Loyalty

1 element that makes Godus sticky, but suck as a game

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Concept4 1 element that makes Godus sticky but suck as a game

In this article I am discussing the iOS version of Godus

I love god games, games where you get to influence the development of a world. Sim City, Civilisation and of course Populous we all favourites as I grew up.

Now the original designer of Populous, Peter Moleneux, has given us a new vision of god games in the form of Godus. The story behind the development and the campaigns run to get it started are almost a “how to” of gamification really.

It started in around 2012 with the release of the iOS “game” Curiosity. This had people clicking on squares on a 3D cube to clear layers. All people were told was that the person who cleared the very last square would win a prize of a lifetime! Clearing cubes gave you coins. Coins could be used to buy better tools to clear squares more efficiently. There was also a series of in app purchases (IAPs) that allowed you to get access to these for real money. A few months later a chap called Bryan Hednerson opened the cube and discovered he would not only get a revenue share of a new game called Godus, but he would also be the main god of the game. Read More ...

Points and Badges in Gamification – Not totally evil.

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Over the last few days, the conversation about the use of points and badges has come up several times with several different people.

The stock answer in gamification these days is that points and badges are bad gamification. They are meaningless and we should be looking at intrinsic motivation more – yet almost every implementation you see of gamification will have some form of points system and probably badges.  They may be called experience points and achievements, or gami-dollars and pictograms – who knows – but they still seem to be there. Read More ...

Collection of gamification thoughts from the last few weeks

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Hi all.

Not a real blog as such today, just a collection of things I have been doing and saying for the past week or so!

A Video

First off, the video of my Gamification of a Career talk at Gamification World Congress has now gone up on YouTube 🙂

A Picture

I was asked on twitter how my User Types might fit with education, this picture was my first run at an answer.

Some Words

Here is a collection of some of the things I have been saying on twitter – may be of interest to some!!

  1. Gamification is not a technology. It is an approach to solving problems.
  2. Gamification can only be the answer if you fully understand the question.
  3. Use gamification to thank people for doing things, not to bribe them into doing them.
  4. If your system is broken, gamification won’t fix it. Chances are it will make it worse! Gamify to solve a specific problem.
  5. Remember. People play games because THEY want to. People use your gamified system because YOU want them to.
  6. Reward systems in gamification are not inherently bad – just badly implemented. Meaningful pats on the back can help early on in a program.
  7. Gamification can be used to motivate, it can also be used to manipulate – which do you think will lead to long term engagement?
  8. Good gamification is not about tricking people into using a system; it is about building a system people are happy to use.
  9. Gamification is not about understanding games, in the same way as driving is not about knowing braking distances.
  10. A lot of gamification is still like a monkey dressed as a ninja. It may look the part, but you wouldn’t rely on it in a fight!

An Infographic

Finally, an infographic I made that talks you through my gamification framework using lots of other ideas from my blog! Read More ...

A Formulaic Approach to Loyalty – the 4 Keys

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Still looking at loyalty this week, I wanted to see if we can create a more formulaic approach to it. Now, huge caveat – there is no proof or evidence to support this in anyway, but it makes sense to me, so I thought I would share it!!

There are three basic states of Engagement and Loyalty. Not Engaged, Engaged and Loyal.

If you are running a shop, these three phases would play out as;

  • Won’t shop with you for reason XY or Z.
  • Will shop with you because of reason XY or z.
  • Will shop with you under any circumstance.

The question is, how do you convince people to shop with you and then how do you convince them to be loyal to you? Read More ...

Loyalty: What is it and how do you cultivate it?

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I have been meaning to write about this for a while, but it wasn’t until I answered a question for someone yesterday that I had some words that actually made sense to me!

Old School Loyalty

When we think of loyalty, especially when we consider it in the context of gamification, we tend to think of loyalty cards , air-miles or other point collection systems. You spend £X and we will give you points that can go towards other goods or discounts. When I was a kid, we used a petrol station called Texaco. There were two reasons for this. The first, it was on the way home from church on a Saturday evening and two, it was cheaper than other local options. Something they started to do, was give you stickers based on how much petrol you bought. These stickers were used to fill up cards. These cards could then be traded in against goods – the more cards, the better the goods you could get. Using this method, my Mum and Dad managed to kit out our kitchen with new mugs, new glasses – I even got a Swiss Army Knife out of it! Read More ...

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