Alien spaceships above the Grand Canyon from the computer Game of War.
One thing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has taught us: do not expect the status quo to remain. Walk through any public area and you’ll see people glued to their phones, playing mobile games like Game of War and Candy Crush Saga. They aren’t alone. The computer game industry is among the least-appreciated business phenomena in the world today. But this isn’t an article about video games. It’s about where innovative organizations are applying the techniques that make those games so powerfully engaging.
Playing games with your company
Incorporating elements of computer games proves to be a better way of encouraging staff to watch training videos.
A recent Spectator article made the point that the tecchies see the future as being driven and rewarded by games. The big buzzword in the tech world in recent years has been ‘gamification’ the steady incorporation of elements of gaming into pretty much everything: work, education, shopping, travel. Evangelists cite, as early working examples, the language learning app Duolingo, which uses levels achievements and ‘winning streaks’ to keep students motivated.
Gamification is the perhaps unfortunate name for the growing practice of applying structural elements, design patterns, and psychological insights from game design to business, education, health, marketing, crowdsourcing and other fields. Over the past four years, gamification has gone through a cycle of (over-hype) and (overblown) disappointment common for technological trends. Yet if you look carefully, you’ll see it everywhere.
Most of the initial high-profile cases of gamification were for marketing: for example, USA Network ramped up its engagement numbers with web-based gamified challenges for fans of its shows, and Samsung gave points and badges for learning about its products.
In all walks of business
Today, organizations are using gamification to enhance employees’ performance, promote health and wellness activities, improve retention in online learning, help kids with cancer endure their treatment regimen and teach people how to code, to name just a few examples. Gamification has potential anywhere that motivation is an important element of success.
“Training is a funny thing,” James Sanders, manager of innovation at Deloitte Consulting, said: “No matter how easy you make it to access, or how brilliant the learning programs are, training is simply not the first thing people think of doing when they have some free time. Let’s face it, for most people, on a typical Sunday morning, if given the choice between ‘Am I gonna watch ESPN, or am I gonna do some training?’ training will not win out.”
And yet, by using gamification principles, Deloitte has seen use of its Deloitte Leadership Academy training program increase. Participants, who are spending increased amounts of time on the site and completing programs in increasing numbers, show almost addictive behaviour. Since the integration of gamification, there has been a 37% increase in the number of users returning to the site each week.
Popular leisure-time activities
It’s also worth considering just how widespread computer gaming already is. Where would you guess the games industry ranks today, economically, relative to say, the film and music industries? The gaming industry rakes in close to $200 billion (£147 billion) a year and is already worth double the other two combined and growing fast. Last year, nine times as many people watched the Game Awards as watched the Oscars. The Halo franchise is now worth more than the Harry Potter franchise books, films, and merchandise included. From only a handful thirty years ago, there are now 30 billion regular gamers worldwide and crucially, many of them are beginning to find ways of turning their lifestyle into a living.
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