One of my team pointed me at a recent Forrester report on how businesses need to ensure that Gamifcation meets its objectives and it reminded me that Gamification has been around in many forms for many years.
Take the grading and reward structure in large companies; are you a grade 12, 13b or 13c; what car did you get – the GT or the GTi, or only the basic LX; and did you ever get that key to the executive toilet ?
Technology, firstly the PC, then console and now interconnectivity and truly mobile platforms have accelerated the social aspect of gaming in the last few years. Accepting or even desiring a level of ‘play’ will be a growing trend as the generation who are native gamers have grown into the ones we need to attract to buy from us, or work for us.
But in the same way there are 100’s of game apps available and only a few get played compulsively, there must be a hook in any corporate application making them fun, simple and able to reward players immediately, to lure them to the next attempt. There must be some element of enjoying the ‘game’ element, immediate feedback and not just the reward at the end. That’s where the steady corporate approach, the work ethic and the long term plan will fail you.
Smart421 has developed a few applications with Gamification at their heart and my #1 rule would be to give the specification and development of these to your youngest team, you know – the ones with no discipline, who come in late and who you can’t understand what they are saying. (!)
And don’t forget Gamers make better decision makers (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11295257) so you might want to encourage those guys to contribute to your business strategy too.
Martin Brazill 