Three Reasons for the Growth of Gamification

We all like to play, and games have been around for a very long time. Yet, it is only recently that the idea of applying game like qualities into work has taken hold of our collective consciousness. Why now? This article examines the three main drivers behind the increase in the interest in gamification in today’s business community.

What is Gamification

Gamification is the application of game design principles to non-game environments. It is not about designing games, but learning from them and applying the insights into other areas. Gamification motivates players to engage in desired behaviors by showing them the path to mastery. It attempts to make technology and business more inviting by taking advantage of people’s innate enjoyment of play.

The Buzz Around Gamification

Gamification is a buzzword in business these days. Type “gamification” into Google Trends and you will see the term started piquing our collective interest in 2011 and has been trending upwards since.

There have been several articles about Gamification in popular business journals. To name a few, Forbes ran an article titled Gamification Gets Down to Business in Sept 2011, and The Wall Street Journal’s article Latest Game Theory: Mixing Work and Play was in an October 2011 issue. In November 2012, Gartner published a Report on Gamification, which predicts that, “by 2015, 40% of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations”. The Oxford English Dictionary added the term to the short list for word of the year in 2011.

Three Reasons for Growth of Gamification

What is the reason for the increased interest in gamification now? There are three main drivers:

1. Business: Changing nature of work

2. People: Workforce of digital natives

3. Technology: Availability of big data, social media and mobile technology

1. Business: Changing Nature of Work

Business is transforming right before our eyes. In Dan Pink’s The Whole New Mind, he outlines the transitions from the Agricultural Age, to the Industrial Age, to the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Gone are the days when employees “punch the clock” and measure their productivity by the number of widgets they produced or the number of forms they processed. Today, organizations expect their employees to be creative, innovative and engaged in achieving the business mission.

While the need for employee engagement is at an all time high, the latest survey results from Gallup indicates that 51% of employees are not engaged and 19% are actively disengaged at work. This translates into lost productivity and businesses are looking for ways to reconnect with their workforce. Gamification provides an option to engage employees by motivating them, and offering positive reinforcements for the desired behaviors

2. People: Workforce of Digital Natives

Wikipedia defines a digital native as “a person who was born during or after the general introduction of digital technologies and through interacting with digital technology from an early age, has a greater understanding of its concepts”.

The generation entering the work force today has about 10,000 hours of experience playing online and video games. This impacts their expectations with regard to software. For example, while previous generations may have been more risk-averse, and utility-focused in their attitude towards technology, the new generation is more comfortable with technology, is willing to take risks and expects constant feedback.

Gamification incorporates the concepts of challenges and feedback to engage and motivate users, and is therefore well suited to the working style of the digital native.

3. Technology: Availability of Big Data, Social Media, and Mobile Technology

Technological advances in other areas have contributed to the growth in gamification:

Big Data

Gamification requires the collection and processing of large quantities of usage data without a negative impact to performance. With the speed of processing increasing and cost of computer’s memory decreasing, big data processing is more efficient today than it has ever been in the past. The big data phenomenon is the fuel to the engine of gamification.

Social Media

Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites, we are all more comfortable sharing information about ourselves then we ever were before. Companies can connect directly with their customers more easily now than in the past. Enlightened companies are using these new channels to communicate with their customers to influence their brand loyalty.

Internally, employees experienced with the use of social media have higher expectation with regard to virtual collaboration, fast feedback, transparency, and competition. This shift in attitude helps the general acceptance of gamification within the company.

Mobile technology

The ubiquitous use of mobile technology means that people have the opportunity to interact with the system wherever they are and whenever they need to. Gamification is most effective when we have the opportunity to influence behavior close to the act itself.

Research from Entertainment Software Association shows that gamers like to play on the go: 36 percent of gamers play games on their smartphone, and 25 percent play on their wireless device. Mobile technology also invites women to play games. Forty-five percent of all players are women. Today, adult women represent a greater portion of the game-playing population (31 percent) than boys age 17 or younger (19 percent). These qualities about mobile technology and its widespread availability make it an ideal platform for gamification systems.

To summarize, shifts in business, people and technology have contributed to the growth in gamification.

Avoid Chocolate Covered Broccoli

As with any emerging trend, the best practices are emerging as well. Some businesses are taking a “chocolate covered broccoli” approach, by simply adding points, badges and leaderboards to their applications and calling it “gamified.” We recommend taking a more thoughtful approach via a five-step process we call Player Centered Design to enable meaningful engagement and behavior change.

To learn more about Player Centered Design, please refer to our book Gamification at Work : Designing Engaging Business Software, published by Interaction Design Foundation. We provide details, examples and insights from projects to guide you on your journey to design gamification that works!