MAGAZINE GAMIFICATION TECHNIQUE(FULL)

BUSINESS

What is Gamification and How
Can It Help My Business?

by JHUNNECILLE ANAK JOHN What is Game Mechanics?

Gamification is a business tool The components of a game are called
representing a whole new di- game mechanics. And as it applies to gam-
rection for achieving the goals ification, the right set of game mechanics
you have set for your compa- are used to engage or motivate the user.
ny. But small businesses have been shying
away from it because of the emphasis on The following 10 game mechanics are used
large, global enterprises deploying the tech- in gamification for applications in different
nology. That’s too bad because gamification combinations to accomplish the desired
is a tool small businesses can easily imple- goal.
ment to create innovative programs allow-
ing them to compete with large brands. 1. Fast Feedback
2. Transparency
So What is Gamification? 3. Goals
4. Badges
The simplest definition of gamification is: 5. Leveling Up
a process for integrating game mechanics 6. Onboarding
into something that already exists to moti- 7. Competition
vate participation, engagement and loyal- 8. Collaboration
ty. This can be almost anything, from your 9. Community
website to social media presence, day-to- 10. Points
day operations, customer engagement and
more. Gamification introduces game design
elements into non-game applications to
make them more fun and engaging. It uses
competition, points, achievement, rules of
play, status and self-expression to encour-
age actions through positive feedback.

BUSINESS 52

What Gamification is Not How can Gamification Help Small
Businesses?
Gamification is not the creation of games for busi-
ness application. According to Bunchball, a leader Gamification delivers proven and tangible
in gamification solutions, it is “About amplifying the results, which can be measured with the an-
effect of an existing, core experience by applying alytics tools most vendors provide. This one
the motivational techniques that make games so is from Bunchball. Businesses have experi-
engaging.” enced an increase in engagement across so-
cial media, both internally and externally. This
Gamification Solutions includes things like more website traffic, lower
times for adoption and conversions from free
Founded by Rajat Paharia in 2007, today Bunch- trial to purchase, and reduction in onboard-
ball supplies solutions for companies including ing time. However, there is also a downside
Warner Bro., EA, Adobe, SAP, T-Mobile and many if not managed properly. Gamification creates
more. But its services it offers can also be used high-levels of expectation, which can be re-
by small businesses. Some of the other compa- sponsible for a false set of incentives. Addi-
nies providing gamification solutions are: MLevel, tionally, gamification should compliment any
LevelEleven, Badgeville, and Intuitive. There are other systems you have in place and not re-
vendors specializing in different segments, includ- place it. And last but not least, the motivation
ing sales, education and customer loyalty. Most of has to be more than money. This is especially
these companies and others have a free trial pe- true for millennials, who have different sets of
riod with limited features. If you want a free solu- motivation than previous generations.
tion you can also try OpenBadges. Developed by
Mozilla, it is an open source platform for creating
and issuing badges to your employees after they
go through a training or achieve a milestone.

Examples of Gamification

Samsung Nation is another example of gamifica-
tion. The company rewards its users with badg-
es as they progress through different levels of
achievement. The badges and levels are given
after users create content, watch videos, review
products, engage with their community and other
activities.

Again while Samsung is a large enterprise, it is
important to note the vast majority of these solu-
tions can be applied by a small business. This is
because users are interacting with the same tech-
nology — a smartphone, tablet or PC. It doesn’t
matter how large your company is. Gamification
can work both as a way to improve your team and
engage potential customers

BUSINESS 53

BUSINESS

6 Gamification strategy tips for
your business

by JHUNNECILLE ANAK JOHN

Gamification Strategy in Business

Let’s take a look at what works with using 3. Create a level playing field
gamification in the workplace vs. what doesn’t.
When we help our clients gamify their employ-
1. Take the long view ee advocacy programs, we advocate they share
the scoring framework with all of their users.
Regardless of who or what you’re trying to gam- This helps everyone understand how the game
ify, it’s very important that you take the long view. works, what the goal is, and how to succeed.
It’s very easy to get people riled up — and in Of course, gamification in the corporate envi-
any group of people — there are going to be ronment should always be about some larger
those that relish competition and those that do goal (e.g., driving new leads, opportunities, in-
not. creasing brand reach, etc.) and having the rules
One of the chief things to avoid when it comes of the game out in the open helps everyone
to gamification in the workplace is going too participate, regardless of who ends up winning.
deep too early.
Make sure that whatever you do is appropriate 4. Don’t just celebrate the
for the audience and not going to be a one-and- top performer
done program.
You’re all winners! No, but seriously, perfor-
2. Don’t overemphasize rewards mance should be measured at least in part
based on participation.
Thinking that people will only participate in your If 90% of your participants are fully engaged in
program if the rewards are big and flashy is a your program (whatever it is), that’s a huge win,
fallacy. regardless if the top 10% are driving the major-
The best corporate gamification programs are ity of the results.
about the competition itself. The problem with Gamification in business is about the team.
big rewards are twofold: Yes, you should reward your very top performer,
 You can’t keep funding big rewards over the but be careful to reward your participators as
long-term (remember the point above about well. If you don’t, you’ll likely see a big drop off
taking the long view?) in engagement.
 It often creates false incentives (people end
up cutting corners and doing things you really
don’t want them doing, just for the win).

