3 spectacular examples of gamification done right

Nearly a decade on from gamification’s rise to prominence in commercial strategies the world over and there’s still some confusion over how to implement it well. Applied everywhere from healthcare and education to marketing and technology design, it refers to techniques translated from the world of gaming to leverage human behavior commercially or socially.

Gamification builds on the science that says we are motivated by things like completing challenges or clocking up points as markers of progress through a task. With Simulcation Datacenter, we’re using game-based learning and simulation to create an immersive, engaging environment where technology providers, students and customers can connect. Gamification technology may be short in the tooth but there are some notable examples of best practice – let’s look at three.

1.     Nike+

Amidst growing competition from other sports shoe brands, Nike developed a range of activity tracking apps where users can monitor their progress and compete against each other. Using the basic tenets of gamification, they incorporated dynamic leaderboards, personalized profiles, and live results published across social media. By creating a competitive community, with customizable ‘missions’ and progress badges, they unlocked brand advocacy by keeping their customers continuously and publicly engaged. Nike had 500,000 community members and a 47% share of the sports shoe market a year after they launched Nike+ in 2007. That had risen to a 61% controlling market share by 2009 and over 11 million Nike+ members in 2013. 

2.     giffgaff

Known as the ‘mobile network run by you’, UK-based giffgaff operates completely online and with low numbers of staff – focusing instead on cultivating a highly engaged community of users. They use a number of techniques to reward positive community contributions to create a huge user-generated pool of knowledge, including virtual praise (‘kudos’) and payback points earnt through referring people to the service, helping other users, or even creating promotional material for the company. The points can be exchanged for monthly billing discounts, cash, or charitable donations. It works: despite their tiny physical customer service team, giffgaff have 91% customer satisfaction and a Net Promoter score in the mid-70s. 

3.     America’s Army

The official and free to play app from the US Army has been used as a highly engaging recruitment and training tool for over 10 years. Recruitment isn’t a new avenue for gamification: Uber hit the headlines for ‘Code on the Road’ and Google has used coding challenges when users search for certain terms to find their next generation of hires. Following a $5 million investment, America’s Army takes the familiar shooter gameplay of Call of Duty and Counterstrike and combines it with real-world strategic theory and an emphasis on team dynamics. By educating and enticing candidates in one go, it has reportedly recruited more people than all their other methods combined, while costing just a fraction of their total marketing budget.

Over 80% of learners claimed that learning would be more productive if it incorporated familiar gaming mechanics. That’s certainly reflected in the growth of the industry, which is expected to be worth $7.3 billion globally by 2021. We firmly believe in the power of game-based education to make tasks more engaging and boost the learning potential of its users. Alongside simulation techniques, we’re using gamification to bring professionals, students, salespeople and IT providers together in one place: Simulcation Datacenter.

The gamification techniques we use will be familiar – virtual currency, tutorials and missions, and leaderboards – and we use them to simulate some of the real-world challenges faced in datacenters, including real-world infrastructure. Let your staff and students learn through experience and you’ll empower them with deeper knowledge and a greater confidence in their abilities.

Find out more about our fresh approach and preregister for an account.