If you are the type of person who thinks that I am going to write about Video games, heroes saving cities or little wolves spinning, jumping and eating apples as a reward for breaking boxes, you are wrong! Sorry to disappoint you, but instead I am going to bring on the table a more interesting concept. I am going to discuss how a game-element can turn a task that we have to do by obligation into a fun and exciting moment. – Gamification Apps – Apply games to tasks –
Let me say tho, there is a lot that we can learn from games. They are the first step towards Gamification Apps concept . Games have the power to separate ourselves form the reality. Makes us travel to another world and completely forget about the present, in a way that is funny, exciting and enjoyable.
And that is possible by having either:
– Points
– Badges
– Leaderboard
Gamification is a really buzzword within the companies, it makes your employees to be more committed to any certain task. It taps into human natural desires for competition and achievement.
The misconception appears when companies or certain individuals think that “Oh, if I just apply any of those three elements into a task, i´ll make it fun”. That is wrong! It became a big concept, but people do not fully understand it.
When you ask a gamers the reason of them playing any specific game, it doesn’t come from the points gotten, or how high you are in the leaderboard. Instead it comes from other feelings such as, brain-challenge, hanging out with friends, be more than who I am today, every game have its unique sense.
And that is what gamification does, it takes all these fun, exciting elements from traditional games and pour that into none-sense context. Whereas task/theory/any accomplishment we have to do but not necessarily want to. It encourages participation. “It has the capacity to turn something potentially tedious into a game”. And it does so, by tapping into certain different senses or feelings that we are searching to get. Some companies and individuals have been able to condense this idea into Gamification Apps.
Yu-kai Chou– gamification author and International Keynote Speaker – discussed about all those 8 different goals when playing video games at the TedTalk and gave different app examples that currently help you achieve that.
8 Gamification Apps examples
1. Epic meaning and calling
“When you feel important or part of something bigger than yourself”
App: Pain Squad – turns kids into detective and keeps track of pain on those who suffer from cancer at hospitals and it helps doctors to tread them better.
2. Personal Development
“It applies on goals”
App: Nike+ – It helps you to be healthy and change your lifestyle towards a more active one.
- Empowerment of creativity and Feedback
It applies in your capacity on building something out of scratch and solve puzzles
App: Lego or Tetris great examples
4. Ownership
if you can own it, improve it, protect it, get more…
It was help by many teachers to help their students learn maths with this app:
App: Dragon Box – You have a dragon within a box and you have to feed it. Now you can only do it when nothing is surrounding it- Basically you have to get X (your dragon in the equation) and eliminate all the other numbers or elements. And in that order, give food to your dragon so it grows big and strong, pretty straightforward!
5. Social Influencies
“What you do based on what other people think of you”
App: Opower – Basically with this app you are able to see the electric bill of the rest of your neighbours, so that A can see how good B is doing and try to save more electric spent, because you don’t want to be the one who spends the more, right?
6. Scarcity and Impatience
“You want something, just because you can´t have it”. It tackles this sense of urgency that humans have.
App: Kickstarter – It is a market, where you can speculate with the price of a product and see how many people did the same, how much time is left. It is always showing you the vulnerability of a precious article sliding out of your hands.
7. Unpredictability & Curiosity
“Because you don´t know what´s going to happen next, you´re always thinking about it
It helps you finishing books, watch a movie…
App: SpeedUp Lottery: what this concept does is: when you are driving through a Speed camera and you are within the limits, it still takes a picture from you. And after between all those drivers within the law it randomly selects one and wins the amount of money accumulated out of those drivers who were caught above the speed limit. Very smart!
8. Loss and Avoidance
“You don’t want bad things to happen
App: ZombiesRun – You are in an apocalyptic run and the app is constantly alerting you of Zombies or threads chasing you. And you don´t want to be eaten by a zombie, so you have to run faster!!
Gamification Apps have the power to transform your workplace, you can apply any of those previously mentioned elements to your worker´s task and see their performance increase!
“For every job that must be done, there is an element of fun, you find the fun and !snap! The job is a game”.
– Mary Popins-
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Top comments (1)
Missing number 3 :)
Also, I'm skeptical of David's comment; it depends how the gamification manifests. It can, and often does, take a negative aspect, such as Skinner Boxes. However, it can also manifest positively, for more on that, I recommend Extra Credits, it's about games, but they talk about different mechanics and how to use them effectively.