Gamification: Definition & Guide 2024

Table of Contents - Guide to Gamification

Introduction to gamification

The first question you’re probably asking yourself is: “What exactly is gamification?” In our Gamification Guide we will answer all your questions about this innovative practice.

Definition of gamification

Gamification, in a nutshell, turns traditionally more serious and less playful activities into games. Gamification takes the playful mechanics of games and applies them to tasks in various fields for varying purposes. Ultimately, gamification allows us to turn all tasks into the form of a game.

Gamification made its Oxford English Dictionary debut in 2011, where it was defined as, “the application of concepts and techniques from games to other areas of study.” In its simplest form it can consist of adding progress bars or assigning points for a good deed, engaging and urging the user, or player, to venture towards desired outcomes.

A short history of gamification

The term gamification is relatively modern, however, its origins date back thousands of years. While the use of game mechanics to deal with social situations have been implemented since the dawn of civilization, the concept has been able to evolve rapidly over the past two decades due to advances in technology.

The appearance of the first games

Games were first used in a non-leisurely context more than 2,000 years ago. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Lydians, an ancient Indo-European civilisation, created games to distract themselves from famine.

During the reign of Atys, a great famine struck all of Lydia, leaving the Lydians in a state of uncertainty and fear. To distract themselves from the hardships the famine presented, they invented dice, knucklebones, the ball, and other games. They would spend the entirety of every other day playing a game to distract themselves from their hunger, then eat the next day. They essentially used games to make rationing food more palatable.

According to Herodotus, these games enabled the Lydians to survive for 18 years before they divided and set out to conquer new lands. Despite the questionable accuracy of this account, the Lydian example shows us the tremendous potential of play in our daily lives and the effects it can have on our brains.

Emergence in the 1980s and 1990s

In 1978, Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw unveiled an early example of gamification as we understand it today. They created the MUD1 game, which would go on to show the world that it was possible to offer total freedom to users to inhabit the same online reality as others. It was the first ever online multiplayer role-playing game.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the first airline loyalty programmes were launched, making it possible to earn points to be exchanged for free flights, other prizes, and reductions. These programmes laid the foundations for the modern phenomenon of gamification. Through this system of accumulating points and rewards, we find the fundamentals of the traditional game added to the customer experience.

With the internet’s arrival at the end of the 1980s, the potential scope of gamification wasn’t far away from being realised.

The advent of gamification in the 2000s

In the 2000s, the emergence of a social and open web created tremendous potential for gamification. It was in 2002 that the term and its concept were coined and used for the first time by Nick Pelling, a British programmer and writer. Then, thanks to American game designers Jane McGonigal and Jesse Schell’s work, the concept took on global significance.

Yu-kai Chou, an American entrepreneur and author of Taiwanese origin, began researching gamification in 2003, and contributed greatly to its development and globalisation. Chou created the Octalysis Framework, a model which lays out eight core drives for human motivation. This “human-focused design framework” acknowledges that humans, unlike machines, have feelings, insecurities, and idiosyncrasies, and lays out the structure for analysing the driving forces behind human motivation. It essentially gave the gamification industry the tools to gamify any service or experience.

The word “gamification” became popular around 2010 to describe the use of game mechanics applied to non-gaming activities. The following year, the first Gamification Summit took place in San Francisco. Following this, the potential scope of gamification began to be realised. Web 2.0 and social gaming have transformed the habits of consumers and users due to the addictive element of games.

In the years that followed, the concept of gamification was constantly discussed at international conferences, seminars, and fairs. Thousands of years after the Lydians played knucklebones to distract themselves from a famine, games have gone on to play a considerable role in modern societies. Almost all applications on smartphones use gamification, and we use it both in learning, and in all aspects of our social lives.

The codes of gamification

Gamification mechanisms

Gamification is built by using varying playful game mechanics to achieve specific goals. It generates engagement through elements that drive the action forward. The game must set an objective to be achieved with a notion of competition or cooperation that will encourage potential players to participate.

Points

Using a point-based rewards system measures a participant’s activity. The more they play, the more tasks they are able to complete, and the more points they can potentially earn. When they have earned enough points, they can access prizes.

Badges

This mechanism, which can become a pillar of user engagement, is based on awarding badges to mark progress and congratulate the efforts made by players. Badges have become a great way to reward individuals for their creativity and active participation.

