The social media elements that make gamification irresistible

It took me a while to figure out one I liked, but in the end the name I chose as my Twitter handle for the final week and a half before Halloween was “Count Schickula.”

This felt like an important thing to do. Around the middle of October I started noticing several of the people I follow regularly popping up with modified monikers. They all incorporated some element of horror movie cliches, and many of them were incredibly clever. (Both Wired and Mashable took note of some high-profile examples.) As with many things, this seemed to begin with celebrities and trickle on down to everyday people like me, but there was no question we all wanted to play. If Canadian researchers want to better understand the motivations that could make gamification succeed, this is the kind of thing you need to study.

In fact, there is an even more recent example, albeit less tasteful. When Toronto mayor Rob Ford recently admitted to smoking crack cocaine while inebriated, Twitter was almost instantly filled with jokes that ended with a hashtag like #drunkenstupor. As November morphs into a fundraising blitz for “Movember,” expect to see a lot more Instagram photos on Facebook featuring men with various levels of growth on their upper lip. Make no mistake: there may not be a score, but there is gameplay here.

Social media is powerful in part because it’s based on participation, but when these sudden crazes take hold, they resonate and appeal to users with striking speed. I think part of it is about topicality: by joining in the fun you immediately establish yourself as informed about the news story or other reference on which the game is based. Participation is also easy, in that it can be done at almost any time (though it feels as though there are bragging rights to get in on the act early). The competition is based on achievements in humour, something of near-universal resonance that contributes to a sense of personal branding. In other words, these kinds of games and social media were made for each other.

It’s possible that one of the reasons gamification sometimes gets a bad rap is because it is seen as too artificial or formally structured compared to the more loosely organized, viral nature of an Internet meme. Yet the attributes of these games can be optimized to encourage positive behaviours, like the effort in 2010 to spread awareness about breast cancer on Facebook by posting a status update beginning with “I like it …” that referred to the location of a woman’s purse. That meme was, in some ways, just the gamification of a marketing message that had previously been handled by wearing something akin to a badge (a pink ribbon). Similarly, gamification researchers need to transcend the concept of virtual badges with something that taps into the ability through play to creatively express who the “players” are.

Now that the trick or treating season is over I’ve retired Count Schickula, but that’s okay. Traditional games often have a brief lifespan, and we might see the same hold true for some gamification projects. That doesn’t mean they’re a failure, because even once the playing is over, the experience of having played lasts longer than you think. And it’s that sense of belonging, of community, that will get you to play again.