Last week the gamification industry gathered in San Francisco for the 2013 Gamification Summit. The conference highlights the truly broad application of gamification across industries around the world. Every year we are impressed with how much the industry has grown and changed. As long running sponsors of the event, we were very excited to have 5 team members staffing the BigDoor booth, speaking at the event and interacting with the gamification community in person.

GSummit offers up speakers from all aspects of the industry: education, enterprise, social good and consumer facing applications. This year, we were very pleased to have another one of our customers talking about their success using BigDoor’s platform.  Jeff Hawley, Director of Customer Experience with Yamaha Corporation of America spoke about his experience implementing a customer loyalty program, in conjunction with Yamaha’s 125^th Year anniversary that engaged and rewarded the diverse set of customers that visit Yamaha’s website.  The ongoing program’s success is unquestionable,  but they continue to expand the program in new directions. Be sure to check out their website and see the implementation live as well as check back for the video of his talk when it becomes available.

In past years, BigDoor CEO Keith Smith has spoken to the GSummit audience about various topics surrounding gamification, but we decided to mix things up and have our VP of Sales, Gavin Hewitt, discuss BigDoor’s philosophy on the importance of rewards in customer loyalty programs. In his talk: Rewards Matter: How big brands are unlocking the secret to customer loyalty Gavin highlighted the importance of offering customer focused rewards as key in increasing customer engagement and long-term loyalty.

Our booth last year was quite a hit (remember the marshmallow guns?) but we think we did even better this year. Some people might recognize this setup as a bit reminiscent of their college days, minus the beer. Depending on their skills, players could earn a number of rewards, from custom ping pong paddles to water bottles and T-shirts. Our grand prize winner, John Leech, walked away from GSummit with an Xbox 360.

Thank you again to the Gamification.co team, who put in a ton of work to make this event happen, as well as to the attendees and speakers who help continue to grow the gamification industry in interesting and innovative ways.

Posted in: Blog, Conferences, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Loyalty

With the first month of 2013 nearly over, it’s time to set our sights on accomplishing all the goals we set for the BigDoor platform and the gamification industry in 2013. The industry has changed drastically from when I first became aware of it; in the early days, everyone was talking about games. At the root of the ugly, often disliked word “gamification” was the idea that platforms like BigDoor could draw inspiration from game designers, successful games and game mechanics to create something that engaged internet users, employees and people around the world. While that is still true, we do still talk about game mechanics (perhaps incorrectly according to Andrzej Marczewski) I think the gamification industry does itself a disservice by misusing terms and classifying “gamification” examples to include things that really just belong in the “games” bin.

I’m guilty of it too. I’m sure if someone dug through my posts about gamification long enough they could find plenty of times I have praised a well-designed mini-game and tagged it with gamification. This doesn’t help our industry. Gamification has picked up steam in everything from consumer facing gamified loyalty programs, to gamified training, and employee motivation. It is less and less about creating a game and more and more about using what we understand about psychology (often from game designers) to motivate people in various tasks, goals and directions. Gamification has plenty of great examples to demonstrate its powerful abilities, but conflating games and gamification negatively impacts the industry as a whole.

That isn’t to say that lines between gamification and games are black and white. They clearly aren’t and many examples will engage in the grey area between the two. But recently I have seen quite a few gamification industry professionals complimenting or discussing mobile games, mini games and other blatant “game” examples, as representative of the industry. This confuses people who don’t fully understand gamification and detracts from successful gamification examples that are a much better representation of the industry and the direction that it is heading.

When the NRA released “NRA: Practice Range” the #gamification stream on Twitter saw tweets flying by about what a poor example of gamification the game was and gamification industry experts were writing about the release. Undoubtedly, this game is a horrible example of gamification, but not because of its political or controversial implications, it’s a horrible example, because it isn’t gamification. It’s a game. Sure, it has some facts about gun safety tossed in, but it is a mistake to classify every game that has any educational value as “gamification”.

