Gamification is like that famous secret ingredient in a recipe: the best ingredient forattracting,engaging, and above all,retainingan audience. Captivating your audience is no easy task. To stand out from the crowd and face the competition, there's nothing better than fun.
Gamification involves integrating game mechanics (points, levels, challenges, rewards, rankings, etc.) into contexts that are not inherently playful: events, training, internal communication, marketing, etc. The goal is simple: to make the experience more engaging, interactive, and memorable. It transforms a passive experience into an immersive and interactive moment.
By adding game codes to your events, you stimulate attention, encourage active participation, and promote the memorization of key messages. It is also an excellent way to collect data about your participants in a natural way.
But before getting started, it is essential to set clear goals.
First of all, what do you want to achieve by incorporating gamification into your events?
Depending on the objective, you can determine the appropriate format for your event.
There are four types of experiences to choose from:
• Competition: encourage participants' performance by focusing on competition
Example: in a company, pit several departments against each other with the aim of improving sales performance, with a significant and motivating prize such as a gift card or a trip.
• Role-playing: allowing players to surpass themselves, be more productive, measure their performance, and understand their progress
Example: offering a game with questions that test players' knowledge of a brand.
By reaching certain levels, players earn points and are rewarded with a discount voucher, a brand product, etc.
• Cooperation: allow participants to interact, share advice with each other, and discuss a product
Example: participate in product tests rewarded with cash or gift vouchers, allowing participants to exchange ideas with others and discover new products
• Storytelling: creating emotion
Example: encouraging participants to promote a brand after purchasing a product and thus show their attachment to it by rewarding them with a discount on a future purchase, for example
Some examples of existing games:
Quizzes tooptimizelearning, contests torewardparticipants,earningpoints through a leveling system,improvingthe customer experience on your website by using immersion mechanics, for example.
Some examples of existing games:
•Quizzesto optimize learning
•Conteststo reward participants
•Leveling systemsto create a sense of progression
•Narrative immersionfor a more powerful experience on a website or app
Before creating a game, ask yourself these three questions:
1. Which game mechanics are best suited to my audience?
2. What behavior do I want to elicit?
3. Which KPIs do I want to measure?
What do you expect in terms of feedback?
Beyond being captivating, gamification must fulfill one or more specific objectives according to your issues and needs.
This can range from developing your employees' skills to training teams, promoting team spirit, improving your employer brand, or even recruiting young talent...
How can you integrate gamification into your training programs?
Learning through play captures the attention of participants, who become active participants in the training.
To do this, there are a few steps to follow:
1. Tell a story: storytelling is the foundation that will allow the learner to be fully immersed and identify with the characters or actions to be carried out as part of the training.
2. Generate interest: it is essential to pace the training course in order to hold the learner's attention throughout. The best way to do this is to re-engage all participants by analyzing their results
3. Get feedback: provide immediate feedback (via a quiz, for example) to assess the impact of gamification on your training and determine how well the training and its content have been absorbed by participants.
However, there are key indicators for measuringthe impact ofgamification on your games, such as:
• conversion rate, reducing no-shows
• improving the use of content and replays
• increase in the number of users and audiences
• improved employee performance
Performance indicators are defined according to the gamification mechanics used.
When organizing an event, there is always a specific goal in mind. It is therefore important to communicate at every stage, before, during, and after.
Before, by creating a teaser that explains the rules of the game, the registration process, and specifying the prizes to be won via a website or a dedicated platform such as AppCraft or Arkham Studio, social media, or printed documents.
Clear and fluid communication with participants ahead of the event will help build trust and contribute strategically to successful gamification!
During the event, by sharing highlights, promoting players' actions, and congratulating them via live streams, for example.
After the event, by communicating the names of the winners, the prizes won, and the best scores achieved in an article, video, photos—any format is possible!
Gamification is a perfect lever in a company's internal communication. Certain topics, which are very serious in nature, can be approached in a fun way.
However, this practice requires the support of team members for effective implementation.
Let's take the example of CSR, an important topic for AppCraft Events. What better way to address it than with a workshop involving a few team members. A game-based workshop that encourages discussion and reflection on the actions that each team member can take on a daily basis to address the climate challenges we face today.
Integrating games into your events is a real opportunity to unite your existing community and expand it.
By collecting data from your participants, you can personalize your messages after your event.
Personalizing your commercial relationship will encourage your audience to return spontaneously and interact with your company.
