Gamification

Gamification is a descriptionrefers ofto the process of using game mechanics in non-game environments, such as a website, online community, learning system, or business intranet to increase participation and engagement. Gamification offers proactive directives and feeback through game mechanics and dynamics to non-game platforms to reward players along the path to accomplishments of given goals and objectives. This is designed to develop a "gamified" experience that encourages users to continue based on their emotions. To do this, most gamification systems offer immediate feedback on performance and guided steps toward new achievements as the user interacts and to keep the user interacting.

Gamification and interactive displays can be effective related to physical activity and exercise programming. Exercising using gamification can be beneficial particularly to younger people, and those who do not enjoy physical education can tie a favorite game to an activity and get youths active. For adults, gamification can offer progress reports and rewards for specific achievements, which can be based on the individual's exercise and physical health goals.

Various studies have measured the level of engagement students display when utilizing gamification in the classroom. The researchers used point systems for various daily class activities, and the students' levels of engagement were measured. These studies found that a game-like atmosphere and using gamification techniques and mechanics increase student engagement in the classroom and increase productivity. Further, studies suggesting gamification can aid in cognitive development suggestssuggest that these techniques can further increaseimprove students' learning.

Advergames are online games that promote a particular brand, product, or marketing message by integrating that element into the game template. These types of games are often developed as a marketing and promotional tool, more than a game itself, with the idea that more interaction with the property through the form of a game leads to better associations. Early popular advergames included Pepsi's Pepsi Man and 7 UP's "Spot from the late 1990s. In 2019, snackable mobile games like Candy Crush and Temple Run were re-skinned with company branding and themes to promote their products and services. Advergames have been, over time, proven to generate higher levels of engagement and redemption when compared with traditional advertisements.

Gamification in health and wellness is primarily utilized in applications dealing with disease prevention, self-management, medication adherence, and telehealth programs. Generally, the core of healthcare gamification is patient-centric, with a focus on improving patient engagement and offering more personalized healthcare experiences. FurtherAdditionally, they can be used to make healthcare, rehabilitation, and physical exercise more fun.

For corporations, continued training of their workforce can be further assisted by gamification or gamified systems. This could be as simple as gamified learning modules through intranets or with training personnel, or it could be as sophisticated as an entire app, such as the HP UniHP Uni App. This app was launched to help train sales teams on cybersecurity topics, which offered users the chance to win the HP Security Cup at the conclusion of the learning campaign. And throughThrough this, the users earned points by engaging in and winning knowledge battles and could rise in the leaderboard in order to win the cup. The app was popular and engaged learners, allowing them to challenge each other and themselves. And the principle was applied to other parts of learning, where it could be replicated.

Gamification has been used as a tool to drive user engagement in user experience design. This does not mean turning an interface into a game, but rather using gamification to inject fun elements into applications and systems that might otherwise lack immediacy or relevance for users. The design can incentivize users to achieve goals and help overcome negative associations for a system or task the user is required to complete. Further, inIn some cases, where appropriate, this user interface can include social elements that can increase engagement.

Crowdsourcing refers more to actionable community engagement that can harness the wisdom, contribution, and capabilities of large numbers of people, or a crowd. It has been used to solicit, improve, and address complex virtual and real-world challenges in the areas of innovation and creativity, building accurate and vast knowledge, solving complex multi-layered problems, and achieving complicated feats within a short span of time. Different crowdsourcingCrowdsourcing applications can use a range of gamification principles to varying degrees to implement gamification mechanics and depends on the quality of experience the project seeks to offer based on the goals of the project. Further, it uses core behavioral drives that compel users to work together to solve problems, which can be enhanced through gamification elements.

Gamification is a description of the process of using game mechanics intoin non-game environments, such as a website, online community, learning system, or business' intranet to increase participation and engagement. GamificationsGamification offers proactive directives and feeback through game mechanics and dynamics to non-game platforms to reward players along the path to accomplishments of given goals and objectives. This is designed to develop a "gamified" experience that encourages users to continue based on their emotions. To do this, most gamification systems offer immediate feedback on performance and guided steps towardstoward new achievements as the user interacts and to keep the user interacting.

