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Tag: gamification

  • 4 Ways Businesses Are Leveraging Gamification

    4 Ways Businesses Are Leveraging Gamification

    Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the global economic landscape has changed. To succeed in the post-pandemic corporate world, we need to transform our concept of the traditional workplace.  

    One method leading businesses are employing to thrive in 2022 is gamification, a trend entrepreneur Kris Dugan spearheaded with the early business gamification platform Badgeville in 2010. Gamification refers to the utilization of game-playing elements in fields that generally wouldn’t use them, such as the workplace. 

    Here are four ways businesses are leveraging gamification in the workplace. 

    1. Improving User Engagement 

    A key usage of gamification is increasing user engagement with your product or service. Customer-facing gamification builds consumer loyalty by providing additional incentives to both choose and stick with your product over time.

    Fitness brand Fitbit offers a perfect example of gamification in action. The brand harnesses this idea using a robust social interface that allows users to compete with their friends to reach fitness targets. The app also rewards exercise milestones with attainment badges that can be displayed for clout.

    Research has shown that competition is one of the biggest motivators when it comes to meeting exercise goals. Thus, gamifying Fitbit through friendly competition increases both user enjoyment and goal attainment. Satisfied customers are more likely to recommend the product to friends.

    2. Increasing Brand Visibility 

    Effective gamification of your product/service will also typically lead to sharing (digitally or through word of mouth). To use the example above, Fitbit’s social sharing feature allows users to post their achievement badges and workout stats on social media. This generates broader brand awareness and encourages others to purchase a Fitbit to join in. 

    Also consider the McDonald’s Monopoly promotion. The popular, Hasbro-sanctioned competition lets customers collect “properties” with food purchases for the chance to win a prize. This clever Monopoly adaptation generates considerable consumer interest and increased sales.

    McDonald’s Monopoly was discontinued in the U.S after reports of fraud, but this gamification attempt is still generating brand recognition for Mc Donald’s and is thriving in other countries. As recently as 2020, the McMillions docu-series was released, detailing the scandal, and getting tongues wagging all over again. 

     3. Motivating Business & Staff Performance 

    Just as gamification can encourage your customers to engage at a higher level, it can also be a powerful motivator for your staff. Even the best-run organizations can run into worker burnout or task fatigue. Inject a sense of fun and urgency back into your workplace with gamification.  

    A simple example would be to create Bingo cards for each staff member. Boxes can be filled with tasks that need to be achieved, such as “receive positive feedback from two customers” or “complete safety awareness module.” When the goal is reached, the winning staff member or team receives a reward. 

    The most effective rewards pair praise with a tangible prize. For example, a coffee voucher and recognition at the next staff meeting. Why does it work? Rewards release a rush of dopamine, the “happy” hormone, in the brain. Our brains are hardwired to pursue this chemical, which can translate to increased motivation to reach targets and a higher level of satisfaction when they are achieved.

    4. Hiring Incentives

    Despite high unemployment rates, many businesses are feeling the pinch of a suitable labor shortage. Savvy businesses are now using gamification to find high-quality candidates to fill essential roles. How? By offering cash incentives, prizes and kudos to employees who successfully refer suitable friends and acquaintances to vacancies. 

    The four examples above barely scrape the surface of business gamification. Consider implementing gamification in your business now to watch your company’s success soar in 2023.

  • Foursquare Might’ve Just Made Swarm Fun

    Foursquare Might’ve Just Made Swarm Fun

    Last May, popular location app Foursquare announced that they would be splitting the core functions of the app in two, creating an entirely new app called Swarm that mostly dealt with check-ins, friends, and the real “social” aspects of Foursquare.

    But to many longtime Foursquare users who loved the gamification elements of the app, there was a problem with Swarm. Mainly, Foursquare stripped much of the gamification aspects out of it.

    For one, Foursquare killed badges – those little tokens people worked so hard to earn by checking in at different places with different people across the network. Sure, Swarm debuted “stickers”, but they just weren’t the same.

    Even worse for fans of the classic Foursquare was the way Swarm handled mayorships. Gone were global mayorships, as Swarm opted to give users a “crown” sticker when they held the “mayorship” only among their friends.

    Now, Foursquare appears to have caved and is trying to reintroduce some of the elements that made it fun. No, Foursquare is still just the local recommendation app it’s always wanted to be – check-ins are still absent. But it is adding some fun elements to Swarm.

    “When we first launched Swarm, we focused on helping you quickly find your friends. We wanted to make it easy to see who was nearby and introduced messages so you could effortlessly coordinate meeting up. But we heard time and time again that while Swarm made those serendipitous hangouts possible, it could be more fun.”

