What is gamification?

which is kind of a buzz word right now. It's been a buzzword for a couple of years, particularly in the tech industry, but it extends beyond just the tech industry. Oh yeah, yeah, this is Uh, it's funny because it's it's not really a tech topic in a way, because uh, this is a this is a human engineering or you know, cognitive engineering. Short, it's not it's not so much related to specific type of technology, but I think in a

lot of ways it can be traced back to technology. Yeah, basically what gamification is and you can probably figure it out just based on the word. It's applying game thinking and game mechanics to tasks in order to kind of create an extra layer on top of those tasks. And there are a lot of different examples. In fact, we've talked about some of them already. We have indeed sure like um like geo cashing. Geo cashing, i would argue,

is a kind of gamification. You take a basic basic activity, which in in geo cashing you could call it either hiking or if you wanted to, even exploring, and then

you add a game element on top of it. In this case, it might be things like the you know, you have a set of coordinates and you follow it, and then when you get there, there's a little cash of of goodies that's inside a box at that particular location, and then you get to take something, and maybe you leave something behind as well, and that's the game element

to it. And as you continue to geo cash, you accumulate these little tokens or whatever, and you leave your own possibly personalized calling card behind at these various geo cashes, so that other people who are following they may say, Hell, hey, this guy, I've seen this guy's stuff before, this guy was at this other geo cash before. I don't know who he is or or I don't know who she is. But I know that they always leave, you know whatever, like a smurf figurine. You know. So that's that's an

example of gamification. It's adding this element of gameplay on top of another activity. Yes see, I I blame Mary Poppins. She did say that in every job there must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap, the job's a game. Well, actually that was pretty wise because it's it's everywhere these days. It's easy to see, uh, in games, you know, and a lot of our listeners are very serious video play, video game players, video play gamers, um. But sometimes I would not put

it past them. But yeah, all those achievements that you unlock, um, you know, you unlock a new character in the game, you unlock a new scenario, you get a badge for running fifty missions. Yeah, that's all that stuff is gamification. And that's and it's weird to think of gamification on top of games, but it is adding another element for example, and the purpose in technology generally tends to be one

of two things. You're either trying to teach a concept and you're using gamification to entice people to learn about that concept by by creating a sort of a reward system really for them to participate, and the reward system keeps them going. And the other related idea is in engagement. Now, engagement is one of those terms you're gonna hear a

lot in technology companies. Engagement is this elusive thing everyone's going after, and that is not just attracting an audience, but keeping that audience and keeping them coming back to you and and to have them invested in your product over a long term. Because if someone just comes to you once and then they never come back, then you know, you only benefit from that relationship the one time. So what you really want to do is you want to create an experience or a product that has people coming

back to you over and over again. And uh, this can be hardware, it can be software, it can be a service, it can be an activity. Like I said with geo cashing. Letter Boxing is another great example. Letter Boxing again is treasure hunting, and there's a whole range of game systems that are put on top of letter boxing that that make it really an engaging activity for people who get into it. And so gamification, it's it's

something that people have been doing for centuries. I mean they've been throwing games on top of stuff for as long as there have been games, really, but it's only been in the last couple of years that that's kind of become a buzzword where people are concentrating on ways to create game elements on top of whatever it is they're offering in order to get that level of engagement they're looking for. Um yeah, and they're they're all kinds

of applications for this. I mean, um, some of you who have mobile devices like to check in on things like go Wala or four square or Scavenger if you like, and Scavenger. Well, yeah, let's let's start with four square and then move to Scavenger because Scavenger is kind of like a very specific twist on four Square. Well it's funny because um, these these I don't know, they're really

not technically games. Um, their badges that you can earn in four square for example, Yeah, that and and uh that would be I would say the oldest of the

three four Square. You know, once you account create an account on four square and you have a GPS enabled phone, Um, basically you're asked to check in where when you go to someplace, so you know, you get to work Um, you say, okay, I'm here at work, um, and it will tell you, for example, how many of your how many people are there, and how many people possibly who they are? Yeah, if you if you're friends with them, will tell you if your friends are there. It may

even tell you if your friends are nearby. If they're not like right where you are, but they're in the area, it might tell you that. It gives you an opportunity to share that on Facebook and Twitter. It gives you opportunity over time to become the mayor of a location. So that's the first layer of gamification right there, is becoming the mayor, because then you have status. You have attached a status to this service, and status is really

important to people. People like having high status. It's good to be the king. Yeah, it makes you feel important, right, I mean it's it's we all get this like it it just if it feels good. So the mayor idea makes perfect sense, you know it. You could argue, yeah, it's just it just means that you have a smartphone and you've been here a lot. That doesn't that's all it means. But you could say, yeah, but you know,

