The BigDoor Blog | Gamification

It’s worth mentioning that today BigDoor Co-Founder and CEO Keith Smith is featured in Forbes, “The Net Breeds Promiscuity; Hang on To Your Customers.”  The article focuses on loyalty. As Keith states, “…your online customers aren’t as committed as you think they are. They’re just as happy to get into bed with some other brand as they are with you. That’s because the Internet has largely killed brand loyalty.”

Keith outlines a few strategies for gaining loyalty including creating valuable content, improving your site’s usability, excellent customer service, fostering online communities and of course adding gamification.

What’s your Loyalty Score?

The first ever MBA course on gamification wrapped up a few weeks ago at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The course was offered by law professors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter. The experimental course was designed to explore game elements, psychology of motivation, legal and ethical dimensions of gamification and the basics of game design. The course ended with mocked up real-world gamification projects created by the students.

Earlier this year, we were very excited to send our Co-Founder and CEO Keith Smith to participate in the Wharton School’s “For the Win: The Serious Gamification Symposium”. The symposium was a step towards gamification being included as a scholarly topic of study.  With gamification being such a new concept, it is extremely encouraging and beneficial for scholars like Werbach and Hunter to get involved in the discussion and add their point of view.

Kevin Werbach says of the course, “[it] reinforced that gamification will soon be a common business practice in marketing, management, and operations, but we still have a long way to go in understanding it”. The course will likely be offered again next year, but if you aren’t a Wharton student, you can access the course materials, discussions and projects on the course website. You can read more about the course from Kevin Werbach here.

Happy Cyber Monday! We hope everyone had a fantastic holiday weekend. Take a break from shopping and read some gamification news you may have missed last week.

Is gamification of driving the answer to urban speeding? ars technica 11/26/2011 – In the past few years, American drivers are seeing more and more electric and hybrid cars hit the market. The Chevy Volt, one of the newest in the market displays some features that imply a gamified driving experience. The Volt is capable of driving 35 miles on its electric battery before switching over to gas, to encourage drivers to hit optimum efficiency Chevy included a new gauge that highlights driving habits in real time, and encourages drivers to slow down and drive more efficiently.

Wearable Sensors Offer Real-Time Snowboarding Performance and ‘Stoked’ Readouts psfk 11/15/2011 Avid snowboarders might be excited to hear about a collaboration between Burton and Nokia that will introduce wearable sensors on snowboards and clothing that can provide live tracking of speed, heart rate, airtime, rotation and ‘rush.’ The project, called Push Snowboarding will sync to Nokia’s N8 smartphone via Bluetooth.  No release date has been set yet, but Nokia’s Stuart Wells says that the company has seen a lot of excitement and demand for the product.

4 Ways Brands Are Tapping the Power of Social Games on Facebook Mashable 11/21/2011 As social gaming continues to rise in popularity, brands are taking note of this trend as a new way to reach audiences and increase sales. Take a look at how top brands are using social games on Facebook to leverage their products, mission or goals.

Love the word or loathe it – Gamification made the short-list in Oxford Dictionary’s 2011 “Word of the Year.” Each year Oxford University Press comes up with a Word or Phrase of the Year. The 2011 winner was Squeezed Middle, but gamification made the short-list of words for the U.S. selection. Gamification was among words including Tiger Mother, Fracking, Crowdfunding, and Clicktivism. Visit Oxford Dictionaries for more information about the Word of the Year.

We hope everyone had a great weekend! Last week was a busy week for gamification news, here are a few articles we don’t think you should miss.

Foursquare starts leveling-up expertise badges VentureBeat 11/14/2011 Foursquare has made some changes to their expertise badges last week by adding the leveling-up feature. Users who obtain expertise badges, can now level up on existing badges which improve based on check-in activity. Foursquare also plans to add this concept to other Foursquare elements, such as leveling when other users complete a tip you left.

