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Why is Gamification relevant?

In the last post I talked about Gamification and different concepts behind Gamification.   In this post I intend to cover why Gamification has become important.

Let us accept it.  Today we live in a world which is increasingly becoming online.  More and more businesses  are moving online and one of the prime focus for these businesses is to sustain and improve the engagement levels of its users.   Gamification acts as key driver in increasing the engagement level.

Before we delve into how Gamification impacts engagement; let us try to understand what "Engagement" means.  The dictionary definition of Engagement which would applicable to this scenario will be "emotional involvement or commitment". Given this definition - the first aspect to analyze is what drives this involvement and commitment.  The generally accepted hypothesis is that it is "Motivation" that drives commitment which implies that Motivation is the key contributing factor to increase or retain engagement levels.

The image below encapsulates the classic definition and classification of motivational attributes. 








The next aspect we need to look at is how an User can be engaged.    Traditionally  Engagement can be grouped under four broad categories
  • Expressive Engagement - Where in the User expresses his/her opinion,  contributes creatively and personalizes his experiences with the product, application or the system.
  • Exploratory Engagement - Where in the User is motivated to search, explore and find creative ways of using the product, application or the system.
  • Collaborative Engagement - Where in the User is willing to share his experiences, team up with other users of the system and solve problems collectively
  • Competitive Engagement - Where the User actively competes with the other Users to score points, gain recognition or improve his standing among a peer group.
Gamification concepts when used correctly and in proper context can be used to drive the above mentioned Engagement models.  For example;  Avatars and other personalization features can drive expressive engagement;  Challenges and Quests can drive exploratory engagement and levels, badges can drive competitive engagement.

Before we close on this topic, I want to touch upon another important aspect on this subject. Nothing is concrete unless we have an ability to measure the impact.  The same applies to Gamification and its impact on Engagement level. This brings us to an issue of how to measure Engagement.  Engagement can be measured across the following dimensions
  • Recency - How recently an user has actively used the product, application or system
  • Frequency - How frequently does an user uses the product, application or system
  • Duration - How long does the user actively stays and uses the product, application or system
  • Virality - How often does the user talk about, shares or amplifies the information about the product, application or system.
  • Ratings -  What are the ratings provided by the various users of the system,
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