Nike. Oracle. United Airlines. Each of them are huge, successful companies, but the last thing you could possibly associate with them are video games. Yet they are all using gamification — the method of applying game mechanics and philosophy to nongaming applications in the real world — to not only increase consumer engagement with their products but for educating and motivating their employees as well.

They and many other like-minded companies were at the third annual Gamification Summit recently held in San Francisco. Hundreds of attendees spent three days learning and networking with some of the top minds in the gamification industry.

While it’s a topic that encompasses a wide range of fields — government, financial institutions, education, entertainment properties, health care — there were a few common themes they all shared at this year’s GSummit. Here’s a look at the ones we found to be the most crucial for the future of the industry:

Gamification is here to stay 

“We estimate that in 2012, the market right now is going to be about $242 million, over 150 percent growth from last year,” said Wanda Meloni, the founder and president of M2 Research, during a speech covering the latest trends in gamification. “In 2016, we estimate it [will be] at over $2 billion.”

For Gabe Zichermann, the CEO of Gamification Co and chair of the GSummit, this type of accelerated growth was one of the reasons why the conference was started in the first place. “[I saw that] people were doing gamification across so many different industries…and I was like, you know what? We really need to get everyone in a room together,” he said during an interview with GamesBeat. “And even though the target markets might be different, the objectives might be different, and the design patterns [might be different], at the core, they’re all just trying to create engagement with people and change their behavior.”

The U.S. isn’t the only country to host to a gamification summit this year: Zichermann already has plans to bring this dialogue to both Australia and Germany, albeit on a smaller scale, in just a few short months.

Gamification has to  feel authentic to the audience

While the conference was home to a variety of interesting speakers, none was as dynamic and crowd-pleasing as the talk given by Chamillionaire, the Grammy award winning hip-hop artist and entrepreneur who is using gamification as a way of rewarding his fans for their loyalty. “Yesterday, when I walked into 24-Hour Fitness, this guy was like ‘Hey man, I’m your biggest fan! When are you dropping your new mixtape?’” he said during his talk. “And I was like, ‘Wait a second, I just dropped a new mixtape! You’re not my biggest fan…. What number are you on [the leaderboards]?’”

Developed in conjunction with BigDoor, a company that helps clients customize a gamified rewards program, Chamillionaire’s Chamillitary social network will seem familiar to anyone who has ever played multiplayer in Call of Duty. Almost every action on the site is rewarded with some sort of badge and ranking, so users can level up to a “Sergeant” or “General” and have their name steadily climb the network’s leaderboards.

“I don’t know what it is. I don’t play [Call of Duty],” Chamillionaire said after his presentation. “But I have little stepbrothers, and they’re super into it…. And the only conclusion I can get from it is that people just want something [interesting] to do. That’s exactly what I’m doing with my website: I’m bringing people that have [similar] interests together and then also letting them accomplish goals.”

A part of what makes this system so successful for him is his genuine passion for interacting and rewarding his fans. “I’m good at articulating to my audience what the badges mean,” he said, “And even when I don’t, I have done so much that they just kind of know. I’m trying to make my brand feel [meaningful]…. Because other artists aren’t going to go through all the stuff that Chamillionaire is going to go through. So whether it’s physical rewards, whether it’s just songs, they just know that I’ve been doing this since back in the day.”

Gamification has to embrace the power of stories

Jon Radoff, the CEO of social game developer Disruptor Beam, knows about the horrible reputation that licensed games have in the games industry. But he believes that they have finally figured out what licensed games have been missing all along: well-crafted stories.

“For the vast majority of cases, people take a license, and they splash this license coat of paint on some existing product and then ship it, hoping they get some massive sales,” he said onstage. “I think that’s the problem with gamification…[people] think they can throw a gamification coat of paint on some existing website and application and end up with a badge or leaderboard, without understanding that those are just tools for communicating a story through the player.”

Disruptor Beam is currently hard at work making Game of Thrones: Ascent for Facebook, a title which Radoff playfully calls an “antisocial” game because of the amount of backstabbing and political deception that the series is known for. While products of gamification don’t necessarily end up as games, Radoff thinks that stories are a crucial part of increasing engagement with users. He believes that if gamifiers can find a way to allow people to share their experiences with others, they’ll keep coming back.

“Gamification is about stories and allowing people to understand what their role is within a story,” he said, “and show them the pathway that allows them to realize that story. Getting through a story [and] understanding a story: That’s fun.”

Let the media say whatever they want to, or let the stats say about Facebook‘s recent IPO spillover, but you still gotta believe in Facebook Marketing. It is still the juggernaut of social media. With Facebook reaching a billion users, and a new emphasis on revenue, the company is increasingly focused on how to make social work for business customers. The most prolific Facebook feature for business is the brand page. There are more than 42 million of them, with activity that ranges from 10 likes to millions. As a result, mainstream marketers are increasingly focused on attracting, retaining, and engaging audiences on the platform.

