Introducing Gamification

Stuti Kaushik
Nov 5 · 2 min read

What comes to your mind when you come across the term ‘Gamification’?

Some people would say ‘it is something about games’.

“It is actually a craft to take all those fun and exciting elements of game (commonly known as (‘Game Mechanics‘) and pouring them into boring/ non-gaming context and making it (such context) a fun experience that motivates people in terms of loyalty, sales and interaction”.

People who are already familiar a little bit with the concept might think of PBL (Points, Badges and leaderboard). People think that if we just add PBL to our sales process or any process for that matter, it would gamify the process.

Image credits: Yaroslav Zubko, Mike Le

But, this is a misconception.

When we talk about games, not all of them are entertaining, fun and exciting. Another point is that by just adding game elements to a non-game context will not make it fun or exciting, it will not necessarily bring your users or customers back to what your brand or company.

Gamification is design that places the most emphasis on human motivation in the process and the reason we call it gamification is because gaming industry was the first to master human-focused-design. Games have no other purpose than to please human inside and create excitement and enhances participation.

Here we are going to talk about the practice of applying game mechanics to non-game (or real-life) situations.

Here’s how I would like to explain it:

It was observed that games can be one of the most fun, engaging, motivating and rewarding experiences in life. And it was asked what any philosophical mind would ask: “Why?” or rather, “what motivates people to be so engaged by games?”

It was found that it was is a mixture of light competition, incentives and rewards are some of the basic elements that make games so addictive.

The next question asked was “Is it possible to integrate these principles with other elements of life in order to make them just as engaging?”. Gamification is an attempt to answer this question. More recently, gamification has proved itself to be a valuable addition to enterprises. Businesses have found that through application of game mechanics, they can motivate their workforces to perform better and their customers to be more engaged. Similarly many .educators are looking into a variety of new tools and techniques in imparting learning.

So depending on WHAT the goal is and what action one wants to take, there are various gamification techniques that can be employed.

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