Gamification Company Bunchball Makes Interesting Announcement

Eariler this morning, the gamification company, Bunchball made an interesting announcement about the personalization of gamification, which ties nicely into my posting the other day–What Happened to the Promise of One-to-One Online Learning? (of course the announcement is unrelated to my blog posting but the company is going ahead in that conceptual direction and making inroads into online personalization on the commerce side, and, I am sure can be adapted to the learning side as well.)

Fortunately, yesterday I had a chance to talk to Rajat Paharia the CEO and Founder of Bunchball when he briefed me on the upcoming announcement and talked about the concept of gamification, how he started his company ahead of the curve in 2005 and how the Nitro gamificaiton platform has helped create engagement in many companies.

Here is what Rajat said about this announcement. “This is the biggest leap forward in gamification since the launch of the Nitro Gamification Platform in 2007. Today, users expect every digital experience to be personalized, collaborative and rewarding and we’re giving businesses the power to meet those expectations with our latest Nitro release.”

Now here are some facts and information from the press release, Bunchball sent after the conversation:

• With the release of the Nitro Gamification Engine 4.3 – codenamed Flamethrower – Bunchball is giving businesses the ability to sustainably engage users with highly personalized, collaborative, and rewarding game mechanics.
  
• First generation gamification is similar to first generation e-commerce solutions- the same storefront for everyone. Initially, customers saw the same displayed items, the deals, and recommendations. First generation gamification was similar and site-centric. All users saw the same missions, challenges, achievements and rewards.
  
• Now, e-commerce vendors have a different store for each buyer that reflects that buyer’s likes and dislikes, targeted recommendations and a clearly personalized feel. With Flamethrower, Bunchball has added the same personalization to gamification. Users expect an experience that speaks to their individual interests and preferences. They don’t want generic, one-size fits all missions anymore, and it won’t sustainably engage them. With Flamethrower, Bunchball customers can create personalized gamification programs aimed at meeting the interests of specific users.

Now for some details about the product, which can have a great impact on commerce but, eventually, education and online learning as well. Replace the idea of a business with the idea of a learning opportunity.

With the new product Flamethrower, every business can now leverage the next generation of gamification:

Personalization: Map the missions to the user(or to the learner)
Using Flamethrower, Bunchball customers can create specific, relevant missions for users to maximize engagement and participation. For example, a sales organization might have inside sales people focused on generating leads, field sales reps focused on selling bigger deals to new clients with long sales cycles, and account managers responsible for growing business from existing accounts. Now, you can establish unique, personalized missions for each of those roles, all within the same environment and instance of Nitro, in any platform.

Collaboration: Winning with others
With Flamethrower, Bunchball customers can create any number of teams based on any criteria, and create any number of specific goals and missions for that team to pursue. For example, the customer service team may have a mission to increase customer satisfaction by 25 percent this quarter, and the renewals team may have a mission to secure 10 renewals this month. When you’re part of a team and responsible for that team’s success or failure, you’re highly motivated to participate and contribute to achieve your team’s goals.

Rewards: Gratification is Motivation
While badges help onboard and activate users in programs, the novelty of receiving a badge can fade quickly and users expect a more rewarding outcome for participating in programs. Whether getting access to exclusive content, collecting sets of virtual goods, or receiving recognition among peers, Flamethrower recognizes that users expect meaningful rewards to sustainably engage in programs. Flamethrower offers end-to-end fulfillment of virtual or physical rewards. Nitro’s redemption technology, coupled with our partnerships with loyalty merchandise providers, lets businesses satisfy user’s needs for meaningful rewards.

To see what else Bunchball is thinking and to contemplate how to use gamification and the concept of gamification 2.0 in learning and instruction poke around the Bunchball web site for ideas and to learn more.

Disclosure: Most of above information came from Bunchball press release sent to me after my wonderful conversation with Rajat. I am currently writing up that conversation and will post in near future.

Here is a video of Rajat talking about Gamification.