For the Win

Kevin Werbach, Dan Hunter

• Publisher: Wharton Digital Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781613630228

Level 1: Getting into the Game: An Introduction to Gamification

Everything in the future online is going to look like a multiplayer game.

—Google chairman Eric Schmidt

Congratulations! You’ve begun! You’re at Gamification Level 1.

At this initial level, we explain why you should care about gamification, and we answer some basic questions:

• Why are games valuable in serious business contexts?

• What is gamification?

• How can game concepts be employed in your business?

• When is gamification most effective?

Ross Smith had a problem. His testing group at Microsoft plays a vitally important role for the software giant. Hundreds of millions of people use Microsoft Windows and Office daily. These software systems were built by hundreds of developers, modified repeatedly over a period of years, and customized for every major world language. Bugs and other errors are inevitable for such complex software systems. The testing group is responsible for ferreting them out.

It’s a monumental task. Automated systems aren’t sufficient, and the only way to ensure quality is for a vast number of eyeballs to review every feature, every usage case, and every dialog box in every language. It’s not just the scale of the problem: Rigorously testing software is, much of the time, mind-numbingly boring. Even for a company with the resources of Microsoft, it’s no easy matter to find enough people prepared to test products like Windows and Office. And the programs have to be tested in every language that Microsoft ships in. It’s hard enough finding people to test in English, and ensuring that they do good work; imagine how hard it is confront the same problem in Polish, Urdu, and Tagalog.

If you were in Ross Smith’s situation, you probably wouldn’t think that fun was the answer to your problem. Software testing is serious business, with solemn financial and even legal implications for the company, and it calls for repetition and constant attention to detail. You might be surprised to learn, then, how Smith solved his problem: through games. Smith’s group pioneered the concept of software-quality games that turned the testing process into an engaging, enjoyable experience for thousands of Microsoft employees.

For the Language Quality Game, Smith’s group recruited Microsoft employees around the world to review Windows 7 dialog boxes in their spare time. They were awarded points for each suspicious bit of language they found and ranked on a leaderboard (a public “high score” list) based on their success. To ensure players didn’t just click through screens without reading them, the organizers sprinkled in deliberate errors and obvious mistranslations. The game’s scoring system tracked the performance of individuals and regions.

The Language Quality Game created a competitive dynamic for the participating employees. Employees wanted to win, and they wanted their languages to win. The Microsoft offices in Japan topped the regional leaderboard by taking a day off from other work to weed out localization errors. All told, 4,500 participants reviewed over half a million Windows 7 dialog boxes and logged 6,700 bug reports, resulting in hundreds of significant fixes. Not only did they do it above and beyond their work responsibilities, but a large number of them described the process as enjoyable and even addicting.

The Language Quality Game is not the only game developed at Microsoft to improve the quality of the company’s products. PageHunt presents users with a webpage and challenges them to guess the queries that would produce that page. In playing the game, users generate large numbers of unusual connections—“JLo” for a page showing Jennifer Lopez, for example—that computers just can’t generate by themselves and which radically improves the quality of Microsoft’s Web search. The Code Review Game broke programmers into teams that competed against each other to win the most points for finding and fixing bugs in Microsoft products.

The Microsoft initiatives led by innovative managers like Smith are examples of a burgeoning set of new business techniques that leverage games for business benefits and which go by the name “gamification.” These practices go beyond the game-based simulations that have crept into corporate training and related fields and instead involve the use of game techniques in all areas of business. They are coming soon to a business near you.

Figure 1.1: Screenshot of a User Playing the Microsoft Language Quality Game in Hindi

How Gamification Solves Business Problems

Ross Smith and the other executives we describe in this book have realized that the power of games extends beyond the objectives of the games themselves. A flight simulator can teach a pilot how to handle dangerous situations that might occur during landing. But if you’re running an airline, you also care about whether your flight attendants exude a positive attitude, your baggage handlers do their best to get suitcases out on time, and your customers express loyalty. Gamification techniques can help companies improve every one of these mission-critical aspects of their business.