Rewards

From a certain stage, the points earned can be exchanged for real or virtual rewards. Therefore, it can keep players coming back for more rewards.

Levels

Points earned not only provide rewards, but also status. This status reflects the player’s experience and corresponds to the player’s level in the game. The more experienced they are, the higher their level, and therefore they are granted greater access to new advantages and rewards. A level system therefore enhances the player’s experience, makes it possible to better visualise their margin of progress, and illustrates what remains for them to accomplish.

Rankings

A ranking system appeals to a player’s desire for competition. The fact that some players gain skills and rewards will make other players want to reach their level or even exceed them. Allowing them to contextualise their progress and their position in relation to others using a ranking system can stoke the competitive nature of some players.

Progress bar

Contextualising progress keeps players motivated, making the progress bar a key mechanism in gamification. It serves as a visual indicator of the amount of work already accomplished, and engages players by showing them their continuing progress through a game. The progress bar keeps the player striving towards their next level, goal or reward.

The psychological levers of gamification

Gamification is also built on several psychological engagement levers. Each of them is set up with the aim of motivating and involving players in different ways, allowing you, the creator or commissioner of the game, to achieve the objectives of your project.

Social dimension

The social dimension is essential for the smooth running of gamified content. The elements of sharing, recommendation, and socialisation must be present for the creation of any game. The search for interaction and forming relationships gives a more human framework to the game.

Discovery

Curiosity is one of the most powerful human emotions. Creating a universe to explore within a game makes it possible to tap into the curiosity of players, and through the mechanics of game-play, satisfy that curiosity.

Challenge

When you want to engage competitive personalities, you have to give them the opportunity to challenge themselves with clear and achievable objectives. Challenges encourage the successful completion of exercises or tasks, which once achieved, can leave players with a sense of accomplishment. They allow players to challenge themselves first of all, but also other players. Competition is an important element that pushes players to surpass themselves, and can keep them interested in the game.

Commitment

With sophisticated game mechanics, you can easily generate commitment and retain all types of people: consumers, collaborators, audiences, or even communities.

Risk appetite

For some people – like those addicted to extreme sports – dangerous or risky situations can be very exciting and make for compelling experiences. This desire for excitement can, for many people, be satisfied through games and in worlds outside of reality.

Progression

Game mechanics and gamification captivates us and keeps us engaged primarily by that sense of progress we feel after improving skills, unlocking badges, and interacting with a game’s unfolding story. We keep pushing on to find out what’s next and new in the game.

The different levels of commitment

Game designer Nicole Lazzaro has worked on a model to better understand the biggest hits in the video game world. This model, based on four “key types of fun,” helps game designers to identify and generate engagement corresponding to the expectations of an audience. Each of the four keys unlocks a different set of gaming experiences.

The EASY FUN

The Easy Fun model first arouses players’ curiosity and is based on emotions such as wonder or admiration. They enjoy exploring and being creative for an even more immersive gaming experience. Easy fun keeps the focus on player attention rather than a focus on winning or conquering. Games using this key encourage the player to linger and immerse themselves in the experience.

The HARD FUN

The opposite of Easy Fun is Hard Fun. Hard Fun is a gaming experience for players who like challenges to overcome and problems to solve. These types of games require more commitment from the player than others. They rely on the player having a certain level of internal motivation, and are not intended for all audiences. Hard Fun creates emotions by structuring the experience towards the pursuit of a goal.

The PEOPLE FUN

The People Fun aspect is based on the desire for social interaction between players. Creating a relationship with other people is very important for the development of collaboration and camaraderie between players, which can flourish when they pursue common goals. Opportunities for competition, cooperation, performance and spectacle are to be highlighted.

The SERIOUS FUN

Finally, people looking for Serious Fun want to live new experiences and be able to influence their gaming environment. What matters is the player’s feeling of accomplishment and relaxation in a world where they will have a real role to play. To play games with this key encourages performance and stimulates the player’s senses and intelligence through engaging interactions.

Types of players

In 1996, Richard Bartle published an article in which he characterised the different types of game players. He carefully studied the different profiles of the people playing his video game, and analysed the way in which they each played it. He drew a conclusion from his observation: even if everyone plays the same game, each of them is looking for something different, and above all, they all have a different gaming experience. From those conclusions, he theorised that there were four main types of players with very distinct characteristics.