    Fun, something Swarm has lacked.

    So in response, Foursquare is bringing back true mayorships.

    “You asked for mayorships, so we’ll be bringing them back soon. All your check-ins now will count towards them, so go out there and start conquering your neighborhood,” says the company.

    Badges are also coming back – kind of.

    When you first open the updated Swarm app, you’ll be asked to start “transmuting” your old Foursquare badges into new Swarm stickers.

    In fact, Swarm is rolling out a “gotta catch em all” 100 sticker book.

    Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley told TechCrunch that the game mechanics has become stale on Foursquare, but they could be given new life on Swarm.

    “The overall theme of our work on Swarm is about how we can make it more fun. When we split off Swarm we focused on the core utility of finding friends nearby, and then we built messaging into it, but there was a minimal amount of game mechanics. We wanted to revisit Foursquare game mechanics, which had become stale, and reinvent them with this new release,” he said.

    “The old foursquare was full of fun and playfulness, and when we split the apps, Swarm lost a lot of that. Now we’re putting that fun back into Swarm in a big way.”

    Soon, Swarm will also add something called “Coins”, which will let users compete with their friends on a leaderboard. According to TechCrunch, Coins will “take into account the value of your check-ins, stickers, etc.”

    You can download the new Swarm app now. Hopefully this kicks the dust off what was already becoming a rather tedious app.

  • Tic-Tac-Go Scales Up Classic Game by Turning It into a Check in-Driven Scavenger Hunt

    It’s highly likely that you’ve spent countless school days, work meetings, and beach hangouts casually scribbling games of tic-tac-toe. It’s highly unlikely that you’ve ever played it like this.

    A new app called Tic-Tac-Go mixes tic-tac-toe with city hopping, check-ins, and photo sharing to provide a fun and unique take on the classic game. It’s a location-based scavenger hunt, where success requires branching out a finding new spots.

    Starting up a game of Tic-Tac-Go is easy. You can challenge friends, culled from Facebook buddies, contacts, and friends made through the game – or you can just pick a random opponent and go.

    The gameplay is also easy – but easy doesn’t necessarily mean simple. Sure, it’s tic-tac-toe – one of the most elementary games in the world. But Tic-Tac-Go’s gameplay takes this intrinsically single-faceted game and gives it depth. By adding a location-based element to the game, Tic-Tac-Go is able to turn tic-tac-toe into a scavenger hunt.

    The game board is populated with locations, either specific types of locations like ‘a salon’ or ‘a sushi restaurant’ or more general locations like ‘starts with the letter N’. In order to mark a space with your X or your O, you must check in to a location that satisfies the requirement.

    Thinking about lying? Don’t. Tic-Tac-Go wants proof. If you want your check-in at your favorite sushi joint to count, you’ll need to snap a photo of your glass of sake, or catch your buddy going to town on some spicy tuna rolls. By adding this photo element to the experience, Tic-Tac-Go is able to tap into a fast-growing trend in the most desired apps – real-time photo moments. It’s like a gamified take on Facebook’s Singshot or Snapchat Stories.

    “While other platforms have attempted to capture where users have gone, Tic-Tac-Go places location-based social media in an entirely new context:peer-to-peer competition. Instead of just giving users a way of capturing and communicating where they were already going to go, TTG inspires users to go to new places by gameifying the world of check-ins. Suddenly, every day is a scavenger hunt and players are stepping out of their comfort zones while discovering new experiences that are often literally right around the corner,” says its creators.

    The “right around the corner” thing is important. Let’s be honest – nobody is going to go miles and miles out of their way on an everyday basis. Location-based goals have to be challenging enough to be fun, but they also have to be attainable.

    In my experience, I could think of nearby places that satisfied nearly every block in my game boards. Tic-Tac-Go does this by making sure the game boards are fair to both players. You and your opponent will only see locations with some commonality to your respective areas.

    That way, a suburb-dweller from Iowa, playing someone who lives in Manhattan, won’t be forced to check in at modern art museum.

    Apart from just winning their games of tic-tac-toe, players can unlock badges (which has a fun old-school Foursquare feel) and get “likes” on their photos to see how high they can climb on the photo leaderboard. Checking in and nabbing squares also nets you points, which can in turn be used to snag “boosters” – which act like little in-game helpers. You can replace squares for a few hundred points, or cause chaos by throwing down a “hurricane” and switching up all the squares on the board.