There are any number of settings in which this approach can work, but at this early stage three non-game contexts are particularly prominent: internal, external, and behavior change.

Figure 1.2: Relationship between Different Gamification Categories

Internal Gamification

Ross Smith’s initiatives are examples of internal gamification. In these scenarios, companies use gamification to improve productivity within the organization in order to foster innovation, enhance camaraderie, or otherwise derive positive business results through their own employees. Internal gamification is sometimes called enterprise gamification, but you don’t have to be a large enterprise to use it. Even small companies and startups can apply game-design techniques to enhance productivity.

There are two distinguishing attributes of internal gamification. First, the players are already part of a defined community: the company. The company knows who they are, and they interact with each other on a regular basis. They may not have shared affinities like the community of Harry Potter fans; in fact, they may be quite diverse in their perspectives and interests. However, they share reference points such as the corporate culture and desire for advancement and status within the organization. The Microsoft Language Quality Game worked because Microsoft offices around the world cared about besting their fellow Microsofties, and they had a shared commitment to shipping the best possible operating system.

The other aspect of internal gamification flows from the first. The motivational dynamics of gamification must interact with the firm’s existing management and reward structures. The Language Quality Game was effective because its players weren’t employed by Microsoft as localization testers. They participated in what Smith calls organizational citizenship behavior, not because their salaries depended on it. Internal gamification can work for core job requirements, but there must be some novel motivation. That could be the status of winning a coveted employee award or the opportunity to learn new skills.

External Gamification

External gamification involves your customers or prospective customers. These applications are generally driven by marketing objectives. Gamification here is a way to improve the relationships between businesses and customers, producing increased engagement, identification with the product, stronger loyalty, and ultimately higher revenues.

A good example is the Record Searchlight, a daily newspaper in Redding, California. Virtually every newspaper faces a quandary as readers shift from print to digital. The reporting, editorial, and investigative functions that newspapers provide depend on revenues from advertising and subscriptions, which largely evaporate when readers think they can get their news from blogs or wire service stories available online. Management at the Record Searchlight realized that it could combat this trend if it built a sustainable community on its advertising-supported website. The challenge was to turn passive readers into engaged users who would spend time interacting with multiple articles on the site and recommend them to friends.

To solve this problem, the Record Searchlight implemented a badge system for comments on its online articles. Users were rewarded with badges for particular numbers of insightful comments. A badge is just a distinctive icon that shows up on a user’s profile when he or she reaches a defined set of requirements. That might not seem terribly important, but badges can be powerful motivators. They signify achievements and display them for all to see. Think about the patches used by the Boy Scouts, the insignias on military uniforms, or the “Harvard graduate” line on a resume. Gamified badges serve the same function digitally.

The paper’s primary goal was to increase engagement with its website. After three months, the Record Searchlight saw a 10% rise in comment volume, and the time spent on the site increased by about 25% per session. Another goal was to improve the quality of conversations on the site. By encouraging readers to reward good comments by other readers, the badges reduced the number of offensive and problematic comments. That reduced editorial costs for the paper, and it made the online discussion area a more valuable tool for retaining readers.

As a form of marketing, external gamification can take advantage of all the sophistication of modern data-driven marketing practices. Gamification adds a richer toolkit to understand and stimulate customer motivation.

Behavior-Change Gamification

Finally, behavior-change gamification seeks to form beneficial new habits among a population. That can involve anything from encouraging people to make better health choices, such as eating better or working out more, to redesigning the classroom to make kids lear...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction: Why Can’t Business Be Fun?
• Ex Libris
• Why We Wrote This Book
• Level 1: Getting into the Game: An Introduction to Gamification
• Level 2: Game Thinking: Learning to Think Like a Game Designer
• Level 3: Why Games Work: The Rules of Motivation
• Level 4: The Gamification Toolkit: Game Elements
• Level 5: Game Changer: Six Steps to Gamification
• Level 6: Epic Fails: And How to Avoid Them
• Endgame: In Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• Additional Resources
• About the Authors
• About Wharton Digital Press
• About The Wharton School
• © 2012 by Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter
• Ex Libris