BUSINESS 54

5. Come up with creative rewards Gamification Strategy Tips
Conclusion
Back on the topic of rewards, there’s a pretty
clear difference between those that work vs Hopefully, these points and learnings can help
those that don’t. you think about how to better organize and ex-
Prizes and other material rewards that aren’t ecute your own gamification strategy and pro-
really connected to your business (e.g., a gift grams at your company.
certificate, an iPod, etc.) aren’t that effective.
You’re running a competition for professionals Things are more fun when there’s some com-
inside a corporate environment. petition. However, it’s important to be careful
The best gamification rewards we’ve seen and be measured in your approach.
are those that are connected with profession- If you have any other thoughts or questions
al recognition and advancement: a Linkedin about gamification for business, or how some
recommendation from a VP, a shout-out at an of this may apply to something you’re consid-
all-hands meeting, an invitation to guest blog on ering for your company, drop us a line. We’d
the company blog, etc. be happy to chat.
Note these rewards are also low/no-cost and
really connect the gamification back to the busi-
ness as a whole, which is very important.

6. Track and report

What’s the saying: if it doesn’t get tracked it
doesn’t exist? That certainly goes for gamifica-
tion programs.
Tracking is important for a number of
reasons:

 It helps the participants know where they
stand and how to improve

 It helps the program leader understand if the
program is actually driving the business goals
you set out to

We recommend putting a tool or solution in
place like EveryoneSocial, which allows you to
easily share results with users either through
the web or mobile app, or an email newsletter
and track overall program performance.
Of course, you can also do these sorts of things
by hand, but that gets difficult and time-con-
suming pretty quickly.

BUSINESS 55

BUSINESS

Top 3 gamification
techniques for your business

by JHUNNECILLE ANAK JOHN

Business training doesn’t re- 1. Design with levels of
ally have the best reputation progress
among employees. As I said
in a previous post, Gamifica- Since a third to a half of the world pop-
tion: the spoonful of sugar for the training ulation are introverts, there are high
medicine, e-learning professionals had to chances a lot of your trainees are intro-
find ways with keeping trainees engaged verts as well. So they also prefer to reach
with their courses and gamification the next level of any training by improv-
turned up to be exactly what they needed. ing on their previous accomplishments.

When done right, the use of game think- Using a progress bar or any other meth-
ing and game tools and mechanics in od to show progress within a learning
learning contexts can have multiple ben- module works well for extroverts too.
efits, Knowing exactly where they are in the
including: whole learning journey — how many and
what kind of activities they need to do to
1. Improvement of the attitude towards get to the next level; how many levels
learning there are in total — contributes to a bet-
2. Higher motivation ter management of time and resources.
3. Better engagement rates
4. Boost in productivity One rule of thumb instructional design-
ers should follow when creating gamified
There are many ways to include gam- courses for business training is to grad-
ification in a business training strat- ually increase the difficulty of the course
egy, so L&D professionals need to modules. This principle is the same for
test various techniques to find out ex- simple, match three balls of the same
actly which ones best suit their spe- color games, as well as for more com-
cific organizational learning needs. plex, strategic, network games. The first
few levels are easier to pass, but things
While there is no perfect reci- need to get more serious and demand
pe, the following three gamifica- more skills from the players/learners as
tion techniques could be part of it: they progress along the learning path.