The ACHIEVERS

Achievers are players who are highly motivated by progressing through and mastering the game they are playing. They are characterised by a taste for challenge and the feeling of having accomplished something. This type of player is 100% dedicated in a game and will do everything they can to either rank highest on the leaderboard, or complete a game in its entirety. They will seek to explore every aspect of it to get all the rewards available.

Points to consider in gamification: the addition of a progress bar, tasks to be accomplished, or badges.

The EXPLORERS

Explorers crave exploration, discovery, and novelty. What matters is not the destination, but the journey. Explorers want to see new things and above all, enjoy exploring a world where immersion and curiosity are at the heart of their gaming experience. For them, it’s not about breaking the speed record to finish a game, but rather to take their time to discover everything about the world within a game.

Points to consider in gamification: the scenario and the graphic universe are extremely important elements.

The SOCIALISERS

Socialisers value the social aspect of games above all else. Nearly 80% of players are socializers, they enjoy living and sharing a playful experience with their fellow players. Socialisers are happy to collaborate in order to achieve bigger and better things than they could on their own. Their goal is therefore to interact and communicate with other players, to meet people, and to feel like part of a group or team.

Points to consider in Gamification: share your game on social networks to motivate collaboration and social contact.

The KILLERS

Killers are fighters and conquerors, they want to compete against others and be the best in their class. They are very competitive and victory motivates them. Multiplayer games are therefore an excellent playground for them since they can express their spirit of confrontation and competition. It is necessary to show them how they are doing compared to the rest of the players.

Points to consider in gamification: remember to highlight the ranking of players.

The different applications of gamification

Marketing games

The marketing game allows you to engage your community or customer base on all communication channels. It is also an excellent way to work on your brand image and to send messages on all media: your website, by email or SMS, your various social networks, and any other platforms or applications you may have at your disposal.

Contest games

The contest essentially allows you to create commitment. It allows you to collect both essential and more qualitative information on the profiles of the participants as it will be a requirement of entering the contest. These games also make it possible to highlight certain messages or develop the reputation of a brand. They do this through the game’s content and by the prizes that could be won by players.

Event games

Gamification is increasingly present in the organisation of physical, online, or phygital professional events. Whether for internal or external events, event gamification is an innovative and fun way to engage your audience and deliver all types of messages to participants.

Educational games

An educational game seeks to achieve a specific learning objective. The game makes it possible for players to learn more on a particular subject or develop a new skill set. In classrooms and workplaces, teachers or trainers play an active role in this pedagogy through play because they guide and accompany the activities that are presented. In digital format, tools for creating educational games offer players immersive and continuous learning experiences.

Serious Games

The serious game adds learning objectives to serious subjects in a fun way. It is an educational tool that allows you to reinforce knowledge in a fun medium to test skills and identify areas for improvement.

Concepts around NFTs and cryptocurrencies

Gaming and gamification are an excellent tool for helping the general public to better understand cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Game mechanics create new possibilities when it comes to promoting and utilising these dematerialized assets.

The different objectives of gamification

Create playful and interactive experiences

Gamification is a vital element in the design of an interactive and playful experience in the world of today, and even more so in the world of tomorrow. What we will be able to accomplish through gamified media and content will only be limited by our imaginations.

Create engagement

Everything is based on a simple principle: the more an activity becomes entertaining, the more the investment and the motivation of its participants increase. If you can make an activity more engaging and more fun, whatever it may be, the more motivated people will be in their attempts to succeed at it.

Collect data

Data collection is easier when done as part of a fun and engaging experience. If they’re engaged with your content, which with the mechanics of gameplay becomes a lot easier, you can make entering pertinent data to your business part of the process. It’s a simple formula. Captivate an audience. Capture their data.

Each sector has its own gamification solutions

Marketing and Communication

The use of games in marketing campaigns has multiple advantages for agencies, companies, and brands. They create more engagement, and they can be a great tool to get to know customers better.

Commercial promotion

The use of games as a means of sales promotion is widespread with the creation of contests and marketing aimed at encouraging consumers to interact, discover, buy, or subscribe.