    Tic-Tac-Go is probably the most ambitious reimagining of tic-tac-toe that you’re likely to come across. Though the actual game is the mechanism for all that follows, Tic-Tac-Go manages to tackle check-in gamification, auxiliary achievements (in the form of badges and photo likes), and a social element with its emphasis on photos.

    Tic-Tac-Go is free and available to download right now in the App Store.

  • ‘Gamification Revolution’ Author Gabe Zichermann Talks At Google

    Author Gabe Zichermann recently stopped by the Googleplex to discuss his latest book, “Gamification Revolution.” Google has made the talk available on YouTube:

    “Gamification: It’s the hottest new strategy in business, and for good reason–it’s helping leading companies create unprecedented engagement with customers and employees,” Google says in the video description. “Gamification uses the latest innovations from game design, loyalty programs, and behavioraleconomics to help you cut through the noise and transform your organization into a lean, mean machine ready to fight the battle for user attention and loyalty.”

    The book itself is available on Google’s own Google Play.

    More recent “At Google” talks here.

  • Pluck 5.1 Goes Live, Adds Pinterest Integration

    If you run a business or a successful brand, chances are you use social media to get the word out about newest products and offers. There are multiple services out there that help brands get the most out of social media. Facebook just recently announced its rebranded Preferred Marketing Developer program, but some brands may want help in marketing across all social networks. That’s where Pluck comes in.

    The Pluck team announced Thursday that version 5.1 is now available for developers and brands to get cracking on new marketing strategies. The most exciting new feature is of course native Pinterest integration. The social media site has proven to be extremely successful for businesses and now it’s time to take advantage.

    With that being said, Pluck’s integration with Pinterest isn’t anything major yet. There is now a “Pin It” button built into the Pluck photo and video widgets. If you want to see what it looks like, the Phoenix Suns have already built it into its fan page. There are other Pinterest integration plans in the pipeline for future updates.

    Pluck has also updated its social bridging capabilities with a new interface. They feel that users will find it easier to share content with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

    Brands can now identify those people who share the most pages and fan content. Brands should pay attention to this so they know the people who are driving their brand forward. As any company will tell you, a brand can not market itself anymore. It takes the word of mouth from various people on social networking sites. With this new tool, it might be nice to reward your most faithful customers who share the most stuff.

    Another new feature is the reputation engine. It adds gamification features to the social sharing aspect of Pluck’s tools. Users are now rewarded with points or badges depending on how many links they share or how often they engage your content.

    Pluck has also integrated new features into its social sign-on tool. This way people can still sign on via Facebook, but you can collect more data on your customers beyond what’s shared from their Facebook profile.

    As a side note to the updates, Pluck is continuing to make performance and adjustment improvements to its software. You should find the software to be faster and more stable than ever before.

    Pluck makes a note of the core features being added to this release. They primarily focused on gamification and social syndication. These are proving to be some of the most important features when it comes to actively engaging your audience on social networking sites. Pluck 5.1 seems to get this idea down to a science.

  • Foursquare To Reward Heavy Users With Leveled Expertise Badges

    Foursquare is about checking-in, so that your friends can see where you are. And lately, Foursquare has been making its service more and more about discovery, by introducing Foursquare lists and the all-new Radar function that uses your location to give activity suggestions.

    But for many people, Foursquare’s true fun is always going to be the gamification – points and badges. And on that note, Foursquare has announced an upgrade to its badges system.

    A subset of the Foursquare badges that you can earn with check-ins are called “expertise badges.” They include things like “Zoetrope” for checking into a desired amount of theaters and “7-10 Split,” for checking into a certain amount of bowling alleys. There are 24 current expertise badges, all of which reward users for “who they are and what they know.”

    Today, Foursquare announced that they will begin leveling up these expertise badges, rewarding users who continue to explore their interests on the service. From the official blog, here’s how it will work:

    The rules are the same for all your areas of expertise:

    You hit Level 1 for checking in five times to a place in a category, or three unique places.

    Level 2 is for five unique places.

    And from there, every level up is five more unique places, so you get rewarded for exploration!

    For instance, I’ve earned a level 2 Bookworm badge for checking into 5 unique bookstores. You can now view your leveled expertise badges in the “trophy case.” There you can see what level all of your friends have achieved for the same badge:

    Forsuqare hopes that these experience levels will improve tips later on down the road. If you’re looking for a pizza place in a strange town, you’d probably give more weight to a tip from a level 8 Pizzaiolo over a level 2, right?

    They are also unveiling three new expertise badges today: Herbivore, Hot Tamale and Bento. You can probably make a good guess as to the check-ins required to earn those new badges.