Top 10 tips on how to use game mechanics in non-game situations

 

 

My name is Vasilis and I work for GAMIFICATION+ as a gamification designer, speaker and trainer. Brighton is my home away from home and a great place to live and work. Brighton is great for business too and the Chamber do a great job helping businesses learn and grow.

 

Here is a small guide on how to use gamification in your own businesses, these top 10 tips are mainly based on the Gamification Project Design Framework we made with Pete Jenkins and you can download after you play a game here. 

 

It doesn’t matter what games you like, they can be digital, board games, sports, chess etc. How do you feel when you play a competitive game compared to a more relaxed game? Play games and observe how you react to the various mechanics and elements of the game. That’s the only way to understand the power they have over us

 

Gamification case studies are a never-ending inspiration. Your project doesn’t have to be a brand-new idea. You can get inspired from something you found online that solved a problem similar to the one you are trying to solve.

 

Gamification is something new and sometimes people are sceptical about it. Try and convince the key people in your organisation before you start designing a solution. It’s nice to have a great idea but it’s even better to be able to bring it to life.

 

When you start a gamification project you need to have a clearly defined goal. That does not necessarily mean hard figures. We may set “improve teamwork” as a goal which is hard to measure with numbers. Improving teamwork is a clear goal though and gamification can help.

 

Do you have a mobile application or a website that could be your gamification platform? You could also use your social media as a tool to build your gamification campaign. This is an important question to answer early in the process as it’s crucial to design a solution for the specific platform you will be using.

 

To achieve the goals you set, you need your users to perform a list of actions. We call these actions User Behaviours. User behaviours work the same way as in games, players need to perform some actions using the tools the game gave them to progress. User behaviours should always be linked to your objective

 

Who are these people that will use our gamification and how will it add value to them? That’s the question you should be answering here. You start by defining the demographics and their motivations You need to design incentives for as many players as possible so you motivate them to adopt the target behaviours.

 

Prototyping is extremely important. In prototyping, you need to be fast and decisive. Take a piece of paper and a pen and try to get feedback from people. Does it make sense to you now that it materialised or not? Maybe you need to iterate many times, prototypes are useful for that because they are not costly.

 

Picking the right team to execute your plan is extremely important. Your team may be other company employees or outside contractors. The important thing is to have all skills you need to bring the project to completion and to be able to collaborate with them efficiently.

 

Roll it out and listen to feedback from players, good or bad, it’s extremely important. See what’s working and what’s maybe not performing as you wanted it to. Develop these improvements and implement them as soon as possible to improve your systems and show users that you care.

If you liked my top 10 tips on how to design a gamification project then you will definitely enjoy the Game Prototyping workshop we have coming up in Brighton on July 19. Join myself and Pete Jenkins on this super creative workshop that will teach you all about games and game mechanics while having fun!

 

For more information and to book your place click here.