Gamifi-what?

What do you think of when you think of gamers and games? What image pops up on the screen in your head? Chips, stained clothes, towers of Coke cans. Stinky stinky and just no sunlight. So much for the cliché. But how much of it is true?

There is a little truth in every cliché. However, the picture painted above hardly corresponds to the year 2020. Twitch, YouTube and various other platforms enable live streaming, interaction, knowledge sharing and entertainment. In any case, the basement dweller cliché has long been firmly rejected in the community. And the figures show this: The proportion of gamers in Germany is 46%. That's 16.5 million female gamers and 17.8 million male gamers.

So gaming has long since ceased to be a niche market. On the contrary: half of all Germans play games. Of course, none of them are e-sports enthusiasts. We can assume that the majority are casual gamers, i.e. people who play a quick game on their cell phone until the subway arrives. But even in these short episodes, games are not just screens to stare at. Compared to movies and vlogs and series and everything else that flickers across our screens every day, games always require interaction. Just looking is not enough. And this interaction is increasingly taking place in all kinds of areas that we might not have expected.

So welcome to the age of gamification. You don't have to use Anglicisms for everything, but gamification sounds better than “gameification”. You can certainly get an idea of what is meant, but let's get a little more specific. Basically, gamification means that certain elements and processes that have been developed for games are applied in other areas. This can be, for example, visualized progress, the achievement of goals and/or associated rewards. If a customer, user, employee, etc. has to work through a rather dull PowerPoint, it may increase motivation to use a colorful slide with an animation, a progress indicator and a reward/commendation after a few somewhat drier slides. For example, users can collect several stickers, stick them in after each section and have a complete album at the end.

But it's not just about individuals. These functions can also be easily extended to larger groups. In collaborative work, everyone can put together a picture with their stickers, which can be a puzzle, for example. This then has to be solved together - or you can turn it into a competition and create public ranking lists to see who has solved more puzzles. All of this falls under the term gamification. The possibilities are almost limitless. And even if gamification has often even unconsciously penetrated many areas, the future offers more and more possibilities, which are also becoming increasingly important due to corona.

The pandemic has forced everyone in our societies to break new ground. This particularly affects companies and businesses that work with many people. Cultural events, trade fairs and politics. The move to move all of this online in 2020 is more than logical - and yet almost frighteningly poorly implemented when you consider that this is 2020 and we know what is actually possible. It's a little reminiscent of the early years of the internet, when the first Myspace pages appeared. Everyone does something first and the results are, well, not ideal. But the good news is that things are moving. And a lot of it.

The proportion of online meetings and virtual meeting places is skyrocketing. Virtual reality and augmented reality are playing an increasingly important role. So if a trade fair cannot take place today due to Covid, it will be held virtually. But the result is often sobering. All too often, the trade fair is recreated one-to-one. What a waste of opportunities! Who says we still need gravity and exhibition halls? A food fair on the Death Star from Star Wars? No problem! Beauty products in the secret cellars under the Sphinx? Almost boring! Marketing cooling systems? Why not in the center of a sun? It's time to rethink creativity.

With increasing gamification, many people are acquiring the skills to enter and use these spaces. Who wouldn't want to walk around the Death Star and have the Emperor himself explain the benefits of molecular cuisine?

We are therefore caught up in a development that has been around for some time, but has always felt like it was taking place in the background and continues to do so. However, this does not mean that it is meaningless. On the contrary: it affects almost everyone. And the more it takes part in people's lives, work and leisure time, the more comfortable and natural it feels. The opportunities here are limitless. The only limit here is creativity. Isn't that what we tell and teach our children? Learning through creativity and play? Who is to say that this doesn't work just as wonderfully for absolutely everyone who is no longer a child? Exactly. Game on!