Even if Mr. Dale Dougherty hadn’t introduced the term Web 2.0 to the world, the world would still go round and we would still have the nowadays phenomenon of the social changes on the web. As earlier we just had our PROPERTY online for informational purposes, today we SHARE photos, multimedia, code, and thoughts with each other. And the future of the Internet will be the online habits and processes GAMIFIED.
Gamification is integrating game dynamics and mechanics into your site, product, service, community, content or campaign, in order to drive participation, solve problems, and engage users. People tend to return back to places where they leave a part of themselves. Gamification provides tools which influence users’ emotions and induce them to act.
The user engagement is happening by combining game dynamics, mechanics and aesthetics. Dynamics are time-based patterns and systems in your game:
- Pacing
- Appointments
- Progressive unlocks
- Reward schedules
- Dynamic systems
- Influence and status
- Communal discovery
Mechanics are the systems and features that make progress visible:
- Points
- Levels
- Skills
- Leaderboards
- Badges
- Missions
- Virtual goods
- Player journey
Aesthetics are the overall experience that yields emotional engagement:
- Curiosity
- Satisfaction
- Surprise
- Trust
- Delight
- Fun
- Envy
- Pride
- Connection
Some real life examples of gamification would be happy hours where you get an appointment when to come to get a discount for food and drinks, collecting stickers or stamps to get a discount or a product for free, and the usual studying system where you get marks for your skills and there are leaderboards of best students.
Some website examples of gamification would be foursquare, SuperMe, and Stack Overflow. Foursquare is a website where you use your smartphone to unlock places in your city and get badges for achievements. SuperMe is a website about personal success where you grow your skills of Wisdom, Ability, Influence, and Connection by watching videos, doing quizzes, and playing minigames. Also you are assigned different levels, get badges, and can see the activity of your facebook friends. Another great example of a gamified website is Stack Overflow and its sister websites Game Development, User Experience, English Language & Usage, Personal Productivity, OnStartups, etc. These are websites where users ask questions and answer them, vote for the best questions and answers, collect reputation points and badges, and unlock moderation privileges by reputation points.
A lot more about gamification can be learned from gamification.org. Especially I would recommend you the talks by Gabe Zichermann and Seth Priebatsch and also the workshop slides by Amy Jo Kim.












