Gamification for Entertainment & Building Loyalty

Notes from Mario Herger workshop at WIX Idea to IPO MeetUp:

Gamification Principles:

Smooth onboarding
Visual feedback
Aural feedback
Clear goal
Hidden goal
Secondary goal(s)
Creating teams
Make simple, routine tasks artificially hard so people compete

Gamification Apps:

– Loyalty programs
– TurboTax (tax filing)
– Hybrid vehicles (see Fiat Ecoville)
– LinkedIn
– Amazon
– Nike+
– Zombie Plus

Engaged Employees: “work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization forward.”

– Look at Skyfall challenge
– Look at Lego competition

Compare gamification with Gartner hype cycle. Start with an invisible trigger, leading to a peak of excitement, then a trough, followed ideally by a plateau of productivity.

Gamification Theory:

Flow Theory: Boredom vs. Difficulty. As the need for skills increases (less boring) the degree of difficulty needs to also increase by a concomitant amount in order to keep the user in the “flow zone”.

Skill Levels: rookie (onboarding); regular (habit-building); master (challenge, creation)

Multidimensionality of Players: what is the motivation of the player? What is their social rule, professional role, gender, age (generation), culture, etc. Bartle’s 4 player types (Richard Bartle): Killers (want to win); Achievers (collect prizes); Explorers (like adventure); Socializers (intersect with others)

Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivators:

Intrinsic: Belongingness, autonomy, power, mastery, meaning, learning, self-knowledge, love, sex, fun

Extrinsic: Points, levels, badges, quests, leader-boards, prizes, money, gold stars, etc.