Brand image and notoriety

Improving the reputation of a brand involves the use of more modern and attractive gamification processes. Gamification incorporated into marketing strategies allows brands to give their customers unique, quality experiences. A brand that can offer these to its customers will be perceived as innovative, and this reputation will grow and spread as interactions increase.

Product launch

The launch of a brand, product or service is a crucial moment in any project.  Gamifying can have big impacts at all stages of the launch, so plan ahead. Upstream, you can use games in the form of teasers to confirm user interest in the product. At launch, a gamified and phygital event device can make the occasion an immersive experience that guests will remember. After the launch, gamification can convert prospects and retain customers.

Community animation on social networks

Today, creating a loyal and committed community around your brand is essential for your company’s growth, but the work can’t stop there. The biggest challenge ultimately lies in keeping your community engaged. Gamification and games provide an effective way to engage, reward, and ultimately retain your brand’s community in the long-term.

Lead generation

Creating new business opportunities by collecting data and qualified leads is essential for the development of your business. Gamifying elements of this process allows you to offer experiences that combine play, data collection, and conversion.

Retention and loyalty programmes

Create a stronger relationship with your customers by placing them at the heart of your brand experiences. The promise of a reward after completing a task with a loyalty programme nurtures this relationship and builds customer loyalty.

Generate traffic from web-to-store customers

In the field of web-to-store, an effective gamification strategy can generate traffic and attract customers to the store. If you are looking to put physical stores back at the centre of the customer experience, games are an ideal way to share offers and incentives that will encourage customers back into your stores. You therefore create the link between your digital communications and the points of sale – that’s phygital!

Experiential marketing

Experiential marketing is a business concept that aims to provide a memorable experience to a customer before and during their purchase. Think of it as a theatricalization of a place of sale or service that focuses on the customer experience. Experiential marketing and gamification are extremely compatible concepts. When applied together creatively, they have the potential to not only give current customers a great experience, but also draw the eyes of potential new customers with the spectacle they create. One amplifies the other, and vice versa.

CRM data enrichment

Gamification and games allow you to collect CRM data in a more engaging way to better understand your audience or market. Companies that use gamified solutions enrich this data significantly, and do so much faster than companies that don’t.

Collection of customer reviews

Collecting customer reviews and showcasing them has never played such an important role in building brand and company awareness. A quiz or questionnaire will allow you to collect this valuable information with ease. Games will allow you to offer an engaging experience in which you can invite your audience to leave an opinion on your products and services on the opinion platform of your choice.

Events

Gamifying your events is an effective way to encourage and motivate guests in a fun and interactive way. It turns guests into participants, and invites them to become more involved in your programming.

Booth entertainment

Gamifying your project could go a long way to attracting as many visitors as possible to your stand. This could take the form of a points game available on a tablet or touch terminal, or by scanning a QR Code which would have the participants play the game on their phone. All the results could then be displayed in a ranking table, drawing more attention and fostering competition and engagement.

Street marketing

Carrying out a street marketing operation is a particularly effective strategy for recruiting an audience. Much like with the booth entertainment example, gamifying the experience, either through a tablet or through a QR Code on a flyer or screen, is an effective way to reach a lot of people in a short space of time.

Entertainment at events

The game is an ideal unifying activity to ensure entertainment and create interactions. It could involve small numbers of guests competing in smaller competitions throughout the event, or take the form of a quiz, and potentially turn every guest into a player. The possibilities are endless here, and could, in some cases, even incorporate and showcase your brand’s products.

Team building

Gamification and hybrid activities are totally inline with the evolution of the working environment in companies, and have great potential to bring out the best in each participant. Team building is an important process for a company’s culture, and allows you to bring your employees together to foster camaraderie within your teams.

Professional events

Whether it’s a team building exercise, a seminar, or a workshop, the gamification of your professional events will allow you to achieve your objectives and strengthen the bonds of a group.

Media and publishers

Games and gamification represent the most innovative and interactive methods of interacting with an audience on websites. Using game elements to increase time spent engaging with a page helps build a loyal, targeted audience that supports online audience optimization efforts. Games are also a great way to enrich content by making them interactive.

Increase in time spent on a website

Adding interactive elements and game mechanics can improve your website’s KPIs and web analytics. Above all else, they can increase the time spent on your site, conversion rates, and traffic to your website or mobile application.