As an emerging industry still defining itself we are bound to make some missteps. Games with clear social purposes sometimes seem to fall somewhere in-between. But gamification industry professionals, experts and fans, let’s make an effort in 2013 to try to separate games, games with social purposes and gamification into separate categories to make things a bit easier.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gaming

Yesterday, gamification expert Gabe Zichermann sat down with BigDoor’s CEO Keith Smith in episode 19 of Gabe’s Gamification Revolution webinar to talk about the gamification industry, trends and what BigDoor is focused on for 2013. The webinar follows a Q&A open format and is an awesome chance for people interested in gamification to sling questions at various industry experts. This episode’s questions focused around analytics, authenticity in gamification and the intersection between traditional loyalty programs and gamification.

Some interesting points from the discussion:
- The gamification industry needs to be more focused on real results. BigDoor’s platform allows for the creation of a small control group, which allows our analytics to compare between users seeing the gamification program and users who aren’t.

- Gamification programs success should be tied to revenue of the brands who are implementing it.

- BigDoor’s consumer facing solution focuses on giving customers what they want, knowing that they will give you things back (in the form of actions, sharing, recruiting, etc).

You can watch the 30 minute webinar below, or check it out here.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Loyalty, Webinar

Happy Friday! We have been working like crazy on some cool new projects and falling behind on our gamification news.  Our favorite links for the past week are listed below and focused mostly on some defense of gamification and new articles about consumer facing gamification and its success.

‘For the Win’: How Gamification Can Transform Your Business Knowledge@Wharton 12/5/2012 Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter sat down with Knowledge@Wharton to talk about their new book, gamification trends and how companies can use game mechanics to improve their business. Interestingly, Werbach and Hunter make the distinction between external and internal (similar to our consumer/enterprise) gamification solutions and point out how different those two approaches can be in solving business challenges.

Don’t Hate The Game. The Points May Not Matter Associations Now 12/4/2012 If you follow the gamification industry you have no doubt heard about the Gartner study released claiming that 80% of gamification will fail. Gamification experts of all types responded to this criticism in a myriad of ways, but we thought this response was especially good. While the hype of gamification has been great in bringing press to our industry, it is also important to remember that gamification should fit your website and that not all websites will need or should implement gamification.

How One Guy Gamified His Google Interview And Won SF Gate 12/1/2012 Gamification is a great way to motivate in the right situations and Jon Guerrera proved that in his quest to land a job with Google. Daunted by the task of studying for the interview, he used basic game mechanics and applied them to his study tactics to create a system of rewards, tracking and milestones.

Social Customer Experiences That Matter Huffington Post 12/6/2012 Being focused on consumer facing gamification means understanding what customers are looking for when they interact with a brand. This is a great look at data describing what customers expect, what makes them stick around and how brands need to adjust to keep their customers happy. Gamification is listed as one of three suggestions for how brands can improve their customer experience. It’s great to see consumer facing gamification get some recognition.

How can social data help drive brand loyalty? Fresh Networks 11/30/2012 Less than 48.8% of marketers believe that their marketing initiatives are working. Unfortunately, the loyalty program landscape has been bogged down by traditional programs that have not adjusted to meet with new customer demands like social recognition, real time feedback. Brands looking to improve the value of their loyalty program should start with taking a look at social data, and adjusting their programs to address deficits there.

Social Loyalty in Action – Airport Check-ins on Social Media for Air Miles TNooz 11/26/2012 Delta Airlines has embraced a new trend of social loyalty by announcing a deal with TripAnomaly a startup that gives passengers 80 SkyMiles points just for checking in at the airport and posting it to their networks. This partnership “taps in to the idea that passengers are increasingly willing to share certain elements of the personal data on social networks (such as location) in exchange for loyalty points and other traveler perks.” We would love to see more airlines involved in something like this!

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty

As with many new industries, gamification erupted a few years ago offering solutions to a number of marketing, brand and even social problems through the application of game mechanics. Before the word gamification was even fully defined, the industry was home to a number of various platforms, companies, gamification success stories, and of course failures. With everyone eager to be part of such an exciting new industry, anything ‘game’ related was often lumped into the industry much to the dismay of game designers and game experts. Today, the gamification industry has matured, and is carving out a space for itself in a few noticeable verticals.

