Gamification by Design

I just finished reading a new O’Reilly book by Gabe Zichermann & Christopher Cunningham (site here) entitled Gamification by Design and I strongly encourage you – yes you – to read it. Just in case you thought that gamification has anything to do gaming, let me assure you: that it doesn’t. Some of the easiest examples of gamifaction are frequent flyer miles, badges on foursquare or the progress bar on LinkedIn. Gamifcation is a methodology that taps into human nature, therefore making your product or campaign, a must have. (This part sounds really “salesy” but this is the ultimate goal.)

There are too many things of value in the book to touch on in this post, but one of the things that stuck with me were player types. Gabe & Christopher define four types

1. Explorers – This person is exactly who you think they are. They’re someone that likes to go out and find things and bring them back to the community. (Important part there.) If you’re a product manager or a marketer, you love this type of player. They will be the first to try your app/respond to your marketing efforts.
2. Achievers – Again, they’re exactly what you’d think. These users take a deep dive into your offering and become experts of your product/offering attempting to master every challenge.
3. Socializers – This is the most common type of player and the game serves as a backdrop for the social interaction.
4. Killers – Also known as griefers, are like achievers but not only must they win, someone must lose and preferably as many as possible. (Reminds me of trolls.)

As you would suspect, most people have more than one of the player traits. According to the book, the percentages are as follows:

• 80% socializer
• 50% explorer
• 40% achiever
• 20% killer