Gamified ad campaigns for advertisers

Advertisers are always looking for innovative advertising formats. With a good game concept, you will make a lasting impression in the minds of your target audience while getting your message across more easily. With a modern and original campaign to set yourself apart from your competitors, you can build lasting notoriety. The marketing of game concepts for your advertisers also makes it possible to generate turnover on the principle of sponsoring campaigns or product placements.

Collect, segment, and enrich user data

Games are an essential tool in the collection, prioritisation, and qualification of data when it comes to delving deeper into the mind of your audience.

In business and human resources

Gamification in business transforms our relationships with work, how we can utilise our problem-solving skills, and our attitudes towards learning. When one wishes to integrate gamification into one’s business strategy and human resources, the game within the work must be intrinsically linked to a clear and measurable objective. It must also be consistent with the company’s vision, as well as its values ​​and mission.

Internal communication

If the game is a business’s opportunity to communicate with its audience and its customers, it is just as effectively employed in human resources. Gamification can be used as an internal communication tool to facilitate access to information within the company, promote employee involvement, or even develop cohesion within a team via a fun approach.

Employer brand

You can boost your brand as an employer through gamification by creating interactive modules and tailor-made games for your company. You can harness the power of games to reveal your business strategy or to reward employees at the end of the year. Gamification can also be used to create innovative recruitment campaigns targeting qualified candidates.

Recruitment

You can introduce fun elements into your recruitment process to attract candidates, facilitate the application process, and also to enhance the candidate’s experience during the interview and evaluation phases. You will be able to detect and select qualified candidate profiles more efficiently when this strategy is effectively executed.

Onboarding

If you decide to gamify your recruiting process, also consider gamifying the onboarding process to keep the experience for new hires consistent. You could gamify a course composed of numerous levels in which newcomers learn the company’s values, strategies, and best practices. Gamifying it can make it a fun, engaging and productive process, rather than a dry box-ticking exercise.

Business strategy

Business strategy concerns the organisation of a company as a whole and how it aims to achieve its vision and objectives. By deploying a gamification project that touches all levels of your organisation, you can communicate this strategy to your teams in an engaging way. This can better prepare your company to achieve its vision and objectives, as everyone understands the mission.

Digital transformation

A digital transition phase can be a complex period, but with gamification, you can facilitate the process with real-time communication. Forget the geographical constraints and increase your knowledge of your target markets thanks to the data collected by the games.

Training and Education

Gamification makes learning and training more enjoyable and fun, while increasing productivity. Implementing rewarding play elements has the potential to completely change the way we learn. Games encourage intrinsic motivation, which is the desire to do something because the task actually interests you.

E-learning

E-learning platforms are essential in the field of training, whatever the sector. Harnessing gamification to make the experience more engaging allows learners to focus on the topics for longer, making their training more efficient.

Professional training

Gamification provides a lot of utility for corporate training. In-house training games promote the development of new skills and their applications at work. Because of the playful game mechanics, they allow learners to be more engaged in their training and absorb information more effectively. As an educational tool for employee training, gamification has proven to be a very effective practice.

Education

Incorporating elements of games into educational environments helps to increase levels of engagement and reduce the number of students losing focus. Games can be a great asset for educators to complement and reinforce lessons.

Associations and non-profit organisations

The use of gamification can be very effective when it comes to reinforcing your message, retaining volunteers and populations, and promoting your organisation.

Develop reputation

Gamification makes it possible to approach the general public and foster interest and support in a fun way. Games can help people learn about your organisation’s purpose, actions and values in a fun and engaging way, making the information easier to digest.

Fundraise

Creating a game-based campaign is an immediate and powerful solution for fundraising, and has the added benefit of creating engagement with donors through a gamified process. The engagement with donors allows information gathering which could be used to make future campaigns more effective.

Promote an awareness campaign

To be impactful, an awareness campaign must be based on three important points: the message you want to convey, the target you are addressing, and the format your awareness campaign should take. The game element allows you to amplify these points in order to reach as many people as possible.

Unify local or national populations

The games represent an alternative communications strategy to unify and motivate populations around a specific cause or idea.

Drimify’s expertise

Benefit from more than 15 years of passion, expertise, advice and tips from the Drimify team to help your gamification projects achieve their goals.