A new thing called gamification (process of leveraging game thinking and mechanics to engage audiences) is in use in Facebook Marketing to drive results. Lets see some of the core patterns and approaches used by the best practitioners for Faceboook Marketing.

1. Know Your Funnel

Consider your users’ engagement over time through the shape of a funnel. At the top, there’s the simplest social action they can take — usually liking your page. At the bottom are complex actions like buy, subscribe or refer others. Your goal is to get as many people into the top of the funnel, and as many through it as possible. In order to do this, you need to start by identifying the major waypoints in the process (e.g. read, like, share, link, invite, buy, subscribe) and then track the metrics as users move through. These progress metrics should be shared by everyone on your team, and form an essential part of your dashboard. You can see an example on Fanzy.com, a Facebook gamification provider.

2. Points for Social Actions

How to motivate users? Comeup with a point system for your social action. Offer points to users for every action, considering the relative values of subsequent behaviors. Allow users to see their progress in a score window, and potentially in leader boards. Based on behavior, over time, more meaning can be added to the points by making them redemptive towards status and achievements. Leverage existing point system if your company has any like  JetBlue’s loyalty program.

3. Contest Run

Contests are the oldest gamified Facebook marketing strategy and a great way to use Facebook to drive interest. Generally, the key to running a good contest are clear rules, easy actions, a great prize, and lots of promotion. It’s important to understand however that most contests are not viral and self-perpetuating. There is a disincentive to letting others know about the contest if prizes are limited and not skill-based. If you already have an established user base and want to bring them to Facebook, or you’re doing something skill based — a Facebook contest can be powerful. Contests are also amplified by regularity so consider holding them at defined intervals to encourage appointment dynamics.

4. Build a Classic Game, if required

With the ubiquity, power and reach of Facebook games like Farmville it can be very tempting to use your page as a literal gaming platform. Many brands have experimented with offering branded games, whether home-grown or working with white-labels like Qmerce. The results however are usually the same. After an initial spike of interest, users stop playing. This happens because branded games are generally not backed by the same level of design, development or testing investment as commercial games. Put another way: Unless you’re Game of Thrones and enlisting gamification expert Jon Radoff to design your Facebook game, most branded games are bargain basement products.

In general, you should avoid this approach and instead refer users to other Facebook games (and apps) made by quality game developers where your product/service is part of the storyline. Or, you can use editorial angles to engage users in a dialogue about their favorite games as a way of getting and keeping them on the page.

5. Design Gamified Challenges

An alternative to making a traditional game is to design a challenge around gamification. Unlike a classic game, the idea is to engage users in a set of social actions that will produce short-term rewards. Then these small actions are tied together across a campaign that eventually yields data or a prize. An example of this is Oprah’s Thank You Game, which asks users to express their gratitude each day based on a challenge that’s issued via Twitter or Facebook (also see Rihanna or Jay-Z’s branded launch game challenges).

The best challenge approaches focus on simple, authentic actions that anyone can do tied to an appointment dynamic. In the case of Oprah’s Thank You app, the focus on authenticity actually undermines parts of the experience. In particular, the app features a misleading usage counter that turns 45K clicks into a purported reach of 11m users. For users, this can call into question the veracity of the whole experience and is likely somewhat responsible for the slow adoption. Remember to always keep the voice authentic and strive for transparency. Tying these challenges to a charity can also help.

6. Don’t Build it Yourself

The hardest thing about getting gamification right isn’t technology, it’s design. Today, a plethora of technology vendors make it easy to implement gamification technology on and off Facebook. Companies like Bunchball, Badgeville, BigDoor and Gigya offer the tools to make all your engagement objectives come to life. Don’t spend resources building your own technology. Instead, strive to focus your energy on great experience design. Your users will thank you for it.

No matter what kind of Facebook presence you’ve imagined for your business, there’s a big difference between just getting some likes and getting real user engagement. Whether content or community are at the center of your strategy, gamification can help drive usage and bridge the gap between clicks and meaningful social activity. Once you’re able to master these interactions using gamification, more complex behaviors such as social commerce and brand advocacy are not only possible but inevitable.

Related articles

• Gamification: Why Play? (mindjumpers.com)
• Gamification: Foster Brand Loyalty Using Game Mechanics (firstrate.co.nz)
• Why Gamification Can’t Be Stopped (mashable.com)
• Gamification: Adding stickiness to your campaigns (thenextweb.com)
• Gamification can be a subtle incentivizing action (vator.tv)
• How to Use Gamification for Better Business Results (doctorfox.wordpress.com)

Game startup Disruptor Beam has announced today the first Facebook game based on the award-winning novels by George R.R. Martin and the award-winning television show on HBO. Titled Game of Thrones Ascent, it is slated for an unspecified “future release” on Facebook. The developer plans to impress fans of the show and books alike with an authenticity and close-hewn relationship to the story-lines and characters of the popular series.