Gamification is often used to solve problems, including a range of issues of engagement in workplaces or society at large, such as voter apathy. And the mechanics are applied to increase not only user engagement, but also user happiness and loyalty over time. Some problems gamification has been used to solve include the following:

The techniques involved in gamification are used to leverage people's desires for socializing, learning, mastery, competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, orand closure, and simplify those responses to the framing situation used in games or play. These strategies reward the player for accomplishing a desired task, and types of rewards can inlcudeinclude points, achievement badges, levels, a progress bar, or offering a virtual currency. These rewards are intended to encourage players to compete. And theThe systems can increase in their challenge or add a narrative to further increase user engagement. Some examples of game mechanics or techniques used in gamification include the following:

• Goals - in which theGoals—Users user completescomplete a task and receivesreceive a reward, such as a badge or a point.
• Status - in which usersStatus—Users can increase their level or rank through completing activities; leaderboards can then be used to show who is winning and to inspire others to work harder and to compete.
• Community - in which usersCommunity—Users are pariedpaired or placed into groups to solve problems, complete activities, or otherwise achieve an objective.
• Education - tipsEducation—Tips, tricks, and quizzes can be given to the users are given to the user throughout the process.
• Rewards - as mentioned above, points,Rewards—Points and badges are common, and useful, rewards; other rewards can be discounts, coupons, or gift cards, which can increase a user's motivation and keep engagement high.
• "Unlockable" content - in which userscontent—Users can unlock a reward, a new level of play, or a superpower, which players can access when achieving something specific.
• Avatars - asAvatars—As a visual representation of the user, avatars can include various levels of complexity but give the user a "game-like" identity and become part of a community.

The benefits of gamification can depend in part on context, but they tend to create more engagement by adopting the act of playing a game into everday usedaily and useusing the entertainment value of games to motivate users to accomplish tasks that are normally viewed as boring, such as learning. Other benefits of gamification can include the following:

Especially in adolescence, using gamification can aid in cognitive development and an increase inthe thebrain activity of the brain that allows for development. Games produced specifically for enhancing cognitive development, often referred to as "brain games," have become increasingly popular and are baedbased on various questions and problems that the user has to answer or solve, and which are deelopeddeveloped to improve the rate inat which the brain processes and maintains information.

Using gamificationGamification and interactive displays can be as effective related into normalphysical activity and exercise as it can be cognitive developmentprogramming. Exercising using gamification can be beneficial especiallyparticularly to younger people, with some suggestions that forand those who do not enjoy physical education tocan tie a favorite game intoto thean activity and get those youths out and active. Further, forFor adults, gamification can offer progress reports and rewards for given or specific achievements, which can be based on the individual's exercise and physical health goals.

Various studies have been used to measuremeasured the level of engagement students have displayeddisplay when utilizing gamification in the classroom. The researchers used pointspoint systems tofor various daily class activities, and the students' levels of engagement were then measured based on their level of engagement. These studies found that a game-like atmosphere, and using gamification techniques and mechanics, increasedincrease student engagement in the classroom and increasedincrease productivity. Further, studies suggesting gamification can aid in cognitive development suggests that these techniques can further increase the students' learning.

Gamification offers benefits outside of classrooms and adolescent development, but that tends to be the most heavily studied application of gamification. Gamification can be used to help students learn at home. In the workplace, there are benefits to increasing employee learning and engagement at work, to increaseimproving workplace results, and offers various other benefits based on their application, such as in workplace training or marketing.

Gamification offers use and has been successful as it takes advantage of human psychology, but this comes with downsides too. Choosing the right mechanisms can be a challenge, and the elements need to be designed to encourage the desired behavior. Whereas poorly designed or implemented gamification can become a distraction from other priorities and encourage peopelpeople to engage in zero-sum or negative-sum competition against each other, resulting in wasted time and money.

Games can also become addictive, and using gamification for commercial purposes can raise the same risk, as developing an addictive compulsion to work or consume a product can be positive for a company but be seen as manipulative and exploitative for workers and consumers. This can further raise potential ethical issues.

