Gamification may sound complicated, but the idea behind it is fairly simple: taking fun parts of video games and putting them into everyday apps and websites. Think about how a video game makes you want to keep playing to reach the next level or get a high score. This doesn’t only happen with video games, but also on other digital platforms. Think about shopping sites, fitness apps or even banking tools. Platforms use instruments like points, badges and progress bars to make you feel like you are winning. It feels like you are playing a game and therefore you want to stay on the app longer or come back more often.
Gamification In All Modern Digital Platforms
The reason why many platforms use gamification has to do with psychology. When we finish a task and get a ‘reward’, even if it is just a digital gold star entering a new level, our brain releases a chemical called dopamine. This is a chemical that makes us feel good and happy. Apps use this psychology by setting up small goals that are easy to reach, the low hanging fruit. For example, take a look at a language-learning app. When you have been practicing for seven days in a row, you will earn a streak badge. You don’t want to lose the possibility of earning a badge, so you keep coming back. Learning a language might be a boring task itself, but it will turn into a fun habit because your brain is craving that small piece of happiness.
Learning And Working Through Play
Gamification is also changing how we learn and work in daily life. Many companies now use gamification to train their employees. Nobody is looking forward to reading long, boring manuals. Therefore, workers might play a simulation where they can earn points if they make the right choices. Or they can earn points every time they answer the right question in a quiz. Learning feels like a game and therefore doesn’t feel like hard work anymore. Simply put, we are trying to learn through play. People tend to remember information more easily and stay focused longer, because they are trying to ‘win something’, rather than ‘to learn something’. Every boring task now seems fun.
Shopping And E-Commerce Fun
Shopping itself might be rewarding enough, but many online shopping platforms have added gamification to make you buy that extra product. You probably have seen a ‘spin the wheel pop-up’ for a discount at a clothing website. Stores use these kinds of microgames to make you feel excited about buying another product.
There are also more subtle ways of gamification, for example, showing you a progress bar to show you how close you are to free shipping. This encourages customers to add just one more item to the cart and reach the next level. By making shopping interactive, you will have more fun during the shopping process and the platform has more revenue.
Gamification In Online Gambling
Gamification also shows up in the online gambling market. Online casinos are experts at using game design to keep people interested, Pikakasinot.com points out. The website has researched many online gambling slots and betting games and found out that gambling slots are more and more becoming big adventure games. When you play, you even might get an avatar or a character that gets stronger the more you play and win. You are not simply hitting a button to win the jackpot, but you are trying to complete a mission. For example, you have to play five rounds of certain games to unlock a treasure chest.
During promotions and tournaments there are leaderboards where you can see how you rank against other players. If you manage to stay in the top 3, you might win an extra prize. These features make it feel like you are making progress, instead of just winning or losing money. It keeps the experience exciting, even if you don’t win the jackpot all the time.
Even Banking Apps Use Gamification
Anyone who thinks online banking is boring, is wrong nowadays. Even banks are using gamification to help you keep track of your personal finance in banking apps. Most people find looking at their bank account stressful or boring. To fix this, apps have turned saving money into a game. For example, some apps let you build a virtual city that grows every time you log an expense or put money into savings. If you spend too much on takeout, your city stops growing. But if you are saving again, you might unlock a new element of the virtual city.
Apps like bunq even used lotteries in the past and when signing up, you get your own forest to take care of. By saving more money, bunq plants more trees. Other apps use automated rules to make saving feel like a surprise reward. For example, you can round up every purchase to the nearest dollar and put the change in a digital jar. The jar fills up and the progress bar moves closer to your goal. That makes saving for summer vacation or a new laptop much easier.
What’s Next For Gamification?
As technology gets better, we can expect gamification to show up in even more places. We are already seeing fitness watches make it possible to race against virtual friends in real time. In the future, your bank might decide to make saving money feel like online strategy gaming. This makes life more interesting and helps us to reach our goals. But businesses should not overdo gamification. After all, we should remember that these tools are designed to keep us clicking. While the goal of gamification is to make your digital lives more colorful and rewarding, we do need to remember that some boring tasks need to be done, too. But gamification just helps us to do these chores and it doesn’t matter if you are shopping or banking, the feeling of gaining a reward always will make us happy.
