What is Gamification?

That is one of the questions we have been getting a lot, from many people in industries far different than our own. Some have a small idea, while others come at it with no background knowledge whatsoever.

So here it is, as simple a definition as I can create: Gamification is the use of game mechanics to add interactivity and retention to any system.

Gamification, I believe, has been around for a long while. The name, “Gamification” is just a buzz word now, something to get excited over. But really it’s pretty simple.

For example: You go to your local coffee shop and you receive a punch card. For every coffee you buy they punch another hole into the card. Once you get ten punches, you get a free coffee. That’s it! That’s Gamification working right there.

Now why is that? Because, there is a system (a punch card) in place that encourages its users to take part in it, to “interact” with it (by purchasing a coffee), and it “retains” them by offering a reward (a free coffee).

But that example I have given, while simple to understand, does not showcase how we add Gamification to digital goods. And that is our current project. We are taking on the task of tackling four different, prototypes/examples of what digital Gamification would look like in four major areas: Product Promotion, HR/Training, Social Campaign, and Community.

The first three are being constructed in Flash, which is a standard web plugin, which everyone has. We unfortunately are avoiding Unity as the Unity Web Player is such a pain to install on the user side of things and we want these examples to be as accessible as possible.

In the following weeks I will post them on this blog and break down the elements behind each example. Here is the title of our product example.