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If you’ve ever participated in a drawing like the lottery
or, perhaps, a frequent fyer miles program, then
you’re already familiar with gamifcation. Specifcally,
gamifcation could be defned as: creating an
atmosphere or infrastructure whereupon:
Social Interactions and Entertainment
Help to propel
Customers/consumers/users
Toward
Collecting, achieving, or, ultimately, investing in
a product/concept/activity or idea (fnancially or
through the use of their time).
The basic concept behind gamifcation is to get
customers invested in a product or service—to make
the product (or service) “theirs” in a sense. When
gamifcation works properly, it has the ability to
actually push customers a step forward past brand
loyalty into devotion. This is because it provides the
customer/user with more incentives and, thus, both
gains consumer trust and interest. Add to this the fact
that gamifcation elements/marketing are frequently
deployed via social media and you have a very
powerful tool for businesses (as well as something
very interesting for consumers to enjoy and share with
their online contacts). To top it all of, gamifcation is
also creatively wide open, and one can never truly run
out of ideas or the means to implement them either
(assuming public interest doesn’t wane, which, given
current projections, shows absolutely no signs of
change).
Gamifcation has always been present in mainstream
computing, like on web-based social media sites
that allow users to participate in simple multiplayer
gaming for example. An even more direct (and classic)
example of gamifcation would be using web-polling
to drive user interest, trafc, and comments on a
forum or blog). However, it could be argued that
gamifcation didn’t truly hit its stride, so to speak,
until it was deployed on the three modern gaming
consoles (Xbox 360, PS3, andWii). For example, the
360’s achievement points system seeks to inspire
gamers (on that system) to play a higher volume
of titles in order to enhance their gamer score
(which refects their activities, level of
achievement, and thoroughness of
completion). This score, in turn, can
be compared to the scores of their
friends and so on and so forth.
There are some that might
feel that the trend toward
gamifcation is somewhat
misleading or,
perhaps, “just
a marketing
ploy” to
assist in
sales.
The Gami cation of the
Computing industry
WilliamManning
Why the computing industry is trending toward entertainment in terms of
design and features