November 11, 2026
Headlines

Consumer

joseph gordon levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Wants Your Gamification Story

Ivan Kuo12 mins

Have you ever wanted to share your personal gamification story to the world? Now’s your chance.

Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Morgan Spurlock are teaming up to produce a crowdsourced documentary on gamification as their next project for JGL’s hittRECord organization. They’re seeking anyone and everyone to contribute stories, illustrations, graphics, and videos about the following question:

“What do you think has been gamified in today’s world?”

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hsn arcade

HSN is Reinventing Online Shopping with Gamification

Ivan Kuo11 mins

Did you know that HSN is more than just a TV-shopping channel? Since 2011, HSN has reinvented itself as a total entertainment and shopping portal with gamification and now sees over 200K daily interactions online .

At GSummit SF 2013, Jill Braff, Executive Vice President of Digital Commerce at HSN, took the main stage to share some statistics and the story behind HSN’s awesome success.

Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get the latest videos from GSummit SF 2013 as they’re released. You can also download a copy of Jill’s presentation by downloading it here.

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J.C. Penny Sale Fail

5 Gamification Lessons From J.C. Penney’s Epic Sales Failure

Heong Weng Mak714 mins

Imagine if retailers decide that it will treat its customers fairly and honestly. There would be no more deceptions, no more tricks. Any item that was made and sold would be priced non-deceptively. Surely a well informed, objective customer would gladly embrace this honest approach to pricing if it makes shopping better for everyone, right? As J.C. Penny (JCP) and recently ousted CEO goes to show, this was unfortunately not meant to be.

In fact, Johnson’s new strategy was a complete and utter disaster.

So, what does the gamification industry have to do with the failed initiative of a retail department’s store? It may seem unintuitive that the gamification industry could learn something from a entirely different field. However, through the gamification lens, we are able to delve into key lessons of the gamification process.

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bbva game

The BBVA Game: A Shining Example of Gamification in Finance

Ivan Kuo01 mins

We initially covered the BBVA Game as one really great case study for an effective use of gamification in consumer finance and this past GSummit, we were actually able to get a representative all the way from Spain to talk about some of the incredible stats the game was able to achieve for the bank. The BBVA game also led them to win the “Best Use of Engagement Techniques in Consumer-Facing Applications” at the 2013 GAwards.

Take a look at Javier Maroto, Innovation Manager at BBVA, to see what well-designed gamification can be capable of.


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trace

Trace is the First Accurate Quantified-Self Device for Action Sports

Ivan Kuo07 mins

The conversation surrounding the quantified-self and measuring all-that-is-measurable has become a very hot tech meme and has even gone so far to successfully fund a Kickstarter for measuring brainwaves. Although brainwave monitoring is a small deviation from what’s popular, everyone has seen no shortage of these devices for measuring physical activity but even then, these devices are mostly limited to running and bicycling at best. What about everyone else?

Trace is a device currently on Kickstarter that wants to bring accurate tracking to surfers, snowboarders, and skaters that goes beyond the simple accelerometers in our smartphones and little wristbands.

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gamify the job search

How Can You Gamify The Job Search?

Ivan Kuo21 mins

Jon Guerrra first showed up at GSummit in 2012 when he spoke about a low-tech personal gamification system he created to achieve his goals. One year later, Jon has taken this system and used it to get a job at Google. Watch his talk from GSummit SF 2013 to learn about his journey into Google’s Mountain View campus and the ultimate power of post-its.

We’ll be releasing more talks from GSummit SF 2013 in the weeks to come! Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get each video as they’re released and as always, if there is someone you want to see released next, sound off in the comments below.

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wearedata watch dogs

Be a NSA Spy in this Promotion for The Watch Dogs Video Game

Ivan Kuo13 mins

Watch Dogs is Ubisoft’s big upcoming game about big data, government spying, unscrupulous agencies, and vigilantism set in the Windy City of Chicago. Amidst all the uncomfortably apt news of whistleblowing and Edward Snowden, creative agency Paris BETC has created a “hyped-connected” visualization tool that offers a way of seeing all the enormous amounts of data publicly available.

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Project Spark Allows Players to Create Any World They Want

Alex Landa05 mins

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 for short) is an annual event where developers showcase their latest electronic and gaming projects. Each year this event announces new video game consoles, games, and other media that are deserving of the big stage. Among this year’s presentation of the next round of console wars, shooters, sport games and RPGs, there was one announcement that stood out in the crowd as innovate to say the least: Project Spark.

Project Spark (PS) was a big part of Microsoft’s press conference at E3. The main concept behind PS is that players create their own worlds filled with characters, story, an evolving environment, or anything else they want.

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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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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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A Leaderboard Always Pays Its Debts: Foursquare’s Game of Cones

Gabe Zichermann28 mins

I’m a recent convert to HBO’s hit series, Game of Thrones – and binge watching in catch-up mode is a favorite activity in my home on lazy Sundays. Inasmuch as I’m just getting to know the complex, fantastic miniseries, I’m no ice cream or gamification neophyte. So it was with some excitement that I followed Foursquare’s newest promotional tie-in, The Game of Cones.

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Can the Gamification of Female Masturbation Remove Its Social Stigma? – GCo Exclusive

Ivan Kuo495 mins

Masturbater. Master Baiter?

Whether you’re an expert animal trapper or a normal person who enjoys self-pleasure, the mere sound of the word masturbation isn’t pleasant for anyone. The clunky quadrisyllabic term meant to describe personal relief is so socially awkward that it’s ostensibly forbidden to talk about, despite being something every human being has engaged with at some point in our lives. Masturbation as it relates to women is an even bigger taboo to discuss, as a result of widespread dogma pushing absolute female purity throughout the development of most modern societies.

The act of masturbation is an important step in our sexual development as human beings, yet this dogma still exists. As a result of this many females feel a societal pressure to live up to these outdated beliefs and suffer from negative self-image and lowered self-esteem for their natural desires. The fact remains that many women and girls don’t masturbate at all and may not even know how to but does it need to be this way?

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