Ahead by gamification

Original Title: Ahead of the curve by Gamification
The next step in the evolution of marketing

Goal: My background in videogames and events made sure that when I look at marketing, I quickly link things to games. In one of the conversations I had with Theo Kroese, my boss at Kroese brands & behaviour, he asked if it was possible for me to connect to two of them in an article; this is the result.

Casual gaming is one of the biggest movers in the current gaming market; the amount of people it attracts is staggering (Farmville attracts 61 million players per month) and the estimated turnover for 2010 is somewhere north of $ 3 billion. Themes and concepts vary widely but the genre appeals to a wide user base as casual games require no special skills or practice in order to be played.

Farmville, a game in which players manage their own farm, has been the highest ranking game on Facebook for quite some time. The addictive gameplay is based, among others, on the blend between game-time and real-time, this concept is called the appointment dynamic. For example if you play Farmville in the morning, six hours later there is reason to check in on the progress on the farm again – e.g. to virtually harvest crop you’ve planted before – wherever you are. So game designers have found a way to integrate games in your life by making it necessary to log in frequently.

Another aspect of casual games, in-game engagement, is governed by different dynamics. A major example is the reward dynamic; by modeling the progress in the game to a curve with time versus interest on the axis, game designers are able to track the moments in the game where players tend to drop out and then offer minor and major rewards to keep engagement up. The progression dynamic is another example that sees wide usage;  a players’ measure of success is displayed in real-time and gradually improved by completing granular tasks. Online game World of Warcraft’s success (monthly revenue $200 million+) is solely based on the developers’ ability to keep the highest possible percentage of people engaged through, among others, these exact dynamics.

The accessibility and game dynamics used in casual games are also highly applicable for brands; how to keep customers engaged and stimulate involvement, be it by additional purchases or word-of-mouth.

Before social media, companies would just buy the right to send their message to an amount of  consumers, the more the better, but Web 2.0 has changed this. Now consumers go through various stages of engagement, and the most influential consumers (ambassadors)  are hardest to influence directly by the brands themselves. Jeff Jarvis’ ‘Dell Hell crusade’ against the manufacturer’s bad service comes to mind. The new goal is interaction; talking to, instead of at, your customers and earning the right to do so. The game dynamics explained earlier can help your company do just that.

Gamification is the application of the dynamics used in videogames to increase customer involvement with the brand, outside of a videogame environment.

Consider LinkedIn’s gamification of their most valuable asset, user profiles:
In order to entice users to complete their profile they use the progression dynamic; by presenting individual users with granular tasks towards a complete profile, LinkedIn gives users a clear path to an achievement. This achievement adds value to the social network for everybody involved. The network becomes a better source of information, making it more attractive, triggering more people to join. It is not hard to imagine real-world applications for this principle. E.g. hospitals can dramatically improve on the time an intake requires by rewarding completeness and lower the rate of errors made because of misinformation. Clearly beneficial for all involved parties. Travel agencies can reward customers who provide feedback on the locations they have visited – be it positive or negative – or those customers who are willing to act as active reference and thus contribute to an up to date and attractive website.

While most brands are still trying to incorporate social media into their communication plans, a few startups are already getting venture capitalist funding solely based on their presumed ability to apply gamification to any website. One example is BigDoor Media who wrote a gamification API to integrate in your current website. It is these companies that will amaze us with their success in a few years. Assuming that  gamification will take at least half the time social media took to develop, companies still have at least a year to get ahead of the curve and adjust pro-actively. To make the adjustment, brands need to realize which par

t of their product or service requires gamification; where can a company leverage their communication in order to improve their offering? As Harvard Business Review writer Umair Haque points out;

“The deepest test of a 21st century business isn’t just whether it glitters, but whether it can create thick value, that endures, benefits, and multiplies: whether it matters.”

A few examples where gamification is applicable:

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