When we come across something that has been “gamified” it is very common that this means that this something has been given an interactive layer that did not exist before, making this product more appealing to the audience, more expressive to the users, and more fun in every way. So they say.
Sometimes this takes the form of scoreboards, achievement medals, and comparative rankings between users (the famous Points – Badges and Leaderboards); other times users are given the option to like or share certain content as a way of expressing their opinions; not so rarely, this can also mean the possibility of taking a short knowledge test after being introduced to a certain content.
There are still cases where “gamification” happens through a character-driven journey or promotes visualization of user progression through a stylized map that represents whatever that product or service is, but under a medieval, sci-fi, horror or whatever metaphor.
For all these cases, I can only say one thing: STOP.
Before a necessary series of texts addressing Gamification from a Game Design perspective, perhaps this little manifesto is important to establish something that is extremely important, especially for those who consume Gamification as a user or as a contractor of a service that proposes to offer you this value.
Not every way you promote interaction in an application or context means that you are gamifying that application or context!
Gamification is, under a more objective and methodological definition, the application of ludic elements in contexts that were not originally ludic, with the goal of promoting greater engagement on the part of users. Giving spoilers for a topic that will be discussed in another moment, Gamification is a playful application of Motivational Design.
Interaction, on the other hand, is a much broader and more diverse spectrum. To interact is, literally, to exert a mutual action on something, affecting or influencing its development or condition. To summarize based on the word itself, it is to promote an action between agents, generating an exchange between them.
Are there things in common? Yes, interaction is the basis when you think about Games, since the whole dynamic of a Game is based on how the players can affect that created context, exploring its rules in search of reaching one or more goals.
But thinking about Set Theory, Interaction is a macro aspect in which game elements are included, but they represent a small part of it.
And this divergence is extremely relevant, since a Gamification has the specific purpose of working with issues that Games are usually very good at addressing, such as engagement, retention, and motivation to perform activities through arbitrary conditions and under stresses and conflicts.
On the other hand, not all Interaction has these properties, not least because it is the more comprehensive and heterogeneous of the two. All gamification promotes interaction, but not all interaction is gamification.
What does this mean in practice? That putting a map for the user to navigate, representing his/her journey in the application, may be cute, but deeply inefficient in generating the engagement and sense of progression you expect, even if using pretty maps is something games like Candy Crush do to represent game progression.
That inserting an Avatar as a way of representing the user within a given platform may give five minutes of silly fun in a simple Dress Up dynamic, but it won’t succeed in creating the emotional connection that creating an MMORPG character can do. Much less will it make the user come back to your application just to see the doll they created one more time.
That passing a quiz to your user, testing their knowledge like a fifth grade test, to give an arbitrary score at the end may be a way to digitize a traditional form of assessment, but the sense of achievement of that user for the points he earned is not at all similar to how players deal with their High Scores in Arcade Games.
And do you realize that all these solutions are extremely common when we hear someone talk about “gamifying” something? That’s the Gamification Coach’s beans and rice. The best seller of the stage gamifier. The most frequent type of presentation at any Startup Pitch that talks about how they will gamify something within their platform and cross-references data from the Gaming Industry with data from their own field to corroborate the commercial viability of the stupidest idea any Game Designer can have the displeasure of following.
I still wonder how there are review boards and investors who fall for this, but this is a question to be answered in the future.
In summary, this little provocation was a first step, perhaps an uncomfortable one, towards thinking that people, especially entrepreneurs looking to innovate in their business, should keep in mind that Gamification is not exactly what you imagine it to be.
Despite being able to generate incredible results, Gamification is an application with a purpose, which needs to be thought out based on the characteristics and needs of each context, and should not be confused with various other possible strategies that may be efficient within their proposals, but that will not achieve the objectives expected by the client at the time of application.
