October 23, 2026
Headlines

2013

engagement platform

The Quest for the Perfect Engagement Platform

Ivan Kuo29 mins

Starting my own company was always the obvious choice. I was raised to look up to entrepreneurs as successful and independent visionaries. I set out to help people to realize the potential of cloud- based services and founded Alien Interactive in 1999. Almost 14 years ago, it was not an easy task. But my vision was bigger than that. I wanted to find a way to offer people what games and sports had offered me; the enjoyment of motivation, determination and deep engagement. The word gamification was not yet heard of but I was fascinated by the thought of making an engaging game out of less exciting work-days. But almost 14 years ago, without the adoption of technology we see today, it was even harder for people to understand that idea than the potential of cloud services.

My entrepreneurial ambition spawned, and still does, from one fundamental stance: There is no reason why work shouldn’t be a thrilling experience. By adding a well-designed engagement system to our enterprise-environment we can take advantage of the elements of games and sports to truly engage users, employees and partners.

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self improvement

Gamify Your Life: Gamification Apps for Self-Improvement

Kevin Shane64 mins

More and more businesses are employing gamification to get customers interested in their products and services. Schools are looking to startups like Amplify to encourage their students to be more engaged in learning, inside and outside of school. The quantified self movement has even evolved to start measuring your brainwaves. Everywhere you look, the world is turning to games to improve participation and morale. Could there be real use for these ideas into your everyday life? These two new companies are saying yes, you can gamify your life.

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keas-mark-koerner

How Keas is Engaging Employees with Wellness and Gamification

Ivan Kuo01 mins

The Gamification Revolution is the only live gamification webcast featuring Gabe Zichermann and fellow gamification experts every week. Join us and have all of your gamification questions answered by these experts. This past week’s guest was Mark Koerner, VP of Product at employee wellness platform Keas.

Gabe and Mark go through some of the features of Keas and discuss how organizations can improve their internal processes by engaging with employee health. Learn about the intricacies of data privacy, the metrics for success, and Keas’ general approach of gamification for health in the video below:



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How to Teach and Engage Students… with Zombies

Aidan Mullaney78 mins

David Hunter teaches a class that is primarily project based, functioning similar to the way a game works including explicit tasks, consistent feedback, and a single theme: zombies. The curriculum, titled “Zombie-Based Learning: Geography Lessons Set in a Zombie Apocalypse”, replaces the standard textbook with a zombie-based graphic novel and implements aspects of gamification into its lessons.

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Gamification Co is Seeking a Social Media Intern

Ivan Kuo22 mins

We are currently looking for an intern to assist the main team with our social media accounts, increasing community reach, and engaging with top thought leaders across different industries. We also need assistance in handling our PR matters to continue spreading the reach of our company within the topics of engagement, loyalty and gamification.

The position is a classic internship with a stipend for support, credit (if available) and an opportunity to learn/develop your skills — and a potential full time gig

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Byki Gamifies Flash Cards for Foreign Languages

Kevin Shane34 mins

Byki (stands for “Before You Know It,”) is a free — premium version available — language-learning application. The software uses a clever combination of animated flash cards and robust gamification, which involves the learner in a multi-sensory vocabulary-building experience.

Download the free version of the application after choosing from an array of 67 languages — Afrikaans to Zulu — and start right in with the basics of situational vocabulary learning, common phrases, asking directions, etc. The gamification element is what makes experience especially unique

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Evangelizing Gamification in Big Corporations with Thomas Hsu

Ivan Kuo11 mins

The Gamification Revolution is the only live gamification webcast featuring Gabe Zichermann and fellow gamification experts every week. Join us and have all of your gamification questions answered by these experts.

Our next episode is taking place Thursday –  June 27th at 1PM EST, featuring Mark Koerner – VP or Product at Keas. 

This past week’s guest was Thomas Hsu, Social Collaboration and Gamification, Accenture. Gabe and Thomas talk about how Accenture first was able to adopt gamification into their collaborative sphere and what Thomas had to go through as an early gamification evangelist into the company. If you’re in a similar position as Thomas in wanting to bring gamification into a large company, this will be a good video to see:

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How Aikido Taught me Games and Gamification will Change the World

Ivan Kuo27 mins

The world is full of issues that we ought to solve. For decades, we have tried to fight hunger, eradicate polio as well as HIV/AIDS, protect the environment and our ecosystem – but somehow final victory always seems to get further and further away. Why is it that in 2013, with all the knowledge, technologies and resources that we possess, we are still struggling to create a better place for the whole world?

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top influencers at GSummit SF 2013

How to Drive Repeat Traffic to Your Blog with a Monthly Top Influencer Leaderboard

Toby Beresford58 mins

For most gamifiers, a social media presence is a must-have to promote gamification skills and your services in particular.

Whether offering a software as a service or consulting (check out the list of vendors in the GCo buyers guide), a blog is a must have.

We all know that getting people to read our blogs and keep coming back for more is a tricky behavior to encourage but as with many desired behaviors, gamification certainly can help.

I’ve been using a few simple gamification mechanics for nearly two years to drive repeat, valuable, VIP traffic to my personal blog (GOW). In this post I want to share the approach and learnings with other gamification.co readers.

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Duolingo Develops your Language Learning Skill Tree for Free

Kevin Shane66 mins

Duolingo is a new learning tool that uses gamification to teach and reinforce language learning. Say that you’re a beginning learner and want to build your vocabulary and translation skills. Log into duolingo.com, sign up and begin learning Spanish, French, Portuguese, German or Italian.

The program cleverly incorporates gamification by awarding points for completing vocabulary exercises and keeping track of the learner’s progress through line scales and level badges along the way. Log in each day for new sessions to view previous progress, your current level and to do optional review practice. The website has a desktop version that works on both the Mac and Windows platforms. You can also go mobile and run the learning program on either iPhone or Android devices.

And the best part? It’s all completely free.

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Mandatory Fun: New Gamification Research from Wharton

Gabe Zichermann36 mins

One of the questions I’m asked most frequently is: “What are the biggest mistakes/risks/pitfalls of Gamification?” My answer almost always includes a cautionary note about the risks of compelling people to “play” gamified experiences, because using force reduces a sense of agency. This is a trap many companies fall into when they gamify an employee process. No matter how much money they spend building an amazing, engaging system, many HR folks fail to consider how they’ll get users to participate beyond “they have to”, or “this is the new process.”

New gamification research out this week from UPenn’s Wharton Business School puts a spotlight on this thorny question, looking at the efficacy of sales team gamification when it’s optional vs compulsory through a primary research project at a high-growth tech startup. The results indicate that gamification is effective at improving employee satisfaction, but if its compulsory it may actually reduce their overall affect.

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Turning Cyberwarfare into a Touch-Screen Game with Plan X

Alex Landa17 mins

To quote the game series Fallout: “War. War never changes.” This may or may not be true to some people, but the Pentagon is at least trying to change cyberwarfare with Plan X.

Plan X is the Pentagon’s brainchild with made by the creators of some Apple products with assistance from the illustrators of the Transformers movies. The goal is to make cyberwarfare easy with a few finger swipes – a mechanism seen in many current casual games.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is looking to take all the uncertainty and difficulty out of cyberwarfare. Currently there is too much planning, too many variables, and not enough control. The government wants cyberwarfare to be as simple and predictable as more classical means of war.

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