How gamification affects behaviour

The immersive nature of games helps to establish and maintain habits.

Games have the power of engaging people intensely and repeatedly through their established mechanics. Applying those basic game ingredients (such as rankings, badges, and characters) to other non-ludic activities can help to establish and maintain habits.

Using gamification triggers

Gamification Triggers are best to tackle Promotion, Shopper and Loyalty jobs. Or pretty much to help anyone adopt and stick to new behaviours. With the brief at hand, try asking yourself the following questions:

(click on them for details and examples)

A bit more on gamification

Gamification became ‘a thing’ in the early 2010s. Today there are even big companies that apply game techniques and mechanics to several non-gaming environments like education, healthcare, software development, workforce, government and, of course, marketing. A short intro video below.

And a longish one.

Great ideas using gamification

Rink Bingo | FCB Geneva for Hockey Club Davos

The Ad That Run | Geometry Prague for Intersport

Most recent ideas using gamification

(check Activation Ideas for even more case studies using Gamification)

If you want to learn more about gamification

At face value, Gamification might be misunderstood as the simply addition of points and badges to a programme, or something that can only be used in apps. Jane McGonigal is an inspiring reference that shows how pervasive games can be in our lives. Her TED Talks are great and her book and app SuperBetter show how games can help improve one’s whole lifestyle.

Gaming can make a better world, TED Talk by Jane McGonigal

The game that can give you 10 extra years of life, TED Talk by Jane McGonigal

How game mechanics can be applied to your whole life

A crash course on the key elements of Gamification

Other triggers

There’s much more than Gamification to influence people’s behaviour. Check out all the other Behavioural Triggers to learn more.