As consumers are increasingly overwhelmed by content online, traditional metrics like clicks and impressions are losing their effectiveness. Companies are now focusing on engagement in order to create connections, foster interaction, and cultivate repeat business. Gamification, the application of game-like elements to non-game contexts, is emerging as a potent tool for small businesses seeking to boost customer engagement and loyalty.
By incorporating points, badges, leaderboards, challenges, and other game elements, businesses can transform mundane tasks into enjoyable experiences. For instance, a coffee shop could enhance customer satisfaction by awarding points for each purchase, redeemable for free drinks or merchandise. Moreover, gamification can be strategically employed to encourage specific customer behaviors, such as joining a loyalty program, providing feedback, or recommending the business to friends. This approach can prove particularly effective in promoting new products or services. Beyond driving customer actions, gamification creates a sense of community among customers. Leaderboards can spark friendly competition, while social features like teams and challenges encourage interaction. Cultivating this community spirit can enhance brand loyalty and the long-term value of customers. Gamification's benefits also extend beyond the customer base. Businesses can leverage this strategy to motivate and engage employees. Sales contests featuring leaderboards and rewards can inspire employees to achieve targets, while point systems can recognize and reward desirable behaviors like exceptional customer service or teamwork. Implementing gamification does not require a radical business overhaul. The key lies in identifying desired behaviors and crafting game mechanics that make those actions more appealing. With a creative approach, gamification can empower small businesses to differentiate themselves in a competitive market, ultimately driving growth through increased customer engagement and loyalty.
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While social media has become an undeniable force in marketing, solely relying on likes, comments, and shares might not be enough to foster a truly engaged consumer base. Marketing executives looking to cultivate deeper connections with their audience should explore strategies that extend beyond the digital realm.
Experiential Marketing: Consumers crave experiences. Events, contests, or interactive campaigns can generate excitement and create lasting brand memories. Pop-up shops, product demonstrations, or workshops can provide valuable interactions that go beyond a passive social media post. Gamification for Deeper Engagement: Gamification, the application of game mechanics in non-game contexts, can be a powerful tool for boosting audience engagement. Imagine if interacting with your brand felt as much fun and rewarding as playing a game. Here are some ways to leverage gamification: -Interactive Kiosks: Similar to the system described by GO4 Gold, brands can utilize interactive kiosks in physical locations. These kiosks can offer engaging games tied to the brand's products or services. Every interaction with the kiosk could result in a small reward, like a discount or entry into a larger prize draw. -Loyalty Programs with Gamified Elements: Loyalty programs can be gamified by incorporating points, badges, and leaderboards. Consumers earn points for completing actions like making purchases, referring friends, or engaging with brand content. These points can then be redeemed for rewards, creating a sense of accomplishment and encouraging repeat engagement. -Interactive Social Media Campaigns: Even social media campaigns can be gamified. Consider contests where users earn points for completing challenges related to your brand. Leaderboards can be used to add a competitive element, and winners can be rewarded with exclusive prizes. By venturing outside the social media sphere and implementing these strategies, marketing executives can cultivate a more engaged and loyal consumer base. This allows brands to move beyond fleeting online interactions and build meaningful connections with their audience. Milind Bharvirkar, a veteran gaming executive and the visionary behind GO4Gold, a platform for sponsor-driven skill-based tournaments, is passionate about connecting brands with gamers. An avid reader of business literature, Bharvirkar finds particular inspiration in Rajat Paharia's book, "Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification."