Consumer Facing

Brands are always looking for new and unique ways to connect with their fans and customers. While loyalty or rewards programs have been around for as long as anyone can remember, gamification is a great way to add an online engagement layer to an existing loyalty program, power a new rewards program or give your users a better way to connect with your content on and offline. Brands with big audiences can gain better understanding of their customers with gamification’s powerful analytics, all while rewarding their fans and making site actions, engagement and exploration more fun.

The key to successful consumer facing gamification is to apply simple and basic game mechanics that make actions customers already take more intrinsically valuable as well as guide them towards new opportunities and content. Brands can then reward the most engaged customers with both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

Examples: NFL Fan Rewards, Starbucks, Yamaha Corporation Fan Rewards

Enterprise

Enterprise gamification began to rise as an effective solution to increasing employee productivity as well as encouraging employee growth early on in the industry. While enterprise gamification is often lumped in with consumer facing gamification, the two are actually very different. Enterprise gamification, most often seen in support desk software, IT applications or employee management focuses on an entirely different set of objectives, namely making work more fun. Goal setting, time management feedback, hiring processes and training games are features of enterprise solutions that often don’t show up in consumer facing implementations.

Due to the focus on personal growth, productivity and company goals, many enterprise solutions have found that focusing on intrinsic value to the user is much more important than tangible rewards. Status within the enterprise and personal development are often much better rewards for success.

Example: Rypple (now Work.com), Play Vox, GamEffective

Social Good

Beyond loyalty applications and enterprise management solutions gamification has revolutionized the way many people are viewing social change.  By applying game mechanics and game principles to education, health, and even environmental causes many companies and nonprofits have seen people engage like never before. By tapping into human competitiveness as well as the power of participants social networks, these kinds of gamification solutions are addressing issues like poverty, online education, and weight loss. Probably the most broad category mentioned, social good gamification solutions often are broken down further into education, government and health.

These gamification applications are often very different from the solutions seen in enterprise or consumer facing programs, but share the facilitation of collaboration as well as creative problem solving that makes gamification work across a variety of verticals.

Example: EveryMove, Nike+, Foldit and Duolingo

These three verticals are by no means definitive and many of the examples mentioned could move from one category to the next. Rather, these hopefully provide a framework for thinking about gamification reiterating that each one will rely on a different set of tools, challenges and expertise to reach success.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Loyalty

Happy Friday! We found some really great articles about building brand affinity, customer loyalty and some interesting critiques on cheaters in gamification programs. Enjoy!

The mechanics of gamification: How to harness perceived distance to benefit your brand Campaign Asia 11/15/2012 Gamification experts often reference basic psychology in explaining the success of gamification and brand loyalty programs but this is by far one of the best examples we have seen. Focusing on how to use gamification to solve customer’s internal needs while promoting your brand, this is an excellent look at how brands should be marketing themselves in today’s online world.

Creating Loyalty With Your Clients Through Social Media Business2Community 11/9/2012 For those of us short on time, this is a very simple and to the point list of ways marketers and community managers can build loyalty online with social media.

The Complex Challenges Facing Advertisers on New Media Platforms Herald Online 11/13/2012 Linda Goldstein, a partner at New York based Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP spoke on today’s marketing landscape at the PMA Marketing Law Conference in Chicago. Focusing on best practices for marketing online, she highlighted gamification and stated, “”We must be thinking about how to use gamification and social engagement in ways that create true human response.”

The irrationality of cheating at gamified learning Wired 11/12/2012 Anyone who has played games or experienced a gamified experience online has probably come across someone trying to cheat or game the system. Focusing on cheaters using Memrise, an online memory improvement game, Robert Barry digs into why people cheat and how to combat this trend in our gamified solutions.

Study: Measuring social media word of mouth drives restaurant traffic Fast Casual 11/15/2012 The importance of social media word of mouth is well established among marketers, but a new study done among restaurants shows that analytics and measurement are important in order for brands to see real success on social media. Brands need access to simple analytics to help measure ROI as well as feedback that shows them how to create success in social media channels.