Gamification has been widely been apliedapplied in marketing. withIn 2013, ForbesForbes in 2013 estimatingestimated that over 70 percent of their "Global 2000 Companies" list were recorded sayingstated they planned to use gamification for marketing and customer retention. In marketing, gamification uses design elements from games to attract and ultimately retain customers, with customers driven to perform an action because itdue offersto elements of a competition or reward. Some types of gamification marketing include the following:

Brandification in its simplest form is in-game advertising for real-world products orand services. This could include messages, images, orand videos used to promote a brand, product, or service in thea video games'game's world. One example of this came when the popular first personfirst-person shooter game Counter-Strike allowed advertisers to include movie posters on the walls of the game. Whereas thisThis has extended to companies releasing products virtually in gamein-game.

Advergames tend to beare online games that promote a particular brand, product, or marketing message by integrating that element into the game template. These types of games are often developed as a marketing and promotional tool, more so than a game itself., Withwith the idea that more interaction with the property through the form of a game leads to better associations. Early popular advergames included Pepsi's "Pepsi ManPepsi Man" and 7 UP's "SpotSpot" from the late 1990's1990s. In 2019, snackable mobile games like "Candy CrushCandy Crush" and "Temple RunTemple Run" have beenwere re-skinned with company branding and themes to promote their products and services. Advergames have been, over time, proven to generate higher levels of engagement and redemption when compared towith traditional advertisements.

Gamification in health and wellness is primarily utilized in applications dealing with disease prevention, self-management, medication adherence, and telehealth programs. Generally, the core of health carehealthcare gamification is patient-centric, with a focus on improving patient engagement and offering more personalized healthcare experiences. Further, they can be used to make healthcare and, rehabilitation, and physical exercise more fun.

Gamification platforms have been used forto helpinghelp users increase their physical health since 2010, when Nike launched its Nike+Nike+ app, which tracked and gamified thea usersuser's run time, distance covered, and health levels,parameters and compared them to the usersuser's historical performance and others within a social field. This included a leaderboard, points, and badges for the user, and is a classic example of live feedback and micro-measuring progress to help runners improve and progress their personal goals.

Gamification has been proposed for mental health applications, which can help users improve thetheir mood, and activate the ventral striatum, which can further enhance individuals' general reward responsiveness to positive stimuli, includingand help users reduce depressive symptoms. Gamification could, according to some studies, reduce depressive symptoms by increasing engagement with and adherence to mental health apps and work to activate reward-mediated neural pathways that could eliciteelicit positive feelings, which could counteract some negative feelings from depression.

Other organizations have used gamification mechanics and techniques to help connect users with others and workout together in groups. For example, one app by Les Mills offeroffers users group classes on stationary bikes with a computer screen in front of them, simulatingwith a roller coaster, whichsimulation. furtherIt tracks the usersuser's score, provides leaderboards, and offers a notification if the user does not show up to class offers a warning to users.

Since a majority of students tend to play games, especially video games, at home, particularly video games, it is no surprise that teachers saw a 70 percent increase in student engagement when introducing gamification elements into the classroom;, such as using educational video games. For education, gamification refers to a teaching methodology that creates a game-like scenario around the curriculum and the objectives of the course. These games are used to promote student engagement and motivate students to participate in course activities.

There are various examples of popular educational games, with one of the better examples including Minecraft: Education Edition. This game works to teach students how to code through a popular game format, and students enjoy the game mechanics with decent results for thein studentslearning.

The use of applications in classrooms can also support learning. AppsEducational suchapps asinclude DuolingoDuolingo or Read Along by Google help students learn, with Duolingowhich helpinghelps students with learning different languages, and Read Along by Google, usingwhich uses voice technology to encourage kids to read and follow along with stories. Further, similarSimilar to games, apps can make learning more fun for kids than traditional learning.

For the classroom, there are various ways to introduce gamification, such as quizzes, jeapordy-stylejeopordy-style contests, and an introduction of other gamification mechanics (badges, rewards, leaderboards, etc.) to encourage students to engage and participate in class. However, usingUsing technology such as smartphones or tablets can increase student participation, allowing them to select or type their answers to in-class questions in real-timesreal time and allowingallow usersteachers to interact with the class in a new way.

