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December 9, 2012 04:00 am GMT

Gamification Can Work Just Dont Hire A Game Designer

Rajat PahariaEditor’s note:Rajat Paharia is the founder of Bunchball, aprovider of online gamification solutions. Follow him on Twitter@rajatrocks. Gartner recently issued a press release that made the following provocative assertion: Gamification is currently being driven by novelty and hype. Gartner predicts that by 2014, 80 percent of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily because of poor design. While the rest of the release discusses the various ways that gamification can effectively be used to drive behavior change, skill development, and innovation, the only thing that sticks in most readers minds is, 80 percent of gamification will fail. This couldnt be further from the truth. First off, there is still a misconception about what gamification is, and the prefix game probably doesnt help.Gamification is the process of taking something that already exists – that has some core, intrinsic value – and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation, engagement, and loyalty. Let me share with you some other phrases that we use when we describe it to people: measure and motivate, recognition and reward, loyalty, reputation, guiding and amplifying high-value behavior. I dont think that anyone would disagree that these are good things, and smart businesses have been doing many of them very effectively for years. The core theme that runs through these, and the mission that gets my colleagues and I out of bed every morning, is motivating people through data. And in this case, were specifically talking about user-activity data. User Activity As A Motivator One way that you can use user-activity data to motivate people is by enabling them to visualize and derive some insight from it, which will hopefully motivate behavior change (aka Quantified Self). Companies like RescueTime and Mint do this to get people to waste less time on their computers and manage their personal finances better. Another way that you can use this data to motivate people is to supplement the visualization with goals to work toward, real-time feedback as they progress, rewards for their achievements and a community of people to compete and collaborate with. This is gamification, and companies like Khan Academy, USA Network, and Nike are using it very effectively to motivate consumers, students and employees. There are also several technology vendors in the space, including Bunchball (my company), Gigya, Badgeville and BigDoor among others. Like anything else, gamification can be done well and it can be done

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