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."
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.