Quora Gamifies: Credits and “Ask to Answer” Suggestions Live for Everyone TechCrunch 11/14/2011 Last week Quora turned its ‘Quora Credits” and “Ask to Answer” features on for everyone after a five month period of beta testing. Users can now earn, spend and give credits. The introduction of the credits feature allows users to pay high value experts on specific topics to answer their questions. Quora co-founder Charlie Cheever says of the release, “The results from our credits beta were really promising, so I expect this will do well and we’ll keep extending and evolving Quora Credits.”

For Job Hunters, Digital Merit Badges NY Times 11/19/2011 As the internet becomes more and more a part of everyday life, it makes sense that it would also hold a larger role in job seeking. The MacArthur Foundation is working to introduce a system of badges job seekers can load onto their web site, blog or Facebook that represent unique skills they have. The badges are not meant to replace resumes, but to supplement and spotlight skills that may often be missed on resumes (such as military service). The foundation is working hard to ensure that badges are uniform across the internet, and require specific organizations to award. It will be very interesting to see this project unfold!

What gamification can learn from the holiday season’s biggest games ZDNet 11/20/2011 What can “Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim”, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” and “Halo: Combat Evolved” teach us about gamification? According to Libe Goad we can learn everything from the importance of social elements to personalization within game layers. “The key metric should always be to actually create an experience that provides real game play and, most importantly, fun — even if it’s in the service of a greater goal”.

Gamification & Online Content: Meet BigDoor Jen Quinlan 11/12/2011 We want to thank Jen Quinlan for taking the time to learn about us as well as writing about us in this piece. We are always excited to share our goals and talk gamification with anyone interested!

Now this is pretty cool! According to Gartner research analyst Brian Burke, “Gamification could become as important as Facebook, eBay or Amazon. During 2012, 20 percent of Global 2000 organizations will deploy a gamified application. IT leaders must start exploring opportunities to use gamification to increase engagement with customers and employees, with the aim of deploying a gamified application next year. Understanding how to apply game mechanics to motivate positive behavioral change is critical to success.” Thanks to BetaNews for the article about trends that will “hugely affect decision-making;” including gamification!

Hopefully everyone had a good weekend! Here is some gamification news you may have missed last week.

IBM Proves Playing Virtual Games is Serious Business Wired 11/8/2011 IBM’s test of game elements on their Social Blue site proved that users interacted more when game mechanics were present. Social Blue, a Facebook-like business centric social networking site, launched game elements for 10 months giving users points for uploads, comments and other desired actions. IBM then pulled the game layer and watched activity drop. Jennifer Thom-Santelli an IBM researcher said of the experiment, “There were a number of people who were motivated by these incentive systems.”

Digital Journal ‘Power User’ List Features Top Contributors in Global Crowdsourcing Project SF Gate 11/8/2011 Digital Journal published its ‘top contributors’ for the month of October after launching a gamification project that tracks every action of contributors on the its site. The gamification project sought to give contributors something to strive for in adding content, as well as give the media site analytics on how contributors are interacting. Chris Hogg, CEO, says of the project, “Most newsrooms have no idea how productive or hard-working some of their employees are, but this initiative gives us a granular look at how every single one of our members and contributors interacts with us in real-time.”

Dell, Gamification Strategy: Are You Kidding? Forbes 11/9/2011 Despite the slightly misleading title, we were very pleased with this positive look at the BigDoor powered gamification app at Dell World. Rishi Dave, Executive Director of Online Marketing at Dell says of the implementation, “Historically we had to build this type of application internally,” says Rishi, “Now companies like BigDoor can bring it together very quickly and use the Cloud. We don’t have to touch that huge global infrastructure that Dell has. We can be very agile.”

Last Friday our Chief Design Officer Matt Shobe spoke at the Creative Mornings: Seattle event sponsored by AIGA Seattle. Creative Mornings is a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types, with free events hosted all over the world. Matt focused on the importance of design in technology as well as took a look at gamification.  The event was a great success with lots of great questions from attendees like Sacha Maxim (See her great blog post on the event, here).

