Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards

by Yu-kai Chou

Explicit Gamification involves strategies that utilize applications that are obviously game-like. Users acknowledge they are playing a game, and generally need to opt into playing. An example would be Dikembe Mutombo’s 4 ½ weeks to Save the World19. This is an interesting and quirky “Advergame” launched by Old Spice, where a renowned basketball legend tries to save the world by accomplishing a series of challenges in an 8-bit video game world before the anticipated “end of the world” in 2012. Of course, Old Spice powerups and placements can be seen repeatedly within the game. This is a clear example of not only applying game design techniques into marketing, but using a game itself to do the marketing. McDonald’s Monopoly Game is also a good example of explicit gamification20. Everyone knows they are playing a game but the key purpose of the game is to get people to return to McDonald’s and eat more french fries - nothing subtle there. We will examine McDonald’s Monopoly game in more detail in Chapter 9 regarding Game Technique #16: Collection Sets.