Throughout history different groups of people got to decide how the world is going to work in the 60s they were the engineers in the 90s they were the coders who leveraged new technology to build a new economy what about this internet thing do you know anything about that sure as new technology becomes mainstream a different type of economy appears on the horizon and there's one particular group of people who already perfectly understand, how this new economy works and that group of people is the gamers. Welcome to web interns in every job that must be done there is an element of fun Mary Poppins got it right. When something is fun to do it doesn't feel like work that's why you can play video games for 20 hours straight with no problem. Whatsoever too bad work can't be a video game too right that would make most jobs way more enjoyable but over the years people noticed how engaging gaming is and they started to implement elements from gaming in their own industries through a process called,
Gamification
Gamificationhave you noticed banking apps getting fancier lately more colorful interesting rewards points, real-time tracking some almost feel like finance games. This isn't a design trend it's gamification happening in the banking system. Gamification is the process of applying game design elements to non-game environments. Every industry on earth will eventually go through a gamification process one of the most successful campaigns McDonald's ever did was their monopoly partnership. You could collect street names from buying their products and match them to win prizes in fact it was so successful. It sprawled into some kind of insane fraud scandal with employees stealing street names and selling them under the table but that's another story one of the most successful language learning apps Duolingo gives you experience points every time you practice but if gamification has been a thing for quite some time. Now, why is it suddenly becoming really important well a couple of things are happening right now one millennial? It's the generation that grew up with modern technology video games and social media are part of their daily lives and they're used to fast access instant gratification and high engagement two interconnectivity. There are seven billion people in the world six billion of them have smartphones funny enough more people have access to technology than to banking and three gaming is blowing up the whole business model of video games is to be enjoyable and rewarding so you keep playing the gaming industry is bigger than the movie and music industry combined so why is gaming so important? Here the industry excels at one very key thing something that every other industry is failing at gaming excels at engagement they're designed to keep you going to stay in the loop to play one more round to make one more turn they're challenging rewarding and offers a sense of progress as you're watching this video there are countless managers and directors stuck in meetings scratching their heads trying to figure out how to boost engagement with their company with their employee's clients and customers. It won't take long until they realize there's an industry right next to them that completely dominates the engagement game. Now before talking about the implications of gamification let's take a look at something really interesting,
The Metaverse Economy
When Nike launched their running app it came with gamification elements like badges points and a progression system. Runners could track their progress and earn showcase rewards. All good so far but what if Nike does something crazy like tokenizing those rewards. What if for running a 5k let's say you get 5 Nike coins which you can later use for discounts in their store or even to buy full products or maybe you could buy nfts like the new virtual Jordan ones, with those coins or how about this you could sell those points on the market for real money? This is how the new economy takes shape to imagine runners farming coins the same way there are gold farmers in the world of warcraft. This is basically how the metaverse works the real world and the virtual world come together. Gamification and blockchain make engagement monetizable for everyone. This new reality is not that far in the future, we'd say we're about five to ten years away from stuff like this being very common in pretty much every field.
Gamification in Education
Gamification in education, imagine a new business school is created where in order to graduate you need to play a game. Let's say this school has its own marketplace that simulates the rules of the real world and it also has its own currency. Your job is to create a virtual company engage with other students create virtual goods and services and be active in the games marketplace using the in-game currency, if your company becomes profitable you graduate how does that compare to sitting through countless classes with a boring professor reciting books from the 90s. Gamification is already being used in education take for example the Duolingo app we mentioned earlier.
Gamification in Finance
If there's anything people don't trust it's banks they're predatory in nature and structurally. Outdated banks really struggle to get people to use their products but one thing that proved to work is gamification. Most of them started to use a pretty basic model with points leaderboards and badges but they saw great results. Gamification outperformed any other system they tried to do and since banks are also under threat from decentralized finance. They'll probably be among the first industries to double down on gamification to catch up okay so all of this seems fun and interesting but how do gamers fit?
How Do Gamers Fit?
How do gamers fit into the story? They are native to this space and have the advantage of great timing the generation who grew up playing video games is now reaching maturity. They understand what makes something enjoyable and rewarding, what progression system works, what doesn't, and what playing the meta means and so on if you look into the gaming industry it's not the developers who say what game is good or not it's the community that provides feedback. It's the one saying hey this sucks it doesn't work change, they have the best understanding of this space because they've been active in it since they were young and right now they're in the best position to translate this knowledge into real-world value. The demand for gaming experience will skyrocket in the following years those who understand how to apply gamification to different industries will shape the new economy and the thing is we're super early in this space. Here's a quick question should a business use social media to grow well duh of course everything happens online but you see while the answer is obvious now it wasn't so obvious 10 years ago we believe the next question will be do you use gamification to grow and it'll be obvious then while being not so clear right now but one thing is clear some of the richest people in the world are the ones who can make you click on things the ones who grab your attention and keep you engaged when gamification gets mainstream adoption and everything you interact with will have some sort of gamification element to it those who are native to this space will dictate how the world works we don't know what gamification will look like 10 years from now but those who've been playing video games for 20 plus years will be in the best position to figure it out and make new products we hope you learned something today alexers as you might have noticed these new saturday videos are a bit different we bundled them up into a playlist which you can watch by clicking in the top right corner we might call this series the saturday educational video so let us know in the comments what topic you'd like to see next and as a thank you for watching until the end of course you're getting a bonus there's a one company who's taking the gamification process to the next level reddit is planning to convert their karma points into tokens on the blockchain karma if you don't know has read its own scoring system they're points given to users by other users based on their content contributions it's actually one of the ways reddit got so huge it's gonna be really interesting to see how this new cryptokarma will look pretty soon thanks for watching alex sir gamers are super empowered hopeful individuals these are people who believe that they are individually capable of changing the world and the only problem is they believe that they are capable of changing virtual worlds and not the real world.