Gamification or How to win 1 billion Users until 2015

Gamification is a trend that is finally reaching the enterprise. Understanding game mechanics and dynamics and how they engage and empower users and give them a sense of control and productivity is something that must not be left to games. Players in the most successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW) have spent more than 50 billion hours of play since the start of this game in 2004. They have created 250.000 articles in the WoW-Wiki, which is the second largest wiki, only topped by Wikipedia. On average each WoW-player spends 17-21 hours per week playing WoW. If you look at Halo, Farmville, Mafiawars and many other popular online games, you will find the same engagement, hard work and dedication to these games.

Now what exactly makes players so engaged? What makes them work so hard? And how can we leverage this for the real world, like businesses, charities, communities? This has started to puzzle and catch the interest of experts. With a rising number of employees who have grown up with video games, the average age of video gamers being at 33 and the percentage of women playing video games at +40%, the ground for gamifying business software has been prepared. And in fact many gamers are craving to take their time and work from the virtual world to the real world.

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