Virtual games tend to attract millions of players each year. The gaming industry is growing at an incredibly rapid pace. According to the Newzoo 2020 Global Games Market Report, the global video game market is forecast to be worth $159.3 billion by the end of this year. Additionally, due to the global pandemic resulting in lockdowns, this sector is thriving more than ever. The popularity of video games is extraordinary. After all, do you know somebody who has never been tempted to immerse in another round of a game just to reach a new level?
Generally, there is a prevalent perception of video games being a huge waste of time and one of the biggest hindrances for productivity. But is it possible for the gaming industry to contribute beneficially to the business and society on a daily basis?
Well, yes, there is.
And its name has already been mentioned in the title of today's post.
Brett Terrill has defined the term 'gamification' in his 2008 blog post as "taking game mechanics and applying them to other web properties to increase engagement." Using the scheme and design of particular game elements can successfully lead to the desired behaviors of market participants. The most important examples of these features are constant competition and goalsetting used to boost motivation.
Examples of gamification
Loyalty programs offered to the customers, competitions for the employee of the month, and the 'happy hours' in a local cafe are all considered to be examples of gamification. Even completing every requested information on your LinkedIn profile, just for the sake of seeing the notification that you have completed 100% of the necessary information, is the classic application of this technique. Implementing items like points, levels, challenges, and rankings helps to gamify the organization and evoke new energy among people involved in it.
Why is gamification so effective?
It all comes to the basics of the motivation behind human actions.
The idea of receiving an instant reward for completing a precisely described task is a vision that people are naturally attracted to.
It is also crucial to keep one's attention on a product or task and encourage people to continue what they have once started doing.
According to the TalentLMS's 2019 Gamification at Work survey, 89% of employees say that gamification makes them feel more productive, and 88% of them claim that it made them feel happier. Moreover, '61 % of those who receive non-gamified training feel bored and unproductive.'
Gamification strategy
The presence of gamification in business has earned it a unique term – the gamification strategy. It is the process of transforming regular mundane tasks into game-alike challenges.
According to B.J. Fogg, the Stanford University professor, three elements need to appear simultaneously to make a particular behavior occur; those are motivation to do something, providing participants with the ability to complete the action, and the final trigger to do it.
Gamification strategy is applicable to various aspects of a business and efficiently increases employee engagement and customer loyalty.
One of its crucial elements is the constant tracking of progress. This is essential for the participants to be aware of the stage they are at and assess how to move forward.
The threats of over-gamification
Considering the general benefits of gamification strategy, we should not forget that it is relatively easy to go too far with this approach. One of the biggest threats related to gamification is overemphasizing the offered rewards. It can lead to running out of funding for them, as well as creating false incentives, making people play unfairly just for the sake of winning.
It is also essential to remember that constant competition can be effective for the business, but quite toxic for the employees.
Increasing the pressure and typical objective-orientated way of thinking could ruin the relations between them in the long run. After all, a company is all about teamwork - in the market, driven by competition and hostility, it is not the best move to introduce the same atmosphere into the company itself. Thus, it is essential to consider the limitations of implementing this strategy into the company, depending on its unique characteristics.
What’s next?
We should definitely intensify the games' construction studies and link them to particular fields of behavioral psychology and entrepreneurship. The nature of human perception of games has a tremendous potential to be applied to practically every aspect of our lives, and we should exploit it. After all, what is a better option than combining the sense of a challenge and satisfaction to the general approach to our mundane responsibilities?
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