Building Loyalty Through Positive Psychology Paharia's book takes a positive psychology approach, focusing on fostering enthusiastic and engaged stakeholders through gamification – a system that encourages point-scoring competition among users. On the customer side, this involves understanding what motivates people to buy and interact with a brand. This necessitates collecting and analyzing the data streams they provide, whether through online purchases or social media activity. Companies can then leverage this data to build personalized engagement strategies, fostering a sense of loyalty when implemented effectively. Gamifying Data for Retention Paharia also explores how programs and apps can be designed to encourage customer retention by making service use enjoyable and goal-oriented. He emphasizes that companies considering a "Loyalty 3.0" strategy should prioritize offering a core service or product with inherent, lasting value to users. Once a foundation of practical utility is established, companies can then focus on gamifying data. GO4Gold: Putting Loyalty 3.0 into Action Books like "Loyalty 3.0" provided Bharvirkar with the insights to create GO4Gold. This innovative platform allows brands to host sponsored tournaments, engaging consumers with a variety of prizes – both free and paid to enter. The key differentiator? Everyone wins something. Winners receive their chosen prize, while others get a discount on it. Through this voluntary brand interaction, GO4Gold measures and builds brand loyalty. In essence, GO4Gold capitalizes on the power of gamification and data analysis, aligning with the principles of Loyalty 3.0 to cultivate deeper customer connections. About GO4Gold GO4Gold is a revolutionary platform that brings the power of gamification to small businesses. We combine video games with rewards, offers, and loyalty programs. By applying gamification to marketing, small businesses can see increased engagement, visits, and customer loyalty. Consumers are drawn to winning prizes. With GO4Gold, businesses can engage customers with exciting games to win prizes from their favorite stores. Everyone wins, though! Participants always walk away with something of value, whether it's the grand prize or a special offer on the desired product. GO4Gold uses a performance-based pricing model, so you only pay when a customer makes a purchase through a gamified offer. Let's make marketing fun and watch your business flourish. Contact GO4Gold today to learn how we can help you build brand awareness, boost customer engagement, and achieve explosive revenue growth! Milind Bharvirkar joined GameCloud Network as the executive vice president of sales and marketing in 2020. In this position, Milind Bharvirkar oversees aspects of game design.
Game design is a complex and diverse field key to making compelling, successful computer and video games. It encompasses virtually every aspect of a game. Game design professionals may function more as writers, artists, programmers, or some combination. Game design decisions influence the overall game flow and experience, including the game's difficulty. Consider the roguelike, a game genre with several specific design tropes. Unlike many video games, roguelikes do not have standard, familiar levels the player returns to every session. Instead, after a player character wins or loses the game, the game starts over with a completely new, procedurally generated set of rooms and corridors. This means the game experience completely changes each time. Roguelikes are typically very difficult. Part of this difficulty can be attributed to the design choice of permanent death. In popular games like Mario or Sonic, a player has numerous lives to play with, and if they lose all of them, they typically are sent back to the start of the level. In roguelikes, when the player character loses, the game ends. Regardless of whether the player was in the first room or facing the final boss, they need to start from the very beginning and will need to take an entirely new path to the end. Roguelikes are named after Rogue, released in 1980. More recent roguelikes include Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, and the first major studio roguelike, Returnal. Based in California, Milind Bharvirkar serves as executive vice president of sales and marketing for GameCloud Network. In his free time, Milind Bharvirkar contributes to Conscious Capitalism.
The nonprofit Conscious Capitalism believes that capitalism can be a vehicle for valuable, ethical change and growth for humanity, especially if it follows four key tenets. Tenet 1: Higher purpose. Companies must understand why they exist in order to effectively elevate humanity. Profit should not be the primary motivation for a company’s existence. Instead, it should serve as a means to an end to keep the company operational. Tenet 2: Stakeholder orientation. Companies need to create value for stakeholders, from customers and employees to investors and communities. Tenet 3: Conscious leadership. Leaders must also serve as visionaries, identifying a path and helping others follow that same path. They must also be cognizant of the company’s higher purpose and intentionally cultivate conscious capitalism. Tenet 4: Conscious culture. While all companies have a culture, not all companies are intentional about creating one that promotes values and purpose. Conscious capitalism requires conscious culture building. Learn more by visiting www.consciouscapitalism.org. Located in Orlando, Florida, Milind Bharvirkar has served as the executive vice president of sales and marketing at Murrieta, California’s GameCloud Network since 2020. During his time in the gaming industry, Milind Bharvirkar has successfully negotiated licensing deals with major companies such as Sony and Marvel.