I've achieved something. I am a mayor here, and then then they have these badges that they have on four Square that you get you You earn these badges by checking into specific types of locations, or perhaps the location you're checking into has a particular feature, like there's one that if you've you've checked into at least three places

that have a photo booth, you get a certain badge. Um, there are there are badges where if you check into a place that has a lot of other people, they have swarm badges, and they have different levels of swarm. So the more people who are there, the the Like if you have like two hundred or five hundred or a thousand people, you'll get a different level of swarm badge for checking in. So if you guys want swarm badges,

here's where you gotta go. You have to go to either south By Southwest or c E S. And I guarantee you because that's where all the tech people are and they all love to use these things. That's where you're gonna get the best chance to really earn one of those badges. You can also earn them an other like really popular places like say disney World or Disneyland. Yeah,

actually that's that's a good point. Go Wala has a feature on it that allows you that where in which they have certain tours where you collect if you go to someplace like uh Disney World, um, you're supposed to if you go to all the different places, they'll have like a subset of badges there and it's sort of like a can you collect all twelve of these locations? You know, see if you can check in at all these different spots, um and then and that really can

do that. Yeah, it really drives engagement. Like we said, like if four Square did not have the badges and did not have the mayor element to it, then there would be I'm sure there would be a significant drop off of the number of people who would use the service a couple of times and then we'll just never come back to it. There would be a lot more of those people, right, and they're there already, are those people.

And it's not like we're saying that these things make you stay, but they are incentives for certain people to keep trying to use this this uh UM service. I know, as as mayor of how stuff works. As of the recording of this podcast, I get really really cheesed off when Brian Steals my mayorship. And that's gone back and forth between the two of us at least five times already. It's impressive. Brian and I we tend to steal this. I become mayor, then like a week later, he's the mayor,

and then I'm the mayor again. And I mean there is a there's a definitely competitive element to now you want to become the mayor, Like there's a there's a certain level satisfaction of stealing the mayor from someone else. UM and uh Goala also offers something, a little something that Fourth Square doesn't that I think is kind of cool. UM. The company that makes uh Goala is called Alamo Fire.

They're based in Texas, and they have a They also if you've ever played the Facebook electing game pack Rat, they also do that. They have some pretty cool art. And that's one of those things that's really neat because they come up with UM badges for certain locations, certain stores and other places. So it's kind of fun to collect those stickers because they may be sort of unique. And you like geo cash and you drop and pick

up items when you go places. You might if you go to a bookstore, you might get a typewriter or what they call a page turner a book. Um, and it has a collector's number on their number, you know, one thousand and fifty four. Um, so you know when they launched that particular item, and so you uh, that kind of keeps you going because you go, okay, well I've gotten these things, or hey, look at that they made a new one for for this station. Um. You

might say, though, what's in this? Why why would anybody do this? Well, companies, uh, these stores for example, have realized that they can offer people using these services a little something extra. You might find if you're using four square, uh a coupon. Yeah. Uh you know they go to this hotel and tell us that you saw this special on four Square and we'll give you ten percent off

your stay. Yeah we Um. I went to a restaurant at Universal, uh the Universal Islands of Adventure properties, and um, they had it where if you showed that you checked in on four Square, that you would get a free cocktail, free my tie, and yeah, I don't drink for for folks listening to the podcast, I'm not a drinker at all. So my wife got to my ties and because she checked into fourth Square and I checked into Fourth Square and my wife was very happy. At the end of

the dinner, she said it was the best dinner ever. Um, getting around the fountain was a bit of a challenge, but no, I'm joking. I'm joking. I love you, Rebecca anyway. So, um, yeah, the the So there's there's this element of tempting people to come into places by having this this special deal. Right, that's one way you can you you as a as a vendor, as a as a retail operator or restaurant operator.

That's one way you would you might want to leverage these services or that this gamification is that it's a way to lure people into your your place. Uh, Scavenger, like you were saying, Scavenger is kind of an interesting thing and that it adds another level level of gameplay to to checking into locations. I first started using Scavenger at c e S so this past the e S

as of the recording of this podcast. And you would go to a booth and you would you know, I went to a booth and they had me sign up for Scavenger and they said, all right, now walk around the booth and you're gonna see different tasks that you need to complete in order to win points, and then at the end of the day there's gonna be a drawing for a prize, and the number of times you're entered into the prize will be dependent upon how many points you burned, So the more points you are and

the more chances you have to win. And it was things like, uh, find out how many uh, how far down this waterproof watch can go before before it's no longer rated for that depth, stuff like that, where it is John Cameron Swayze when you need him right, So you would have to go over to that part of the booth and find that device and learn. You might even have to talk to one of the one of

the representatives there to get the information. Then you have to go into the app and text that information in for it to be verified so that you would get those points. Or it might be get a picture of this one gadget uh that's located somewhere in the booth, and you would have to go through the booth and find it. Well for those people, the people at these booths, every time you're going through and completing one of these tasks, now in your mind you're thinking, I need more points.

