I’ve long talked about the serious business benefits of gamification and how it can help in the acceleration of behaviour change within an organisation as part of digital transformation. However, one of the other major benefits I have often spoken about is the use of gamification in creating a culture of ‘self learning’ in education.
AT&T have recognised this and have invested $3.8 million in a gamification start up GameDesk. Now, while GameDesk are an R&D hub who have traditionally focused on building ‘games’ as a way of creating a fun and interactive learning environments, I believe that this is just the beginning of organisations realising that the mix of Gameful design, Gamification, Serious Games / Simulation and Games (as described by @daverage) can start to have a real impact in changing behaviours.
So whats next?
I believe the acquisitions of Gamification companies will accelerate for 3 reasons:
1. It is incredibly powerful at getting customers and employees to change behaviours – this has been proven over that last year
2. The pace of change continues to accelerate and big companies will need innovative ways to differentiate their products and create engagement
3. The language we use to describe gamification is maturing and it is becoming ‘less of a gimmick’ as more practitioners start to understand it
What do you think? Is this just the start of a gamification acquisition frenzy? Will we see the big traditional players taking notice and moving? Or will they hold back and wait to see if gamification still has more ‘growing up’ to do?
March 18, 2013 at 11:44 am
In a lot of cases, acquisition is also the easiest way to recruit those with proven and rare skills. I agree that we could see promising gamification startups acquired by bigger players in the coming months/years.
March 18, 2013 at 11:51 am
Katherine, completely agree. In fact, one of the articles written about the AT&T acquisition suggests that this was their main driver – to acquire vastly different skills to those they have, and know how to recruit for.
March 18, 2013 at 6:28 pm
You got the story wrong (as did Seeking Alpha). The $3.8m was not an “acquisition” or an “investment,” but a donation by AT&T to 501c non-profit to support academic style research. GameDesk is a spinoff of a University of Southern California research program.
http://www.gamedesk.org/2012/05/16/gamedesk-partners-with-att-to-build-a-new-learning-hub-and-national-digital-learning-platform/
Carter Lusher
Research Fellow & Chief Analyst
Ovum, a global IT research and advisory firm
March 19, 2013 at 10:17 pm
Carter,
Thank you for the clarification on the story. However, my opinion still stands re. Gamification companies being ready for acquisition.
Ill amend the post to reflect the facts
Scott