Solid State Newsletter – May 2011
Playing online games at work is not a habit most employers would encourage. Games are viewed as a form of leisure activity, for which there is little room in the corporate arena. This view is changing, however, as the mechanics of gaming are working their way into other parts of our lives. This trend, known as “Gamification,” borrows the engaging elements of game play and builds them into technology applications that have very little in common with what is regarded as entertainment.
Ever since world-renowned alternate reality game designer Jane McGonigal’s talk at the 2010 TED conference on how games can make for a better world, media and industry have become increasingly interested in the promise of gamification. Scvngr CEO Seth Priebatsch electrified the audience at his recent SxSW keynote when he characterized the last decade as the battle for the social layer which according to him has already been won by Facebook.
Priebatsch postulates that this coming decade of “human technological interaction” will be driven by the game layer in which interactions and actions will be spurred by human influence versus those of human connection which are endemic to the social layer. Many agree with him. A simple Google search with the word, “gamification” resulted in more than two million results. There are blogs, wikis, and even an annual Gamification Summit. This summit was held in San Francisco earlier this year and featured industry luminaries from business, venture capital and academia. One of these speakers was Ian Bogost, a professor in digital media at the Georgia Institute of Technology and founding partner of Persuasive Games. This is what he had to say when asked about the possibilities of gamification for communication.
“The thing that makes games interesting, powerful communications tools is that they have the ability to represent systems rather than to tell stories or describe events. We can use games to depict complex systems. We’re constantly inside of these intersecting and overlapping systems of inputs and outputs and actions and consequences and that’s the thing that games give us that is different from other kinds of media.”
The strategy of using gaming mechanics to solve complex problems and engage workers is not new. Major consumer and industrial brands including Cold Stone Creamery, Nissan, Mattel, and Siemens have used games to improve the employee training process for years. However, the rise of social and mobile gaming has generated tremendous interest from other companies. “By 2014, a gamified service for consumer goods marketing and customer retention will become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon, and more than 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application,” according to Gartner, Inc.
Latitude Research launched a study on The Future of Gaming to gain fresh perspectives from gamers and non-gamers alike on this category in March. Initial respondents identified the following as areas of focus for gamification:
- Health and Wellness
- Social Networking and Community
- Finances
- Politics
- Education
Gamification is even being used to upend business processes that have not changed much in the past century. Software start-up RightPay is introducing their first service RightBonus, a web-based platform that applies behavioral psychology and game mechanics to calculate bonus pay. “Bonuses and compensation are something that people can have strong opinions about,” said Obie Fernandez, founding partner at RightPay. “RightBonus allows a company or department to take a bonus pool amount and put it in the hands of the employees themselves to distribute in a peer-to-peer fashion throughout the year. Where game mechanics comes into play is that you have to keep people from cheating. Encouraging the right type of participation by making it a game is an important part of how we are architecting the app.”
A Georgia-based start-up, Badgy, has created a social media engagement platform for brands and digital agencies that uses gaming principles to increase engagement and conversion of fans on Twitter and Facebook. “Mobile, casual, and social gaming have identified a much larger audience than traditional gaming was able to uncover, and we’re still in the very early stages of understanding what this audience wants,” said Rob Kischuk, founder of Badgy. “Our experience in social gaming helps us bring the most effective techniques used by Zynga and other game companies, and use those to engage, grow, and motivate fans of everyday products. For years, companies have been running games for their customers and employees in the forms of sweepstakes and bonus plans. Now that they are fully embracing game-based approaches, it really opens up a host of new opportunities for motivating people.”
The market for gamified applications is expected to grow to $1.6 billion in 2015, up from $100 million in 2011, according to Wanda Meloni, founder of M2 Research, a consulting firm that researches the gaming industry.
In other words, the market potential for gamification is huge and Priebatsch may see his game layer become reality.
