Gamification and healthcare may be the next best thing since the invention of bread and butter. I recently read an article on 3 different ways that video games can improve health and immediately became curious as to other research going on in this area. Since GSummit 2013 is fast approaching, I would like to take the time to provide a brief comprehensive overview of how games and healthcare are converging in harmony in 2013.
The quantified self-movement (QS) is a hot topic in 2013 and focuses on using sensors and other trackers to acquire self-knowledge for the end goal of gaining deeper insight about personal habits. For example, I use Nike+ to log my daily run performance. I also make a list of my diet for that day and compare it to how well I performed. I am hoping that after a couple of months of use, I can figure out what the optimal diet is for me before I go for a run or engage in physical activities such as sports. Other examples can include measuring coffee intake vs. productivity or sleep activity vs. diet. With the inclusion of Big Data—the ability to process large amounts of data quickly—people are looking to contextualize all the data available on their laptops, mobile devices, or even social media platforms.
Whether or not you are actively participating in the QS movement, companies are adopting the method to find new ways to measure performance metrics. By measuring employee activity through sensors, these new metrics will be aggregated to redefine what being a successful worker means.
If creativity is a muscle, then gamification is the bench press. Much of workplace frustration stems from being stuck on day-to-day problems that arise such as optimization of a large workload or maximization of quantified metrics such as sales. Organizational creativity is in great demand for companies, and Blitz—a speed-thinking process that brainstorms innovative solutions—may be the gamified answer to the knot in the creativity muscle.
Dr. Ken Hudson, former marketing director of American Express, created Blitz as a fast, easy way to bring people out of a production rut. The main idea is to create as many as nine ideas in about two minutes. He found that when he gave managers less time to generate novel ideas, not only could they do it, but also they did it in inspired ways. Blitz’s rules and platform combines energy with creativity and production to drive innovation.
Rice University is piloting English 312, Scandinavian Fantasy Worlds: Old Norse Sagas and Skyrim, for the Spring 2013 semester. Research into the benefits of using video games as an educational tool is vast and has been advocated by people such as Jane McGonigal and Katie Salen. Even Berkeley has taught a game theory course with respect to Starcraft II, and it has been shown to improve critical thinking and analytical skills.
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.
Every parent knows that bribing their child is not the most effective behavioral management technique, but getting your children to eat the vegetables on their plate for 15 more minutes of video game time doesn’t seem too harmful, right?.
Over the years, psychologists have determined that short-term rewards directed towards end results are not helpful in teaching children proper behavior and manners. In fact, bribes—whether they come in the form of money, play time, and/or candy—have a negative effect on children learning development.
Gartner has kept busy in the past few months with analyzing gamification’s current status and potential. A list of all of their research can be found here, but a recently published report by them states that by 2015, 40% of Global 1000 companies will use gamification as a primary tool to drive primary business goals. For these companies who wish to engage in increasing loyalty, virality, and engagement, they often host promotional offers through the popular social media platform Facebook. While most marketing campaigns are based around standard giveaways, three companies have been able to successfully implement some form of game elements and behavioral science to drive results. Taking a look at these retail gamification implementations from Rue La La, Dunkin Donuts, and Best Buy, the spirit of giving is mixed with the flair of games to promote cheer through the past holiday season.
We hear a lot about gamification success stories, but there really aren’t too many regarding music. Most success stories involve increasing engagement and motivation to have users and/or consumers interact with brands and institutions in favorable ways to both parties. Nike+ allows users to obtain more feedback on their running routines while providing Nike with a way to get people more accustomed to having Nike in their everyday life. The Buffalo Wild Wings Scvngr app allows people to have an engaging experience while eating their favorite wings, providing the restaurant chain with ways to increase customer loyalty. However, in the case of the music industry, there isn’t that definitive success story that provides ample evidence that gamification largely benefits music. Therefore, it begs the question: does gamification have a place in music?
It isn’t uncommon to hear the gamification sphere talk about the dangers of using badges. People claim they are typically used as an extrinsic reward, which leads to consumers quickly losing interest in gamified applications and services. Couple this danger of using badges with Gartner’s prediction that 80% of gamified solutions will fail by 2014 due to poor design, companies and designers looking to adopt gamification as a strategy to meet business objectives need to be aware of useful implementations.
That said about being meticulous on design, badges can still be used effectively as a positive growth tool. This past spring and summer, Global Kids—a premier non-profit organization dedicated to developing youth leaders that come from underrepresented demographics—conducted a beta-tested study on “Six Ways to Look at Badging Systems Designed for Learning”.
Gamification has finally hit a significant speed bump—overinflation from hype and expectations. In a recently published Gartner article, in-house analysts have predicted that about 80% of gamified solutions will fail in reaching business objectives by 2014 due to poor design. This could be easily avoided if people would simply just use good gamification design, but that simply isn’t the case.
Gamification is not just a national hype as it drives from game mechanics as well as various other arts and sciences. Games stem from play, humanity’s natural form of learning. As play is universal, gamification is an international sensation that is providing many solutions in B2E, B2C, and B2B contexts all over the world. However,…
“From zero to peak experience in thirty seconds flat – no wonder video games caught on. Never before in human history could this kind of optimal, emotional activation be accessed so cheaply, so reliably, so quickly.” This passage is taken from Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How they Can…
In almost all of India, you can go into any village and find cell phone towers. In Juanga, a village of less than 3,000 lives off rice, lentils, and scarce supplies of water, but lives comfortably with their cell phone. Due to the size of the village, running family businesses and keeping strong family ties…
Gamification warns designers about the dangers of using leaderboards as a measure of success for its members. Citing its loss of meaning for players if they aren’t first place, many cap the potential of the leaderboard as a meaningful game element for all. Trials Evolution is a side-scrolling motorcycle game with an excellent physics engine. Trials Evolution’s…
By the age of 19, up to 25% of people will have faced depression. The teenage years are formative years for everyone, and it is not a surprise that these years may be filled with confusing and hard-to-deal with emotions. To make matters worse, most teens fail to receive the proper cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)…