Brand Loyalty Via Social Media CMV Live 11/12/2012 With so many options for consumers on the web, brands can always use a few more tips on how to engage their customers and create deeper brand affinity. CMV Live lists three tips to build better loyalty. Number two on their list, rewards. We don’t want to toot our own horn, but in consumer facing gamification, we were the first gamification platform to speak to the value of tangible rewards in order to boost loyalty and engagement.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Loyalty, Social Media, User engagement

Happy Tuesday! If you are in the USA, happy election day! If you are old enough to vote we highly encourage that you take the time to do so today! While Twitter, Facebook and pretty much every other news outlet are focused on election results, we decided to take a break from politics and compile some of our favorite gamification news articles from last week.

Reveal By L’Oreal, Recruitment Gamified! Business2Community 11/3/2012 This past September well known beauty and cosmetics brand L’Oreal launched a new interactive game called Reveal, to educate users on what it’s like to work for the global brand. The game, features mini challenges incategories including marketing, R&I, product development which challenge players to learn and earn achievements in various categories. Upon completing the game, users can send their scores to L’Oreal recruiters, who can select from high scorers for internships and job opportunities at the company. Using game mechanics to test and educate potential employees reduces the amount of time recruiters need to spend filtering candidates and ensures that candidates are up to speed about the brand they are applying for. Nice work L’Oreal!

Using Gamification to Curb Children’s Anger Issues Gamification.Co 10/29/2012 The field of games for social good has been growing rapidly over the past few years and is an interesting sub-category of the gamification trend. A new game called RAGE Control has been designed to help children with anger issues control their emotions. The game monitors children’s heart rate and forces them to stop playing when their heart rate peaks higher than an acceptable level. The idea being that it teaches children who want to continue playing, to keep their emotions and heart rate in check.

9 Stragegies to Gamify Your Startup Mashable 11/2/2012 This is a great compilation of 9 entrepreneurs advice on implementing gamification. If you have a startup or smaller business, these tips are a great place to start. Plus, since they come from a variety of backgrounds and applications, they are pretty universal in their approach.

Gamification – Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter’s new book Concurring Opinions 10/30/2012 Hundreds of people have taken Kevin Werbach’s gamification course online at Coursera.org. Now his expertise on gamification will be able to reach even more people with his new book co-authored with Dan Hunter called For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Read a summary of the book, and order a copy if you are interested!

Health Insurer Humana Gamifies Fitness TriplePundit 10/29/2012 Gamification is a great way to motivate people. Health Insurance companies like Regence and now Humana have caught on and are now using gamification to motivate their customers to make healthier decisions as well as encourage employees to volunteer in their local communities. This is an comprehensive look at their various gamification programs across mobile, game consoles and web platforms.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty

I get excited every time I see an announcement for a new gamification program on the web. Each new implementation is a chance to witness the industry growing as well as experience the individual creativity and innovation from various companies around the world. Far too often, I head to websites to check out their gamified programs, only to have to spend time searching for how to join and participate. What good is a loyalty program if users can’t find it?

Gamification Tip #5: Make sure to onboard new users

Customers coming to your site may or may not know that you have implemented a gamification program. Either way, they can’t participate if they can’t find it. Publishers should be notifying incoming customers of their loyalty program as well as outlining its value. Will the gamification implementation help the user meet their goals? Will it give them access to exclusive content? Whatever, your customers want, it should be clear that your program can help them achieve it.

In addition to concisely communicating the value, make it easy for users to sign up. Customers shouldn’t have to spend more than a few seconds deciding and joining your program. A simple sign-up that guides the user through the registration process (or social sign-in authorization) means that customers can start participating in your loyalty program while they are still excited about what the program can do,

Onboarding your new users shouldn’t stop at registration. Publishers should be sure to educate newly registered users on what actions they can be rewarded for, how the program works and how to navigate around. Good design and quests can help guide new customers, giving them hints at what actions will help them meet their goals.

One of our favorite examples of excellent onboarding into a gamification implementation is the NFL website, what do you think?

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Success

It’s Friday again! The shorter days and fall weather made the week seem like it flew by. If you missed out on gamification, customer loyalty or social media marketing news, you can catch up with our favorites below.

When is Gamification Not Gamification? Business2Community 10/25/2012 Gamification evangelist Andrzej Marczewski asks and attempts to answer some open ended questions about gamification. How many game mechanics should an implementation use? Should you tell users that they are participating in gamification? Find out what Andrzej thinks, and add your comments to his post.

