Easter Eggs Archives - Gamified UK - #Gamification Expert

Being Silly and a Flash Christmas Sale

December 20, 2019 by Andrzej Marczewski

How do gamification folk! You all ready for Christmas?

So a very short blog, you may have noticed I’ve taken it a bit easier this year, everyone deserves a break 😀

Being Silly

It sounds very unbusinesslike, but it is so important just to do things for fun from time to time. I’ve spoken about Easter Eggs in the past, but I wanted to just briefly revisit them.

Easter Eggs are a reward for people who want to explore deeper than most would. I firmly believe that you should try to include them whenever you can, even if there is a risk people will never find them! It’s like an encore from a band. There is always the risk that people will never see it.

Make them silly, make them fun and make people smile and feel that it was worth the effort of finding them.

So for instance. If you know THE cheat code, it may or may not do something on this site 😉

Christmas Sale

If you don’t have it already, I have dropped the Full Monkey Bundle (as I have just decided to call it) to £20. This is the Gamification Design Tool Kit, Inspiration Cards and Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Unicorn Edition as a downloadable package – bargain!

You can grab it here until the 2nd of January 🙂 [purchase_link id=”7087″ style=”button” color=”red” text=”The Full Monkey” direct=”true”]

Learning From Games: Fortnite and Exclusivity

November 1, 2018July 5, 2018 by Andrzej Marczewski

Recently, gaming phenomenon, Fortnite ran an event that signalled the end of their current season and a whole new set of clues to what may be coming next.

Two weeks prior to the event, players had seen a skull on in-game televisions, which had turned into a countdown – heading towards the 30th of June. The Friday before the event, an in-game message advised players to get into the game on the 30th and look to the sky.

Players who were able to get in then witnessed a rocket launch that tore open an interdimensional rift in the sky.

It may not seem like much, but to players of Fortnite, this was a “Where were you when it happened” type of moment. A moment that will only happen live once. If you were not there, you will never get to experience it properly.

It was exclusive! Its exclusivity created a group of people who shared a particular bond formed on the simple basis of “we were there”. It may not seem important, but it is to them in the context of Fortnite.

In gamification it is often easy to lose sight of the fact we are dealing with real people, not just business objectives. They like to feel that those communicating with them, via whatever medium, value them in some way. They also like to feel that they are special!

Implementing Exclusivity in Gamification

There are many ways to create the feeling of exclusivity in your gamification solutions and they don’t have to be difficult.

Taking the time to create Easter eggs that only the most dedicated of players will find is a simple way to create that exclusive feeling for some.
Adding content that only players who have achieved certain things can access. For instance, if you have an avatar in your system, create a special hat that only players who have completed everything by the second Tuesday of the month get to wear.
Taking a leaf out of Fortnite’s book, create events that only happen the once, invite only or time sensitive.
Creating communication campaigns that target certain players is another. How many emails have you had that say things like “You are invited” or “You have been chosen”. You know that that email has gone to thousands of other people, but it feels personal, special. You were chosen, you are part of the special group.
Build up curiosity by hinting at things, like the TV screens in Fortnite. Create anticipation!

Easter Eggs and Gamification

February 12, 2015 by Andrzej Marczewski

Now, before you get excited – this is nothing to do with chocolate!

Easter eggs in this case refer to hidden surprises and extras (just like an Easter egg hunt when you were a kid). They are aimed at people who like to explore (Free Spirits) as they reward people for just looking around and digging a little deeper than some others.

In games (and actually even in serious software like Office), Easter eggs have been around for a really long time.

An Easter Egg doesn’t have to be hard to get too, Disney’s Aladdin had a lovely nod to Mickey Mouse for the more eagle eyed amongst its players.

Some games, like Duke Nukem 3D had little digs at other games if you looked around. For instance, below we see the fate of the marine from Doom. This kind of Easter Egg just requires you to be a little more inquisitive.

Actually, Duke had loads of them – check out this reference to the Simpsons!

Activision’s Black Ops II had a playable version of the classic Pit Fall. Accessing this required a bit more effort as you had to do certain things in the game first.

In gamification we can make use of Easter Eggs as well. Hell if software giants Microsoft used to include them in Office, you can include them in your solutions!

“Word97pinball” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Word97pinball.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Word97pinball.jpg

The trick is to make them fun to find and make the value of the Easter Egg or the smile factor relative to the amount of effort! If you require someone to dig through your source code to find a secret page (for instance…), make sure there is some level of reward for doing it!

It does not have to be that complex though, it could just be a funny reference that only the most observant will see. It could be that you send people on a short treasure hunt to find things. It won’t be for everyone, but if you spend a bit of time and effort on them – Free Spirits will be very grateful to you and you may just raise a smile or two!