b c O'Brien, Chris (October 24, 2010). "Get ready for the decade of gamification". San Jose Mercury News.
  8. ^ Raven, Mike (2012), http://thoggy.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/gamification-and-use-of-achievements-in.html, retrieved 2013-01-06 {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  9. ^ a b Takahashi, Dean (September 30, 2010). "Gamification gets its own conference". Venture Beat.
  10. ^ Daniels, Matt (September 23, 2010). "Businesses need to get in the game". Marketing Week.
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  12. ^ a b "Introducing An App Store for Microsoft Outlook"..
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  20. ^ a b c Corcoran, Elizabeth (October 29, 2010). "The 'Gamification' Of Education". O'Reilly Media.
  21. ^ Dredge, Stuart (October 15, 2010). "New app brings gamification to extreme sports". Mobile Entertainment.
  22. ^ Sage, Mark (July 6, 2011). "Gamification expands the loyalty toolbox". Sage Words Blog.
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  24. ^ Herger, Mario (Oct. 28, 2011). "Making Surveys More Fun". Enterprise-Gamification.com. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  25. ^ Herger, Mario (Oct. 28, 2011). "Enterprise Gamification — Sustainability examples". Enterprise-Gamification.com. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  26. ^ Tehrani, Rich (Nov. 11, 2011). "Will Call Center Gamification Increase Productivity?". blog.tmcnet.com. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  27. ^ Heim, Anna (Aug. 26, 2011). "How Arcaris Is Gamifying Call Centers". TheNextWeb. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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  29. ^ Lunden, Ingrid (Oct. 23, 2012). "Data 2.0 Goes Large: InfoArmy Raises $17.3M To Build Out Its Crowdsourced Competitive Intelligence Platform". TechCrunch. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  30. ^ Thomas, Owen (October 5, 2010). "Should you run your business like a game?". Venture Beat.
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  32. ^ Jarret Brachman and Alix Levine (April 13, 2010). "The World of Holy Warcraft:How al Qaeda is using online game theory to recruit the masses". Foreign Policy.
  33. ^ Ungerleider, Neal (April 22, 2011). "Welcome To JihadVille". Fast Company.
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  53. ^ . TechCrunch. July 12, 2011 http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/12/badgeville-raises-12-million-celebrates-with-an-infographic/. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  54. ^ . TheNextWeb http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/07/18/achievements-points-and-leaderboards-hit-the-workplace-with-engage-for-salesforce-com. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  55. ^ Yap, Jamie (October 18, 2010). "Gamification ups user engagement and ROI". ZDNet.
  56. ^ Rao, Leena (December 15, 2011). "Salesforce Buys Social Performance Platform Rypple; Will Launch 'Human Capital Management' Unit Successforce". TechCrunch.com.
  57. ^ . TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/data-2-0-goes-large-infoarmy-raises-17-3m-to-build-out-its-crowdsourced-competitive-intelligence-platform/. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
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  65. ^ Parr, Ben (May 5, 2011). "How You Can Help Find Alien Life". Mashable.
  66. ^ Joel Falconer. "UserInfuser: open source gamification platform". http://thenextweb.com/. {{cite web}}: External link in |publisher= (help)
  67. ^ Shantanu Sinha (February 14, 2012). "Motivating Students and the Gamification of Learning". Huffington Post.
  68. ^ Herger, Mario (July 27, 2011). "OINK OINK! Welcome to the SAP Gamification Cup!". Enterprise-Gamification.com.
  69. ^ Herger, Mario (Nov. 2, 2011). "Gamified Manufacturing". Enterprise-Gamification.com. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  70. ^ Silverman, Rachel (Nov. 2, 2011). "Latest Game Theory: Mixing Work and Play — Companies Adopt gaming Techniques to Motivate Employees". Wallstreet Journal. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  71. ^ Lindner, Joselin (Sept. 15, 2011). "Microsoft Gamification Blog". Gamification.co. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  72. ^ Coghlan, Jeff (Feb. 21, 2012). "Guest Blog - 'RedCritter Tracker– Gamifying the Work Place', By Jeff Coghlan, Matmi MD". The Orchard Agency. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  73. ^ Jim Giles (19 July 2012). "The password you can use without knowing it?". New Scientist.
  74. ^ Christien Kroeze (16 August 2012). "Gamifying authentication". IEEE Conference Proceedings.
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  76. ^ Herger, Mario (Jan. 4, 2012). "Gamification and Law or How to stay out of Prison despite Gamification". Enterprise-Gamification.com. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  77. ^ Byron Reeves, J. Leighton Read (2009). Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete. Harvard Business Press. ISBN 978-1-4221-4657-6.
  78. ^ Bell, Jase (November 2, 2010). "Your life is but a game and points win prizes". Belfast Telegraph.
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  80. ^ Bogost, Ian. "Gamification is Bullshit". Ian Bogost.
  81. ^ Slavin, Kevin (June 9, 2011). "In a World Filled With Sloppy Thinking".
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  83. ^ Jon Radoff (February 16, 2011). "Gamification". Radoff.com.
  84. ^ Margaret Robertson. "Can't Play Won't Play". Hideandseek.net.
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