For me, 2011 was the year I discovered games. Not in the football, baseball, basketball sense, or the Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Dungeons & Dragons sense. No, games in the marketing sense. While Oxford may have chosen “squeezed middle” as the Word (words?) or the Year, for me it was “Gamification.” I’m not particularly a fan of the word, but it was the one that seemed to stick. And while it may seem trivial to argue semantics – game theory, gamification, game mechanics – it actually is important to try an understand what these terms really mean. We’ve seen what happens when the marketing industry grabs an idea and runs with it, we end up with people still talking about “viral” videos more than two years after the word was ‘debunked.’

I’m by no means an expert in this territory, but I did have a decent amount of exposure to the ideas and people who are leading this industry forward, and it is indeed an industry.  From working with Badgeville to speaking on a Gamification panel at Social Media World Forum, I was able to really begin to understand the science and art of games and develop an appreciation for how challenging it is.

If you work in marketing communications it’s likely you’re going to hear a client, a vendor or a colleague mention games and one, or several, related terms. The first step to understanding this area is understanding some of the fundamental terminology. So, with that in mind I wanted to give a brief primer on three terms that are often used interchangeably or incorrectly: Game Design, Game Mechanics and Gamification.

Game Design

Let’s start with this as it is the most important, most complex and least used of the terms.  Game design encompasses all aspects of creating a game.  It is the skeletal framework from which everything hangs. People tend to throw around the word gamification to mean creating the game, but that’s incorrect. Here’s the definition from Wikipedia: Game design, a subset of game development, is the process of designing the content and rules of a game in the pre-production stage and design of gameplay, environment, storyline, and characters during production stage. The term is also used to describe both the game design embodied in a game as well as documentation that describes such a design. Game design requires artistic and technical competence as well as writing skills.

Game Mechanics

Game mechanics refers to how the game works. It’s about the interplay between the game and the player. What happens when a player takes an action? What does a player see or hear?  Again, from Wikipedia: Game mechanics are constructs of rules intended to produce an enjoyable game or gameplay. All games use mechanics; however, theories and styles differ as to their ultimate importance to the game. In general, the process and study of game design are efforts to come up with game mechanics that allow for people playing a game to have a fun and engaging experience.

Gamification

In essence, gamification is the act of adding game elements to something that doesn’t inherently have them. It’s probably the most misused term, thrown around as a shorthand for Game Mechanics or Game Design. The fundamental misunderstanding is that you can just add a points system, or award badges, and you’ve successfully added gamification to your site/product/service. Here’s the Wikipedia definition: Gamification is the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. Typically gamification applies to non-game applications and processes (also known as “funware“), in order to encourage people to adopt them. Gamification works by making technology more engaging, by encouraging users to engage in desired behaviors, by showing a path to mastery and autonomy, and by taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming. The technique can encourage people to perform chores that they ordinarily consider boring, such as completing surveys, shopping, filling out tax forms, or reading web sites. Available data from gamified websites, applications, and processes indicate potential improvements in areas like user engagement, ROI, data quality, timeliness, or learning.

Think of the relative importance of these three ideas with this graphic:

Understand the Importance of Game Design

I think we’re going to see a lot of companies try to tack on gamification elements this year without truly understanding its role. Game Design is the core issue. That takes a lot of time and consideration and without it, you’re going to find yourself struggling to understand why people tired of your ‘game’ after one of two sessions.

Here’s three books I’d recommend if you want to learn more about this (and trust me, you do):

The Art of Game Design, A Book of Lenses, by Jesse Schell

Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal

Game Frame, by Aaron Dignan

I’ll be speaking at Social Media World Forum today as part of a panel entitled, Incorporating ‘gamification’ into your social marketing campaign and long term loyalty strategy. I’ll be joined by Omar Divina, Director of Sales,Badgeville; Nancy Friedman,  Owner, KidzVuz.com; Rebecca Levey, Owner,KidzVuz.com; and, Esteban Contreras, Social Media Manager, Samsung.

It should be a lively discussion, in this the “Year of Gamification.” I’m a believer in game mechanics, which I define as the integration of game elements into a system, whereas I’m a little leery of gamification, which to me is the act of merely layering game elements on top of an existing system.  I see a lot of social platforms, tools and services which fall into the latter category.