BUSINESS 56

2. Include rewards 3. Offer instant feedback

Small things like a thank you note or a pat on the We live in a fast world. Everyone is hur-
back acknowledging a job well done can do mir- ried and everything needs to get done fast-
acles in a workplace setting. These and other er: we speed walk on our way to work, we
positive reinforcements contribute to a pleasant speed dial people during the day, we even
working atmosphere and increase motivation. speed date after hours. Should anyone be
surprised that today’s employees demand
While any LMS can come with a set of social instant feedback regarding their tasks?
features, gamified training courses need a little
more than that to make users feel their learning That’s right, the answer is no. Feedback
progress is really appreciated. That’s where needs to be delivered as fast as possible,
rewards like points, leaderboards, badges, tro- because no company can afford errors. If
phies and certificates come in handy. Let’s take employees make mistakes during training,
them one by one and see what they stand for: they need to know exactly what they did
wrong, why, and how to fix things. Otherwise,
1. Points — the more the merrier; 1,000 is they’ll add up new knowledge on top of bad
better than 100 and 1,000,000 is better than or unclear information and when they draw
1,000; the line at the end of their mandatory CPD
(Continuous Professional Development)
2. Leaderboards — working harder to get hours, they’ll end up with erroneous training.
there and showing everyone else who they’re This will, sooner or later, translate into poor
dealing with; performance and average company results.

3. Badges — striving for perfection and being From Time’s up! and You need [insert big
proud of one’s mastery of skills; number of] points to unlock this level to
Wrong answer! [followed by a detailed ex-
4. Trophies — always starting and always planation], L&D professionals could make
finishing a job, no matter how difficult; use of these bits of feedback to keep
learners on the right track to success.
5. Certificates — just in case someone
doesn’t seem very convinced with the spoken The last rule of thumb (of this post, of
words. course) instructional designers should fol-
low when creating gamified business cours-
Another rule of thumb instructional design- es is to include personalized feedback on
ers should follow when creating gamified any learning activity that has the potential
courses for business training is to connect re- to be unclear. This way, you’ll minimize
wards with real performance. There’s no use chances of misunderstandings and max-
in collecting hundreds of thousands of virtual imize the results of the training modules.
points if those points don’t mirror knowledge
retention and real world improvement of skills.

BUSINESS 57

BUSINESS

How to Use Gamification for
Better Business Results
Business Results

by JHUNNECILLE ANAK JOHN

Gamification works by encourag- Gamification Principles
ing users to engage in desired
behaviors, by showing a path to Rewards. A reward is something you receive
mastery, and by taking advan- and feel positive about. The feeling positive
tage of our human psychological predisposi- part is the key ingredient. Consumers should
tion to engage in gaming. Smart marketers be rewarded with virtual goods (e.g., points)
use it to increase consumer engagement for specific behavior (e.g., purchase, filling
and influence consumer behavior. In order to out a form), and those virtual items should
achieve this, consumers should be reward- offer access to exclusive privileges and re-
ed with virtual items (like points) for specif- wards, such as levels or prizes.
ic behavior (e.g. buying something, signing
up, using the product, filling out their profile), Loss Aversion. Most people strongly prefer
and those virtual items should offer access avoiding losses to acquiring gains. One way
to exclusive privileges and rewards, such as to get going with this is to give people some-
levels or prizes. thing right away that they can lose (unless
they keep playing). When you join Zynga’s
The Secret Sauce: Game-Like Farmville, you get a starter farm. If you don’t
Mechanics visit the farm and care for your crops, they
wither and die.
Game mechanics are constructs of rules in-
tended to produce an enjoyable gameplay. Status, competition and reputation. Most
Think of it as basic building blocks that can people inherently want a higher status and
be combined in interesting ways to drive a not only to keep up, but to out-do the Jone-
(often complex) sequence of actions in order ses. This is why leaderboards are a good
to achieve desired results. These typically in- idea. Also, making achievements social en-
clude items such as points, badges, levels, courages people to continually one-up, and
challenges, leaderboards and the possibil- stay motivated to reach clear goals.
ity to level up. These come from game-like
dynamics such as rewards, urgency, pride, Feedback. Feedback tells users that their in-
competition, and status-building. I’d like tended action was registered, and shows the
to point out that gamification is not games. outcomes of that action. Seeing points ac-
Games are often much more complex than cumulate as actions are taken establishes a
the simplifications that are abound. clear and instant reward system. It’s also an
immediate indication that the user is getting
Gamification is also not about game-like closer to their goal. Continually accomplish-
wording. It’s not enough to call filling your ing small goals in order to reach a larger goal
email newsletter subscription form an “un- is often what makes games addictive.
locking the treasure” While gamification in
marketing has become a popular buzzword BUSINESS 58
in the last two years, the practice of using
game-like mechanics in marketing programs
has been around for a long time.

