Games, Games, Games


As I've mentioned in recent posts, I've started an online course on Gamification from UPenn.  This course covers the use of game elements and game design techniques in non-game contexts.  The concept of gamification can be traced back to the 1980s, when Mud, the precursor to World of Warcraft, first made it's appearance.  This was the first multiplayer online game where players could interact with other players in real-time.  Once this game gained popularity, research slowly began on video games and their potential for learning.

I chose to learn about this topic because I think gamification can be a helpful tool for behavior change.   In fact, behavior change was one of the three main areas where gamification has been seen to add value according to my professor.  The areas are as follows:

  1. External to the firm: Marketing, Sales, Customer Engagement
  2. Internal to the firm: Human Resources, Productivity Engagement, Crowdsourcing
  3. Behavior Change: Health and Wellness, Sustainability, Finance
My professor, Kevin Werbach, gave an example for each of these areas and I'd like to share them here because seeing gamification in practice can help us understand how it can be adapted for many different goals.  

The first example, representing external to the firm gamification, was an online promotion called "Club Pysch" from the USA television network.  This site was set up by the network for one specific and very popular show, Psych.  The goal of this promotion was to increase visits to the USA network site as well as increase shared content related to this particular show.  Results showed that overall visits to the USA network website increased by 30%, online merchandise sales increased by 50%, page views increased 150% and Psych content was shared over 300,000 times on Facebook, reaching 40 million users.  What was it about this site that made it so attractive?  The developers included multiple elements of gamification, including personal avatars, challenges, points, badges, rewards and a leaderboard.  They made sure to include motifs from the already popular TV show, such as pineapples, that existing fans would recognize and new fans might identify as a theme.  The USA network basically took a popular TV show and brought it to a new medium.  They wanted to elicit the fun nature of the show in the site and did so through elements of gamification.

The second example, which was internal to the firm, came from Microsoft.  Their goal for this idea was to have internal employees proofread different language adaptations of their many programs.  They motivated employees to do this extra work for no extra money by utilizing gamification.  There was a leaderboard displayed that allowed different Microsoft offices to compete with other offices on how many errors they had corrected.  With this simple orientation, Microsoft managed to take a tedious task of reading dialog boxes into a game of sorts.  All participation in this was voluntary for employees, yet the company saw 4,500 individuals participate.  Together they reviewed over 500,000 dialog boxes and reported 6,500 bugs in the programs.

The third example, which represents a goal of behavior change, had to do with speeding while driving.  This concept came from Volkswagon who utilized the proven fact that individuals tend to slow down on the roads when they know they are being monitored, either by seeing a cop with a radar gun or with a flashing sign that tells them their current speed.  When an individual is caught speeding, they recieve the negative reinforcement of a speeding ticket.  But what motivates individuals to follow the speed limit?  VW took the idea of speed monitors and tried something unsual out in Stockholm - they called it the speed camera lottery.  When individuals passed a speed monitor and were not speeding, their information was captured and they were entered into a lottery.  This lottery would pay one of these non-speeders with funds that came from speeding tickets that were still issued.  The company found that people slowed down by 20% over the course of 3 days.

These few examples show that gamification can work if appropriately implemented.  More to come on this topic as I continue along with the course!

-Vicky














 

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