Marvel’s transition from comics to films has resulted in unparalleled success to the tune of more than $25 billion at the global box office. That said, the company’s recent ventures into gaming have not panned out as well. Marvel’s Avengers was released in 2020 by Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix Europe. The game received mediocre reviews and sold only 3 million units, resulting in estimated losses of $63 million. Released the following year, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy received much higher scores with critics and players. Unfortunately, the game did not draw much of a player base. Developer Square Enix quickly lowered the game’s asking price from $60 to $30 following a sluggish launch. Sales never recovered. Most recently, Marvel’s Midnight Suns followed the Guardians with a strong reception but poor sales, via Take-Two Interactive. The lone Marvel exception in recent years has been Insomniac’s Spider-Man. The game and its sequel both had strong reviews and sales figures, with the first game selling over 33 million copies. Insomniac is set to release another follow-up in 2023, and is also working on a video game adaptation for the Marvel character Wolverine. Capitalism is considered the most successful economic model ever conceived. And contrary to popular opinion, capitalism is not about the wealthiest individuals in society — it is about the betterment of society. However, public distrust of capitalism is growing. Consumers, employees, and other stakeholders feel that businesses have neglected their interests while single-mindedly pursuing profits. Conscious capitalism has emerged in response to these concerns. It represents a shift from business as usual to a new way of doing business. Conscious capitalism is both a philosophy and a business model. It promotes a more complex, more encompassing form of capitalism that encourages awareness while pursuing profits. This means businesses should consider all the stakeholders involved, including those that cannot speak for themselves, such as the environment. At the forefront of these efforts is Conscious Capitalism, a nonprofit organization that brings together like-minded business owners to do things consciously. Conscious Capitalism focuses on impact maximization by pursuing a higher purpose, conscious business culture, stakeholder orientation, and conscious leadership. These are the four pillars supporting the organization’s mission. The goal is not to limit capitalist powers but to inspire business leaders to aspire for more. The principle of higher purpose encourages business leaders to view profit-making as a means to an end — impacting society positively — instead of as an end in itself. Recognizing that humanity has often taken a backseat in the quest for profit maximization, Conscious Capitalism encourages business leaders to positively impact society even as they pursue monetary gain. Corporations are increasingly viewed as soulless capitalistic machines, solely concerned with the bottom line. Conscious Capitalism, through the principle of stakeholder orientation, encourages business leaders to pursue capitalist goals in a way that best reflects their stakeholders’ conditions and the state of the environment in which they operate. Stakeholder orientation encourages business owners to create and optimize value with and for their stakeholders, instead of only taking value from them. This calls for optimizing value so that profit, people, and the planet have equal value in the eyes of business leaders. Conscious capitalism emerged due to growing distrust between corporations and their stakeholders. Customers and employees felt that they were getting the short end of the stick. Meanwhile, environmental activists were lamenting the harm done to the planet by corporations. In response, Conscious Capitalism created the principle of conscious culture. A conscious culture is entrenched in organizations’ business models, practices, and principles. Conscious Capitalism as an organization encourages a business culture in which business values reflect conscious capitalism, informing all decisions and fostering a culture of trust among all participants. This is the major difference between conscious capitalism and corporate social responsibility. The latter treats social responsibility as a side project, while the former sees it as an ongoing process that is part and parcel of all corporate decisions. It’s one thing to build and advocate for conscious business systems. Getting business leaders onboard is another thing altogether. Armed with this knowledge, Conscious Capitalism sees conscious leadership as the glue that holds the other three pillars together. Without forward-looking leaders who understand that profit-making is a means to an end and that the people, planet, and profit are equal pursuits, it’s extremely hard to implement a conscious culture within a business. Conscious Capitalism strives to cultivate in business leaders a spirit of self-awareness in the hopes that such leaders will inspire other stakeholders to travel along the same path. The overarching goal of Conscious Capitalism’s credo is to use business to elevate humanity, not diminish it. It’s not about pushing profit-making to the backseat in favor of socialism. Instead, it respects and builds on the foundation of traditional capitalism, promoting competition, free trade, entrepreneurship, and the rule of law — only in a more collaborative and compassionate manner. via WordPress https://ift.tt/NE8Mh0w Bernard Suits, a philosopher, once said that games are much more than mere pastimes that occupy people when they have nothing to do. Games offer individuals an avenue to exert most of their untapped intelligence and passion into a rewarding, simulated experience. In her eponymous movie, Mary Poppins explains the very essence of gamification: “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and SNAP! The job’s a game.” Gamification is simply the process of applying game-design concepts and principles in non-game contexts. Gamification existed long before Mary Poppins pointed it out. In the early 1900s, a Boy Scout earned badges and ranks after completing a task or mission. The 1970s and 80s witnessed the take-off of video games. Games like “Math Blaster” and “Reader Rabbit” were popular games geared towards educating its players. Video games and computer games have become mainstream in the United States. A 2020 study established that a little over 163 million American adults in America play video games, and 70 percent of kids in the Untied States 18 and below are active gamers. Consequently, gamification is increasingly becoming an invaluable tool across industries and sectors- especially marketing. In 2013, Forbes estimated that more than half of their “Global 2000 Companies” planned to incorporate gamification into their marketing structure and overall work architecture. According to Gartner, about 70 percent of the Global 2000 Companies have begun implementing game-design elements and principles in their companies. Statistics show that one in three employees in contemporary America are millennials, a generation that grew up gaming. