Holá Barcelona!Who wants to be gamified?

Relation from the Gamification World Congress 2015

A magnetizing speech, strong persuasion, an ability

to motivate others and lead them to success — those

features are not only superpowers of comic heroes.

Those are differentiations of all gamification heroes

that met during the biggest superheroes gathering

— the Gamification World Congress 2015. Sounds

amazing? Sure, it is. It lasted only a few days, but we

are still under the spell of this exciting event.

The organizers gathered people from various countries

and continents in such an inspiring and vivid city as

Barcelona. While there, we met gamification gurus, IT

directors and consultants, UX specialists, startupers,

engagement designers and more. It was a perfect

mixture of competencies and perspectives based on

different backgrounds. We collided our experience and

knowledge during workshops, presentations and every

possible moment of networking.

"Gamification starts with core drivers, not game elements."

Yu-Kai Chou

One of the most unforgettable workshops was held by Yu-Kai Chou, the

founder of the Octalysis Group and the winner of the Gamification Guru

of the Year 2015 award (you rule, Yu-Kai!). He not only turned our minds

into our internal gaming motivators, but he also reminded us one crucial

thing — currently, the awareness of companies about gamification is

getting bigger and bigger. During production of complex IT gamification

projects for them, sometimes there is a risk to forget that the real

engagement starts not with ultra interesting, catchy and jazzy game

elements, but with the core drivers. Game elements picked randomly

and put into a project? It’s not gonna end well, he assured us.

It was also mentioned by Horst Streck aka ‘Gamifier’ from Dutch Games Association who

started his presentation with a thought that engagement can stand even with no game

elements and left us with an amazing and inspiring case on how to use gamification in such a

serious world problem as water waste. Gamifier also pointed out a new important trend for

2016 — the Gamification Social Responsibility.

"Gamification is really a big data discipline. It generates a lots of data from the driven behaviours. It also requires a lots of data for feedback, for reinforcement."

Michael Wu

Other workshops and presentations brought up

many interesting thoughts and cases. We were

fascinated by a really well-designed presentation

by Chris Solarski — an Artist Game Designer

from Solarski Studio. It was a detailed journey

through a dynamic composition and techniques

of shaping emotional experience within game or

gamification. It gave us such a different

perspective and let us understand a huge role of

graphic design in gamification projects. It carried

our minds into new areas of improvement the

same as Juan’s Pablo Ordoñez presentation who

spoke from a perspective of a professor and

Gamification Design Consultant. He presented

an interesting case on how incredible public

learning can be if we forget about standard

methods and add gamified cards. Do you

remember your History lessons? It is not really

interesting for born-with-a-smartphone

teenagers nowadays... We should really think to

redesign it and make it more immersive.

… And then Michael Wu entered the workshops’

classroom. The Chief Scientist from Lithium

defined his perspective in only one sentence:

Gamification means behavioral analytics. The

rest of the workshop was a fast journey without

any stops. Descriptive, predictive, prescriptive

analysis? It is not a question anymore. He

brought our attention to big data analysis that

should be a base of every after-deployment

works in every gamification project.

"Creating a gamification project could be described by the orchestra (which means a cooperation of graphic designers, creative teams, analytics, business people, etc.)."

Chris Solarski

It required a longer break with a small cup of cortado, the

strongest Spanish coffee. The city of Gaudí wakes up at 11

PM and requires a lot of energy to keep up the pace with

citizens. Its magnetic and unique character is visible on each

step — on the top of Parque Güell, between tiny streets in

Gothic Quarter, on golden sandy beaches or inside crowded

tapas bars. Any better place to discuss the notes and

impressions from the workshops? :)

All the people we met confirmed that perfectly served gamification

is an effect of great cooperation between people with different

competencies. It’s like an orchestra that consists of various

musicians and leads to an amazing music that rushes minds and

hearts of its audience. We wholeheartedly agree with that and we

are proud to say that effects of our actions stand for this more than

our words. The Gamification World Congress was not only a place to

improve our knowledge, but also our small moment of glory owing to

Badges — our project prepared for JetBlue’s TrueBlue loyalty

program received the Best Gamification in Retails award during this

conference. Thanks for this distinction and kudos for all the team!