Having worked at Spilgames in 2009, I mostly heard channel managers and game developers talk about gamification aspects. When I first encountered this topic, it seemed a dry gaming thing and irrelevant for programming aspects. “I am not a game designer, what’s the point for me?” Soon, Zynga would achieve huge success with gamification, growing social game Farmville with 1 million users a week in 2009. The word ‘gamification’ became one of the biggest Internet buzz words of 2010. With the success of Zynga (Exploding monthly active users) Now, one year later, gamification is getting broader application and entering different industries, making it an important aspect for almost every industry. (on Facebook)

Note: I wrote the following post mostly for myself. Based on three articles plucked of the Internet, mentioned in ‘sources’ below, I summarized the most important points for facebook gamification elements. (At first I was searching in a scientific database but found little on the subject) So i’ve decided to put them on my blog now I wrote them out. Let me know if you have any additions or comments.

Gamification as a marketing tool

From http://www.localwisdom.com/blog/2010/09/four-square-mayor-spot-at-a-ua-movie-theatre/img_0051/

Gamification is all about rewarding users, by looking at the game industry and applying game design techniques to non-game applications. Gamification can be applied to almost every industry to create fun and engaging experiences for users. It can make tasks that users would usually find boring more interesting, making studying online, filling out survey’s, online shopping or reading websites more interesting.

Another important reason to look at gamification is from a marketing perspective. Remember how proudly you told your friends you received a gold frequent flyer card? Gamification can apply dynamics from your airline’s loyalty programs in your own online product, giving it viral marketing aspects. Viral marketing is the application of social platforms to promote a product or service. Due to the word of mouth aspect of viral loyalty programs though gamification, one can achieve incredible user acquirement. Another important point is that gamification could enable loyalty for cheaper products rather than luxury goods.

Finally, gamification is important to create engagement with your users. Is it me or are Internet communities getting less diverse? I used to be part of a lot of social networks but today I mainly go to Facebook and Twitter. These websites are so sticky that one is tempted to make it a habit to visit once or twice per day. The return rate is achieved with interesting information and gamification elements.

Applying gamification for your app in facebook

A few days ago, Marc Zuckerberg took the stage at a Facebook’s conference in San Francisco. Here, as you probably know, Facebook stipulated a new set of new tools for their platform. Among many others, timeline, and a real time activity bar on the right side of the facebook UI. After a week of good use, I see that their decision to separate top news from real time activity bar is a useful attention for gamification. How to make use of these functionalities in gamification terms?

Imagine you would launch an app on facebook or other social network. What gamification items would be used for what goal?

1/8 Activity feeds
If you want to show users they are not alone using your app, give them real time feedback with activity feeds. In traditional gaming like FPS games, the activity feed would be a real time indication of game progression. On Facebook, the recently launched real time activity feed could perhaps server better as a tool to show off that your friends came back to the app. Besides, the timeline still allow to share achievements achievements to others and motivate other players to achieve the same. The Facebook ticker is also a great aware maker for the user itself to understand that there are game elements in the app they are currently using. Ofcourse, Facebook used to allow more visible ways to promote an app for developers, but real time isn’t bad at all.

2/8 Personalization
To improve emotional attachment, consider personalization features. Offering a user personalization of their experience is a great engagement tool. Example of this is to offer avatars (customizable picture) to represent the user across the website. On Facebook, the user sets an avatar for the entire website, making the avatar feature less powerful. One could consider other personalization features to achieve a better experience. An example of this could be allowing users to save their experience, give them names and allowing them to create an environment of themselves, giving them a feeling of ownership of their newly created assets on your application.

3/8 Badges and Achievements
Badges are representations of accomplishments. Usually easy to achieve at first, but harder as the game progresses. Emotionally, it gives users something to brag about what they have done. It also adds challenge and character to the game. Usually, badges are combined with achievements which are unlocked at a certain stage. These are the real game changers, but are industry specific. Examples could be to allow users a ‘power’ at a certain level. Like moderation access (The ability to be the moderator of a conversation), or discount code’s.

4/8 Challenges
Add challenges to increase users engagement and efforts (Time) on your app. Apps come and go on Facebook, people who can oversee the entire app at once will likely not come back. Challenges are somewhat similar to quests in role playing games. You can think about ways to extend your app with a time limited competition or achievement/obstacle a user needs to overcome. An example of this could be to give a badge to people that become skillful at using your app, with some proof.

5/8 mini games
To add entertainment to the app or website, consider to include mini games on the site. Mini games are small, achievable challenges. I believe this is perfect if your app is complicated and requires a lot of time to attain, a mini game can break the flow in a more enjoyable path. The outcome can be shared achievements (thus achievement for user and virality for you).Embedding small mini games within activities also motivates the user to explore more on your app.

6/8 Leaderboards
To increase community and achievements, add a leader board to your app. A leader board is a board showing the ranking of leaders in a competition. A leader board is great for people to show off their commitment and could serve an aspiration for new users. If you have badges on your app or website, you can display those over here as well. Using facebook auth you can get a clear idea about your users demographics on your app.

7/8 Levels
Levels can be used to increase the lifespan of your app or website. Divide content in different stages and create a challenge to unlock the next level. Levels can be tied to unlocking content on a website, or used simply as a motivational note to keep players progressing forward. This is somewhat related to challenges on your site.

Levels are somewhat hard to create for functional apps. However, examples could be to make an analysis of your app. Cut it into different level’s (let’s say 3) and step by step giving hidden content to a user when they complete a set of difficult tasks.

8/8 Progress bars
To improve return rate and completion of tasks, consider adding a progress bar. A progress bar is a gauge on your app which displays the success of the user is displayed. LinkedIn makes great usage of progress bars to motivate users to complete their profile.

Future

Gamification will certainly become a bigger part of our lives in the future. I foresee that platforms (iOS, Facebook etc.) will enable more game elements though their SDK’s, making game elements part of a broader application then games only. To goal will be moving from engagement only, to also money driven ramifications. Peter Driessen mentions in Emerce that a lot of daily activities could be turned into a game. Examples could be to gamify doing dishes, or brushing the teeth. Using a small chip in the device, a social network would enable a leader board with the best tooth brushing child of the week.
SOURCES:

1. http://gamification.org/wiki/Game_Features/Activity_Feed
2. http://loveitorleavitt.com/post/2674926662/gamification
3. http://www.emerce.nl/interviews/hele-leven-game