May 31, 2026
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January 2013

Superbowl Gamification Roundup: What to Watch

Ivan Kuo25 mins

Today is Thursday. Thursday qualifies as “almost the weekend” and therefore brings us that much closer to Superbowl XLVII between the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens on Sunday. As the biggest televised event in America, you can be sure you’re going to see some interesting commercial and marketing techniques that go beyond the standard big budget commercials we’ve been used to. Superbowl gamification will play a big role in a number of these efforts so keep an eye out for the following from now until the big game.

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4 Quick Gamification Design Tips that Work Well

Kevin Shane15 mins

Many designers are using gamification to intrigue their users and keep them involved with an application over time. However, you want to make sure that the mechanics you are using are sound, and will make the most out of your effort. Some ludemes (things like badges, experience points, achievements, levels) may look useful since they are used in many games, but can be overused and may eventually turn a user off. Here are some things that will work in gamification.

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The Power of Engaging Game Design with Jesse Schell

Ivan Kuo11 mins

Starting next week, the Gamification Revolution, the only live gamification webcast featuring Gabe Zichermann and fellow gamification experts will be at a new time every Thursday instead of the previous Monday.

You can now catch the Gamification Revolution every Thursday at 1PM EST/10 AM PST/1800 GMT.

Starting next week, the Gamification Revolution, the only live gamification webcast featuring Gabe Zichermann and fellow gamification experts will be at a new time every Thursday instead of the previous Monday.

You can now catch the Gamification Revolution every Thursday at 1PM EST/10 AM PST/1800 GMT.

If you missed this week’s episode, we had the venerable designer and GSummit SF 2013 speaker, Jesse Schell of Schell Games. Watch Gabe’s discussion with Jesse to learn about how making engaging game experiences is the same process for designing any product:



Download this episode (right click and save)

Be sure to catch our next episode of the Gamification Revolution, airing live on Februrary 7, 1 PM EST. You can also catch Jesse express his expertise in person by catching his session at GSummit SF 2013

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Industrial Strength: Badgeville Showed Triple-Digit Growth in 2012

Ivan Kuo04 mins

Yesterday, Badgeville announced that 2012 marked the company’s second consecutive year of triple-digit revenue growth. They also reported on some of their new partnerships, which include Deloitte, Oracle, Rogers, Samsung, Bell Media, Citrix, Autodesk, Panera Bread, EMC, Marketo, CA Technologies, NBC, Universal Music, Barnes & Noble, Danone, A&N Media and Microsoft. How’s that for a list of prominent companies using gamification?

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Prominent Gamifiers: Jesse Redniss

Ivan Kuo14 mins

Its amazing that the sole act of watching TV has been replaced with watching TV while on your phone/laptop/tablet. And thus the concept of the “second screen” is born. We’ve become such distracted and consumption driven individuals that no one medium of entertainment is enough for our brains. While this may sound like a negative thing at first, nobody really understood the inherent synergy that exists between these two devices if they’re being used to consume the same media together. That is…until Jesse Redniss saw this opportunity and became one of the earliest pioneers of gamification for television media.

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Why China’s Propaganda Games Don’t Work

Sudarshan Gopaladesikan27 mins

China has always viewed video games as a negative influence to society and the social order. In 2009, the Chinese Ministry of Culture banned mafia games, citing that these games embody antisocial behavior like killing, beating, and looting. China has not slowed down on its blacklisting of games, and they have even banned consoles such as the Playstation and Xbox. Contrary to what China’s past actions may infer, they have been actively investing millions of dollars to game companies in the form of grants and tax breaks. However, a new political move targeting the 120 million Chinese online gamers comes with some strings attached to these game developers.

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Minecraft Added to Mandatory Curriculum in Swedish School

Ivan Kuo23 mins

Minecraft is emerging as one of the most pleasant surprises in game-based learning. Already existing in some schools as a social tool and Roman history lesson, the Swedish-developed block building game has found its way into the mandatory learning curriculum for one particular school in Stockholm.

The Viktor Rydberg school in Stockholm has made Minecraft a part of the compulsory learning curriculum for about 180 students. This new curriculum addition stems from an  internnational school competition called Future City that aims to teach students more about urban engineering.

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Modern Loyalty Done Right: MOGL Joins Virgin America for More Loyalty Rewards

Ivan Kuo33 mins

Loyalty is changing and MOGL’s gamified rewards platform is really shining through. MOGL is a gamified loyalty platform that rewards users for dining out at restaurants by giving 10% cash back on select restaurants and donating a meal to Feed America for every $20 spent. Their new partnership with Virgin America will allow MOGL to power Virgin’s new Elevate frequent fliers dining program.

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SimCity EDU Combines STEM Education and Management Simulations

Ivan Kuo03 mins

Some light-hearted approaches of educating through simulating have been interesting, like the Killer Flu game, for example.  But a new collaboration by Electronic Arts and GlassLab is aiming to take management sim education to the next level, with SimCity EDU.

Coming this March, SimCity EDU will be a special version of the beloved SimCity game designed to teach STEM Education in classrooms.

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Lush Quests Combines Gamified Training and Cloud Computing

Heong Weng Mak06 mins

In their common endeavor to engage its employees, enterprises have been slowly embracing the concept of gamifying employee training programs and handmade cosmetics firm Lush is no exception.

Lush’s training program, Lush Quests bears the markings of a gamified training system where employees are introduced to Lush’s brand and products through an interactive story filled with challenges and rewards. Upon completion of the narrative, users are then given a 10 minute quiz to reaffirm what they have learned from the material. Thus far, over 2,000 Lush employees have completed this online training program.

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Prominent Gamifiers: Jesse Schell

Ivan Kuo13 mins

The moment a discussion about gamification dips into a deep discussion about game mechanics and what constitutes proper design, it seems inevitable that Jesse Schell’s book, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses becomes mentioned as the official reference to prove someone’s point. Jesse’s long history of working as a game-designer has earned him numerous accolades and his position as the CEO of Pittsburgh’s largest videogame studio.

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Gamified Cat Sharing Site Catmoji Gets 21K Shares in 1 Month

Ivan Kuo13 mins

The only thing more engaging than effective gamification is the incredible power of cat pictures on the internet. Combine that with, well gamification, and you get over 21,000 cat photos and videos shared in a single month by the new gamified cat-media platform, Catmoji.

Born out of Startup Chile, Catmoji is a platform dedicated to users who want to purruse through vast quantities of cat pictures and videos.

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