What Is Gamification?

What Is Gamification?

Source: Gamification with Unity 5.x - By: Lauren S. Ferro - Publisher: Packt Publishing - Pub. Date: November 28, 2016 - Web ISBN-13: 978-1-78646-224-4 - Print ISBN-13: 978-1-78646-348-7

Gamification relates to the use of games to tackle issues related to real-world situations, and while the term has become popular, the concept is not entirely new. Think about loyalty cards, not just frequent flyer mile programs, but maybe even at your local butcher or café. Do you get a discount after a certain number of purchases; maybe the 10^th coffee is free. For a while, various reward schemes have already been in place; even giving children a reward for completing household chores or good behavior and awarding gold stars for academic excellence constitute gamification. If you consider social activities such as Scouts, they utilize gamification as part of their procedures. Scouts learn new skills, such as cooperativeness, and by doing so gain different status, and receive badges to demonstrate levels of competency. Gamification has become a favorable approach to engaging clients with new and exciting design schemes to maintain interest and promote a more enjoyable and ideally "fun" product. The product in question does not have to be digital. Therefore, gamification can exist both in a physical realm (as mentioned before with gold stars awards) as well as in a more prominent digital sense (such as badge and point reward systems) as an effective way to motivate and engage users. Some common examples of gamification include:

• Loyalty programs: Each time you engage with the company in a particular way such as buying certain products, or amount of you are rewarded. These rewards can include additional products, points towards items, discounts, and even free items.
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• School House points: A pastime that some of us may remember, especially for fans of Harry Potter. Each time you do the right thing such as following the school rules you get some points. Alternatively, you do the wrong thing and you lose points.
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• Scouts: They reward levels of competency with badges as well as ranks. The more skilled you are the more badges you collect, wear, and ultimately the faster you work your way up the hierarchy.
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• Rewarding in general: This will often be associated with some rules and these rules determine whether or not a reward is obtained. Eat your vegetables, you get dessert; do you math homework you get to play. Both have winning conditions.
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• Tests: As horrifying as it might sound they can be considered as a game. For example, we're on a quest to learn about history. Each assignment you get is like a task, preparing you for the final battle...the exam. At the end of all these assessments, you get a score or a grade that indicates to you your progress as you pass from one concept to the next. Ultimately, your final exam will determine your rank among your peers and whether or not you make it to the next level or not (that being anywhere from your year level to a university). It may be also worth noting that just like in games, you also have those trying to work the system, searching for glitches in the system that they can exploit. However, just like games, they too eventually are kicked.