Gamification solutions platform

A catalogue of varied games

Discover and enjoy our catalogue of games all year round. Create quizzes, instant-win contests, and points-based challenges to diversify your organisation’s approaches to marketing, training, and brand engagement. Consider employing longer, more immersive experiences into your content strategies with something like the Dynamic Journey™, which allows you to tell your own story while incorporating all the game engines from Drimify’s catalogue.

Easily create immersive experiences

Add your content, texts and images to our specialised online game creation tool, then the system takes care of the rest. No technical coding knowledge is required. You design your games easily and digitise your content in a fun way in a few minutes.

Completely customisable

Our gamification platform offers you 100% customizable games. Your colours, your logo, your images, your videos, and your texts. Let your creativity express itself through customization without constraint.

Shareable on all communication channels

All our games are mobile-first and responsive, so they easily adapt to all your communication channels. Share your creations and concepts with ease on all media: websites, intranets, social networks, emails, newsletters, QR Codes and more.

Mobile-first

In terms of format, the “mobile-first” principle plays an important role in product design. Mobile-first consists of designing our games by prioritising the mobile version and gradually adapting the design for larger screens. In this way, we ensure the most optimal user experience possible on all types of media and devices, whether that’s a smartphone, a tablet, or a computer.

Collect data, generate qualified leads, and analyse results

Collect data and analyse the results in real time from your Drimify creation platform dashboard. You will be able to extract key data to guide decision-making at various stages of your project.

Gamification agency

Creators of games and digital experiences since 2007

Drimify was designed by our team of gamification experts, the DrimTeam, the same team that has been working for more than 15 years at the heart of Drimlike, our creative digital agency. It is the logical continuation of our years spent creating games and digital concepts for our customers around the world. We decided to make gamification accessible to everyone.

A team of passionate experts

When we realised the impact that our games could have, and their effectiveness regardless of the sector, we naturally wanted to share it with as many people as possible through the Drimify platform. Drimify gives everyone access to the superpowers of gamification and digitalization.

Support services

Because we are able to support you and assist you at every stage of your project, Drimify has created support offers to meet your different needs and objectives. Take advantage of our gamification platform, the strategic and creative advice of our experts, and the resources of our blog to define your project. Through our various support packs, we can help you at every stage of your project, and offer you an appropriate gamification solution for your aims.

The stages of a gamification project: A to Z

Define the gamification strategy

For your strategy to be effective and successful, the first steps in designing your project are extremely important. Your objectives must be clear and precise and for that, you must ask yourself the right questions. They will help you choose the most suitable game format and reward system.

Adapt the game mechanics and experiences to the objectives

Defining the type of experience you want to deliver to your target audience and how this can tie into your project’s objectives is of primary importance. It is important that the gamification mechanism is adapted so that it can deliver the desired results. There is no one-size-fits-all format here, so gameplay and experiences must be customised to match your audience.

Create your gamification experiences with ease

Create and share experiences with ease! Get results quickly by customising content, graphic appearance and user experience in just a few steps. No technical skills are required to design games on our gamification platform.

Ensure effective promotion

The relationship that you are trying to develop with your audience must first and foremost be long-term. For your gamification operation to be a success, it also needs to be long-term. To win, it needs your support. It is important to promote your game on the various communication channels available to you.

Good communication can help you get the desired results.

Analyse statistics and results

The games you create allow you to collect data at each stage of your audience’s interactions. This information is available from your dashboard and can be consulted at any time.

Analysing the data of your gamification project is necessary to allow the extraction of important information. By tracking results, you will assess the performance of your project and understand the behaviour of your participants. This will allow you to better optimise your project going forward. You can also retain data from past projects as a training and reference tool for future projects.

Repeat the experience

This is your gamification strategy. It needs to be developed over time, and must be regularly renewed and adjusted according to the evolution of your objectives. It is the repeated use of gamification that makes it possible to effectively encourage audiences to embrace this playful and digital aspect of your outreach. Consistent use of gamification will allow you to strengthen the commitment of your community and act effectively on its loyalty.

Captivate your audience

After reading this guide, you now know that utilising gamification makes it possible to stand out from your competitors with a truly innovative approach. Whether it’s marketing, training, outreach, or spreading a message, the possibilities really are unlimited.

So why wait? Our platform is putting the superpowers of gamification at your disposal.

Now it’s your turn! 🙂