BenchPrep Teams Up With The Princeton Review To Gamify Test Prep. For awhile now “gamification” has largely existed as a buzz word.
It’s felt just as ridiculous to write the word as it is to read it. However, as Tim Chang pointed out this weekend, although it’s important to avoid thinking of “gamification as the panacea,” it’s real, it’s moving beyond media and fitness, and it needs to be taken seriously. When it comes to educational tools, gamification has real value in its ability to make learning more fun and engaging. But as with all emerging trends, it can’t be applied willy-nilly. BenchPrep, a young edtech startup backed by $2.2 million from Lightbank, launched last year to convert content from big educational publishers, like McGraw-Hill, into interactive web and mobile courses.
The high cost of education is just one of the industry’s many problems, but the real problem, he says, comes from a dearth of sticky, engaging experiences. And so far, the experiment is showing positive results. So, how does the app work? What do you think? Wall Street Survivor Gamifies Financial Education With Help From Bunchball.
If you’re someone who thinks gamification is just a fad, you may want to look away now.
To be clear, Bunchball isn’t just jumping on the latest buzzword. The company was founded to deliver gamification tools all the way back in 2005 — founder and Chief Product Officer Rajat Paharia has told me that he probably came to the market too early, and has had to keep the company alive while the industry caught up. Now it’s focused largely on enterprise customers who want to use game mechanics to turn employees into better workers.
There are, however, other applications. For example: Bunchball just announced that it’s partnering with financial literacy site Wall Street Survivor. On the new version of Wall Street Survivor (viewable on the beta site), there are now “missions” where users learn about stock market concepts. Gamification: Insights And Emerging Trends. Editor’s note: Tim Chang is a managing director at Mayfield Fund.
Follow Tim on Twitter @timechange. He’s hosting a workshop on gamification at the Mayfield Fund offices on June 6 and has reserved 10 spots for TechCrunch readers — more details at the end of this post. I have been active in the field of gamification for the past couple of years, working with companies like Badgeville, HealthTap, Gigya, Basis and others on leveraging game mechanics for end user behavior measurement, scoring and shaping.
Last week, I participated on an investor panel of at VatorSplash’s Gamification Summit and the group shared several noteworthy points: Gamification is expanding beyond the initial verticals of media and fitness: The next target verticals are education, eCommerce, local retail (example: Belly), and financial services. Gamification and Social often go hand in hand: Just as games come in single-player and multi-player flavors, gamification can be oriented towards solo or social play. 4 Tips For Gamifying Your Tired Marketing Plan. Darren Steele is the strategic director of Mindspace, and co-author of the gamification book, “I’ll Eat this Cricket for a Cricket Badge.”
Darren can be reached at darren@mindspace.net. The hype around gamification is fairly new, but the idea has been around for some time. In fact, badges and leader boards could be considered the new sweepstakes and loyalty rewards. And gamification is not just for major consumer brands and their tech-savvy 18-to-34-year-old demographic. There are examples where gamification in marketing has worked spectacularly for 50-year-old rural ranchers. SEE ALSO: Why Gamification Can’t Be Stopped That said, marketers can't just add a Groupon-style approach to something and think it's gamified. 1. Do you want this to actually feel like a game for your customers or do you want game mechanics buried deep enough that your target may not realize why the experience is so compelling? This might mean starting with an actual branded game on your Facebook page. 2. 3. 4.