Avoiding the Big Mistakes
In this section, I share some of the mistakes I’ve made so you can avoid making them yourself. Believe it or not, the list was originally much longer — I’ve shortened it to the most important mistakes I believe can be easily avoided with a little care from the start.
Depending on desktop
Mobile phones and tablets are everywhere, so as a marketer you need to make sure your gamification elements are developed using mobile-friendly interfaces.
As I explain in Chapter 6, having a responsive game design means that it can be played on different types of devices. You can achieve this goal using HTML5, which is a web-based framework that, in my opinion, is the best way to ensure games will run correctly within any device.
Going rogue
This is when you try to add more elements after the final functional spec has been agreed upon. You see something new and creative and you just have to incorporate it into the development. Most of the time, this only delays your final product and inevitably creates a muddled and confused gaming experience.
Complicating the gameplay
Making the gameplay more unique or more complicated doesn’t mean your campaign will be better. The ultimate goal for your team is to get your audience to engage with your campaign. Overly complicated gameplay causes confusion, and confusion means minimal overall engagement. Another downfall to adding too many elements is the adverse effect on loading times. If your campaign doesn’t load quickly, your audience will quickly lose patience and give up.
Creating too many rewards
Throughout this book, I go on a lot about rewards. After all, rewards are the ultimate goal for gamification marketing campaigns. But you can have too much of a good thing. If your audience is being rewarded for every little action, the rewards won’t mean anything. Your entire reward system, along with your entire gamification campaign, will be rendered null and void.
Misusing game mechanics
Game mechanics are the vehicles that drive your marketing goals and objectives. Use too many, and your message becomes over-saturated and your audience will start to become confused over the goals being communicated to them. Use too few, and the message won’t be clearly communicated.
As an example, you can use badges to communicate achievements to your audience. Badges keep them motivated to reach the next level or earn another badge. Badges, which mark special achievements, give your audience a way to feel connected to your campaign.
However, a common mistake I see is when my clients force their audience to earn their next badge by making them do something they don’t want to do. For instance, maybe the only way to progress is by sharing their progress on their social media platforms. Not everyone will want to do this, and some people will bail.
Banking on virality
Gamification marketing may be more likely to go viral than ordinary marketing campaigns. However, you can’t bank on this happening. It will either happen or it won’t. I never create a gamification campaign for virality.
The sheer volume of campaigns that contain online videos, photos, cartoons, memes, infographics, posts, and other easily sharable content is so enormous that it unlikely for any campaign to go viral.
Most companies I work with have to acknowledge that the primary goal of their gamification marketing campaigns is to create a buzz within their industry.
Creating a campaign that can’t be played at work
