Gartner analysts say gamification on the rise

A report by tech industry analysts Gartner believes that half of all organisations which 'manage innovation processes' will gamify those processes by 2015.

The study concludes that gamification in marketing and customer retention programs will be "more important than Facebook" by 2014, citing programs such as the DWP's Idea Street and recruitment tool America's Army as prime examples of the process.

"Gamification describes the broad trend of employing game mechanics to non-game environments such as innovation, marketing, training, employee performance, health and social change," said Gartner analyst Brian Burke.

"Enterprise architects, CIOs and IT planners must be aware of, and lead, the business trend of gamification, educate their business counterparts and collaborate in the evaluation of opportunities within the organization."

Key points of gamification were identified in the study, which splits the advantages of the process into the four distinct branches of accelerated feedback cycles; clear goals and rules of play; compelling narrative and a successful challenge/achievement balance.

"Where games traditionally model the real world, organizations must now take the opportunity for their real world to emulate games," added Burke. "Enterprise architects must be ready to contribute to gamification strategy formulation and should try at least one gaming exercise as part of their enterprise context planning efforts this year."