GETTING STREAM
Gamification @ SXSW
Posted by Melissa Summers on Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Ben Ryder, Manager, Emerging Technologies
This past week, Austin was the place to be for those wanting a firsthand look at some of the latest trends in the digital space. The city was flooded with hipsters and brand reps looking to spread the word about their startups, meet new connections from other companies, and share innovations and ideas.
From the moment I walked in to SXSW at the Austin Convention Center and saw hundreds of other attendees waiting in line for their badges, I knew it was going to be an interesting week.
As I experienced the convention floor, attended panels and keynotes, one experience, one word began popping up over and over, gamification -- the idea that game mechanics can be applied to things that aren’t considered a game, to make activities more fun and engaging.
Interactive Convention Floor The inside of the convention center had been transformed into a learning space.
Various stations invited users to play with everything from Legos to a 3D video display in the Tron Lounge.
For Microsoft it was about Windows phones and Kinect. Microsoft reps were standing by, ready to show off the handsets and answer questions. A small "living room" was directly behind the booth for those who wanted to enjoy a quick game of Dance Central.
One of the coolest interactive offerings was from Chevy, who provided rides throughout Austin city limits in some of their new models, including the Volt.
Beyond the overall convention experience, there were a ton of great panels and keynotes to choose from, which were generally standing room only. Garnering some of the biggest crowds were the current leaders in the location space, Seth Priebatsch and Dennis Crowley.
Leaving the Decade of Facebook
Seth Priebatsch, 22-year-old founder of SCVNGR, kicked off the week's keynotes with his interpretation of how the next ten years will play out in the digital space. Priebatsch believes we have just left the decade of social where Facebook is now positioned as the leader. The next ten years, according to Priebatsch, will be the decade of the game layer. The game layer will usher in a new era of incentives for users to interact with traditionally non-game actions.
- Gaming in Schools: One of the biggest issues Priebatsch wants to tackle with the game layer is the "ineffective" reward system currently in place in schools. He believes that the game layer could turn school into a system where students don’t fail classes but compete against themselves to earn a higher status, not dependent on grades.
- Real-time demo: Priebatsch put the game layer to work as a large scale game with the 2,000+ attendees in the room. Each person was given a 12"x8" card with a color on each side. He told the room we had 180 seconds for each row to pick a color from one side of the card and create uniformity. What could have been chaos, was a controlled effort. This is because Priebatsch used simple game mechanics, broke the room into individual rows instead of one large collective and coupled it with clear directions. As a result, the 2,000+ attendess succeeded and Priebatsch donated $10,000 to the National Wildlife Federation.
Next Generation LBS
Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare, was interviewed by Pete Cashmore, CEO of Mashable. Cashmore kicked off the interview by crowning the Foursquare CEO "Mayor" of SXSW, which didn't seem to be Crowley's favorite point in the interview. Crowley went on to discuss:
- The future of the platform will focus heavily on their APIs and allow developers to leverage their venue database. That database is also undergoing a transformation in the form of their new "venue harmonization" initiative, a push to make the ultimate "social places database."
- Crowley says in the future, users should be able to create "to do" lists of places they'd like to see and things they would like to do. Once they are in the area of that "to do," they will be reminded that they wanted to eat at that restaurant or go to that museum, regardless of the date that the "to do" was created.
- Foursquare is currently one of the leaders in the gamification space. Crowley gave us some insight during his panel announcing that March 13 was the biggest day in the company's history, surpassing their previous one day check-in record of 2 million by 600,000. For a company driven by gaming principles, they are proving to be a driving force in the digital engagement space.
After a week of some of the best interactive panels I have been to, I was ready for a few moments to digest. Panelists seemed very passionate that, moving forward, users are going to need a more compelling reason to take action. The reason could be as simple as checking in to earn a badge, or as complex as redefining the school system. Either way, gamification could be exactly what users need to change their behavior.
Will gamification and the game layer be the biggest digital trend of the next decade? Let us know what you think.