An elearningeLearning platform allows teachers to develop lesson plans with YouTube links and classroom notes and develop a learning pathway, which can include the addition of gamification strategy in the form of class quizzes, educational video games, mixed media exams, and awarded certificates upon completed courses for an all-around gamification learning experience.

For corporations, continued training of their workforce can be further assisted by gamification or gamified systems. This could be as simple as gamified learning modules through intranets or with training personnel, or it could be as sophisticated as an entire Appapp, such as the HP Uni App. This app was launched to help train sales teams on cybersecurity topics, which offered users the chance to win the HP Security Cup at the conclusion of the learning campaign. And through this, the users earned points by engaging niin and winning knowledge battles, and could rise in the leaderboard in order to win the cup. The app was popular and engaged learners, allowing them to challenge each other and themselves. And the principle was applied to other parts of learning, where it could be replicated.

Gamification has been used as a tool to drive user engagement in user experience design. This does not mean turning an interface into a game, but rather using gamification to inject fun elements into applications and systems that might otherwise lack immediacy or relevance for users. The design can further incentivize users to achieve goals and help overcome negative associations for a system or task the user is required to complete. Further, in some cases, where appropriate, this user interface can include social elements whichthat can further increase engagement.

Crowdsourcing refers tmoremore to actionable community engagement that can harness the wisdom, contribution, and capabilities of large numbers of people, or a crowd. And itIt has been used to solicit, improve, and address complex virtual and real-world challenges in the areas such asof innovation and creativity, building accurate and vast knowledge, solving complex multi-layered problems, and achieving complicated feats within a short span of time. Different crowdsourcing applications can use a range of gameificationgamification principles to varying degrees in order to implement gamification mechanics and depends on the quality of experience the project seeks to offer based on the goals of the project. Further, it uses core behavioral drives that compel users to work together to solve problems, which can be enhanced through gamification elements.

Gamification is a description of the process of using game mechanics into non-game environments, such as a website, online community, learning system, or business' intranet to increase participation and engagement. Gamifications offers proactive directives and feeback through game mechanics and dynamics to non-game platforms to reward players along the path to accomplishments of given goals and objectives. This is designed to develop a "gamified" experience that encourages users to continue based on their emotions. To do this, most gamification systems offer immediate feedback on performance and guided steps towards new achievements as the user interacts and to keep the user interacting.

Gamification is often used to solve problems, including a range of issues of engagement in workplaces or society at large, such as voter apathy. And the mechanics are applied to increase not only user engagement, but also user happiness and loyalty over time. Some problems gamification has been used to solve include:

• Learner engagement in workplace training
• Sales staff performance
• Ability to complete chores and mundane tasks
• Performance at the gym
• Organizational productivity
• Ability to enter "flow" states
• Knowledge retention
• Crowdsourcing
• Recruitment issues
• Customer retention

The techniques involved in gamification are used to leverage people's desires for socializing, learning, mastery, competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, or closure, and simplify those responses to the framing situation used in games or play. These strategies reward the player for accomplishing a desired task, and types of rewards can inlcude points, achievement badges, levels, a progress bar, or offering a virtual currency. These rewards are intended to encourage players to compete. And the systems can increase in their challenge or add a narrative to further increase user engagement. Some examples of game mechanics or techniques used in gamification include:

• Goals - in which the user completes a task and receives a reward, such as a badge or a point
• Status - in which users can increase their level or rank through completing activities; leaderboards can then be used to show who is winning and to inspire others to work harder and to compete
• Community - in which users are paried or placed into groups to solve problems, complete activities, or otherwise achieve an objective
• Education - tips, tricks, and quizzes can be given to the users are given to the user throughout the process
• Rewards - as mentioned above, points, and badges are common, and useful, rewards; other rewards can be discounts, coupons, or gift cards, which can increase a user's motivation and keep engagement high
• "Unlockable" content - in which users can unlock a reward, a new level of play, or a superpower which players can access when achieving something specific
• Avatars - as a visual representation of the user, avatars can include various levels of complexity but give the user a "game-like" identity and become part of a community

The benefits of gamification can depend in part on context, but they tend to create more engagement by adopting the act of playing a game into everday use and use the entertainment value of games to motivate users to accomplish tasks that are normally viewed as boring, such as learning. Other benefits can include:

Especially in adolescence, using gamification can aid in cognitive development and an increase in the activity of the brain that allows for development. Games produced specifically for enhancing cognitive development, often referred to as "brain games," have become increasingly popular and are baed on various questions and problems that the user has to answer or solve, and which are deeloped to improve the rate in which the brain processes and maintains information.

