Must Play

This is the best article I’ve read about why the Gartner all gamification will fail post is stupid AND gamification is harder than you realize.

The post takes 3 myths and patiently and completely explains the TRUTH of gamification - that is highly effective but neither easy or plug and play.

Myth 1:

Points, badges and leaderboards encourage competition and enhance performance

Marty - I agree. Leaderboards managed badly become disincentives. This is why Scoop. Its "horse race leaderboard" called MyCommunity is so brilliant as it only shows the horses running immediately behind and in front of me.

Myth 2:

Gamification is simple – assign points and badges, and you are done!

Marty - If you think about what we are doing you know "simple" doesn't apply. We are applying game theory to web marketing. Simple? Not at all, but what Internet marketing ever starts as "simple"? None that I've ever come across.

Myth 3:

Gamification increases participation and productivity of employees in boring, mechanical tasks

"Boring mechanical tasks are boring. Visiting a website is rarely either boring or mechanical, so I don't see this issue as important as it is for those attempting to adopt gamification for HR and other team building applications.

This post is a tad confusing. Is opening stances is "gamification is being driven by novelty and hype". I agree and disagree with that statement. Yes there is hype, but gamification, the application of game theory to business, is far from new. 

Airlines have been using games for years games called "frequent flyer miles".  When I was growing up moms collected books and books of S&H Greenstamps. The lotto is a game, so examples of successful game theory used by business abound. 

The idea we can create something called "enterprise gamification" for Fortune 1000 companies is somewhat new and it can be full of "hype". The web is the source of that hype. 

Any gamification system needs agreed upon rules; a "game ground" and clear stimulus matched to ever increasingly motivated response. The web makes creation of a game ground easy, players abound and so creation of games and the use of game theory are easier to apply. 

I call BS on the famous 80% will fail Gartner projection too. Or, more accurately, call "so what". I was an Internet marketer and when we started doing anything new at least 80% failed miserably. The web is a self-healing system, so today's failure is tomorrow's winner. 

Great examples in this post after you read down past the confusing intro. Worth a scan for those examples.