I’m looking forward to hearing what the other panelists have to say as they are all smart folks with some real experience in this area. I’m interested in speaking about how social networks can better use game mechanics for the benefit of community members and the network itself.  I’ll look to post an update later in the day after the event as well.

UPDATE: Great conversation with some really smart panelists. It was good to hear how much thought everyone was putting into their programs and the realization that gamification is easy to do badly. You can really see that a change is coming and future activations will be more nuanced and immersive.  I have high hopes for what gamification can become and will continue to report on what I see happening.

Two topics I’ve written about recently, gamification, and the need to focus on creating (or leveraging) emotion, got me thinking.  How can these two concepts be used in concert?  Is there a way to combine elements of the former with the latter? Before I go down this road, a brief disclaimer: I’m not a fan of the term ‘gamification‘ (and I’m not alone). However, for the purposes of this post I’ll use it just to keep things simple.

If the point of gamification (good gamification) is to drive certain behaviours or maintain motivations then the important question becomes what behaviors or motivations are we trying to drive and maintain?  Right now I think a lot of gamification is centered around button clicking.  Keep clicking to earn points, win badges or gain levels. On many levels this works.  As a marketer and someone who is interested in and aware of gamification it works on me. Check out my badge haul on Osnapz. But as the practice of gamification matures, badge fatigue is sure to set in.  How many (virtual, mostly worthless) stickers, pins and badges can one person earn before they say, “Aw, to hell with it.”? I feel like I’m getting very close to reaching that threshold.

That brings me to the second part of the puzzle – emotion. How can marketers tap into emotion as a way to bring stronger ties to gamification?  How can we create a sub-genre called emofication?*

If I was building a new social platform/tool/service the first thing I would do is allow users to login via Facebook connect. With access to that incredibly rich treasure trove of information I’d look to create rewards that have personal meaning for the user. Photos, jobs, schools, friends, interests (sports, movies, books, music…), birthdays – all of these could be used within a game model that would have a unique and personal connection for the user. Instead of a random music badge with an icon of a music note or instrument, what if the badge was a picture of your favorite band?  Sites often ask you to share with friends – why couldn’t that badge have a picture of one of your friends on it? Two small, simple ideas, but you see where I’m heading.  Rather than get the exact same badge as 10,000 other people, make them (semi-)customized.

I’ve just scratched the surface here, but I think it’s a concept worth exploring further. Maybe someone already has. If so, please let me know in the comments below.

*Yes, I’m sickened by that portmanteau as well. Let’s just call it a placeholder name for the concept and move on, ok?

Actually, yes, we do need some stinkin' badges.

When new ideas, theories, tactics and practices are created, it’s not always clear at first the value or purpose or direction they may go. Often many people are thinking along the same lines, independently, and refining the ideas. At some point, these ideas begin to coalesce around an overriding theme and a name emerges so that everyone can begin to understand each other when speaking about a topic. How does an idea get a name? It’s a good question and I don’t know if there is one answer. Why is crowdsourcing called crowdsourcing? Jeff Howe’s Wired article from 2006 seems to have been the inflection point that really launched the concept into the current mainstream (though the concept itself has been around quite a while).

Today the marketing buzz that used to surround crowdsourcing now surrounds another idea, and it’s one that is having a struggle with nomenclature – gamification (or one of many other names). I’m not a fan of the term gamification because to me it says, “let’s take something plain and ordinary and slap some psychological ploys and cheap incentives on top to juice our numbers.”  Game mechanics, game theory, social rewards… all these seem better to me.

I just read an interesting article from Peter Friedman called “A new name for gamification” in which he argues for the term maintainable motivation. He explains that it effectively exposes and expresses the intention of the designer to address a need often felt by both the purveyor and consumer: persistent engagement.

I think that’s a pretty solid way of thinking about it. At the end of the post, there is a video featuring Gabe Zichermann (check out his book, Game-based Marketing)

I think this video, which is long but really engaging, shows the level of thinking that goes into this area. Now, that being said, Gabe seems pretty ok with the term gamification, so maybe I’m trying to make a distinction or argument where one doesn’t exist. I’d be interested in Gabe’s (and your) opinion on this. Is gamification a good term? Should it be called something else? Can it be called something else at this point?

Gamification.

