Gamification as a Strategy
The world loves a good aaS. Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, Cloud as a Service. Everything these days seems to be “as a Service”. That means, of course, that Gamification platform providers have started to speak about Gamification as a Service. Now, there is nothing wrong with this, though I do find some juvenile amusement at the acronym of GaaS. For me, it just smacks of making it easy for people to implement gamification really badly!
Hear me out. I have nothing against being able to use gamification in a simple way. You will see Gamification as a Service on this site in the form of Captain Up. I have not implemented it brilliantly, it is there for those who want to see it and can be ignored by those who don’t. It actually goes against some of my core messages about designing gamification in from the start. However, there is something to be said for being able to just paste a line of javascript into a page and have gamification up and running straight away. If nothing else, it gives people the opportunity to get involved.