Gamification: Its Positive Impact on Industries Beyond Gaming

The gaming market has become lucrative in the last twenty years as new consoles have been released and technology has improved. The industry has only grown bigger and shows no signs of slowing down. Many statistics and research pieces show that it will continue to grow at a rapid rate and certain factions of gaming will show more promise than others.

We can talk all day about how the internet created a new market entirely in online gaming and how different factors like socialization have increased participation in online gaming. It would be more interesting to cover the impact of gamification on other industries.

Gamification is a marketing technique used by different industries to include elements of gaming such as online competitions, rules and point scoring to make a service or a product they are selling more fun.

Even companies in the online gaming industry use gamification to edit their existing games by adding more features like new ways to earn points and new tournaments to keep the games entertaining. Online casinos are especially clued into this trend because they have had to revive their old games to appeal to a new generation of online gamers. As there are so many casinos, each one has to stand out amongst potential customers and they do this by customizing their games.

Gamers who play in online casinos like Joe Fortune in Australia may notice that as well as traditional casino games, online casinos also have games with new features and newer play modes. This is a form of gamification because the originals are being altered and new features are being added to market to a different audience. However, now it has expanded beyond the casino and into other industries.

1. Education.

Education has been one of the first sectors to use gamification to engage with children. Because they are young and their minds are still developing, children pick up on technological-related things faster than we do.

Across the board, gamification in education has been shown to improve student engagement with training and educational materials. Websites and trivia games have become popular for children’s learning materials and have helped students improve their memory skills, which can be beneficial when taking a test or an exam.

It has also helped to support different kinds of learners. Children are taught to maintain things in their memory and then are tested on their ability to remember. Gamification in the forms of quizzes, leaderboards and friendly competition helps each child to feel motivated to learn in a way that allows them to remember. Some children are kinesthetic learners who will thrive with gamification, but others learn through reading, writing or visual means. Gamification helps support most if not all types of learners with its different ways of learning.

Even language learning sites like Duolingo have enhanced the learning experience through gamification using streaks, points and levels to motivate people in and out of education to continue their lessons and learn a new language.

2. Marketing services and the engagement of customers.

So it is not strictly an industry, but a sector of the business where marketing and customer engagement have been revolutionized by gamification. Huge companies like Starbucks have incorporated gamification in the form of loyalty schemes and digital visuals of customers’ rewards so they can see how many points they have. Starbucks for example has a loyalty scheme with a tier system and a points system where at 150 stars, a customer gets a free drink. Beyond receiving a free drink, there is a system of tiers where when you spend enough money and earn enough stars, you go up the tier system and receive perks as you level up.

Overall for marketing and the customer engagement department, this shows business is improving and encourages repeat business from customers, especially in the food and drink industry.

3.Business.

In Business, gamification has been used to boost employee productivity and motivate workers during business hours. Companies have incorporated gamification into their training materials with point systems for training questions and collecting real-time data on leaderboards for the employees who get the most questions right.

Businesses have started to use these things to measure employee productivity and it has created some competition, but in a healthy way.

For customers, gamification and points systems have made them loyal. Some businesses have used these to improve their practices by offering rewards, points and cashback to their employees who provide online feedback and answer surveys.

4. Health, wellness and safety.

The health and wellness industry has always been on top of the latest fads but they are also well-acquainted with gamification. On the Apple Watch, there are new workouts and levels when you complete certain ones, you get rewarded with unlocking new ones, like in a video game. There has also been a trend with the Apple Watch through a visual diagram to ‘close your rings’, relating to moving to burn enough calories, getting at least 30 minutes of exercise, completing your step count goal and any other personal goals you set.

For fitness freaks, this is just another way to make exercise fun but for Apple consumers, it has improved health and made exercise fun. Internally you can create a streak of how many days you closed your rings, creating a sense of personal achievement.

Similar fitness apps do the same, as do health and safety apps. For example, Grace James used gamification in her climate change awareness app by incorporating games and 3D effects to educate people about climate change. She used different factors to measure each game’s effectiveness which is one of the many benefits of gamification, receiving real-time feedback.