It’s the 2011 version of crowdsourcing, social media’s dirty little 13-letter word. As a concept crowdsourcing has a lot of really wonderful applications, but unfortunately, overzealous marketers and their “quick, let’s make a buck” agencies turned crowdsourcing into a generic catch-all that encompassed just about every possible consumer engagement. The talk about crowdsourcing has quieted down quite a bit recently, perhaps because the concept doesn’t have the same sizzle, or perhaps because a new term, gamification, has captured the interest of those fickle marketers.

The term itself has taken on the appearance of a perjorative to many involved in the field, with Margaret Robertson, Development Director of the UK firm Hide & Seek, saying, “…That problem being that gamification isn’t gamification at all. What we’re currently terming gamification is in fact the process of taking the thing that is least essential to games and representing it as the core of the experience. Points and badges have no closer a relationship to games than they do to websites and fitness apps and loyalty cards.”

Stolen from http://katebennet.wordpress.com/

She hits upon the thing that most people associate with gamification: badges. To many, slapping a badging system onto a platform equals gamification. And on some level that’s probably correct. Slapping badges on a site is as sloppy, weak effort in the same way that calling the practice of game mechanics and social rewards (much better terms) gamification is sloppy and weak.  But when you see the success that badges seem to have, many peole naturally gravitate in that direction.  Foursquare has badges. Gowalla has pins and GetGlue has stickers. Rob Walker has a recent piece in Slate on Foursquare’s badge history. This approach to consumer engagement, providing simple rewards for otherwise unengaging tasks, has been dubbed, pouring chocolate on broccoli.

Recently, I’ve been working with Badgeville on a project for a client, and despite what their name suggests, they are about far more than badges. In working with them I’ve learned that badges are one of the least important aspects of game mechanics. It’s about understanding how people use a site, what they are doing and why. Tracking this can help us make a better user experience, not simply artificially gin up the fun factor to get people to do things they don’t really want to do.  I’m discovering that game mechanics is a lot of science, but also some art as well. Yes, it’s about providing rewards for behaviours, but understanding how, when and how much of a reward to provide is pretty tricky.

And here’s why having an understanding of user behaviour and motivation is so important:  Last week I spent about 30 minutes pounding away on GetGlue. I was typing in reviews, “liking” movies and music groups and checking in on multiple TV shows. I was doing this because once I earned my 20th sticker, GetGlue promised to send me physical copies of these digital stickers. Nerdcore FTW!  Now, I’m a reasonably intelligent guy and I work in the digital marketing industry, but obviously I’m not immune to this sort of thing. Game mechanics is clearly a powerful tool. For GetGlue, keeping me on the site is a win, that’s how they measure success and attract partners, with stats showing the stickiness of their site. Two problems though. First, I’ve pretty much maxed out my interest on GetGlue.  I pushed so hard for the reward that I now have GetGlue fatigue.  I have no real reason to continue, I got what I wanted from the site. They’re going to have to ‘change the game’ in a pretty compelling way in order to get me back on a regular basis.

Second, for most brands, just keeping you on the site, winning badges/pins/stickers isn’t enough, they need to turn a person’s online affinity into something more tangible (like in-store sales). That’s where simply throwing achievement badges at people falls short.

I’m a believer in game mechanics, anyone who’s played Cityville or other Zynga games, created a LinkedIn profile or used dozens of other sites obsessively probably will be too. But we’ve entered a dangerous time where game mechanics are being wielded indiscrimately. Many people are going to be sorely disappointed, not unlike when they tried their hand at crowdsourcing.

Badgeville helps turn customers into fans

My series of CEO Interviews continues this week with Kris Duggan of Badgeville. As you know, I’ve started to write about Game Mechanics a lot recently and am currently working with Badgeville on a client project.  This is a new and developing area and I think you’ll be interested in reading what Badgeville CEO Kris Duggan has to say:

Rick Liebling: Let’s start off by giving a quick overview of Badgeville. Who are you guys, what do you do and who do you do it for/with?

Kris Duggan: Badgeville is the leading Social Loyalty Platform. We make it easy for marketers of commerce and content brands to drive user behavior using smart gamification techniques. With Badgeville, you can reward any user behavior in real time and measure the health of your community by tracking user behavior and identity using advanced engagement analytics. Badgeville customers range from large online retailers, such as Bluefly.com, to entertainment and media brands, including Interscope Records and Island Def Jam (Universal Music), to community sites such as The Active Network, and many more.

