GAMIFICATION

                                                                             GAMIFICATION

Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users in solving problems and increase users' contributions.

Gamification has been studied and applied in several domains, with some of the main purposes being to engage (improve user engagement, physical exercise, return on investment, flow data quality, timeliness), teach (in classrooms, the public or at work), entertain (enjoyment, fan loyalty), measure  (for recruiting and employee evaluation), and to improve the perceived ease of use of information systems.^.

 A review of research on gamification shows that a majority of studies on gamification find positive effects from gamification.  However, individual and contextual differences exist.

CATEGORIZATION

Gamification uses an empathy-based approach (such as Design thinking) for introducing, transforming and operating a service system that allows players to enter a gameful experience to support value creation for the players and other stakeholders.

 Gamification designers address the user as player to indicate that the motivations and interests of the player are in the center of the gamification design.

Gamification in a narrow sense is used in a non-game context, is built into the service system, and is aiming at an infinite experience. It does not aim at creating a game but offering a gameful experience. In a broader sense gamification also includes game context such as in serious games and finite and infinite games. 

TECHNIQUES

Gamification techniques strive to leverage people's natural desires for socializing, learning, mastery, competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, or closure. Early gamification strategies use rewards for players who accomplish desired tasks or competition to engage players.

Types of rewards include points, achievement badges or levels, the filling of a progress bar, or providing the user with virtual currency. Making the rewards for accomplishing tasks visible to other players or providing leader boards are ways of encouraging players to compete.

Due to potentially problematic consequences of competition, which can result in unethical behavior, low cooperation and low collaboration, or disadvantaging certain player demographics such as women, current gamification designs try to refrain from using this element.

Another approach to gamification is to make existing tasks feel more like games. Some techniques used in this approach include adding meaningful choice, onboarding with a tutorial, increasing challenge,  and adding narrative.

^APPLICATIONS

Gamification has been widely applied in marketing. Over 70% of Forbes Global 2000 companies surveyed in 2013 said they planned to use gamification for the purposes of marketing and customer retention.  For example, in November 2011 Australian broadcast and online media partnership Yahoo!7 launched its Fango mobile app/SAP, which TV viewers use to interact with shows via techniques like check-ins and badges.

As of February 2012, the app had been downloaded more than 200,000 times since its launch. Gamification has also been used in customer loyalty programmes. In 2010, Starbucks gave custom Foursquare badges to people who checked in at multiple locations and offered discounts to people who checked in most frequently at an individual store.

There have also been proposals to use gamification for competitive intelligence, encouraging people to fill out surveys, and to do market research on brand recognition. Gamification has also been integrated into Help Desk software. In 2012, Freshdesk, a SaaS-based customer support product, integrated gamification features, allowing agents to earn badges based on performance.

Gamification has also been used as a tool for customer engagement, and for encouraging desirable website usage behavior.  Additionally, gamification is readily applicable to increasing engagement on sites built on social network services.

For example, in August 2010, one site, DevHub, announced that they have increased the number of users who completed their online tasks from 10% to 80% after adding gamification elements. On the programming question-and-answer site Stack Overflow 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.

Gamification can be used for ideation, the structured brainstorming to produce new ideas. A study at MIT Sloan found that ideation games helped participants generate more and better ideas, and compared it to gauging the influence of academic papers by the numbers of citations received in subsequent research.

LEGAL RESTRICTIONS

Through gamification's growing adoption and its nature as a data aggregator, 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 labour laws.

The use of virtual currencies, in contrast to traditional payment systems, is not regulated. The legal uncertainty surrounding the virtual currency schemes might constitute a challenge for public authorities, as these schemes can be used by criminals, fraudsters and money launderers to perform their illegal activities.

HISTORY

Though the term "gamification" was coined in 2002 by Nick Pelling, a British-born computer programmer and inventor, it did not gain popularity until 2010. Even prior to the term coming into use, other fields borrowing elements from videogames was common; for example, some work in learning disabilities  and scientific visualization adapted elements from videogames.  

A Forbes blogger also retroactively labeled Charles Coonradt, who in 1973 founded the consultancy The Game of Work and in 1984 wrote a book by the same name, as the "Grandfather of Gamification".

The term "gamification" first gained widespread usage in 2010, in a more specific sense referring to incorporation of social/reward aspects of games into software.

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

Among established enterprise firms, SAP AG, Microsoft, IBM, SAP, LiveOps, Deloitte, and other companies have started using gamification in various applications and processes.

Gamification 2013, an event exploring the future of gamification, was held at the University of Waterloo Stratford Campus in October 2013.

The inaugural Loyalty Games 2014 Loyalty Gamification World Championship will be held Online with Live World Finals San Francisco.

REFRENCES:

1.      "Gamification Design Elements". Enterprise-Gamification.com. Retrieved2014-10-07.

2.      Zichermann, Gabe; Cunningham, Christopher (August 2011). "Introduction".Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps(1st ed.). Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly Media. p. xiv. ISBN 1449315399. Retrieved2012-12-10.

3.      Huotari, K., & Hamari, J. (2012). "Defining Gamification - A Service Marketing Perspective" (PDF). Proceedings of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference 2012, Tampere, Finland, October 3–5.

4.     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.