I need to get more points because then I can win. Uh. What they're thinking is by making you go to all these different sections of the booth, you are building more awareness of their brand and that you might not be very conscious about it, but that you're gonna take home this experience and you're gonna think, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that that laptop. I remember I saw it at such and such booth because I played that game. And for them, that's where it pays off. It's like marketing, right. It's

a way to build awareness. And they didn't have to buy a commercial. All they did was put this stuff into an app and they let you do all the work. And because there's that reward system, because there's points involved and there's a competition, everybody really comes out of winner because the user gets the feeling of accomplishment as they build points, and the vendor gets the feeling of hey,

we've got a successful marketing campaign. It's not like one of those things where you know, you feel I wouldn't think that as a user. I would feel like I was quote unquote used right because I got something else

out of it. It wasn't just you know, having to walk around I was doing it voluntarily because it meant that I was earning points and that's a lot of that's that's one side of gamification is really you know, you've designed this this level of games to to reward people but also to keep them coming back to you. But there's another level of gamification too, there's a problem solving and learning side of gamification. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, UM.

The In fact, there have been some projects that have been using gamification as a way to and as an incentive for other people to participate. We've talked about crowdsourcing some on the on the show UM where basically, look,

I've got a lot of stuff to do. For example, the SETI at Home project, as as an example we've used before where UM scientists were collecting a mountain of information through radio telescopes and they just didn't have the computing power to process it all in a timely manner to see if there was any kind of discernible signal in all the noise they were getting from space. UM, so they enlisted the help of many many people. Hey, look we've got a little application that you can install

on your computer. It will help us crunch the numbers that we're getting back from space. And in the background you don't have to do anything. Yeah, and and it was a pretty cool screen saver as well. Um, so it looks like it's doing something really cool. And basically you're when you share the information back with them, it's it comes to them in a form that they can use and quickly scan to see if there's any value in it. Um. Also, hey, a little bit of gamification

before gamification was a word. Um, I think, Uh, they offered you the chance. They said, hey, look, if we find somebody out there, Uh, you know, you'll have some credit for that. So you you do get a little something. You get a share in the prize. It's I guess it's not a prize. Essentially, your name is associated with

what could arguably be the biggest scientific discovery since ever. Yeah, but they're doing that with all kinds of other projects now too, where they offer you the opportunity to participate in the project and they'll give you a badge for getting a certain number of units turned in and and uh, you know other kinds of things like that. And there's talk of even turning using gamification in designing educational courses.

So you know, you create a game playing element in learning, and you have created a new way to encourage students to learn. So, you know, one of the big challenges of being a teacher, and there are many, Being a teacher is an incredibly challenging and so I'm sure many

people would argue a very rewarding occupation. I certainly am very thankful that both of my parents are teachers because they they taught me a lot as by extension, but uh yeah, there there's this this idea of throwing game elements into education and turning education into more of a game so that students are are enthusiastic about learning. They're eager to learn because it means that they get points,

they get to move ahead. It's it's it's kind of just taking the whole concept of grades and turning it into more of a a game. And you could you know, we've been doing this, like I said, for decades. I mean, you know, when I was a kid, and you did something really well, you'd get a gold star, Like you know, that's that's a level of gamification. It's a reward system that's kind of like a game. Like you did well

on this test, you get a gold star. Um, it's just taking that and and making it a little more sophisticated and a little more integrated into the educational system. And it's still very early days for that kind of of widespread use of gamification, but uh, there are a lot of people who are really interested to see if

this will pay off in the long run. UM and I actually have an interesting kind of example of this that I would like to talk about just for a second, if I might have you heard of a man named John Hunter. John Hunter. John Hunter is a teacher in UH in Virginia, and he came up with a game that he calls the World Peace Game. And there's a documentary film about this. It's called World Peace Game and Other fourth Grade Achievements, which is a great title. Right.

