All the world’s a game

In the popular mobile phone application Foursquare, users “check in” to the virtual equivalent of real places they’re visiting, thus announcing to their Foursquare followers where they are, in real time. It’s a pointless expression of self-importance to social-media skeptics who question why anyone would think anyone else cares where they are.

But to many of Foursquare’s eight million registered users, it’s a game that’s fun to play. Check in to locations and you can score points, and even earn badges for special achievement; check in to a place more frequently than anyone else and you’ll be named its “mayor” for all to see. And at any time, you can view a leaderboard to see how many points you and your friends have amassed. Trailing your best pal by 16 points? You’d better start using Foursquare more often—which, by the way, will generate more exposure for Foursquare’s paying sponsors.

Foursquare is one of the most prominent examples of “gamification,” the use of game mechanics within non-games to encourage specific user behaviours. It’s one of the hottest buzzwords in business, and many big companies are tripping over themselves to gamify their operations to boost sales and productivity. What seems to be a fad could soon be a pillar of modern commerce. “In five years, nobody is going to be talking about gamification,” says Amy Jo Kim, who holds a doctorate in behavioural neuroscience and is CEO of Shuffl eBrain Inc., a Burlingame, Calif.-based game design studio. “Games are going to be everywhere.” That doesn’t mean smaller firms must rush into the gamification arena. But there are benefits to gamifying your business—if you do it the right way.

Business has applied gaming principles for decades—think of the annual Monopoly promotion at McDonald’s and the points and levels of popular consumer loyalty programs. But the recent explosion of interest is fueled largely by the intersection of two forces. First, online social media and mobile devices make the game board ubiquitous and omnipresent. Second, videogames have been a primary form of entertainment for a generation; more recently, hit games such as Brain Age, Angry Birds and FarmVille have turned everyone from technophobes to grandmothers into regular gamers.

A wide swath of the population is ready to play in your business. But where to start the gamification of your enterprise? Begin by defining clear goals and the actions you want your clients or staff—i.e., the players—to take that move you toward those goals. Then you must figure out how to apply game mechanics to promote that behaviour without turning players off. This is where many companies stumble. “There’s no magic pixie dust,” warns Kim. “If you stick game mechanics into a crappy product, you’ll still have a crappy product.” Attaching point systems and tangible rewards to a process might generate short-term lift, but it won’t deliver long-term engagement.

The key to gamification is to spur action that generates real value for the end-user; it should support, not manipulate. So, if the player is a new customer, game elements might make it fun to learn how to use key features of your product or service; if the player has already mastered your offering, the game needs to satisfy deeper needs. “What emotional part of their lives can your company touch?” asks New York-based software entrepreneur and gamification author Gabe Zichermann.

To that end, status, access and power trump stuff in the rewards hierarchy, says Zichermann, a Toronto native. “The problem isn’t that giving away free stuff is bad,” he explains. “The problem is that people know what free stuff is worth. People can’t pin a value on status, access and power, so they tend to grossly overvalue them.” That theory is applied at Foursquare, which grants status through mayorships.

And at San Francisco-based ModCloth.com, a growing e-tailer of womenswear, power is up for grabs when online shoppers vote on which items the company should stock. Firms must also consider each user’s game preferences. Zichermann identifies four types of player, such as the “killer,” who prefers games in which there is a winner, a loser and witnesses, and the “explorer,” who gains satisfaction through discovery. Clearly, not all games work for all people. And, stresses Kim, you should incorporate as much of the intrinsic motivators that make the greatest games great, such as challenge, a sense of progress and mastery.

Whether you go it alone or hire one of the small but growing number of gamification consultancies, remember that getting the formula right requires testing and rejigging. “Every good game comes out of much iteration,” says Kim. “Every good game.”