10 Gamification Predictions for 2012
In 2011, “gamification” grew from what many considered a funny-sounding word to a significant and sustainable business strategy. Now top analysts and business leaders are predicting gamification to be one of the top trends of 2012, and for good reason. As the gold standard for gamification and reputation programs, it has been quite a remarkable year for Badgeville, following our launch in the fall of 2010. Along with the rise of gamification, we have grown from just 4 employees in 2010 to 50 at the end of 2011, and our client roster now includes over 100 global businesses, and we are supporting over 1 Billion API calls per month.
Next year, gamification will undoubtedly be one of the largest trends for the enterprise. My predictions for what that means in the coming year are as follows:
- Gamification Grows Up
The gamification industry went through its adolescent phase in 2011, as businesses, analysts and press started to take notice of its growth. Like any adolescence, this phase was filled with some awkward misunderstandings, but now business leaders understand the true value of gamification for their key objectives. In 2012 gamification will be an expected part of our digital experiences.
- Focus on Business Results
Gamification is no longer about adding a few points and badges to a site or rewarding users for short-term engagement. It is about viable and sustainable business results, using proven techniques to influence customer and employee behavior. We will see a rise in expectation for gamification ROI to be proven by real business results.
- Gamification Spreads Across All Industries
From healthcare to IT, gamification techniques will be prominently used to drive user behavior. Some key growth industries for consumer experiences in 2012 will be retail & eCommerce, technology, telco, health, education, media, travel, and online communities.
- User Reputation Across All Digital Touchpoints
Reputation and rank systems, part of the gamification umbrella, will become increasingly important in gamification programs. User reputation, focused on rewarding behavior taken on your branded experiences, will need to be portable across all of your online experiences, whether a user is interacting with a product review system, your separate customer community, your mobile app, or any other experience you present to your users.
- Training Compliance gets Gamified
Internally, enterprises will use increasingly sophisticated gamification techniques to monitor and reward employees who go through corporate training programs and update their certifications. 2012 will be a large growth year for internal enterprise use cases for gamification. - Employee Recognition also gets Gamified
In addition to training compliance, enterprises will focus on providing a way to reward their employees for a variety of desirable behaviors, including helping achieve sales, product, and other relevant goals, participating in social programs, and being advocates for the company’s brand.
- Gamification Gets Social
Experiences designed to reward user behavior will require an addition of or integration with a real-time, social experience in order to drive the highest business results for companies. Gamification will be thought of as an extension of social experiences (extending these experiences from Facebook and other social sites to every brand’s web and mobile presence), versus a separate technique for driving behaviors without the context of a social network.
- Gamification Consulting is a Big Business
Agencies and individuals will seek to differentiate themselves as experts in gamification consulting independent of software services. Business executives will seek out consulting services to understand their options to gamify programs, and those who have already established themselves as leaders in the field, such as Amy Jo Kim, Gabe Zichermann, Jane McGonigal, and others, will see an influx of inquiries regarding how to gamify various experiences. - The Analytics Industry is Disrupted by Gamification
People who focus on understanding data for a living will take note of the rapid advances occurring in behavior-based analytics. Businesses will expect metrics to measure not just page views, traffic, and uniques, but to provide much richer insight based on individual users, user types by behavior data, and specific behaviors tied to key business objectives.
- Badgeville will continue its reign as the leader in gamification
With the most powerful and flexible platform to measure and influence behavior, Badgeville will remain the gold standard for gamification. Businesses that want long-term, meaningful behavior change across their online audiences will continue to rely on our Behavior Platform to support their sophisticated gamification, reputation, and social networking programs.
From the Badgeville team, Happy New Years to our customers and friends! We all look forward to 2012: the year of gamification!
I think it is a pity that ‘gamification’ is being seen only as a computer related intervention. In your own definition you describe gamification as ‘Gamification, the practice of applying powerful behavior motivating techniques from traditional games to non-game experiences’, and then go on to describe the digital experience and digital loyalty. Unfortunately I see this not as a symptom of gamification ‘growing up’, but of a symptom of gamification becoming hyped, too narrow focused, and missing opportunities. Although I strongly believe that gamification as you describe it has enormous value and potential and is undoubtedly a powerful tool and exciting development. We have been using game mechanics in serious business games for many years. Interactive game playing in which teams of people get together in a classroom based game environment, or simulated environment using no computers at all, to solve business problems. Serious business games help translate theory into practice, make use of experiential learning. As Confucious said ‘I listen and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand’. Serious or applied games like business simulations help create buy-in to change, address resistance, foster team working, create dialogue, help learn new ways of working and new behavior. In a simulated game environment people test and apply new solutions. They capture concrete improvement actions they have seen, felt and experienced which they can then take away and apply, they are energized and motivated to do things differently……these to me are the value of serious games which unfortunately are not getting the attention they deserve as the ‘gamification hype’ seems to be focusing on computer related systems and interventions. I would like to see organizations such as yours place gamification in a wider context, that to me would be a symptom of gamification growing up. Paul Wilkinson, GamingWorks.nl
testing