So yeah, he has he teaches fourth graders and he's a he teaches gifted students. So it's a it's a specific program here. The kids are given an interesting task. They have a UM a map that has four layers to it. It's actually like, uh, levels of of plexiglass and plywood, all right, So you've got the top level is space. That kind of represents space. So it's it's where satellites are, it's where spacecraft are. That's the top level. The next level is airspace, so we're talking like clouds,

weather patterns, planes, that sort of stuff. The base level is ground and sea level. That's where all your your land based in water based units are. And the level below that is under the sea, so it's things like submarines and uh, undersea oil drilling, that kind of stuff. And there's this The purpose of the game is that the they have I think it's four nations that are not representative of any particular real world counterparts phoe nations, and the students even get to to name the nations

that they belong to. Each nation, the teacher comes up to students that he thinks would be particularly well suited for the role and approaches them and said offers them a chance to become prime minister of one of those nations. The prime minister in turn gets to a point from the class uh different cabinet level positions, and these fourth graders end up taking over these nations that all have various economic powers, military powers, they have various complicated relationships

with one another. Um there's a whole element of of competition for resources. There are differing political ideologies, and the goal of the class is to go through this program and by the end of the program achieve world peace while dealing with all the other issues that nations in the world have to deal with. So there could be uh he has I think it's I think it's a thirteen page uh document that has all these different elements

to it, all of which are are somewhat interconnected. So if something changes on one, it's gonna change everything else too, and and so things like there may be various crises like ethnic disputes between different groups. Uh, there may be m a resource shortage, there may be environmental disasters. Uh, there may be um like a massive storm takes out resources in one part of the world, and the students have to keep working together to work through these problems

in order to achieve world peace. Well, this is gamification of a of lots of different issues, things like every he tackles stuff like global warming, you know, political science, um, environmental concerns. I mean, there's all these different elements that go into this game. And the the amazing thing is that I think he I think his classes have a perfect record of reaching world peace by the end of

the program. And he's been doing this since I think ninete so uh, it's a pretty phenomenal uh lesson there and he and he actually says he has a talk, Ted Talk that you I would recommend looking this up, the Ted Talk and there's also the documentary film as well. Both of them are are great. I do recommend them. Um. But he he talks about how at the very beginning of the project, he admits to the students, I don't have the answers. I don't know how to fix the world.

That what you have to do, and here's the game. Yeah, but that's the thing is that it gets these kids thinking because it's in a game format, it gets these kids thinking in a way of how do I solve this this obstacle, how do I how do I get around this obstacle to achieve my goal? And then the hope, of course is that they'll carry that experience with them to actually apply the lessons they learned in that that

game in real life, which is again pretty phenomenal. We should see if we could get an interview with Ian Bogosts from Georgia Tech, the Georgia Institute of Technology, who uh uh also has a um, I don't know if you'd call it a company, but he also has a book called Persuasive Games and the website based on it and the idea he he has a number of games

that look at social and political topics. Um. Basically, how you can generate a discourse around our discussion around these topics through using games, and how you can investigate that. That's sort of a side topic to gamification, because I mean, it's it is gamification, but it's kind of not. Um. Also, Budget Hero on Marketplace, uh, the public radio program marketplace dot org. You can find the budget Hero game. I think I posted it to our Facebook page a long,

long long time ago. But yeah, basically it's a way to balance the budget or um. Actually, I don't know if you had these, but when I was in junior high school, we had the stock market game where they were trying to teach us about economics. But what they would do is say, Okay, we're gonna as a class, everybody gets two fake dollars to invest in the stock market.

Now you guys have to go look at the market and based on what you know of these companies, make some fake investments, and by the end of this, we'll see who has the most money and who has the least. Yeah, I actually won that, I actually failed. Miserable. I want it, and I gotta tell you my team used the throw a dart at it strategy. I mean, that's that works for people in real life. That's the sad thing is that that was a case where gamification did not teach me.

But there are different levels of gamification, sure, and you can and you can use it in your daily life too. Um. I was while while Jonathan was talking a minute ago, was frantically looking at um I prefer molten peanut butter. The um iPhone an iPod app um epic Win. Have you heard of this. It's a it's a really cool little app um and it's uh, it's not free. I think it's two in the app store as of right now. When I happened to be looking at it. I learned

about it a few months ago. Um. But yeah, it's a it's a to do list and so you write down the stuff you have to do, and they give you little badges and things when you actually checked of off your list, and you level up after a certain amount of time, and there are new characters and things. So it's um uh. It's gotten mixed reviews. I would