The typical Badgeville customer has users/customers that already are interacting with its web product occasionally, and is seeking to leverage gamification techniques to increase user-driven business objectives and conversions. We launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2010, and are one of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley with over 60 customers in 15 countries around the world. Our team of 25 includes experts in game design, social gaming, social media, software-as-a-service, and building large-scale applications. The Badgeville Platform includes the Dynamic Game Engine, with support for sophisticated business rules as part of a gamification strategy, and the Widget Studio, for highly configurable turnkey widgets to deploy a rewards program in a matter of weeks.

RL: Game theory, gamification, social rewards. This is still a pretty new area and terminology is still being solidified. Can you explain which terms you prefer to use and why?

KD: That’s a great question! Terminology for new technologies sometimes can make an industry that solves a real market need sound like passing trend. Gamification is one of those words that happens to be describing this really hot industry right now, and to some has a negative connotation. However, the word gamification, which means using game mechanics for non-game experiences, is something that can be applied in very positive ways. Gamification has really been around forever — loyalty programs are gamification, Girl Scout badges are gamification, karate belts are gamification.

However, modern gamification techniques need to be applied strategically in line with a company’s larger business goals in order to work in the long term, and not end up hurting a brand more than they help. We call ourselves a “Social Loyalty Platform” because loyalty (and conversions) is what good gamification delivers. Social rewards are one mechanic that can be used as part of a gamification strategy. Regardless of whether you’re seeking gamification, social rewards, modern loyalty, game mechanics, or something else in this world, we’re confident that our platform is flexible enough to handle unique implementations that represent the angle each customer wishes their deployment to take.

RL: Talk about the difference between designing social rewards for collaborative vs. competitive play and when you should use one or the other in a community?

KD: Designing a gamification strategy for our customers always starts with an analysis of the site audience demographic and business goals. Some companies want to inspire a very competitive experience on their site, which can be very effective in driving user behavior for the users to “win” social rewards and status. On other sites, collaboration is more powerful, as the community is less about being the top fan of the site or brand, and more about contributing regularly and expressing loyalty by bringing friends to the site to participate.

Some people ask us if male-focused sites should be competitive and female-focused brands should have collaborative programs only, but this isn’t true. We have some female-focused deployments that are very competitive, and some male-focused sites that are more collaborative in nature. Ultimately you have to figure out what you want your audience to do, and which members of your audience you want to drive to do these behaviors.

There are also ways to have a combination of competitive and collaborative rewards, which often works very well in allowing the top fans to compete for status, while also making everyone else feel part of the program without having to compete.

RL: Jane McGonigal gave an amazing talk at TED, saying we need MORE play to solve the world’s biggest problems. Do you see Badgeville as a tool in that sort of ambitious goal?

KD: Yes. One of the exciting parts about what we have here at Badgeville is that our software platform can power just about any loyalty program or game based on behavior. While not every Badgeville customer is using our platform for solving the world’s biggest problems, there’s a lot of potential in partnering with the right creative company in developing a program that can not only drive revenues and loyalty, but can also crowd source a program to better the world.

We’ve spoken with a lot of large brands that are interested in ways to use Badgeville to help drive more participation by customers in their ties to charities and causes around the world. The right creative minds could really make a difference using our software, and we look forward to see future implementations using Badgeville to promote all the ideas McGonigal talks about. Currently, we see customers in health, education, and finance using Badgeville to help drive positive behaviors that, while tied to business goals, are also designed to help users solve global problems on a personal scale.

RL: What will we see next in this industry?

KD: This industry is at its infancy, and even so, innovative companies of all sizes have taken note. Expect to see gamification applied in a variety of ways, and as something that becomes an expected part of our everyday experience. We see interest from such a wide range of industries today, it’s clear to us that these techniques are going to become more and more prominent over 2011 and beyond.

For instance, SAP, one of the largest enterprise organizations in the world, is currently running a Gamification Cup, where its developers are using Badgeville’s API to compete in a challenge where they have to come up with creative ways to use gamification to improve existing SAP experiences. Everyday, our horizons for the breadth of this market and industry expand. There will be plenty of surprises along the way, but we are confident that gamification, social rewards and social loyalty will have a long-term effect on helping many industries connect with their customers, drive behavior, and understand their audience on an entirely new level.

For more on Badgeville, see this recent Forbes article.