So How Does Gamification Engagement Leads To Sign Up
Increase Engagement?
Codacademy doesn’t let people to sign-up for
To sum up the psychology behind it, game their service, but instead invites them to par-
dynamics use positive feedbacks (points, ticipate right away. As you complete little as-
badges, status, progression, etc.) to build signments, you earn badges, get a pat on your
up the users’ motivation. Next, they increase back and enjoy making progress. Users are
the perceived ability of users by making diffi- only later asked to create an account, if they
cult tasks / challenges simpler either through want to save their progress and not lose the
practice or by lowering the activation thresh- work they’ve done so far (using loss aversion).
old of the target behavior. Game dynamics
place triggers in the path of motivated users Get Employees To Exercise
when they feel the greatest excess in their
ability. That is, triggers that prompt the user Gamification is about behavior change.
for action are designed to bring about the NextJump wanted their employees to work
convergence of motivation, ability, and trig- out more, and thus be healthier and save
ger all at the same moment. All of this togeth- company money. They installed gyms in its
er forms an effective driver of user behavior. offices, and offered to reward to perform-
ers with a cash prize. Still, only 12% of the
Increase Work Speed And company’s staff started to workout. Then
Results By Making Work A Game they retooled the fitness “game” to become
a team sport. Leveraging the game themes
55% ofAmericans said they were interested in of tribalism and competition had an aston-
working for a company that uses gamification ishing effect on behavior. Today, 70% of
to increase productivity. Here are a few exam- NextJump employees exercise regularly.
ples of gamification improving the workplace:
Higher Quality Survey Answers
OpenText: OpenText made it possible to
earn points and badges by sharing informa- Engage Research and GMI found that gam-
tion, contributing to discussions, complet- ified surveys would produce both higher
ing assignments, passing tests, or closing quantity and quality feedback. They began
deals for their OpenText Pulse product. The by making questions more fun and game-
results were more than promising: “the IT like in nature. The results were instructive:
level of active participation was well above 2-3x as much feedback to the more engag-
60% which is significantly higher than the ing questions and participants consistent-
current average in the rest of the company.” ly took more time providing their answers.

Steward Agency: Stewart Agency wanted to More Pageviews, Higher Ad Revenues
get sales people to collect email address-
es when talking to leads. They incentivized TV show Psych launched an online platform
this with a competition. They launched con- Club Psych and implemented gamified in-
test which awarded salespeople based on centives to raise page views by over 130%
how many emails they could collect over and return visits by 40%. The resulting rise
the course of a couple months. In less than in engagement has generated substantial
2 months they almost doubled the number revenue for the company, bringing registered
of emails they had collected over 3 years. user counts from 400,000 to nearly 3 mil-
lion since the launch of the gamified version.

BUSINESS 59

ENTERTAINMENT

A R T I F I C I AL S WOD NI W INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
WO R D C OMP UT E R DA F F O
I N T E L I V I DI VI S I ON R
N E WY O F C C ANYQ E N OT D
T Y I N U E L OT S S E CN I R P
E T I E D UL L AP T O P O YE R
R R N A C P U Z BAL L E T I N O
F A N J O YS YAI NU NN OT C
A S I A MI L E S T OL E I C I E
C H A MP I O NE F ON T R E E S
E ME B U L L DOGS C R Z E WS
S N I H T HI NKS T O RA GE I
A E L S I NP UT I NG T H GI N
S E K I N ON S E NS E S O ON G
I C I N G OO GL E NE T WOR K

Word Puzzle Question:

1. An organized collection of data,
generally stored and accessed electronically from a computer
system.

2. A mechanism that enables a computer to retain data, either
temporarily or permanently.

3. A shared boundary across which two or more separate
components of a computer system
exchange information.

4. The term is generally used to describe data centers
available to many users over the Internet.

5. A device or computer program that
provides for input, editing, formatting and output of text, often with
some additional features.

1. DATABASE 2. STORAGE 3. INTERFACE 4. CLOUDCOMPUTING 5. WORKPROCESSING ANSWER

COMIC

COMIC
SECTION

GALLERY

JHUNNECILLE
ANAK JOHN
18010395

“If people are doubting how

far you can go, go so far that

they can’t hear you anymore”

JOY LIM SIEW YEE
18010396

“Start each day with a positive

though and a grateful heart”

KU CHING NGO
18010398

“You will face many defeats in life, but never
let yourself be defeated”

ARIYA A/P EVEIN
18010388

“Sometimes it’s very hard to
move on, but once you move on,
you’ll realize it was the the best

decision you’ ve ever made”

CANYQEN LOUSIP
18010389

“Above all keep God first and all things will be
given to you. Do not worry about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day

has enough trouble of its own”