Marketing Specific Primer: Gamification. Advergaming. Transmedia. The GAMESbrief guide to marketing and games. - Games Brief

by Nicholas Lovell

"What is gamification?

Gamification is about using game-like mechanics to improve a business process, or customer experience, or profits.

It is not about making games. It is not about brand extension. It is about encouraging and rewarding users for doing the things that you want them to do.

A loyalty scheme where you “level up” for taking more flights is an example of “gamification”. An answers website which gives users badges and achievements for providing helpful responses is an example of gamification. Games purists sometimes refer to gamification as pointsification, deriding it as not being about making games. They are right.

But that doesn’t matter. Gamifiers are not trying to make a game. They are not trying to take the best bits of games and apply them to your website or product. They are trying to take many of the lessons that game-makers have learned – about showing users what to do, about offering rewards, about using psychology to encourage behaviours you want – and applying them to other fields.

The #1 rule of gamification is that you are not making a game. (Read The 10 rules of gamification if you want to know the other nine.)

I’m not sure that there are any gamification experts out there: the discipline is too new, and there have been too few good examples. You could do worse than hire a game maker, and tell them that you are not gamifying, you are pointsifying. At least that way you avoid the dull-but-worthy conversations about how much more games have to offer than the gamifying trend allows...."