What is Gamification and Real World Examples of It
What Is Gamification?
Gamification is a new vocabulary word lately, and there’s even a summit about it. What is the definition of gamification? The word gamification is used to describe companies integrating game mechanics into their non-gaming product or service to drive user engagement. These companies are “gamifying” their products and services by adding light game mechanics on top of them.
What does that actually look like? While the term is relatively new, the tactics aren’t and have already been in play for quite some time. Here are some examples of gamification in action.
Real World Examples of Gamification
Collecting Friends on Facebook and Twitter, and the LinkedIn LION Phenomenon (Game Mechanic: Collection)
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are great examples of users who are collecting a list of friends, or thumbnails of friends. Twitter is a particularly good example, putting the number prominently at the top and picture collection of all the people you’ve follow at the bottom.
My Twitter (@adachen)
For LinkedIn, the desire to collect people has created the peculiar phenomenon of LinkedIn LIONs. LIONs are “Linked In Open Networkers,” individuals who are open to connecting with people whom they have had no prior business relationship with. This is a somewhat unintended result, since LinkedIn would naturally want to keep social graphs accurate and this goes against that. These LIONs have even evolved to create a website complete with leaderboard (TopLinked 50 Leaderboard) for the top LIONs.
Collecting Badges in Foursquare (Game Mechanic: Collection, Achievement)
Foursquare is both a way to collect and record locations that you’ve visited, but has layered on mayorship and badge collection. Through Foursquare, checking in the most in the last month for a restaurant can make you mayor of that location. A contender for the position can trigger a competition for mayorship. Foursquare also allows their users to unlock badges based on their check-in activity.
One clever facet of badge collection is that they are not linked to particular places, but instead particular types of places. The Gym Rat badge, for example, can be earned by checking in 10x a month at any gym, not just one gym. This creates a common language and context for people to relate with one another, regardless of whether they are next-door neighbors or across the nation from one another.
Leveling Up in My Starbucks Rewards (Game Mechanic: Points, Achievement, Leveling, Rewards)
Starbucks has a rewards program called My Starbucks Rewards. Basically, it starts with a Starbucks gift card pre-loaded with cash, but the game mechanics kick in as soon as you’ve registered your card. After registration, Starbucks shows a progress bar and points in the form of stars to track your progress. Stars are earned for every purchase with your registered Starbucks card.
Once you’ve earned 5 stars, you advance to the Green level. This level rewards you with free refills on coffee and tea, free syrups and milks, and access to select trial offers. Get to 30 stars, and you get a free drink for every 15 cards and a personalized gold card.
Earning Points in My Coke Rewards (Game Mechanic: Points, Collection, Rewards)
My Coke Rewards is a rewards and loyalty program for consumers of Coca Cola products. Each product has a unique alphanumeric code printed on the label, and these codes can be collected and redeemed at the website for points. The points from the codes can be redeemed for sweepstakes entries and rewards like electronics and retailers.
Travel Leaderboards in Tripit.com (Game Mechanic: Competition, Collection)
Tripit.com is actually one of my favorite services. I love how simple it is to forward my trip itinerary to an email, and instantly gain access to a clean itinerary on my iPhone. Tripit also allows you to connect with other users of the service. One fun way they’ve gamified their site is by introducing travel leaderboards and personal statistics.
Through the travel leaderboards, I can not only collect my own record of travel achievements, but see how I compare against my friends. As you can see, not doing so good compared to other jetsetters.
Gifting membership through Netflix (Game Mechanic: Gifting)
Part of Netflix‘s user acquisition strategy is the free trial and then converting the trial users into paid subscribers. They occasionally send out emails inviting their existing subscribers to invite their friends and family.
Source: hackingnetflix.com
Cleverly, these free trials are described as a gift to treat your friends and family, while they are basically an invite to trial the service.
Personalization and Self Expression through NIKEiD (Game Mechanic: Personalization, Self Expression)
While many retailers take advantage of limited edition and designer edition shoes to allow consumers outlets for personality and self-expression, NIKE has take it one step further with their NIKEiD shoes. NIKE allows full personalization through their ability to create on-demand customized shoes for each person. Through their NIKEiD site, you can fully customize the colors, materials, sizing, and fit of your very own special Nike shoes and they will ship it just for you.
In Conclusion
The practice of gamification is commonplace and well-practiced. My pile of rewards cards shows that companies have been on to the idea of motivating users through points, levels and status for a long time.
However, while many of these companies have been using these strategies for a while, they are likely not thinking of this consciously as gamification.Viewing these tactics through the lens of game mechanics and psychology prompts deeper analysis around effectiveness and engagement. Are they optimizing the virality of gift invitations, or figuring out how to tune their rewards systems to be fun? There’s a lot of psychology and science underpinning why basic game mechanics can be so effective in motivating consumers to engage. Hopefully, as gamification becomes more mainstream, the result is that products will be more fun and engaging!