say mostly positive. I've heard people talking about it in a in a kind of cool way, and um, there are other forms of gamification too for companies now when they're trying to encourage human resources people to sign everybody at your company up and uh. It allows people to give other people a pat on the back in a game. In the game say hey, you want to badge because you really turn that job around from me really quickly,

and I appreciate it. And you know, there there are elements of gamification that have been in the workplace for a while to like, um, like, whenever you have those team building retreats, that's kind of a gamification thing because again you're you're you're doing the team building so that you can, in theory, at any rate, apply those team building skills you you you learn on these retreats to

actual work in the office. But in the case of the retreats, it's to build a team to do things like get across a a an obstacle course, you know that kind of stuff, or you know, everyone is linked together by this one rope and you have to find how to get free of the rope in the smallest number the fewest number of moves possible. That kind of thing, and it's all problem solving skills and teamwork that are part of it. But uh, you know, the the goal isn't just to have a good time and and you know,

to get across an obstacle course. The goal is to build the skills that you're going to need to successfully work your way in that office. So uh yeah, I mean that kind of gamification has been around for for ages and ages, and it's just now we're getting to a point where it the layer is more obvious. It's it's more incorporated directly into whatever it is we're doing.

And we're gonna see lots of this, I think for at least a year, um and if it proves like to truly be a success, we're going to see it from here on out. If people get bored of it, then we'll move on to the next thing. So that, I've seen people criticize gamification to say that, well, one, it's been around forever, and to it's a fad um

or a buzzword. But we'll see what is it is a buzzword, it's certainly something that people have been studying as what it is sort of a hey would you look at that, um, and how can I make use of this in training or education or you know, getting my employees to feel better about themselves or getting more

customers in the door. Um, you know we have. I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of my favorite How stuff Works dot com authors, Stephanie Crawford, who has an article on the side how Gamification Works that highly recommended. It's an excellent article as she mentions people who have been influential and sort of creating, you know, establishing themselves as experts in the field, like Jane McGonagall. Yeah, she gave a keynote presentation itself by south West, which

I hear was amazing. Yeah. Yeah, um and um oh, I'm just trying to find the other person's name. There's several other people who have been really uh it was Gabe Zickerman who who was I've seen there's a couple pieces on O'Riley, the the tech Publisher, Um where you can there's i think a webcast and some other things that you can go check out if you're interested in it. Um. But you know, they're they're really sort of studying this now and and finding ways that people can incorporate it.

So I'm I'm inclined to say. I mean, if it makes the stuff that we do every day a little less boring, um and makes people more likely to be engaged, I don't. I don't see it going away anytime soon. I certainly think that it's uh. It certainly works on me every time I, uh, you know, get stuck in some zinga thing where I have to plant something and be back in twenty minutes. Otherwise it fails miserably. I go, I am such a sucker. Well, and I mean I'm

still using board square. Uh, that was one of those you know, I first started using Twitter. I've said this, told this story several times in the podcast too. When I first started using Twitter, I used it for about a month and then I stopped, and then about three or four months later I picked it up again, and then I've been using it ever since. Uh, four square.

There was a good chance that I was going to Yeah, I installed it, I used it for a couple of weeks, thought it was kind of interesting, and then just sort of forgot about it. And it wasn't until I think I managed to become mayor of a local theater in Atlanta Stage Theater and that's when I the bug bit me and UH. It also helps that actors are by their nature very competitive, and so I and my fellow actors.

I do acting occasionally, but I my fellow actors now try to become the mayor of various UH stages around town. And by the way, this runs the family. My sister is the mayor of a local theater in Atlanta too, because when I got there to check in, I said, oh, she's she's the mayor, and I got a little upset actually, because the it was one of those places that had a special where you could get a discount off your tickets. Well, she was performing in the show. She wasn't buying. She

couldn't even take advantage of the offer. She was in the That's why she had become the mayor, because she had been there for all the rehearsals and the performances. Yeah I love you, says yeah. Yeah, I have to say that all the time. Like I love my wife and I love my sister. The women in my life are wonderful. I'm I'm very happy with them. Please don't

beat me up, don't make a game of it. But yeah, it's I think it's definitely something that's that's going to be around a while, and I'm interested to see where it goes next. Yeah, despite the fact that I fall for it, find myself falling for it, know what's going on, and I'm angry at myself and still do it. Anyway, Well, let's wrap this discussion up. Gamification is a pretty cool trend.

If you have other trends you would like us to talk about, particularly ones that are related to the technology, that's that is what we do. Let us know. You can tell us on Facebook and Twitter are handled. There is text stuff h s W or you can send us an email that addresses tech stuff at how stuff Works dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. Be sure to check out our

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