August 14, 2026
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Consumer

Where Does Gambling Fit in Gamification: Legal Issues and a Success Story

Sudarshan Gopaladesikan37 mins

Gamblification is the intersection of social gaming and gambling. Many casino and card games make use of a human’s gambling instincts to lure people into deep engagement. Although real money is used to purchase chips to be used in these games, the chips are not redeemable for money. However, some social games provide venues where in-system virtual currencies can be exchanged or raffled for virtual goods. Some systems such as Virgin Gaming allow console players (PS3, XBOX) to wager real money against others for big cash prizes. But It doesn’t end there.

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Boston CIO to Gamify Citizens Connect App to Thank City Workers

Ivan Kuo34 mins

If the case for non-physical rewards (see SAPS) as a motivator still hasn’t convinced you of its effectiveness, you might want to look at Boston’s government mobile app that will allow Bostonians to improve city services.

Released in 2008, Citizen’s Connect allows local citizens to report issues like broken signs and potholes to make sure they are fixed quickly. According to SearchCIO, this effort is in part of Boston CIO, Bill Oates’ desire to create an active communication loop between citizen and workers to ensure city problems are solved.

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Foursquare’s Removal of Gamification: Not a Mistake but a Mature Design Decision

Ivan Kuo95 mins

Earlier this week, Twitter was run amuck by Foursquare Co-Founder and CEO, Dennis Crowley, and his statements about Foursquare’s overemphasis on gamification elements.

Crowley was discussing the future direction of Foursquare in an on-stage interview with Anil Dash (Co-Founder of Activate) at SXSW and stated that he was phasing out gamification from Foursquare in an effort to move away from the perception that Foursquare is only about points and badges.

Numerous people on Twitter were quick to take these statements as evidence that gamification itself was a mistake, when in fact Crowley explicitly mentioned that it was the overemphasis on points and badges that has led to Foursquare’s perception problem.

In fact, I would say that Crowley’s decision to ultimately phase out Foursquare’s gamification mechanics is one of the most mature decisions a gamification designer can make.

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Wufasta Aims to Reward Video Game Loyalty with Physical and Digital Prizes.

Ivan Kuo134 mins

Many people believe the video game console market is dead. In the face of growing mobile and casual games market, some would even go so far to say that traditional games are dead altogether. While we won’t know what the market will shape out to be just yet, there is one thing for certain: there are die-hard loyalists on each side of the spectrum and TechCocktail has recently written about a new startup wants to start rewarding these people.

Wufasta will be partnering with companies to produce branded promotions, reward gamers for completing in-game challenges, and even sponsoring professional completive gamers.

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GSummit 2012 Behind the Scenes: Sunny Lee

Ivan Kuo11 mins

(5/26 Gamification Expert Interviews Unlocked)

Every week until GSummit SF 2013, we’ll be unlocking some special content from last year to give you a preview on what to expect this April 16 – 18.

Watch Sunny Lee discuss the future of credentials and recognition with Mozilla’s Open Badges project:


To see more expert gamification videos, visit our Video page or Subscribe to our YouTube channel!

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Gamify your Media Through Interactive Storytelling app, dio

Alex Landa34 mins

Are you getting tired of sending and receiving pictures from family and friends? Are you ready to step it up a notch? Let’s try sharing experiences instead.

The creators of Second Life, Linden Labs, have introduced the beta phase of dio. This new interaction creator allows you to gamify your pictures, videos, other media for fun to share with people you already know or with the public. Users can upload pictures and create adventures from them with a  similar feeling to tabletop RPGs.

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New Vendors Added to the Gamification Buyer’s Guide – 3/1/2013

Ivan Kuo02 mins

Need a place to start looking for gamification solutions? Our gamification buyer’s guide is a comprehensive database featuring numerous prominent companies, their vital stats, and a filtering system to find which company is right for you. Here are this week’s new gamification solutions added to the Buyer’s Guide:

  • FantasySalesTeam is an application that allows sales teams to run more engaging sales contests based on fantasy sports concepts.
  • Mobitto is a crowdsourced mobile loyalty app that rewards people for doing the things they like the most.
  • PAKRA works with you to understand the knowledge, skills and behaviors critical to maximizing your customers experience, and to explore opportunities for business improvement across all channels of contact

See the full gamification Buyer’s Guide for the complete list of gamification vendors. If you would like to be apart of the Buyer’s Guide,

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Quincy Jones’ Playground Sessions is a Rhythm Game that Actually Teaches you Piano

Ivan Kuo54 mins

Playground Sessions will Make you a Piano Hero…and thank the gods that there won’t be any crappy plastic controllers necessary either.

Playground Sessions is a new piano education application created by Chris Vance and Quincy Jones to make learning piano more fun. The program utilizes a “play to learn” model that relies on today’s most popular music to get students interested in playing and subsequently learning as well.

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Chok! Coca-Cola’s Most Successful Hong Kong Marketing Campaign in 35 Years

Ivan Kuo63 mins

Coca-Cola has really been innovating with their marketing campaigns worldwide. We saw one Coke vending machine challenge mall visitors to dance for free Coke in South Korea. And another Coke machine challenged commuters to be James Bond in Europe to promote the release of Skyfall. Apparently, Coke isn’t done with using gamification for marketing as the Harvard Business Review blog shed some light on their Chok campaign — an initiative Coca-Cola claims to be the best Hong Kong marketing campaign they’ve accomplished in 35 years.

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Psych The S#cial Sector: A New 8-Week Second Screen Experience

Ivan Kuo29 mins

Have you ever watched a mystery show and found yourself yelling at the television set “come on guys, the clue is right there!”? Have you ever solved the mystery within the first 10 minutes, only to find out at the end that you were right the entire time? How many times have you thought you should be the ones solving the case?

Well, now you can be.

Following the success of the Emmy-nominated game Hashtag Killer, PSYCH The S#cial Sector is a multiplatform game that allows fans of the series Psych to upload video content, play games, examine evidence, and post to a theory wall for the entire 8-week duration of the mystery.

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