Playing games is becoming big business.

With more than $100m invested in gamification worldwide last year, using games as a way of engaging consumers is becoming a popular technique for marketers wanting to increase engagement with their brand and grow consumer loyalty.  It’s become a bit of a buzz word over the past year or so.

Gamification is a simpler concept than it sounds, and you’ve probably come across hundreds of examples of it already.  Defined as the introduction of gaming mechanics into a non-game activity, it can range from rewards schemes to progress bars, to an interactive platform such as foursquare, none of which is anything new.  So it’s more of a re-labelling than a revolution.  Where the real change appears to be is an increase in the amount of gamification being used, and the variety of purposes it is being used for.

It’s not just about using points and leader boards to give people some extra motivation to buy your product.  Already gamification has been used as a research tool to investigate consumer behaviour, and to help people stick to their financial or fitness goals.

One of the most successful examples of gamification has been an online game called FoldIt, created to help scientists to solve real problems around the structure and shape of proteins.  By solving puzzles, progressing through levels, and earning points, players of the FoldIt game (the vast majority of whom have no professional background in science) have in just a few days discovered the structure of a particular protein that scientists have struggled with for more than ten years.

If that’s what playing games can achieve with an anonymous group of unskilled players, just think what gamification could bring to employee engagement and internal communications.  Employers already have ready-made teams of real people with known skills and similar interests, so surely gamification is better suited in the workplace more than anywhere else? The players are already in place!

We know that using games in the workplace can increase cooperation and build strong relationships between colleagues.  By simply playing a game together we naturally tend to like others better – even if they beat us, the trust it takes to play together by the same rules brings us emotionally closer to our opponent. 

But what if we were to apply gamification to other areas of employee engagement and internal communication?

We did just that a couple of years ago when we developed a board game for a large retail organisation, designed to engage employees with the company’s strategic vision and key business messages.  It was a campaign that proved to be hugely successful and resulted in significant improvements on a number of key performance indicators by generating enthusiasm and buy-in amongst employees.  The strategy became more than just words on a page, it became something everyone could personally experience.

As with anything though, gamification isn’t a sure-fire route to success.  Game mechanisms need to be applied in a way that gives the audience the pleasure and enjoyment they want from a game, without detracting from the intended purpose.  Get that balance right, and gamification can be a powerful tool for employee engagement.

Then playing games won’t just be big business, it’ll be good business.