In Game of Thrones Ascent, players will lead the life of a noble during the time of upheaval as portrayed in the books and the series. Set in Westeros against a background of political and sexual intrigue, players will choose their allegiance to a great house, secure their holdings, develop their lands and reputation, and assign adventurers to quests while forging alliances with Facebook friends.

There will be an open beta for Game of Thrones Ascent, details of which can be found at Disruptor Beam’s website or their Facebook page.

“Everyone at Disruptor Beam was a huge fan of Game of Thrones long before we began working on the game, so we recognize that other fans expect character-driven conflict and intrigue to take center stage in our new game,” said CEO of Disruptor Beam, Jon Radoff, in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat. He promised this won’t be just another media tie-in experience.

Disruptor Beam is a Boston-based game company backed by a group of technology and gaming entrepreneurs from the Boston area. HBO is a premier-content cable entertainment company that produces and airs Game Of Thrones, a television show based on fantasy novels by George R.R. Martin. Radoff was the former chief executive and founder of gamer social network GamerDNA.

This is actually the first of two posts I’ll be doing on WebInno this week. This one is a set of faces of people who have been at the event over the years with their ideas and companies. I’ve added some details on each of the companies in case you’d like to learn more. The second post will be a preview of the companies that will be participating at Monday’s event. I’ve been writing these previews for a few years now. Sometimes I hit the nail on the head and sometimes I miss by a mile. Such is life. Here are links to some past previews: WebInno32, WebInno31, WebInno29, WebInno28 and WebInno23.

In the spirit of transparency, I want to say that I’ve recently started working more formally with WebInno, mostly helping generate content for their blog and social channels. It hasn’t really changed anything since I was already generating the same kind of content on my own (and will continue to). Anyway, here are 12 faces of people with bright ideas.

This is Matt Cutler, co-founder of Kibits. Kibits is a nice social connection and collaboration app/platform.

This is Andreas Randow of TourSphere. TourSphere really impressed me when I saw it, basically it’s a platform that allows the creation of museum or city tours. As someone who once was a ranger at Alcatraz, I appreciate a good tour.

This is Liz Zalman of MediaArmor. MediaArmor is in the mobile advertising space and basically helps advertisers port all of the things they currently do with traditional display to mobile.

This is Seth Lieberman, the CEO of snapapp. It’s a really simple self-service site for creating branded polls, survey, questionnaires, etc. They have some awesome customers and it looks great.

This is Jeffrey Penden of Crave Labs. They do a platform to help local businesses – mostly restaurants – market more easily using social and mobile channels. It’s pretty cool.

This is Roy Rodenstein, the cofounder and CEO of SocMetrics. SocMetrics is a service to help you ID influencers in a ton of different categories – you name it and it’s likely they’ll be able to tell you who blogs, tweets or posts about it the most (and which of those people actually matters the most). As a PR guy it seemed like a cool tool.

This is Jennifer Fremont-Smith of Smarterer. They’ve created a platform to understand and evaluate people’s skills in all kinds of technical, social and digital skill. There’s an update on how they’re doing on the WebInno blog.

This is Jon Radoff. He presented his company GamerDNA at the second WebInno I attended and he’s incredibly active in the world of gaming. His current startup is Disruptor Beam. They’re still in beta.

This is Amram Shapiro, founder of Book of Odds. This is a site to help you understand the odds of things in everyday life. It’s neat.

Susan Hunt Stevens, founder of Practically Green, presenting at WebInno29. It’s a very cool company that helps you find ways to live a cleaner, more sustainable life. Check it out, take the quiz, register and explore.

This is Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot. They’re an Internet marketing company over in Kendall Square that’s doing very well.

The  BiG conference brings together video games professionals to discuss their most pressing business challenges.  The BiG conference supports industry growth in the Northeast by connecting professionals, facilitating knowledge exchange, and steering talent into the industry.  Now entering its second year, the 2010 conference will focus on the challenge of “Competing on Analytics.”

The Friday night reception is free to attend, but registration is required, so please sign up via this Eventbrite page.

Separately, if you would like to register for the Business in Gaming Conference, please do so here: http://www.mitbig.com/ 

Thanks to our sponsors Tencent Boston, UK Trade & Investment, Gamesville, and Jones & Bartlett Learning for making the reception possible. Hope to see you there!

Please use hashtag #MITBiG on Twitter

GamerDNA watches what you play, how long you play it, and tracks what you like. This lets you meet other people, buy games you know you’ll be interested in, and the industry gets a snapshot of what gamers like and why.

“We want to do for games what Last.fm did for music,” Radoff told me. GamerDNA wants to know what you’re playing, it wants you to interact with other gamers like you so you can figure out the next game to buy or rent, and then (of course) it wants to provide that game to you.

via GamerDNA wants to do for gaming what Last.fm did for music – Ars Technica.