field notes

Did Someone Just Say - "101 Years of Gamification"?

That's correct. Just like like the shock some of our younger staff members experience when we show them that many common Direct Marketing techniques preceded the internet era, "Gamification" itself is something that preceded the digital era as well. While some might put the start of it all with the Boy Scouts awarding their badges from 1911, we think a more deserving start point would be the introduction of "A Prize in Every Box" of Cracker Jack's in 1912. And as we will show in our next article, pyschology demonstrates how we are wired to respond to these techniques. For today, we will talk a bit about how those techniques have been deployed and mastered over time.

When you hear the term gamification you probably think of Xbox or Angry Birds or Grand Theft Auto. I think of "addiction" - or the impulse to keep doing something because you subconsciously like it. Research has shown that we are all born with a desire to play games. It’s wired into us. Brands can take advantage of that desire, not by creating games, but by using “game mechanics” to drive certain desired behaviors.

If you Google “uncomplicate your life” you’ll get over 2,200,000 results; change the search to “simplify your life” you get 11,100,000. These numbers suggest a yearning for an easier way, but also that most believe the answer to “complicated” is to simplify.  But is this really true?

Ever wonder sometimes if human beings have “over-evolved”? That maybe the cumulative innovations, over hundreds of thousands of years on this planet, have finally surpassed our ability to comprehend it all?