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2025, 75 percent of the American workforce will consist of millennials. According to a Gallup report, when a company has highly motivated employees, the company is likely to become 21 percent more efficient. Its profits will be 22 percent higher, and the rate of customer satisfaction will increase 10 percent. It becomes evident why senior executives at Global 2000 companies would propose incorporating gamification into operations and customer relations. Eighty-five percent of employees become even more motivated when gamification exists in the workplace. Gamification impacts the employee’s performance, innovation, and personal development. It introduces a reward system that motivates them to complete set goals. Learning applications like “Read Along” by Google and Minecraft help students learn in the educational sector. Research shows that 80 percent of students learn better with gamified practices. Minecraft, for instance, teaches students how to code. Read-Along features Google’s voice technology and encourages kids to read and concentrate on stories. The United States Army has launched a gamified platform for its recruitment process in the military sector. Enrollees can demonstrate their ability to become a soldier. Virtual battles are not substitutes for real-world combat, but this initiative is cost-effective. About 30 percent of American youths perceive the US Army more positively. A popular pizza chain, Domino’s Pizza, has also included gamification into its recruitment process via the mobile application Pizza Hero. Since the app’s release, sales have increased as high as 30 percent. Starbucks, FourSquare, and Nike are some corporations that applied gamification to their business processes with successful results. The research vice president at Gartner, Brian Burke, believes that for gamification as applied in a business setting to work, it must contain three elements: motivation, momentum, and meaning. He believes that gamification could become as important as Amazon or Facebook if applied just right. via WordPress https://ift.tt/A5cSdYM The process of making a video game is as much an art as it is science and was once primarily managed by a single programmer. In the early 1980s, during the home computers and game consoles era, the programmer handled all aspects of the development, from programming to graphic design. Sometimes the process could take as little as two months.
As video games increased in popularity and consumer expectations of commercial games increased, a typical game project became highly specialized. The entire process of designing a game requires a team of skilled artists, game designers, writers, programmers, producers, and publishers. Games are costly, with a multiplatform game's budget typically skirting the $30 million mark. High-profile games usually cost more, exceeding the $40 million mark. And it is the publisher's responsibility to pay the game developers' staff–whether internal or external. Typically, the publisher is a company that publishes the video games they have developed within their organization or is outsourced to an external developer. Like how book publishers operate, video game publishers oversee the manufacturing and marketing of the product. They own the game's intellectual property, and depending on their size, they also oversee the distribution of their games or contract it out to distribution companies. The producer could be external or internal. Internal producers manage the development team and practically oversee the hiring process, developers' team, schedules, and progress reports. The external producer works closely with the publisher. Their job description includes contract negotiation, public relations, quality assurance, and budget management. Some external producers may double as project managers and project leads. The game designer serves as the visionary of most games. They are responsible for creating a concept for the game. At the beginning stage, they decide which category the game falls within. Generally, the genres a game might fall under are six in number: simulations, strategy, shooting, fighting, adventure, and RJA (Run, Jump and Avoid). From designing the gameplay to defining the structure and rules of the game, the game designer is crucial in the entire development process. Some designers double as writers and contribute significant material to the game's commentary, dialogue, and plot. They also participate in developing the narrative for a cutscene. There might be multiple designers on a larger project, focusing on a different aspect of the game like characters, graphics, dialogue, or user interface. The programmer, or software engineer, is in charge of the codebase development of a game. A typical game project will have more than one programmer. Their responsibilities vary from managing the game tools, developing network communications, and designing the user interface. They write scripts for the events and interactions and build a unique base engine. The complete physics of the game, the simulation of the opponents' AI, and the integration of sound effects, speech, and music are all within the ambit of a programmer. A level designer works closely with the programmer to create multiple levels, missions and challenges. They create these by writing a unique set of programs. Writers provide the game with a comprehensive and imaginative story complete with characters, plot, and setting. They furnish the game with purpose and ensure it is as entertaining and rewarding as the players. A team of writers would compile information on the players' objectives and guiding rules into a game manual. By this time, the team would have organized a game design document that involves every detail of the development process and guides the members. |