Gamification — what is it, and how is it used

If you’ve ever come across people from marketing or product management from large companies, you know that gamification is practically a new religion of business. About the same can be said about education. Gaming began to penetrate into many areas of our lives, forcing the word “gamification” to flash more and more often. It is no longer owned by game studios or game developers.

But what is it really? Why is gamification needed? And why is it so popular? Today Cookie.Games will deal with these difficult issues.

What is gamification?

Gamification is the application of game mechanics to non–game processes. The correct use of this tool allows you to increase the involvement of participants in solving applied problems, using products, services or strengthening customer loyalty. This term contains the same root as Game, under which computer games are largely represented nowadays. And this is not by chance, because this area of business has learned to involve, entertain and retain users the best of all.

After all, when a user enters the game, then for the most part the only purpose of this action is to have a good time. This is what any business strives for. So that a product or a certain activity is associated with a good time. Because without cheap involvement and long retention the unit economy of many products will be unprofitable. For a deeper understanding, we need to understand what a game is and why people play.

And what is a Game?

Bernard Suits, expressed a very beautiful definition of the game: “The game is a voluntary overcoming of optional obstacles.”

Referring to Bernard Suite, the game contains:

1. The goal A specific outcome of the game that the players are aiming for. It directs the player’s attention and coordinates his actions, as a result, the participants have a sense of purpose. If it’s a race, then the goal is to run from start to finish. If this is chess, then the goal is to “kill” the opponent’s king
2. Rules that make activity a game. The rules set limits on how to achieve the goal, which encourages players to explore the unexplored spaces of possibilities. In chess, you can’t just swipe all your opponent’s pieces off the board. You can’t walk pawns through the whole map. A knight is a knight, a queen is a queen.
3. The feedback system tells the players how close they are to achieving the goal. This information can be presented in the form of points, levels, score, or an indicator of the progress of the game. In the simplest case, the feedback system comes down to the player’s understanding of the target result: “The game will be over when …”. Real-time feedback seems to assure players that the goal is achievable and motivates them to continue playing.
4. Finally, voluntary participation requires that each player consciously and independently accept the goal, rules and feedback system. Awareness creates a common basis for a large number of people to play together, meaning participants follow the rules and do it voluntarily. If the participants are forced, then this is no longer a game.

From games to non-games

And since gamification comes from games, it should also contain:

• Voluntary participation
• Learning something or solving a certain problem
• Purpose and rules for achieving this goal
• Narrative. Namely, a structure that combines fragments of a game or a game system into a single whole. Otherwise, there is a risk that a gamified system will be just a bunch of abstract things.
• The right balance of the system. The lack of complexity will make the game uninteresting and a large number of rules and complexity will increase the entry threshold and, accordingly, lower the active audience of your system.

Gamification is not an attempt to turn everything into a game. It is used not only to attract or engage users. And it’s not just points, badges and leaderboards

Gamification is the study of the mechanics of games (not just virtual ones) with an understanding of why we like games. If we look into this issue, we can make any product or process almost as engaging as games. The study of game design, psychology and human relations will help to understand this.

Atomic structure of gamification

Like all systems, gamification can also be disassembled into the elements of which it consists. Look at this with the example of the framework by Kevin Werbach, who came up with his own pyramid of elements. We have taken this framework in a simplified form to give you an understanding of what games are made of and how different gamification elements are related to each other.

But you need to understand that games are not just elements that are somehow glued together. Games are abstractions that are designed systematically and thoughtfully, with the ability to influence the emotions of the player and, most importantly, they should be fun.

The pyramid of elements is the structure of standard elements in games and the relationship between these elements.

There are Dynamics at the top of the pyramid. These are the most high-level concepts in games or gamified systems. You can think of it as a grammar in a language: hidden structures that make the whole experience connected and have regular patterns.

This level contains:

1. Constraints. Every game should have limitations. Artificially restricting freedom, games create a meaningful goal and add interesting problems, the solution of which does not annoy players. Thus, the idea of what restrictions are imposed on users is an important dynamic that any designer of gamified systems should think about.
2. Emotions. Games can cause almost any emotion, from joy to sadness and everything in between. The emotional palette of gamification, as a rule, is somewhat more limited, because we are dealing with the real world, a non-gaming context. But there are still a lot of emotional levers that can be used to make the user experience more intense.
3. Narrative. A structure that combines fragments of a game or gamified system into a single whole. The narrative can be explicit, a storyline in the game, or implicit. Without a narrative, there is a risk that a gamified system will be just a bunch of abstract things.
4. Progressive. This means that the user sees the beginning of the path he is currently on, and where he will come if he follows the rules. Progression does not necessarily require levels, progress scales, and points. But these are the most typical components that are used to create this dynamic.
5. Relationships. This dynamic tells about how people interact with each other. This includes friends, team members, and opponents. These dynamics are very well developed in MMO, shooters and other online games.

Then there are the mechanics — a set of rules and methods that implement in a certain way some part of the interaction between the player and the game. All the many game mechanics of the game form a specific implementation of its gameplay:

• Challenges
• Chance
• Competition
• Cooperation
• Feedback
• Resource Acquisition
• Rewards
• Transactions
• Turns
• Win states

And the lowest level of the pyramid, the components. Users interact directly with these elements and, basically, directly observe only this level. These are certain blocks from which mechanics and dynamics are assembled.

• Achievements
• Avatars
• Badges
• Boss fights
• Collections
• Combat
• Content unlocking
• Gifting
• Leaderboards
• Levels
• Points
• Quests
• Social graph
• Teams
• Virtual goods

For example, points are at the lowest level — the component level. From points, you can build a higher-level structure — the mechanics of progression. And then this mechanic will become part of the narrative — the level of dynamics.

The lower level of the pyramid is the basis for building a good gaming experience, while the upper levels affect which elements from the lower level are applied.

There is another level outside of this pyramid — this is Aesthetics. It describes the desired emotions that should arise in the player when he interacts with the game.

The combination of these four elements creates the entire gaming experience

At first glance, there are too many elements. But you come across many of them every day and can even write your own options:

Challenge (Mechanic level)

• Monthly bonuses in the sales department for the accomplishment of the plan
• Gifts in the gym for those who swim 10km in a month

Levels (Component level)

• Loyalty card with levels for frequent flyers
• Promotions at work

Teams (Component level)

• Book clubs
• Army
• Fan symbols in sports

Reward (Mechanic level)

• One free car wash for every ten.
• Cashback for purchases

Badge (Component level)

• Platinum card in banks or airlines
• Medals
• Custom number plates on the car

Conclusion

As you can see, gamification surrounds us in almost everything and we encounter it every day. We feel it at work when our bonuses get bigger if we perform better. In study, when we try to make a creative project better than others, because it will affect the final evaluation of the course.

Increasingly, we are faced with gamification among brands and their products. For example, Nike offers its regular customers to track their running activity to increase the discount in stores. And at the same time, it’s not that we don’t feel it, we even more willingly agree to interact with it, because it ignites excitement and fun in us.