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game mechanics

Game On: Why Gamification Works & 5 Examples You Need to Know About

game mechanics

He was getting into it

Gamification. It’s one of the ‘buzz phrases’ of the last year (along with ‘Pivot’ etc) – and, although overused, – much of its popularity is for good reason. 

Since beginning working with a Social Gaming startup about 6 months ago – I’ve had my eyes opened to the wonders of ‘game mechanics’ and the impact they can have on a website, business or game. Considering that before this I hadn’t played a computer game since a Match Day II addiction in the late ’80s,  I believe my ‘freshness’ to this gaming has allowed me a certain awareness of these game mechanics that others, perhaps in the industry a longer time, may take for granted.

In this post I explain what game mechanics and gamification is, as well as sharing some gamification examples

But first: What are game mechanics or Gamification? Game mechanics are items used in games that make them addictive, makes you want to win and makes you want to tell your friends about them. They’re the activities that happen in a game that make it fun, and make you want to come back for more. Sounds good yah! Using these game mechanics in non game type businesses = gamification. Make sense? Awesome

There are some really high impact game mechanics out there – some of which resulted in our startup acquiring literally hundreds of thousands of users in a matter of weeks for zero cost (nice!). I will go into the specifics of these in later posts – but the purpose of this post is to introduce some of the fundamental game mechanics that any business/startup could implement pretty easily.

Before I begin – I’d just like to make the note that introducing any of these game mechanics to your business will almost certainly have a big impact on……..something. Just make sure it’s making the right kind of impact (I’ll share an example of it going wrong at the bottom of the post).

5 Gamification Examples You Kneed to Know

1.  Points

Rewarding people points for participation – points give people feedback on how well they are progressing through the game, and allows them to show others how good they are. So simple yet so effective.

Behavior influenced: Retention & increased engagement (more you come back and play – better you get)

Examples of points are everywhere – Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are all examples – the more followers (points) you have – the more influential you are – supposedly. (and there is now an companies that help people game these game mechanics to look more influential – oh the irony 🙂

And once we have points, we can create………..

2 – Leaderboards

The ostentatious collection of the above – leaderboards by their very layout, makes us competitive and want to win = increased engagement

Behaviour influenced: Retention, increased engagement & acquisition (the game is more fun, when your friends are involved)

Examples of leaderboards: Any Business development chart that shows performance of sales staff

3 – Collecting

Collecting rewards us for repeated behaviours. We like to be rewarded if we do something well – and we like others to know how good we are. One of the most common examples of how this is displayed is through ‘badges’ e.g. get 50 instore points to receive a gold badge

Behaviour influenced: Retention & increased engagement

Examples of Collecting: Unlocking the Mayor of Starbucks badge 

4 – Customizaton

Once you put your personal touch on anything – you want to spend more time in it, and have others see it. This is the same for your house, your car……or your myspace, Facebook or Linkedin profiles!

Behaviour influenced: Retention (once it feels like home, you want to come back and visit as often as possible)

Examples of Customisation: The entire industry that popped up around pimping myspace profiles OR how 37signals prompt you to customise your profile in Basecamp before anything else – why do they do this? I bet $$$$ it’s because they tested it and saw that leads to increased retention

5.  Exchanges

Another simple yet stupidly effective mechanic – we all use exchanges every day. It’s one of the most basic human behaviours – it;s your tuen, it;s my turn etc. Conversations: I speak, then you speak etc

Exchanges work particularly well on the web as it brings in that lovely psychological factor called ‘reciprocation’  = which is a much proven behavior that if someone does something nice to you – it is in our human DNA to want to give them something in return. It’s a powerful piece of persuasion and many marketers take advantage of this.

Behaviour influenced: Retention

Examples: of Exchanges: Just check out the hottest new game to hit the market in the past 2 months. OMGPOP’s Draw Something. This game is built on this principle or exchanges – and they’ve had 50 million downloads in the past 50 days. None too shabby!

See them in action

If you’d like to see obvious examples game mechanics in action – go to Zynga or Wooga – they are absolute masters at this stuff, and rest assured that anything they have live on their site, has been A/B tested and optimised to its most effective state (just don’t get too addicted when you‘re there)

Example of it used badly:

When Yahoo launched Yahoo answers, they rewarded people for submitting answers to questions. It worked – in as much as they recieced a HUGE number of answers to questions. Thee trouble was, they were rewarding users for submitting answers, but not on the quality of the answers.

The game mechanic (points & badges) worked – but it was driving the wrong behaviour!

Your turn:
Have you experience with game mechanics? – or know any examples of businesses that use game mechanics well in everyday life? Please share them in the comments below:

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Barry Shaverin: Founder and CEO of Zip World London
Barry Shaverin: Founder and CEO of Zip World London

Most obviously, Howard is great marketer. He knew which channels we should try, when we should try them, how we analyse and how to react to them….as a result we sold a lot of tickets. Which was obviously great for us.

Joel Burgess, Founder and CEO Nutrifix
Joel Burgess, Founder and CEO Nutrifix

Escape Velocity was a game changer for us. The biggest impact on us was that it gave us clear direction of what we need to achieve. It has really massively impacted on my life and given me the clear direction and the sort of tools to manage my business.

Julien Deslangles-Blanch, Regional Director, UK & Germany at General Assembly
Julien Deslangles-Blanch, Regional Director, UK & Germany at General Assembly

Howard has been with us in the past five years and has taught thousands of students. I can say he is a fantastic instructor. Honestly, students just love him.

Jakob Modéer, Entrepreneurship Program Manager, Swisscontact Worldwide
Jakob Modéer, Entrepreneurship Program Manager, Swisscontact Worldwide

Our program consists of Macedonia's top performing startups (some already doing millions in revenue $). When I asked the teams who they would like me to bring in to coach them on growth, Howard's name was proposed. Howard came in and made an overwhelming positive impact and has helped our entrepreneurs grow their businesses to the next level.

Jennifer Maerz, Editor in Chief & Program Chair, The Lean Startup Co
Jennifer Maerz, Editor in Chief & Program Chair, The Lean Startup Co

Howard gave a fantastic keynote at Lean Startup Summit London 2017. His talk blended strategic thinking with practical takeaways that engaged the audience throughout.

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