Any big examples I missed? How are you thinking about gamifying your product?
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Great write up Ada.
One example that comes to mind is Microsoft’s “Ribbon Hero” – used for training people to use the new Office Ribbon interface – http://www.officelabs.com/ribbonhero
Lawrie
4 October 2010 at 9:22 am
That’s a great example. What’s interesting in the case of Ribbon Hero is that they’ve created an actual game on top of the product, instead of just adding in game mechanics. I’m curious how well it’s working for them.
Ada Chen Rekhi
4 October 2010 at 10:21 am
Some great examples of gamification here thanks Ada!
There really is a close relationship between motivations/personality types and game mechanics as you have suggested here.
I think when designing gamification strategies it’s important to understand the audience and map motivation to mechanics, otherwise the game may be ineffective at engaging the user. Basically, what one person finds fun, another might not. I cover this mapping in more detail in my Gamification blog:
http://stratsynergy.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/motivations-and-personality-types/
Thanks!
Sharleen
Strategic Synergy
4 October 2010 at 1:51 pm
Sharleen, thanks for sharing your post. I like the way you’ve mapped out motivations against specific behaviors and needs, and would suggest adding collection as a motivation or personality type of those that participate in these light games.
Ada Chen Rekhi
6 October 2010 at 8:59 am
Good call! There is a whole segment of the population interested in that “gotta catch them all” lol I’m actually expanding the chart into a detailed model with intrinsic/extrinsic mixing into the equation, and you’re right collection is definitely one of them! I think Nick had it originally under Discovery but like you I think collecting deserves it’s own bullet
btw saw your post on the wedding Congratz!! Beautiful photos, what an amazing event that must have been!
All the best,
Sharleen.
Strategic Synergy
19 October 2010 at 1:29 pm
I’ve wondered if rating should count as gamification, which is probably Netflix’s most successful gamification. If rating is considered as a special variant of self-expression (and being rated a la Ebay?) as opposed to just being technically advanced customer feedback.
I’d also argue for including collective group action (the game is played by a team instead of an individual – think Guilds) very apparent in Groupon & co.
Richard Kain
5 October 2010 at 12:36 am
Ada,
Excellent article and very good examples of real world gamification.
Along the lines of your NikeID example, another Nike product that does awesome with gamification is Nike+. They have added game mechanics to make exercise fun! There are leaderboards, trophies/badges, etc. For me personally, I second guess running if I happen to forget my iPod at home…simply for the fact that my miles won’t be tracked
At BigDoor (http://bigdoor.com) we have created an API to allow website owners to quickly and easily add game mechanics to their website.
Tommy
5 October 2010 at 10:02 am
Nice post. Can you give an example of “optimizing the virality of gift invitations,”
taylor parsons
17 October 2010 at 9:57 pm
I’ve been thinking about the easiest to implement some sort of game mechanics for one of my projects. The easiest way I’ve got so far is simple scoring. Do stuff, get points. It’s susceptible to cheating though, which I haven’t figured out how to prevent. Lot’s of really interesting problems in this space.
Dave Doolin
17 October 2010 at 11:29 pm
Hi Ada –
Your conclusion is spot on. Loyalty/reward programs are already games, just ones that don’t use all the available mechanics – usually just points and levels. Some loyalty companies, like Maritz, are realizing this and looking explicitly to gamification to build the next generation of loyalty programs: http://j.mp/9vaMV2
btw – you should also check out HopeLab’s Zamzee: http://j.mp/bHFQjZ – using gamification to drive physical activity amongst tweens.
- rajat
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Sharleen, thanks for sharing your post. I like the way you’ve mapped out motivations against specific behaviors and needs, and would suggest adding collection as a motivation or personality type of those that participate in these light games.
Sharron Clemons
21 December 2010 at 12:07 pm
Thanks for the post! People often don’t realize just how much of the web apps they use are directly inspired by game mechanics.
Richard Powell
24 January 2011 at 1:22 am
Thanks, for your great post. The best short introduction to various gamification models used is various services. I just created curated gamification topic in Scoop.it – http://www.scoop.it/t/gamification . Please your expertise is needed there
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Ada,
Great post! As the term “gamification” has become more popular, the definition of the term has become more and more convoluted. The straightforwardness and simplicity of your explanation of gamification and your real world examples were refreshing. Thanks again! Also, check out our open source gamification platform when you get a chance http://code.google.com/p/userinfuser/
cpwhalen
23 April 2011 at 12:10 am
Thanks for the kind words and comment. I’ll definitely check out your platform.
Ada Chen Rekhi
23 April 2011 at 12:13 am
Very useful information on Gamification.
We build 3D games specially around company’s products and services.
Akhilesh Maurya
http://www.wowdesigns.co.in
akhileshm@hotmail.com
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Keep up the good work!
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