Gamification +Charity=?
“Gamification refers to a game design element and game mechanics in a non-gaming field” Huotari. K.& Hamari .J.（2012）
The rise of Alipay is in just a few years, allowing payment methods from offline to online. According to Alibaba’s 2018 financial year results, Alipay users reached 870 million, which is the number one mobile payment service organization all over the world. Alipay’s success not only brings the company a lot of dividends but a more social responsibility. In August 2016, Alipay launched the Ant Forest, which mainly implemented the gamification of the charity campaign. Users can plant a virtual tree in Alipay, and continuously generate “green energy” through carbon saving behaviours such as walking, using shared bikes and paying the fee online. When you water enough “green energy,” and the virtual tree will become a tree of entities. “Research Report on the Public Low-Carbon Lifestyle in the Background of Internet Platform (2019)” showed that until this August, the Ant Forest has accumulated 500 million users to reduce emissions by 7.92 million tons and planted 122 million real trees on the earth. The data showed that the effect of Ant Forest is very significant. But how did tedious charity become so related to gamification? And in what ways does gamification changed our lives.
First of all, the Ant Forest meets the altruistic psychology needs of the public. Everyone has the dream to become a hero and change the world. The Ant Forest provides a low threshold and an exciting way to achieve everyone’s heroic dreams. Nowadays, people are addicted to the virtual world to get the happiness that reality can’t reach. The Ant Forest was starting from the virtual world to change reality and get a more real sense of achievement. As indicated in the above figure, Alipay gave Ant Forest a meaning of eco-friendly. Whether it is low-carbon behaviour or planting trees, it contributes to the optimization of the ecological environment.
“This tree is for the first time in more than 20 years of life, there is a first thing that I have given the right to live.”- one of the Ant Forest user’s online message.
Secondly, Ant Forest provides social interactivity. Ten years ago, there was a top-rated farm management simulation game on Facebook — Happy Farm. There were 23 million daily active users in its heyday. Ant forests also borrow from Happy Farm; there are leaderboards, team and individual challenges, ability to steal “green energy”, and so on. These functions make Ant Forest more entertaining to the process of planting virtual trees. The leaderboard is an effective incentive mechanism. It is because rankings reflect the extent to which everyone contributes to the charity project, everyone will compete for rankings. The leaderboards are one of game design elements that visually show the player’s progress and achievements.
ACTION: The user knows that he wants to collect “Green Energy” to plant trees. This is the task that the game gives the user.
FEEDBACK: When the task is completed, the user is eager to get feedback. The achievement system is one of the feedback of Ant Forest.
MOTIVATION: Finally, if this feedback is good, the player will naturally want more, so he can return to ACTION to start a new round.
In the logic of Ant Forest, users pay for Low-Carbon behavior and reap real public welfare behavior (planting trees). Alipay’s use of gamification has changed the way people think about the general welfare. Donation is not the only way to contribute to society. Internet and social media diversify public welfare participation. Attention is such valuable in our Media landscape today. How about the use that attention transforms into action. Similarly, the “Ant Forest” is not a public fundraiser, but an active force. Let people connect with Ant Forest and use technology to solve social problems.
