Why There’s Such A Hype Around Gamification?
Topping the lists of what’s going to be the next big thing in 2012 is “Gamification“.
Do you need to employ someone who knows and understand games & gamification?
Or would you just be hiring the tailor for the emperor’s clothes?
For those of you who have not been reading any blog on this (you won’t be reading this anyway but for form’s sake): Gamification is embedding certain game design or mechanics in campaigns or products.
Examples of this are earning badges, level completion (incl. leveling up), set-completion, random reward elements, leader-boards… and well – much more.
I don’t get the hype. Really. Why? Because it’s one big misinterpretation.
Firstly – it’s been around for such a long time. Seriously. It’s not a new thing. You know what counts as gamification? Loyalty cards! Seriously.
And not only is the loyalty card an old thing, think of levels due to participating more… nearly EVERY forum uses it. For ages already.
So why the sudden hotness – well that’s point #2:
A big contribution to the hype has been a presentation on how our future life is going to be gamified completely as given by Carnegie Mellon’s Jesse Schell at DICE 2010.
The guy was being cynical (excerpt from an article in Wired Magazine): Schell says he wanted to encourage people to think carefully about which kinds of games and experiences were appropriate to develop.
But not everyone picked up on those subtleties. “I’ve had dozens of people come to me saying, “Your talk was so influential to me that I started a company.”
Schell says. “All I can think is, oh God, don’t blame me for that.”
Third of all in this data driven age people are prone to succumb to the narrative error: This occurs is when you see two quite random points, connect them together and retrospectively make a story in which these points are connected in a seemingly coherent and logical way.
Alas, most of the time these stories are WRONG. We are headed toward another “let’s do this for the sake of itself” phenomenon.
The same as we’re currently seeing in social as a whole, but primarily with Facebook.
The biggest mistake that is made in this is that people mistake cause and effect. The best example right now is that you see all of these infographics and such that teach you “What is the average value of a Facebook fan?”
When did we stop thinking about how cause changes the effect?
The correct answer is: dependable on at least:
- What kind of product you have (value of purchase, ability to cross sell, number of purchases in and time in which life-cycle occurs, availability of product in general, possibility to purchase product on-line, etc. etc.)
- What was the trigger of someone to become a fan of your brand (did they HAVE to become a fan due to otherwise missing out on content/a prize, were they lured to you because of an offering or because of value adding content, did they come through experience of friends or through advertising or did they seek your brand out themselves, etc. etc.)
- And what kind of content do you post (just brand positioning stuff, offers, or content that adds value by solving people’s problems, etc. etc.)
Not to mention all outside influence. As you can see – there are quite some variety in categories: just my examples means at least 2,500 permutations that make the value of a customer differ.
So simply stepping over all of this and put out the blank statement that an average user is worth $ xxxx is ludicrous at best, detrimental to the potential of what social can bring to the table at worst.
The same goes for adding gamification elements. The main premise of gamification is that it is THE best tool for:
- Getting more people to interact,
- Getting people to interact more often and,
- Getting people to interact longer per interaction
I firmly believe it is as much a blank statement as saying that the ROI of a FB fan is $ x,xx
Why? Well simply because gaming elements will do next to NOTHING for you if they are just tacked on at the last moment without being an intrinsic part of the campaign / product. Gamification does NOT make people want to interact with a brand.
People already must already feel the need to interact – what gamification does is firstly make the decisions of what people can do to interact more explicit and second of all make you streamline /enhance the elements this needs.
Choosing which gaming element(s) to incorporate is essential to the gamification working: the element should enhance the basic need for the person to interact naturally. If you do that… then all will be well – but you basically were already doing that when you didn’t call it gamification, but were just trying to streamline interaction, weren’t you…
So did you already optimize for interaction… or do you seeing the light and will you start using techniques to get people more involved in your brand/ campaigns… or are you just happy with how things are?
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I couldn’t agree with you more: gamification has been around for ages and ages and anyone who’s ever been on a forum or two knows it.
And it’s the same thing with social media: before Facebook, there was MySpace, and before that there were personal sites (blogs, still are around), and even before that… again… forums!
I think the main reason why “everyone” (such an ambiguous term) is talking about it is simply so they can rank higher in Google for a keyword (in this case gamification) that’s getting more popular BECAUSE so many people are blogging about it. In short: self-fulfilling prophecy + old thing in a new jacket = gamification.
Nice piece Eric!
Very well formulated Motriz, sharp copy! Think you hit it spot on: old wine, new bags. Howeverr, might be partly clever market making sometimes?
We’ll see probably more like: social commerce, social tv, social nps, social crm…
cheers
Igor
@moritz – The point I am trying to make is that most people follow the herd without thinking. It’s not that I don’t believe in the mechanics. So if you mean the term ‘gamification’ then agreed 100%.
@Igor – thanks for the compliment.
I think our industry always tries to name things that are already there… as we can then sell it separately. Which then starts to lead it’s own life . Not the thing a purist like me actually likes… but it is the nature of our industry as you put very well
Nice one.
I’m not saying that “everything has been already invented” but sometimes it just needs a “new look” and a trend is born, followed by millions without asking. Simply – they are doing it, we have to do it also!
Gamification has been around forever – you are right about that. But, one thing is it definitely new and has value is when you look at from the perspective of user adoption. That is, getting people to use something they normally wouldn’t – like business software. Rewarding users for entering data, completing tasks on time, adding notes to a record in a database (instead of on a piece of paper that ends up in a drawer somewhere), etc., has merit to it. You can actually get teams to compete against one another (in a fun way). People can get points that convert to badges for doing things like reporting bugs, training other users, etc. That part of gamification is new and we’ll be seeing more of it. Salesforce is doing it already. We (small open source CRM app) are working on it too.
@Stafford – you are definately right that it is applied more often in normal products. But what often goes wrong is that it often is not an inherrant part of the product, but simply tacked on.
I am intrigued by what you say – but a more important thing is: why would people want to do this? Why would teams compete? people getting points earns them what?
The only reason why badges are interesting is because they are a part of the ego – and thus only interesting if others can see it and if those others are peers in a way in which it is relevant. If not… it is a nice salesfeature, but will not really be used a lot.
So if it is a real part of the product: fantastic & please let me/us know! Then it is a real addition.
I like where you are going with this Eric.
I think the introduction of clear goals and instant feedback can benefit any interaction or task – but I think there is way to much focus on achievements and points. To be a gamified I think we need to introduce the term “Fun” (as in enjoyable, fulfilling) and that is where Gamification often fails – because the design process of “Fun” is extremely hard and (as you also point out) when done AFTER the product is finished it will almost certainly fail. Why? Mostly because of motifs: Is all of this done to be a fun experience? OR is this just “post-gamified” to spif something else up?
Also when introducing scoring parameters in actions you often end up with users that score high but not necessarily in the way you wanted them to – as in the support person that gets points for short calls and therefore redirects callers to other supporters.
I think the lesson is that you shouldn’t score points, get badges, wins etc. for the sake of it. You should instead create interactions that are fun and fulfilling – for the sake of it – that is real Gamefication.