Wednesday, 19 February 2014

Gamification- A new "Fun with Work" trend

The term 'Gamification' sounds very catchy and interesting to most of us as it contains our beloved word i.e 'Game'. In this post, we will go on a brief journey to the new & interesting world of gamification. So, the first few questions which might have popped up in your mind, must be 'what does Gamification exactly mean?, 'what is its relation with the actual games we play on our PC, PS3, X-box etc.?. All these questions of yours will be answered as you go through the topic. So lets begin, shall we?

'Gamification' is the process of applying game thinking, game mechanics & game dynamics to create a game like deep user engagement in the non-gaming context. In layman's language, gamification simply means making a particular organisational process, product or activity more like a video game so that the users will feel like gamers engrossed in playing a game while working on that process, product or activity. This will drastically increase their concentration and involvement in the respective processes or activities assigned to them. Thus, gamification will amplify company's productivity.

                                                                     (image source:- devbridge)

According to the Wikipedia, over 70% of Forbes Global 2000 companies surveyed in 2013 said they planned to use gamification for the purposes of marketing and customer retention. This makes it clear that this new technology of gamification is applied in the field of marketing on a big scale. Gamification is also applied in the education systems wherein studies and exams are made more active & fun by applying conventional gaming concepts so as to amplify the engagement, concentration & loyalty of students. 

Let me give you few simple and familiar gamification examples. We all are well aware of the professional social networking website known as 'LinkedIn'. So, in linkedin, the profile completion progress bar which is called 'percentage complete' is a gamification applied feature which motivates the linkedin members to fill in their respective profile. Also, the 'Profile strength' feature in linkedin encourages the members to reach the 'all star' level by being socially & positively active on linkedin. This is also a gamification feature.

Gamification is a drastically evolving trend in current IT scenario. According to Marketsandmarkets, the gamification market is estimated to grow from $421.3 million in 2013 to $5.502 billion in 2018. This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 67.1% from 2013 to 2018. This obviously signifies a great scope of market growth in this segment. Here is the link if anyone is interested in the market report.



No comments:

Post a Comment