Marketers rely too heavily on social, need to diversify digital into gamification Marketing Mag 10/25/2012 Marketers and the brands they represent have begun to heavily rely on building customer relationships through social media channels, but what happens when Facebook and Twitter aren’t enough? “Gamification can be coupled with social media and existing online content to add an extra layer and greater motivation to engage in digital programs”. Gamification is a great way to encourage customers to engage with content on multiple social media platforms as well as explore brand websites.

Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2013 and Beyond Daily Finance 10/24/2012 Last year, Gartner predicted that, “By 2015, more than 50 percent of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes.” This week, Gartner released its top predictions for IT organizations and making the list was none other than gamification. “By 2015, 40 percent of Global 1000 organizations will use gamification as the primary mechanism to transform business operations.”

Using “social” and “gamification” to provide UX improvements Ovum 10/16/2012 Implementing gamification often includes a lot of UX improvements that guide and improve the user experience. Ovum analyst Somak Roy discusses the relationship of social, gamification and UX. This is an interesting read on the role of UX in gamification solutions and features.

Apple, Amazon, Samsung, YouTube, and Twitter Are 2012 Loyalty Leaders Forbes 10/25/2012 BigDoor’s platform is all about increasing customer loyalty and what better way to improve our platform, than by taking a look at the loyalty leaders of 2012. No surprise, Apple tops the charts, but Starbucks, Call of Duty and Costco also made huge gains in the list this year. Many of the new arrivals to the list were brands that create connections in industries like social media, smartphones and tablets. Check out the Forbes article to see the full list of loyalty leaders.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Social Media

Happy Friday! Here is the gamification and customer loyalty program news from the past week.

How Gamification Can Improve Customer Loyalty Programs Entrepreneur 10/9/2012 Gamification expert Gabe Zichermann talks about using gamification to improve customer loyalty programs, a topic that is near to our hearts. Here at BigDoor, we have seen great success in making customer loyalty programs more fun and engaging by applying game mechanics and design principles. It is great to see Gabe endorsing that concept!

When research is a game, and politicians seize the social media BizCommunity 10/12/2012 The use of gamification in politics is a relatively new idea, but one that seems to be sparking a lot of interest. At a recent conference of the SAMRA (Southern African Marketing Research Association) Kyle Findlay argued that gamification can produce significantly more effective and valuable market research, by ensuring that respondents are more engaged. Findlay says of his research, “It is important to stress though that gamification generally does not imply turning research applications into video games with bright colours, flashing lights and cute mascots. It can be far more subtle than that. Gamifying a research methodology could rely on something as simple as changing the way in which a question is worded by framing it as a challenge to respondents.”

Three More Views on #Gamification Kapp Notes 10/8/2012 In case your eyes are strained from reading too much, you can jump over to Kapp Notes and check out their compilation of gamification videos. Everything from TED talks to animated comedic shorts.

LinkedIn Decides Recommends Aren’t Worthless Enough, Adds Endorsement Gamification Business2Community 10/13/2012 If you are on LinkedIn you might have noticed this change and wondered what the point was. You aren’t alone. Chris Voss talks about the decision and why it is an example of poorly thought out gamification.

The Gamification of Philanthropy Calgary Herald 10/13/2012 A new app is under development in Vancouver called iBeg and its purpose is to help users understand the difficulties of homelessness while raising money for charity. This is a great example of the ‘games for good’ trend and it will be interesting to see what the app looks like when it is released.

Gamification: Some More Views Business2Community 10/15/2012 A few weeks ago Andrzej Marczewski posted an article that featured various experts opinions on gamification, what it is and how to use it. He has posted the same article, featuring random people who filled out his survey. This is definitely an interesting read that highlights how different people think about the gamification trend.

Maximize your collections! BankersLab gamifies debt collection (exclusive) VentureBeat 10/16/2012 A new training simulation has been created to help teach bankers the ins and outs of collections. It’s called BankersLab and it uses gamification principles to coach bankers through the complex process of debt-collection. While many people facing collections may not appreciate the idea of better training for bankers, this is definitely a new and interesting use of gamification.

Posted in: Blog, Game Mechanics, Gamification, Gamification Tips, Loyalty, Social Media, User engagement