Using gamification and interactive displays can be as effective in normal exercise as it can be cognitive development. Exercising using gamification can be beneficial especially to younger people, with some suggestions that for those who do not enjoy physical education to tie a favorite game into the activity and get those youths out and active. Further, for adults, gamification can offer progress reports and rewards for given or specific achievements, which can be based on the individual's exercise and physical health goals.

Various studies have been used to measure the level of engagement students have displayed when utilizing gamification in the classroom. The researchers used points systems to various daily class activities and the students were then measured based on their level of engagement. These studies found that a game-like atmosphere, and using gamification techniques and mechanics, increased student engagement in the classroom and increased productivity. Further, studies suggesting gamification can aid in cognitive development suggests that these techniques can further increase the students learning.

Gamification can also be used in classrooms to teach students with different cognitive abilities and help reach and teach students of all needs. Scientists have previously studied the benefit of gamification for teaching students diagnosed with autism, to good effect, especially with age-appropriate gamification content.

Gamification offers benefits outside of classrooms and adolescent development, but that tends to be the most heavily studied application of gamification. Gamification can be used to help students learn at home, there are benefits to increasing employee learning and engagement at work, to increase workplace results, and offers various other benefits based on their application, such as in workplace training or marketing.

Gamification offers use and has been successful as it takes advantage of human psychology, but this comes with downsides too. Choosing the right mechanisms can be a challenge, and the elements need to be designed to encourage the desired behavior. Whereas poorly designed or implemented gamification can become a distraction from other priorities and encourage peopel to engage in zero-sum or negative-sum competition against each other, resulting in wasted time and money.

Promising rewards can create an initial draw and support early engagement, but engagement can wane if the rewards are not enough of a motivator. For example, if a health app rewards certain behaviors or frequent usage, the highest achieving users can begin to demand more and higher-level rewards to ensure participation over time. The rewards established in any gamification design have to be sustainable and support users with additional motivation.

Games can also become addictive, and using gamification for commercial purposes can raise the same risk, as developing an addictive compulsion to work or consume a product can be positive for a company but be seen as manipulative and exploitative for workers and consumers. This can further raise potential ethical issues.

Gamification has widely been aplied in marketing with Forbes in 2013 estimating that over 70 percent of their "Global 2000 Companies" list were recorded saying they planned to use gamification for marketing and customer retention. In marketing, gamification uses design elements from games to attract and ultimately retain customers, with customers driven to perform an action because it offers elements of a competition or reward. Some types of gamification marketing include:

Transmedia is the practice of taking a media property and extending it into different mediums to expand upon the material or bring greater attention to it. One example of this came in 1997 when Nintendo released the game 007: Goldeneye for the N64 console. This game title was created to bring more attention to the film of the same title's release but ended up making more money than the film itself.

Brandification in its simplest form is in-game advertising for real-world products or services. This could include messages, images, or videos used to promote a brand, product, or service in the video games' world. One example of this came when the popular first person shooter game Counter-Strike allowed advertisers to include movie posters on the walls of the game. Whereas this has extended to companies releasing products virtually in game.

Advergames tend to be online games that promote a particular brand, product, or marketing message by integrating that element into the game template. These types of games are often developed as a marketing and promotional tool, more so than a game itself. With the idea that more interaction with the property through the form of a game leads to better associations. Early popular advergames included Pepsi's "Pepsi Man" and 7 UP's "Spot" from the late 1990's. In 2019, snackable mobile games like "Candy Crush" and "Temple Run" have been re-skinned with company branding and themes to promote their products and services. Advergames have been over time proven to generate higher levels of engagement and redemption when compared to traditional advertisements.

