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Game undeniably has becoming a significant part of human’s culture, may it in traditional form with its traditional rules and equipment, to the modern virtual-reality ones. As the form of games may differ, the goal stays the same, to experience happiness by directly rewarded or punished for the action we choose. For that matter, developing games are quite relevant for daily use. Simply for entertainment or with a higher purpose, such as increasing the engagement rate.

As a company, employees are capital that needed to be developed in order to increase the growth of the company itself. Training is one of the solutions to develop employees’ potential. Nowadays, a method such as e-learning is seen as a comprehensive solution. It doesn’t require employees to leave their desk to join the training and can as well maintain their daily productivity while doing the training. One of the recently famed forms is gamification.

The implementation of gamification in talent management through The Code by Agate

The Origin

The word gamification starting to pops everywhere. It becomes a new trend in the game industry. Taken from Badgeville Wiki, gamification is a concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals. Gamification taps into the basic desires and needs of the users’ impulse which revolves around the concept of status and achievement.

The idea of incorporating game elements into non-game settings has actually started in 1896. The trend was retailers to give reward stamp for their loyal customer that later can be redeemed for gifts. It was probably the simplest implementation of reward-giving. Leaping into 2002, the game world began to recognize the term of Serious Game. The initiative has since emerged a link between electronic game industry and education, health, public policy, and training.

The very first time the term gamification was coined date back to 2003 by Nick Pelling, a British-born computer programmer and inventor. In the early of gamification rise, it didn’t gain much positive reception. It was mainly caused by the long-run assumption of gaming purpose adheres for entertainment use only. In 2010, gamification started to gain a lot of exposure and more popularity. Gamification captured the attention of venture capitals. It also dubbed that gamification as the most promising area in the game industry.

As gamification drew more attention, it even got its own conference. The first ever was held by Gamification Co. hosting Gsummit that attracted around 400 attendees. Other than its own conference, it then led to its own research expo, Gamification 2013, and was held at University of Waterloo, Stratford Campus in October 2013. Gamification has become a huge part of technology development ever since and has been implemented in mostly everything, in order to maintain or even increase the engagement.

The inventor of the term ‘gamification’, Nick Pelling. Image via source

The Implementation

Gamification nowadays also applied widely in corporate level. According to the survey conducted by Forbes Global, over 70% or 2,000 companies planned to use gamification for its marketing purpose of and customer retention. Many large-scale organisations and brands use gamification to attract new customers and to gain more engagement with their customers.

According to the survey, organisations with the likes of Marriott, Deloitte, Aetna, and Department of Defense are also using games to recruit and develop their employees. The growing interest in gamification stems from a desire to increase engagement levels among employees. This gaming process reckons more visibility, openness, and a system of rewards as well as recognition into the workplace.

The success story of gamification can be seen in many organisations or brands, in many types of industry. One of which is Nike, with its NikeFuel campaign. In NikeFuel, users compete against each other in the daily amount of physical activity. An app on their smartphone notes all activities by users and turns them into points. After reaching a certain point, NikeFuel unlocks special trophies and rewards. This then generates lots of buzz on social media and adding brand value to Nike’s customers. This program also increased the brand visibility.

NikeFuel‘s interactive badges that draw users’ engagement to achieve more. Image via source

Furthermore on Forbes, the power of gamification is eliminating the evil side of competitiveness; it taps into the competitive fires and make us more engaged, feel a greater sense of accomplishment, and are more willing to go the extra miles. It transforms into the eager on whether making more sales calls, completing more training programs, or answering more customer center calls. All in all, gamification has become a ground-breaking solution to face a fast-moving world.