Since not everyone could attend this event, we would like to share Matt’s slide deck along with the video of the event.

We would like to thank the AIGA team for sponsoring this event, as well as David Conrad on the Creative Mornings side for all their work putting this event together.

Today, we would like to introduce a guest blogger, Izzy Woods. Izzy is a freelance finance journo and FOREX trader. Her day job involves current accounts and foreign exchanges. Her real passion however, is virtual currencies and in-game wheeler-dealing. We see virtual currency as an important part of gamification. Understanding how virtual currency has evolved and changed since its creation, is vital to understanding how it can be used successfully in gamification implementations.

The most exciting currencies in the world aren’t the kind of currencies you’d recognize. You can’t even hold them in your hand – they’re virtual, existing intangibly on gaming networks and the hard drives of fiscal pioneers.

Project Entropia Dollar (PED)

In online gaming world, Entropia Universe, the PED is used by more than a million gamers to buy and sell items on planet Calypso. PEDs are obtained by making deposits of real currency, such as US dollars or Swedish kronor. Thanks to a license granted by the Swedish government, a new bank is being created that will allow people to link their real-life current accounts to their online accounts. Soon, users will even be able to take out PED loans.

Bitcoin (BTC)

Billed as the world’s ‘first decentralised digital currency’, Bitcoin was created in 2009 and is unusual in that it does not have a central clearing house operated by a single company or organisation. Instead, it is underwritten by a torrent-like peer-to-peer network. Bitcoin can be used to purchase things in both the real and virtual worlds. Users can store Bitcoin by creating a digital wallet on their computer, or by signing up to an online wallet service. There are currently more than seven million BTCs in circulation online, which is equivalent to more than £41m US dollars.

Linden Dollars (L$)

Linden dollars are the currency used by residents of the Second Life virtual world to buy and sell things in a free market. To earn a stash of Linden dollars, Second Lifers need to find customers who are happy to pay for the products or services that they can supply.

L$ can be exchanged for real-world currencies using market-based currency exchanges. The total size of the Second Life economy grew by 65 percent in 2009, reaching an impressive $567m US dollars. It now accounts for about a quarter of the entire US virtual goods market.

World of Warcraft Gold

When Blizzard Entertainment released World of Warcraft (WoW) in 2004, few could have predicted its rocketing popularity. It has more than 11 million subscribers, and its currency has become the stuff of mass media debate and government legislation. Hundreds of sites sell WoW gold and real-money commerce in this virtual market is now a multi-billion dollar industry.

FarmVille Cash

FarmVille – which sees users harvesting crops, managing livestock and ploughing land – is owned by Zynga, a hugely successful business with $600m US dollars in revenue in 2010. Players of FarmVille earn or buy Farm Cash to help boost their farm’s performance and progress more rapidly. For those who don’t have the time or energy to virtually earn credits, Farm Cash can be bought via PayPal, credit card or by using third-party payment tools.

Here is some gamification news you may have missed from the first week of November. Enjoy!

Five things you need to know about gamification Ernst & Young: Performance 11/04/2011 Andrew Stone gives a great synopsis on gamification’s key elements in this article. He also touches on the potential future of gamification and makes a great argument for why gamification is here to stay.

AIGA Creative Morning Sacha Maxim Blog 11/5/2011 Last Friday our own Matt Shobe had a chance to speak with the AIGA Creative Mornings Seattle session. Sacha Maxim wrote a great blog post about the session and his thoughts on gamification after the event.

Another Round of Gamification CRM.com 11/01/2011 If you haven’t already read Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken, Marshall Lager makes a case for why you should. Lager calls McGonigal’s book a “game-changer” and makes a case for what we can take away from games and apply to business. He rallies, “Gamification can fundamentally alter business for customer and worker alike.”

Top 20 Gamification Gurus Gamification of Work 11/01/2011 We are excited to see our CEO Keith Smith making this list at number 12 based on his Klout score.  There are a lot of great thinkers and points of view on this list including the chart topper Jane McGonigal and we are really happy to be included this month!