Gamification Explained: What It Is, Its Goals, and Examples
Gamification is a concept that applies game mechanics and dynamics in non-gaming contexts to increase user engagement, motivation, and satisfaction. It involves applying game elements such as points, levels, badges, leaderboards, quests, and rewards in various fields, often in situations where games seemingly have no place — day–to–day routines, learning, apps for solving trivial tasks.
For example, companies can use gamification to increase employee productivity by implementing a reward system for achievements. In education, gamification can help students absorb material through interactive and engaging tasks that award achievements or rewards. This approach is not limited to children’s games; adults also benefit from external stimuli to stay motivated.
You may have noticed that gamification is used in health and fitness to motivate people to lead active lifestyles. For example, platforms may reward points for completed workouts or the number of steps taken. These points can be utilized in various ways, such as competing for winning places or being used as an internal currency that can later be exchanged for some perks or valuable prizes. Users can compete for first place with friends or other community members.
Gamification helps increase user engagement in online communities and social networks through point and badge systems that reward active participation. Additionally, gamification can be useful in project management, where teams can use game mechanics to monitor progress and achieve goals.
The main advantage of gamification is its ability to make routine tasks more interesting and motivating.
By incorporating game elements, people feel more engaged and satisfied with completing tasks, leading to improved productivity and efficiency.
Gamification in Our Daily Life
Thanks to the widespread use of smartphones and apps, gamification has become a significant but often unnoticed part of our daily lives. If you look at a few apps on your phone, you’re likely to find gamification elements incorporated into them.
I’m sure most of you have heard about Duolingo, which also uses gamification to improve the language learning experience. The company wonderfully applies the main principles of gamification to its product. Duolingo Manifesto directly states that language proficiency can significantly improve the quality of life of its users, thereby motivating users and giving the learning process an epic meaning.
Of course, we all understand this ourselves. However, this narrative runs through Duolingo’s narratives and constantly reminds us that this is not just an app and not just a tool for improving skills but a path to a better life. The achievements implemented in the app are well thought out, and they state that the most engaging mechanic of their app is the “Streak”. By not missing a single day of learning, users earn a checkmark, which visualizes their continuous learning process.
This visualization serves as a powerful motivator, encouraging users to stay consistent in their language learning journey.
By the way, I personally felt the impact of this mechanic many years ago. I do not remember exactly how significant the streak was, but accidentally changing the learning language reset the progress. That’s where my journey with Duolingo ended.
Although the main goal was learning itself, not just having a nice graph in the app. Duolingo also has its own currency, allowing players to buy attire for their avatar or freeze their streak, as mentioned earlier. Another brilliant idea was implementing the “lives” concept into learning. If you fail a lesson, you lose a life. Subconsciously, users try to avoid this loss.
Once you run out of lives, you have to wait for them to regenerate before you can proceed with learning. During this waiting period, you can’t continue with your lessons. This setup creates a feeling of impatience and a stronger desire to achieve your learning goals.
Isn’t it great that this approach can make people more dedicated to learning in such an engaging way?
Turning to other examples, perhaps not as bright and obvious, but therefore even more interesting. Social networks like Instagram and Facebook also use gamification elements through a system of likes, comments, and badges. You might remember those exciting stories from influencers who received a blue checkmark on Instagram or a YouTube button.
Another common example is fitness apps like Strava, which use gamification to motivate users to be physically active. Here, users earn points for each run or workout, set goals, and compete with friends. For instance, this app was used for a challenge in our company to create a separate tournament, where leaders were determined based on the most runs or the greatest distance covered. The spirit of competition evokes a desire to put in maximum effort to achieve first place.
Task planning and tracking apps are also gaining significant momentum. For personal use, I utilize TickTick. One of the most valuable aspects is seeing your progress. It might seem trivial, but the positive sound and notification that informs you another task is completed can lead to a surge of dopamine, making you feel great.
In TickTick, you earn points and badges for your activity, which further triggers the desire to complete another action to receive “praise” in such an interactive form.
In online communities, gamification helps create more active and interactive spaces where users can share experiences and support each other. Gamification can also enhance the user experience, making interactions with products and services more engaging and enjoyable. It helps make routine tasks less monotonous by adding elements of play and challenge.
Let’s dive deeper into some gamification elements and determine why they have such a strong impact on us.
Main Elements of Gamification
Avatars allow users to express themselves and share their identity with others. Similar to how people present themselves in real life, avatars allow users to boldly demonstrate aspects of themselves online that may be unattainable offline. When people spend a lot of time customizing their profile or avatar, they automatically feel more ownership.
Another important element is points. Virtual currency and rewards for completing tasks can be used to encourage users to take additional actions. This brings us to the idea that action without reward often leads nowhere. We want to be rewarded for our actions. It doesn’t always have to be something valuable financially — receiving praise, recognition of superiority, or the uniqueness of your abilities is an important incentive for each of us. This can become the driving force to continue a particular activity.
Actions can be structured as specific missions so that the users can easily track their goals and follow the flow of gamification. It’s important that missions should be challenging and require some effort from the user. Just as action without reward makes no sense, action without challenge will eventually cause the user to lose interest.
Progress bars and achievement indicators help visualize the user’s progress, giving them a sense of control and achievement. Let’s be honest: When working on a product, we want user activity that either generates profit for the company or achieves the ultimate goal of non-profit projects.
Depending on user activity, levels can often be formed. Borrowing another element from games. The level system shows the user’s progress and allows them to experience development and growth.
Leaderboards create a spirit of competition by allowing users to compare their results with others and strive to achieve better scores. The presence of a community can multiply the effect of using the elements I mentioned above. Discussions, comments, and collaborative tasks contribute to forming active communities and increasing engagement. levels
Gamification in Gambling
Gamification is widely used in the gambling industry. For example, many products offer loyalty programs where players earn points for each bet , which can later be exchanged for bonuses, free games, or material prizes. Online casinos often hold tournaments and competitions where players can compete with each other for prizes.
Gamification is also used to create a more interactive and engaging experience with the platform itself, for example, through seasonal and thematic quests in which the user places a bet on a specific game or match to receive a reward for their activity.
By Intertwining sports and casino missions, we can introduce users to new streams for themselves. There is a high probability that a sports bettor will try instant games if they know they will receive a bonus afterward. Any mechanic mentioned above can be used for gambling, and in my opinion, this is often easier to implement than, for example, for e-commerce.
Conclusions
Gamification can bring many positive results.
Firstly, it helps increase motivation by providing additional incentives to complete tasks.
Secondly, gamification increases user engagement as game elements stimulate active participation and interaction. In a corporate environment, this can lead to increased employee productivity and improved teamwork. Gamification is a powerful tool that can significantly improve various aspects of our lives and activities.