Gamification in health and wellness is primarily utilized in applications dealing with disease prevention, self-management, medication adherence, and telehealth programs. Generally, the core of health care gamification is patient-centric, with a focus on improving patient engagement and offering more personalized healthcare experiences. Further, they can be used to make healthcare and rehabilitation and physical exercise more fun.

Gamification platforms have been used for helping users increase their physical health since 2010, when Nike launched its Nike+ app, which tracked and gamified the users run time, distance covered, health levels, and compared them to the users historical performance and others within a social field. This included leaderboard, points, and badges for the user, and is a classic example of live feedback and micro-measuring progress to help runners improve and progress their personal goals.

Gamification has been proposed for mental health applications which can help users improve the mood, activate the ventral striatum, which can further enhance individuals' general reward responsiveness to positive stimuli, including help users reduce depressive symptoms. Gamification could, according to some studies, reduce depressive symptoms by increasing engagement with and adherence to mental health apps and work to activate reward-mediated neural pathways that could elicite positive feelings, which could counteract some negative feelings from depression.

Other organizations have used gamification mechanics and techniques to help connect users with others and workout together in groups. For example, one app by Les Mills offer users group classes on stationary bikes with a computer screen in front of them, simulating a roller coaster, which further tracks the users score, provides leaderboards, and if the user does not show up to class offers a warning to users.

Since a majority of students tend to play games, especially video games, at home, it is no surprise that teachers saw a 70 percent increase in student engagement when introducing gamification elements into the classroom; such as using educational video games. For education, gamification refers to a teaching methodology that creates a game-like scenario around the curriculum and the objectives of the course. These games are used to promote student engagement and motivate students to participate in course activities.

There are various examples of popular educational games, with one of the better examples including Minecraft: Education Edition. This game works to teach students how to code through a popular game format, and students enjoy the game mechanics with decent results for the students.

The use of applications in classrooms can also support learning. Apps such as Duolingo or Read Along by Google help students learn, with Duolingo helping students with learning different languages and Read Along by Google using voice technology to encourage kids to read and follow along with stories. Further, similar to games, apps can make learning more fun for kids than traditional learning.

For the classroom, there are various ways to introduce gamification, such as quizzes, jeapordy-style contests, and an introduction of other gamification mechanics (badges, rewards, leaderboards, etc.) to encourage students to engage and participate in class. However, using technology such as smartphones or tablets can increase student participation, allowing them to select or type their answers to in-class questions in real-times and allowing users to interact with the class in a new way.

An elearning platform allows teachers to develop lesson plans with YouTube links and classroom notes and develop a learning pathway, which can include the addition of gamification strategy in the form of class quizzes, educational video games, mixed media exams, and awarded certificates upon completed courses for an all-around gamification learning experience.

For corporations, continued training of their workforce can be further assisted by gamification or gamified systems. This could be as simple as gamified learning modules through intranets or with training personnel, or it could be as sophisticated as an entire App, such as the HP Uni App. This app was launched to help train sales teams on cybersecurity topics, which offered users the chance to win the HP Security Cup at the conclusion of the learning campaign. And through this the users earned points by engaging ni and winning knowledge battles, and could rise in the leaderboard in order to win the cup. The app was popular and engaged learners, allowing them to challenge each other and themselves. And the principle was applied to other parts of learning, where it could be replicated.

Gamification has been used as a tool to drive user engagement in user experience design. This does not mean turning an interface into a game, but rather using gamification to inject fun elements into applications and systems that might otherwise lack immediacy or relevance for users. The design can further incentivize users to achieve goals and help overcome negative associations for a system or task the user is required to complete. Further, in some cases, where appropriate, this user interface can include social elements which can further increase engagement.

Crowdsourcing refers tmore to actionable community engagement that can harness the wisdom, contribution, and capabilities of large numbers of people, or a crowd. And it has been used to solicit, improve, and address complex virtual and real-world challenges in the areas such as innovation and creativity, building accurate and vast knowledge, solving complex multi-layered problems, achieving complicated feats within a short span of time. Different crowdsourcing applications can use a range of gameification principles to varying degrees in order to implement gamification mechanics and depends on the quality of experience the project seeks to offer based on the goals of the project. Further, it uses core behavioral drives that compel users to work together to solve problems, which can be enhanced through gamification elements.