Today, games have become one of the most popular entertainment activities. But they are also used in education, marketing, and business. This is where the concept of gamification – the process of applying game elements and mechanics to non-game spheres for better motivation and communication of participants – comes into play. Gamification turns boring tasks and processes into interesting adventures where participants can earn the same rewards as those who have accounts on a Hellspin login website. This powerful tool helps companies, educational institutions, and other institutions ensure loyalty, improve efficiency, and achieve their goals using game approaches and mechanics. Let’s dive into the world of gamification and find out how it works and what benefits it can provide.
What Gamification Is
Gamification is the process of applying game mechanics and elements to non-game situations to motivate and engage participants. It’s used in business, marketing, advertising, education, healthcare, etc. It may involve the use of badges, levels, point systems, quests, and other elements that strongly influence a person’s interest.
Gamification works based on an understanding of what needs drive human stimulation and how they can be met. According to many psychologists and researchers, human motivation is based on the following needs that make it possible:
- Need for a sense of self worth – Game elements, such as rewards and badges, help the user feel meaningful and valued. Otherwise, it just becomes boring and uninteresting.
- Need for Success – Levels and progress bars allow people to feel satisfied with the progress they’ve made on tasks.
- The need to develop creativity – Motivates people to unlock their creativity by providing a field for experimentation and implementation of something new.
- The need for possession, the feeling of control – Rules and choices help feel more confident and in control of the situation.
- Need for social influence and social connections – Users can feel part of a community, interact with other users, share experiences, and receive feedback.
- Limited resources and the need to satisfy the resulting impatience – Using perks and opportunities to accelerate progress can help people satisfy their need to get results as quickly as possible.
- Need to satisfy curiosity – Using interesting and curiosity-inducing gameplay elements, such as puzzles and riddles, allows for a sense of satisfaction in solving difficult problems.
- Loss Avoidance – Notifications and reminders help you avoid missing opportunities and keep your progress on tasks throughout gameplay time.
Gamification helps meet these needs by creating an engaging and motivating gaming environment. It can provide desired outcomes and progress, allow control, provide social interaction, create a sense of safety, provide chances for recognition and respect, provide novelty and freedom, and help develop skills and knowledge.
What Gamification Is Used for
Gamification is one of the simple and effective tools for increasing the aspirations of users, as well as for winning in different areas. One of the most common scenarios of gamification usage is business and marketing. Let’s take a look at a few examples of how this technique is used in these areas:
- Improving customer engagement. Attracting customers to the company’s products and services. Many restaurants use loyalty systems, where customers can earn points and bonuses for purchases. By the way, this helps retain them and stimulate their purchases.
- Staff training and development. The majority of large companies use training games to help new employees quickly get accustomed and get the necessary knowledge and skills, and learn important work materials.
- Promotional actions and competitions. For example, a company may create a game in which participants can receive discounts or prizes for completing certain tasks or achieving certain indicators.
- Increasing sales. Gamification also works in commerce, increasing sales and revenue. For example, stores can use any loyalty system to entice visitors to buy more products or bonus programs to entice customers to buy from the company again.
- Improving consumer interaction. A company can try to make better interactions with consumers throughout the relationship. For example, it can create a game or an app to make it easier to communicate with customers, get feedback, and provide recommendations.
In general, gamification is an effective way to increase user engagement and motivation, and it also works well for simple tasks. In business and marketing, you need it to provide an engaging and interesting experience for participants, which can lead to more sales and better customer contact.
Criteria When Creating Gamification
When creating gamification, consider 6 basic criteria:
- Uninhibited participation. People should have the freedom of choice and the right to play at their own pleasure.
- Regulated rules. Gamification must have clear and understandable rules that regulate the gamification process. People must understand what actions will lead to what outcomes and how they can achieve the goals of the game.
- Alternate reality. In an alternate reality, users can have new experiences and experiences different from those they experience in everyday life.
- Developmental Stages. Development stages will allow users to achieve certain objectives and increase their level in the game. Each stage should be achievable and present a certain challenge to the user.
- Social World. This is where users can communicate and interact with each other. This will create an additional impetus for activity in the game.
- Dynamics of development. Gamification should have a dynamics of development that will allow it to change and evolve depending on the needs of users. This will allow companies to accumulate game experience and keep the interest for a long time.
Principles of Gamification
In order for a system to be successful, there are certain principles that must be considered. There are several basic gamification principles that can help in creating a successful gaming system:
- Principle of Motivation. The main thing is to have an incentive. The parties must feel interested and passionate about the gameplay. To obtain this goal, it’s necessary to provide them with tasks and challenges that will cause them to want to participate.
- The principle of unexpected discoveries and rewards. The next important principle is to create unexpected discoveries and rewards. This will help keep the players’ attention and create a sense of accomplishment. As an example, this can be a promotion to a new level in the game, which opens after completing a difficult task.
- Status Principle. The status principle has to do with creating a sense of belonging and gaining a certain status in the game. This can be achieved, for example, by giving players rewards for completing certain tasks.
- The principle of competition. Competition is the mechanism by which each character gets to compete against each other to complete tasks. This can include leaderboards, survival battles, challenges, and so on.
- Reward Principle. This can be something tangible, such as a monetary reward, or something more symbolic, such as a prize in the form of a medal for completing a task, name badges, a certain status and the like.
All principles are designed to form an interesting game system that makes people feel motivated and interested in the game. They can be applied in different areas, including business, education, and health care.