The battle for attention commences. And it is more fierce than ever! Meanwhile, social media enables you to engage in conversation with consumers. But how do you keep them interested, once you have their attention? And besides attention, how do you motivate and raise engagement around your brand?

Gamification – injecting game elements and -tactics in a non-gaming environment – can be an important ingredient of your strategy. Gamification is not about gaming; it’s about developing innovative concepts that make use of easy gaming tactics and structures. In other words: offer consumers solutions around existing products, services or events that will give them a completely different experience. Why? Because engagement is even better than attention and no other medium has more engagement than computer games: people spend may hours per week – sometimes days – playing games like World of Warcraft, FarmVille, Wordfeud or Angry Birds.

The first part of this session will explain the origin of the Gamification concept and visions from different perspectives. What’s the difference between games, social games, serious games and Gamification and why is this so important? In the second part we will discuss a couple of case studies and best practices. After these sessions you are presented with an answer to the question what Gamification and Engagement Design means for your social business.

David also participate in the Social Talk Gamifiaction
With games becoming more and more accepted as a cultural form, the notion of gamification is gaining traction as well. Gartner put gamification on its hype curve and Google trends is showing the online diffusion of the topic around the world. Influential game designers, academics and marketers have helped to attract attention to the idea that game elements and game mechanics can make a difference. Some say, “reality is broken”, others argue that what is missing from many products and services is “fun”. Global companies as SAP, Cisco, Accenture, Dell, Adobe, Microsoft and Google are early-adopters of gamification elements and have implement leaderboards and badges in their products and services. At the same time, within academia, but also among practitioners there is a pushback against the current application and understanding of gamification. They call gamification bullshit, “exploitationware” and despise shallow implementation of game-like elements.

The on-going discussions on the ethics and implementation of gamification, what it is, what it is not, and what is should be, are the starting points of this social talk. First, one could argue that gamification is indeed a hype, which limits proper implementation. Second, one could debate that effective gamification applications and strategies are quite rare. The social talk participants have experimented with projects for major national and international companies and will draw from experience to discuss the challenges of gamification. Third, what are the limits of gamification? You can gamify running, a visit to the museum, and financial services as pensions, but where does it stop? And finally, there is the question of audiences. Will everybody be willing to invest time in gamified experiences?

Biography
dr. David B. Nieborg is an academic at heart. Holding a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree (cum laude) from Utrecht University, being a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and holding a PhD from the University of Amsterdam. David has been interviewed by every major Dutch magazine, newspaper and blog, and has given numerous interviews for radio and TV on all things about games. After a career in journalism, as well as consulting businesses, NGO’s and government agencies on the use of social media and applied games, David co-founded Flight 1337