雷声大，雨点小：企业“游戏化”热潮已经玩到头

    承认吧，你或你认识的某个人肯定曾一度痴迷于《糖果粉碎传奇》（Candy Crush Saga）或是《愤怒的小鸟》（Angry Birds）、《开心农场》（Farmville ）等社交游戏。所以当大企业试图利用我们对游戏的痴迷来提高消费者和员工对公司的参与度时，也就没有什么难以理解的了。

    正所谓一将功成万骨枯，社交游戏也是如此。每一款大热的社交游戏背后，都有几百个失败的社交游戏折戟沉沙。它们要么设计得不好，要么玩得让人上火而不是上瘾。“游戏化”自2011年成为主流用语以来，迅速成了一个被大肆炒作的噱头。但到了2014年，根据最近的数据来看，游戏化作为一种商业战略可以说基本上已经“Game Over”了。

    据市调机构高德纳公司（Gartner）估算，像Badgeville 和Bunchball等公司开发的游戏化技术的市场渗透率大概只有5%到10%。那些最早敢于吃螃蟹的人把游戏化平台用到了各种挑战上，从刺激消费者采用新产品或服务，到更开放地改造员工行为或流程，似乎桩桩件件都可以搞一搞游戏化。但是由于没有脚踏实地的目标，很多早期宣传得颇为高调的项目最后都以失败而告终。

    一个经常被人提起的例子是万豪酒店集团（Marriott Hotel Group），它想通过一个类似《开心农场》的游戏教育让潜在的新员工了解酒店行业。第一批试图通过游戏化提高员工参与度的公司有很多，而这个项目只是其中的一个代表。但是除了万豪酒店外，其他企业的目标都没有实现。

    高德纳早在2012年就预测道，到今年底，一些企业早期采取的游戏化战略将有80%都会失败。现实情况也并不令人意外。不过据高德纳公司分析师布莱恩•伯尔克表示，现在很多企业都在重组或重新考虑他们的投资。伯尔克最近刚刚出版了一本新书，题目就叫《游戏化——谈游戏化如何激励人们做不寻常的事》。

    伯尔克认为：“成功的标准是根据企业设立的业务目标来定义的，今天只有很少的游戏化项目可以宣称他们完成了企业的业务目标。造成这种局面的原因有很多，首当其冲的就是缺乏定义明确的业务目标。其次是只关注企业的目标而忽视了玩家的目标。”

    游戏化做得非常成功的一个例子就是Nike+。健身爱好者们可以利用这个网站记录自己的锻炼成果，然后和自己的健身目标进行对比。目前Nike+据说有2800多万活跃用户，给这个品牌带来了很高的曝光度。伯尔克说：“Nike+做的最正确的一件事情，是专注于让用户实现自己的健身目标，而不是实现耐克公司的目标——这是成功的游戏化战略的一个关键特征。”

    另一个例子来自B2B领域。科技服务企业Bluewolf公司采用游戏机制，鼓励更多的咨询顾问分享能够令客户受益的信息和最佳做法，同时积极鼓励咨询顾问在社交网络和博客上建立他们自己的“个人品牌”。参与者每完成指定的任务就会获得一定的分数，而这些积分可以兑换一定的特权（比如打折的酒店房间）。Bluewolf公司营销总监科琳•斯科拉说：“这样做的目标是让我们的客户和潜在客户参与进来，同时也是为了让我们的员工参与进来。”

    斯科拉表示，去年在这个项目的促进下，公司的内部知识分享提高了57%（通过Salesforce的Chatter平台），社交访问量增长了68%，博客文章的数量增长了153%。

    游戏化公司Badgeville营销总监昌达尔•帕塔必拉姆指出，企业要想实行游戏化战略，首先要考虑几个关键因素，比如你首先需要明白它要激励的哪些特定的业务成果，其次要仔细考虑游戏化战略的“个性”，第三是哪些触点（比如移动应用或网站）与你的目标人群最为相关。更重要的是，如果游戏化战略所包装的核心是产品或服务的话，帕塔必拉姆认为：“你不能用好的游戏化战略包装普普通通的产品，然后指望它带来好的成绩。光靠好的酥皮救不了一块普普通通的蛋糕。”

    现在越来越多的企业正在利用游戏化战略鼓励某些B2B行为。比如加拿大的西捷航空公司（WestJet）就采用了Badgeville公司的游戏化技术来改造公司的费用管理。美国运通公司（American Express）正在使用一个游戏化平台作为自己商务旅行服务的补充。这个项目旨在帮助商务出差管理人员引导他们的员工使用提供了企业协议价的酒店或航空公司。

    美国运通全球商务旅行部商务服务副总裁艾丽西亚•蒂尔曼指出：“现在有些商务出差人员不遵守公司政策，自己做决定。那么你怎样充分利用社交媒体的优势，同时围绕这些优势提出一个解决方案，并且把它联系到企业的目标上来？”

    美国运通对这个问题给出的答案就是GoTime。它是基于Badgeville公司的游戏化技术开发的一项针对企业用户的高级服务。在针对100名商务出差者进行的试用中，美国运通的一个客户在合作航空公司的订票出现了7%的增长，出差人员提前预订打折机票的比率更是跃升了12个百分点，而且在预订机票的同时，预订酒店的比例也增长了3%。

