Gamification is The Future

McDonalds and Monopoly - A Gamified Crossover Among Two Brands in Popular Culture There are crossovers happening everywhere. From movies to automobiles and fast food to comic books; it’s everywhere.   So what is a crossover? For those who are uninitiated to the idea of crossovers, it simply means an interaction or coming together of two distinct worlds which may involve people, objects or even ideas by transcending the various dimensions of time and place. Urban Dictionary has defined a crossover as “a fanfiction in which several fandoms interact with one another. This involves time travel  and  inter-dimensional  travel to  melt  two different fandoms. Popular examples of crossovers can be seen in film franchises like the Avengers, where a lot of characters from the Marvel Comic Universe come together and interact with each other in a common storyline. All that said and done, how has gamification sought to enhance the fun element and the excitement that comes from

Google Crowdsource – Gamifiying Online Information Crowdsourcing The term crowdsourcing refers to a method of actionable community engagement that seeks to harness the collective wisdom, knowledge, contributions, and capabilities of large groups of people in society. Crowdsourcing has been used by companies and organisations to solicit, improve, and address complex virtual and real-world challenges. This has helped to develop innovation and foster creativity while building on an ever-expanding, accurate and credible knowledge base. Crowdsourcing has been proven to help solve complex multi-layered problems within short spans of time. According to gamification expert, Yu Kai Chou, “Crowdsourcing utilizes several core behavioral drives that compel users to collectively work together to solve problems (sometimes by breaking them into tedious, and manageable tasks). “ An example of this could be the massive online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. It utilizes gamification principles

Gamification in Healthcare - Finding the Right Balance between Motivation and Gameful Design In a rapidly moving world where people are gripped by technology in its various avatars, we are rapidly losing touch with our selves. As a result one of the first casualties of such an onslaught is our health. As we rapidly increase our ‘screen times’ and are near paralyzed by a momentary lapse in internet connectivity and lag in our phones’ user interface, our minds and bodies have given themselves up to the mastery of the machines. Someone once rightly said it, “the machines are becoming smarter, while we as the human race, are becoming progressively weak and dumb.” All this sounds apocalyptic; with the possibilities of futures predicted by Hollywood movies like ‘The Terminator’ seeming increasingly possible and not too far in the future. Yet, we as gamers and disciples of gamification would like to see this situation as one where “if you can’t beat them, then join them!” The healthcar

Gamification in Google Maps - Part 2 The world of online maps has become very intriguing, with companies like Google taking the game to the next stage by looking to engage users and developers to create and use the platform in ways that will ensure continued usage and relevance for all stakeholders. An example of how serious Google is about this could be seen by the giveaway of 1 terabyte of free data storage to entice prolific reviewers to join its Local Guides communities and help it achieve its mammoth goal of creating a massive wiki of location reviews for the entire world. This program will help Google Maps better compete with Apple Maps, which is powered by Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Booking.com reviews of local businesses. Perhaps it will win back the hearts and minds of users who maybe are tired of giving Google their data for free. Google has gamified its platform from two perspectives. One, It has allowed users to engage with the platform via the Local Guides Community. Th

Google Maps Applies Gamification by Using Easter Eggs We all love surprises, don’t we? Well, at least the pleasant ones; the ones that bring a smile to our faces and relieve us momentarily from the monotony of our daily lives. In the marketing or business parlance, such surprises are often referred to as “Easter Eggs”. Easter Eggs are pleasant little surprises discreetly put into the product or service offered by marketers to surprise their customers. In the online context, they are hidden gems, features, or moments of surprise buried within the software and throughout the internet. They're designed to catch you off guard and make you smile, that is, if you can find them. They may or may not offer functional utility, but they are believed to enhance the perceived value of the brand in the minds of the customers.   Easter eggs are game elements that are fun to build and fun to find because they reward users that care enough to find and get excited about them. They create this

Google Stadia – The New Game Changer? In March 2019, Google formally announced Stadia during Google's keynote address at the 2019 Game Developers  Conference in  San Francisco.   Google’s Stadia is a cloud gaming service that is capable of streaming video games in 4K resolution and will be accessible through the company's Google Chrome web browser. It is essentially a cloud-based platform that streams games from a remote data center to nearly any device that can run Chrome, is designed to work on laptops, phones, tablets, PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, and TVs with Chromecast.   The Concept and Features: From a technological perspective it's an impressive concept. The USP of the service lies in the fact that it eliminates the need for heavy gaming or computing hardware to run these games from a user’s perspective. All the heavy and intense graphics processing is outsourced to off-site hardware, requiring users to only have a strong internet connection. Google will al