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April 7th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda From recycling, to personal health, to corporate culture, gamification is seeping into all aspects of everyday life. The practice of applying game mechanics to non-game contexts — for example fandom, separating trash from glass or meeting company goals — has exploded in the past few years.
Since the beginning, the California-based company Bunchball has been at the emerging industry’s forefront and today works with companies including including Comcast, the Los Angeles Kings, Hasbro and Warner Bros. Bunchball founder Rajat Paharia (see photo) was one of the term’s earliest adopters and the company owns the domain gamification.com. Bunchball recently introduced a new product, called Nitro Flamethrower, that’s touted as the first personalized gamification product and something Paharia says will power the industry to stronger traction.
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“It’s spread not only incredibly deep, but it also reaches almost everywhere now,” Paharia says. “And I think it’s only going to penetrate deeper as long as people continue to see value.”
The power of game mechanics to invest people in websites, shows, teams, companies and other properties is what Paharia says has fueled the rise of his company and others like it. But he says Bunchball’s road to success was rocky at first.
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The company started out building social games in 2005, but found that to be a dead end. Facebook hadn’t yet launched its gaming platform and few thought the genre could catch on, so Bunchball changed course. Applying game mechanics to non-game settings was also a tough sell at first, until an ironic twist helped Bunchball get established: Facebook launched its gaming platform and the industry Paharia entered too early to capitalize on exploded. But as products like Foursquare and FarmVille became popular, Bunchball’s new tack gained more believers.
One of the company’s early hits came in 2007, when it created a gamified website for NBC’s The Office. Based off a storyline in the show, users signed up on a social network as employees of the Dunder Mifflin paper company. Users earned “Schrute Bucks” for making comments, posting photos and performing tasks that built engagement and buzz for the show. Before long, the site was populated with loads of user-generated content.
“NBC loved it because they were paying all these users fake money to do real work,” Paharia says.
In the five years since, Bunchball has gone on to leverage gamification concepts for more than 100 clients. In the next five years, Paharia sees gamification becoming more widespread in the health, media and employee-training spaces, among others.
What are the keys to that continued rise? Paharia points to more customization for companies to tailor campaigns to their own needs, expanding beyond primarily individual challenges to promote more team-based engagement, and further incorporating real rewards beyond virtual points and badges.
“Gamification is all about providing sustained user engagement,” Paharia says. “The word itself implies a transformation of something that exists, and people are starting to see more and more how they can apply it to their own situations.”
Photo courtesy of Bunchball.com
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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