The little bit of magic all gamification projects need

I’m not saying we chose the hotel specifically because there was a free magic show in the evening, but when you’re dealing with three young children and nearing the end of March Break, you’ll do almost anything to make the hours before bedtime disappear.

The turnout was better than I expected. At least three dozen families must have shown up in the ballroom of the Americana Hotel in Niagara Falls that night to watch Charlie Tuna, who performs there every week. His repertoire included all the classics: juggling, card-guessing, multiplying handkerchiefs and, most dramatically, levitation. It wasn’t until about half-way through, however, that I realized that all of us in the audience were not merely watching. We were playing a game — the kind of game that could be instructive to researchers and businesses working with gamification.

Though Tuna’s onstage patter and instructions were obviously the key element, everyone in the room was contributing something vital to his magic act. First there was the suspension of disbelief. He forced us to pretend, for example, that a ball he threw in the air was “invisible,” and asked one of the other dads to catch it. People laughed and played along in ways that sometimes seem challenging in gamification, where employees struggle to believe their organizations are trying to engage, rather than manipulate them. Tuna reinforced this notion by reminding us that the key to magic was imagination, cutting off any hecklers before they could begin.

Whereas many gamification initiatives also seem based on point systems or other forms of achievement, Tuna’s magic act reminded me that playing a game can be driven by something more nuanced, like wondering how things work. I’m pretty sure all the kids (and most of the adults) were silently playing each trick backwards to figure out how he got a Loonie to mysteriously pass through the bottom of that bottle, or how he made that little kid seemingly float in the air after removing the board and a chair that was supporting his body. You don’t need to “score” in a situation like this to feel intellectually stimulated and relaxed at the same time.

Finally, just as some experiments in gamification seem to hand users an app or a Web site and ask them to get busy, Tuna’s magic act reinforced the need for effective leadership throughout the process. He made sure things were interactive and got volunteers to take part, but at every stage he was showing, joking and encouraging. No wonder he got so much applause.

Perhaps some elements of a magic act wouldn’t transfer to a gamification project, but Tuna made one other comment that stayed with me. Magic, he told us, was about making people pay attention to one thing while something else was going on behind the scenes. That could be a way to measure success in gamification: If what they’re playing is genuinely enjoyable, users won’t be so quick to try and look at what may be up their employers’ sleeves.

photo credit: kennymatic via photopin cc