Yes, it’s a word!

Gamification is one of the newest and I believe one of the biggest movements in the creative world today. It is the concept that you can apply game mechanics (elements that make games fun, engaging and in some cases competative) to things that aren’t typically considered a game, or even fun! From work, to health, to socialising, to cooking, to just about anything! In essence, it’s about fun and the enjoyment of sharing the game with your friends.

So all this is well and good, but what does it have to do with you? Have you ever bought a shirt and then scanned your fly buys card? Yes? Then you are collecting points to spend on something later, you are receiving a reward for your actions.

Taking this one step further, Nike, a few years ago, introduced a device that was embeded in it’s shoes and communicated with an iPod to record data that was generated as you went for a run. This was then stored and kept as a sort of Scoreboard that was used to motivate the user to keep on running and improve their “score”. Since then, they have added a whole social layer to the program, one that lets you share your run online via popular social networking sites. By now this should be sounding …