    美国运通计划有选择性地推出这项服务。用户将这个平台投入使用大概需要一个月的时间，包括收集用于建立个人资料的目标数据和差旅信息的时间。蒂尔曼说：“我们想引入一种现代化的方法来解决行业的一个老问题……我们之所以要在这个问题上要保持多疑，那是因为我们需要这样做。”

    蒂尔曼的这种态度也得到了高德纳公司分析师伯尔克的附和。他提醒企业对游戏化移动应用或网站不要太过兴奋，而是要更加实际地考虑员工和消费者的网络参与怎样才能对企业现有的业务模式产生意义。“随着时间的推移和游戏化战略的成熟，会出现更多游戏战略成功的例子，人们对游戏化战略的态度会再次变得更加积极。但到了那个时候，他们对游戏化战略的潜能和局限也会采取更现实的态度。”（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    Admit it: You or someone you know is obsessed with Candy Crush Saga—or were obsessed with Angry Birds or Farmville when those social games ruled the Internet. Can you really blame big business, then, for experimenting with ways to use our collective addiction to “leveling up” to drive higher rates of consumer and employee engagement?

    It turns out that you can. Like with social games, for every hit there are a hundred clunkers, poorly designed and more aggravating than addictive. The gamification of digital engagement fiercely rode the hype cycle since the term burst into mainstream usage in 2011, but according to recent figures, gamification as a business strategy in 2014 is essentially, well, game over.

    The market research firm Gartner estimates market penetration of gamification technology, exemplified by enterprise developers suchas Badgeville andBunchball, at just 5% to 10%. The pioneers have applied these platforms to all manner of challenges, from encouraging consumers to use a new product or service more liberally to reshaping employee behavior or processes. But without well-grounded goals, some high-profile early projects have foundered.

    One oft-cited example centers on Marriott Hotel Group MAR 0.87% , which tried using a game akin to Farmville to teach potential new employees about the hospitality industry. The project was supposed to represent the first wave of a series of game-inspired attempts to improve employee engagement; the rest have yet to materialize.

    Gartner actually predicted in 2012 that up to 80% of early gamification strategies would fail by the end of this year. The reality isn’t quite as dramatic, but many companies are regrouping or rethinking their investments, said Gartner analyst Brian Burke, who just published a book on the topic, Gamify — How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things.

    “The bar for success is defined by the business objectives the organization sets out to achieve, and with gamification today only a minority of projects can declare that the business objectives were achieved,” Burke said. “There are many reasons for this, starting with the lack of clearly defined business objectives, or focusing on the organization goals rather than the player goals.”

    One vivid illustration of a successful gamification initiative is Nike+, a website athletes can use to record performance against their fitness goals. It currently boasts more than 28 million users who turn regularly, giving the brand significant exposure. “One of the things that Nike+ does right is to focus on enabling the users to achieve their fitness goals, rather than Nike’s goals—which is a key characteristic of gamification done right,” Burke said.

    Another example comes from the business-to-business world, where technology services company Bluewolf is using game principles as part of a campaign to get more of its consultants to share information and best practices that could benefit clients and to build their “personal brands” through social networks and by writing blogs. Participants earn points towards certain perks (such as discounted hotel rooms) by completing designated activities. “The purpose is to engage our customers and prospects, and also to engage our employees,” said Corinne Sklar, chief marketing officer at Bluewolf.

    Last year, the program helped inspire a 57% increase in internal knowledge sharing (via the Salesforce CRM 0.84% Chatter platform), a 68% boast in social traffic and a 153% rise in blog contributions, Sklar reported.

    Key considerations behind gamification include understanding the specific business outcomes it is meant to inspire, thinking carefully about the “personalities” involved and which touch points—such as mobile apps or websites—are most relevant, said ChandarPattabhiram, chief marketing officer of Badgeville. Even more important, however, if the design of the product or service at the center of that strategy. “You can’t have good gamification on average products and expect to get results. Good icing can’t save an average cake,” he said.

    Increasingly, companies are using gamification to encourage certain business-to-business behaviors. Canadian airline WestJet uses Badgeville, for example, to shape expense management. American Express AXP 2.27% , meanwhile, is creating a platform that complements its business travel services. The idea is to help travel administrators guide their employees toward hotels or airlines that offer special corporate rates.

    “You are starting to see travelers make their own decisions and not follow policies,” said Alicia Tillman, vice president of business services for American Express Global Business Travel. “How do you take the very best elements of social media and mold a solution around those elements and attach it to a corporate goal?”

    For Amex, the answer is GoTime, which it is developing on Badgeville as a premium service for corporate accounts. During a pilot with about 100 travelers, one Amex client realized a 7 percent increase in bookings with preferred airlines, a 12 percent jump in the number of travelers reserving their ticket with advanced purchase pricing breaks, and a 3 percent increase in hotel reservations booked at the same time as a flight, Tillman said.

    Amex plans to roll out the service selectively; it takes about a month to get clients up and running, including the time it takes to gather data about objectives and travel information for profile setup. “We wanted to bring a modern method to solving what is an age-old problem in the industry . . . We’re going to skeptical because we need to be,” Tillman said.

    That sentiment is echoed by Gartner’s Burke, who cautions companies to temper their excitement about the gamified mobile apps or websites and to think more practically about how digital engagement makes sense within their existing business model. “In time, when gamification matures, and there are more consistent examples of success, people’s opinions will change once again to become more positive, but at that point, they will be guided by a more realistic sense of the possibilities and limitations of gamification.”