Gamification - play smarter, not harder

  If you're in advertising, you're no doubt familiar with the perils of trying to put lipstick on a turd, (or is that polish on a pig?).It seems the latest form of lipstick might be Gamification.There's no disputing that using game thinking and contextually relevant game mechanics can help to influence behaviour but let's be clear that not all Gamification is good Gamification. When I say good, I don't mean to open the topic of ethical vs unethical uses; that's an entirely different and equally spirited argument. I mean good as in "implemented in a way that makes it effective in the long run".Plenty of websites are trumpeting great successes in getting new users and increased page views by adding some game mechanics, without making any other changes to their models. They are essentially "Gamewashing" their businesses by injecting extrinsic motivators, often out of context and sometimes at odds with any existing intrinsic motivators of their customers.In a recent story, Ryan Kim covered a start-up called CrowdTwist and how they worked with LiveNation to create something called BoozleTwist as part of the Bamboozle Music Festival website.BoozleTwist is held up as a gold star Gamification example because in a month it added 10,500 members and increased per week per user page views from 3 to 26. It did so by creating a points system where users were rewarded for viewing photos, 'Liking' content, and viewing blogs posts. These points were then redeemable for swag like signed posters and 'meet the bands' experiences.Here is the problem. It uses a completely extrinsic motivator to reward actions that are essentially false indicators of engagement.I remember many years ago when someone in New Zealand set up an online system where you could get entries into a daily draw for free flights for every piece of content that you looked at that day. There was a daily limit of 50 entries per day so I, and many people like me, set a calendar reminder and proceeded to hit the browser refresh 50 times each morning. Were we engaged with the content? No. Did we buy more? No. Did the number of views look good? Most probably. Did it stick around long? NoIt's easy to cheapen your product and brand by slapping on a points system, a couple of badges and a leader board, especially when they lack context with your brand.It's much better to build on a motivation that your customers already have by amplifying the intrinsic value of the behaviour you want.If you are considering Gamification, start by...

1. Being clear on the desired behaviour. Be real and think about this. Simply getting a product trial or Facebook 'Like' might not be what you really want.
2. Thinking about the intrinsic social insights that might cause some to want to exhibit the designed behaviour already. How can you amplify that first?
3. Identifying the behavioural triggers. Strongly consider rewarding existing behaviour as the first step in the journey.
4. Then, and only then, consider what game mechanics might support all this.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for the power of game design thinking and mechanics to influence behaviour. It's just that Gamification should support your brand story and build on it. It shouldn't look like an afterthought or a tack on.Over time, Gamewashing will reduce as businesses realise that the real value comes from building fulfilling relationships, which can include gaming elements.Here's to the time machine that speeds up this process. Anyone got one in the garage?