Gamification and the power of personalization may enable new opportunities and possibilities for engagement and enhancement of processes involved to achieve different targets and goals across the social landscape and other industries.
People all over the world generally accept gaming as one of the mainstream entertainment media. With games becoming more accessible, entertaining, functional, and almost like a part of lifestyle for people, Gamification is undoubtedly increasing across various industries.
What is Gamification?
Gamification is the process of integrating gaming elements and mechanics to any existing experience, work, or task to enhance and upgrade learning, engagement, performance, and enjoyment. During this gamification process, various gaming elements like levels, achievements, rewards, leaderboards, badges, challenges, etc., are integrated into the experience.
It eventually focuses on meeting the ultimate end goal, albeit with a more “gamified” approach. Hence, successful and good Gamification enhances and uplifts the experience involved, all the while being focused & guided to meet the actual targeted goals and demands within the original design intent.
Is Gamification Effective?
The workforce today is generally modern and is mixed with people from different generations and times. For example, millennials and people from Gen X, Y, and Z contribute to the vast workforce of the current world. Such a diverse mix of people from different generations was unseen and is unfamiliar to the contemporary world.
It is a complex process since different generations of people have different needs & demands, along with something all these generations can relate to. However, Gamification can solve that by using other game mechanisms applied to almost all people.
Gaming is one of the things that can relate to this diverse mix of generations. Gaming and game mechanics are generally noticed & found to be an associating factor between different ages when working and accomplishing a target or a goal.
This target or goal can be anything from work-related targets, project goals, a learning process, or even a simple daily routine. It is also essentially motivated by the fact that people try harder and engage in tasks that present themselves as small steps and challenges. Therefore Gamification is a necessary step in various platforms and processes.
In addition, due to the current digital and modern age, integrating something like gaming mechanics in any targeted system makes achieving the target more engaging, competitive, and fun for almost all generations. Consequently, Gamification can be readily implemented and adopted by nearly all industries.
Especially gamification apps with personalization of the gamification mechanics are more engaging and rewarding for most people. Therefore, different gamification systems and processes employ personalization in their design and operations.
Due to these reasons, Gamification is currently on a significant rise and in a high tide for adoption and integration in different educational or business systems. Hence we can safely say that Gamification is undoubtedly effective.
Social Gamification and Mobile Apps
The use of social media and engagements on social platforms is very high among people today. With more users (of social media) interconnected through various kinds of social media channels & platforms, Gamification can be highly suitable for different types of social elements and e-learning platforms.
Social Gamification is the process of integrating gaming and different gaming mechanics in various social elements. Collaboration and cooperation between social peers are widening worldwide with innovative technologies and mobile apps, making the world smaller than ever before.
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Various mobile apps of different social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc., are constantly connecting people. It presents an opportunity for e-learning through the blend of these social & mobile apps with Gamification. Features like forums, discussion panels, chats, team events, etc., promote collaboration and increase knowledge sharing.
Almost every social media platforms and mobile apps have gamification features like badges, leadership boards, points, challenges, ranks, and other stuff from games and game mechanics. These apps can be called gamification apps. These gamification apps give the user a fun and enhanced experience of interaction and engagement with these social media platforms and mobile apps.
Different social media websites and their mobile app counterparts employ Gamification as their core feature. For instance, Reddit is a social media platform that presents Gamification in “upvotes” and “downvotes.”
In addition to this, Reddit focuses primarily on its awarding system too. Therefore, these features (upvote, downvote, and awards) play a significant role in the daily engagement of users of Reddit. Furthermore, these Gamification features motivate their users to contribute to the site to gain upvotes and awards from other users.
Similarly, particular purpose social media sites like Quora and Stackoverflow also integrate Gamification in their platform. These platforms generally use upvote, downvote, badge, and point systems to rank answers & responses. These platforms then use these ranks to sort replies and responses and display them accordingly with proper relevance.
With social Gamification and mobile apps going side by side, various mobile apps aside from social media platforms also apply Gamification in their apps. However, mobile apps are a more suitable platform for Gamification because of their wide availability among people. Due to this, almost every mobile app applies Gamification and integrates it into their apps.
Especially mobile apps for e-learning are using gamification processes with personalization to engage their users in learning more. These mobile apps use gamification features like daily achievements, points for reading & learning, challenges to test users’ knowledge, and levels to promote users according to progress made. Gamification apps like these keep the users engaged and active in learning.
Almost all gamification apps move with a single motive. This motive is generally a simple game mechanic to give users awards, badges, or points based on their contributions and engagement. Hence the users will be more motivated to contribute and have fun on such gamified apps.
Personalization
Personalization is an essential component in any gamification process. Every person or user is generally motivated due to different things and achievements, i.e., personalization. Therefore, if gamification apps have a single type of gaming mechanics, such mechanics will only attract and engage users of a small category.
But suppose the same mobile app has multiple game mechanics or employs mechanics for personalization catered for different types of users. In that case, most users will be more engaged and attracted towards the mechanics of their liking.
For instance, suppose a mobile app awards users badges and recognition related to comments only when the user comments. So, this app uses a linear gamification process without personalization. As a result, users who like to comment will be engaged and have more fun using this mobile app.
While users who don’t generally like to comment may get motivated to comment in posts or contents, this type of Gamification probably will ward off these users since they see no additional gain through recognition and badges related to comments. It may demotivate the users from using such apps. Hence, no personalization usually demotivates the majority of users from using such mobile apps.
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However, suppose the same mobile app provides rewards and recognition for various activities a user can perform in the app. In that case, the majority of users will get motivated to serve these kinds of activities.
Especially since a user is fond of some recognition or award related to some task in the app, the user is generally more likely to get motivated and engaged in such activity and perform this activity more. Moreover, the mobile app now employs personalization for users in their gamification mechanism. Hence, these types of personalization in gamification apps are highly needed.
Personalization is essential because to motivate and engage a user, and the app needs to cater to their preferred gamification mechanism. For example, people want to put time and effort into any mobile app, task, or work. In that case, the rewards, achievements & scores they gain should be recognized and identifiable for the individual user themselves.
Gamification in 2021
This year expects Gamification to be adopted even more widely. We can expect companies, businesses, and mobile apps to use Gamification with personalization actively.
Personalization with Gamification will only be more powerful and refined in different apps and websites, not just on social media platforms but also across the industry. 2021 will probably see rapid adoption of Gamification with personalization since more and more people are engaging themselves in the digital world.
Personalization will become more refined with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and technologies like machine learning and deep learning.
With the power of data analysis and machine learning prediction, gamification mechanisms will employ more powerful personalization systems that will analyze the user and predict suitable gamification mechanisms for individual users. It will undoubtedly fully utilize the power of personalization in gamification mechanisms to enhance and upgrade them even more.
With structured, refined, and more powerful personalization, Gamification in 2021 will revolve around mobile apps, businesses, companies, and social sites with the idea of individualization and rich engagement brought by personalization.
In addition, organizations and companies may be able to deploy Artificial Intelligence and technologies like machine learning to define and build more powerful personalization systems that will only increase the rate of Gamification across the industry.
