What I am reading:
What if everything we did was a little more fun?
Ever since Foursquare burst onto the scene with its clever badges and simplified “mayoral” achievements, people have been going gaga for game mechanics (and Gaga videos, circumstantially). Its competitors and allies, from Gowalla and Yelp to Miso, Hot Potato and my own startup, beamME, have been evangelizing the value of points, badges, levels, challenges, leaderboards and achievements as an easy and powerful way to get consumers to engage with a product or service.
This use of game mechanics outside of games—also known as Funware—is taking the social web and mobile apps world by storm. Almost every aspiring startup—and many established brands, including Chase, NBC and the US Army—are turning to Funware to deliver results that traditional/social marketing simply cannot deliver. As I explain in my new book, Game-Based Marketing, game mechanics can make any service or community more fun; and when given a choice between two similar activities, consumers will always choose the one that’s more enjoyable.
Editor’s note: In this guest post, Gabe Zichermann argues that fun is good and that game mechanics will find their way into all sorts of products and businesses.
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