Gamification trend or future?

Every where you turn someone is Gamifying something.

I’ve been doing the Gamify Your Life, Gamify Your Work/Business thing for 14 years in workshops all over the world. Teaching people in Experiential workshops about how to approach life, your jobs, your relationship or your health, heck even small projects, as if you were playing a game. Personally I have a great time doing so and love the personal development, business development, leadership and just plain life transformation that happens for people when they play.

And now finally, with the preponderance of online gaming experiences, it’s an idea whose time seems to have come. In fact it has the virus/meme quality to it now. But will it come and go?

Personally I don’t think so. For a number of reasons and here’s a short list:

1. Everyone actually loves games – we’re just bringing people up to speed that the world can work that way. Tony Hsieh at Zappos, the wildly successful online shoe company has created a ‘fun’ culture and clearly the FQ (Fun Quotient) hasn’t cost his company any. Here’s a great you tube videos of the family of fun that’s been created. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gHlEBU_NSg   And the numbers for his company keep going up.
2. Gamification has legitimacy – Whether it’s the Harvard Business review article titled “Online Learning Labs” http://hbr.org/2008/05/leaderships-online-labs/ar/1   or the recent Gamification course offered by Wharton business school, it’s clear these esteemed business environments aren’t just playing around with the topic. When it shows up in those hallowed halls you know something’s up.
3. Gamification gets results – “Gamers Decode AIDS Protein That Stumped Researchers for 15 years in just 3 weeks” (actually there’s an update that it took only 10 days) here’s the link     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/19/aids-protein-decoded-gamers_n_970113.html
4. And online companies are using Game Elements to help their website attract traffic and basically just give a great user experience.  Like this one https://www.fitocracy.com/  that creates fitness more like a fun game than the frickin chore it normally seems to be.

And these are just some of the real world examples. So Are You Playing the Game or is the Game Playing You? Let me know if you want to have a better time playing the game you’re already playing. Sincerely, your GameMaster  Michael Stratford

Posted by Michael Stratford in Gamify for Success.

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