Written by Editor Morten B. Reitoft

When I was a teenager - God knows, how long time ago - video-games or computer-games were just about to become mainstream. I remember my father brought back a Philips G7000 console (sold under other names in the US and Asia (Magnavox Odessey) - a black and white only gaming machine when I was about 13-14 years old, and it was a great toy. My brothers and I played it; friends came over to play. Shortly after I got myself a Commodore C64, and I know other people in the industry got into computer programming with these relatively inexpensive computers, yet relatively powerful. 

Today you see games everywhere, and computers are in the centre of all what we do. I must admit that I rarely play games today, but kids of today spend a lot of time on computer games, consoles, and even hand-held devices from smart-phones, to Nintendos. 

Games are made to make you entertained - and often even addicted. Dopamine is continuously released and if not making you addicted, then at least intrigued to play. Many kids also have an online Social Life that is so different from when my generation were kids. A lot of scientists research the effect of this game addiction on young generations. However, games are not only a kids thing. Adults of all ages play as well, and when you are in i.e., Tokyo, you see adults as "addicted" to games as your kids at home playing everywhere, all the time.

What makes you "addicted" to games is the nature of how you are rewarding your dopamine receptors. You get a score; you get on a top-whatever list, and the game keeps developing and challenging you to become better, more connected, and also very focused on the challenge. There is a complete socio-economy as well as a genuine economy around games. Though many gameplays are similar to old arcade games, the complexity in graphics, being "encapsulated" in the game with goggles, VR and other amazing technologies, ultra realistic and who knows; some may have more and more difficulties separating the real-life with the virtual?

All above, and a lot more, has led to a new discipline in industries referred to as gamification. Gamification has nothing to do with games but is a discipline using elements from games in non-game products. Gamification intends to use these elements to keep users more engaged, more focused, more productive, and to change behaviour - more about that later. 

A straightforward example I know from myself, and I am pretty sure all of you recognise as well, is the "likes" on Social Media. If you post something, you always look for how the number of Likes develops. You also continuously look for comments and appreciations. And all of us know how bad it is to get thumbs down, criticism, and even silence is terrible. With likes, you look for instant gratification of your words, your film, your picture, your post, and this is an example of how gamification is used. 

Gamification is used in many different ways and applications, and the intention is to make things fun or rewarding. One of the maybe oldest kinds of gamification is lotteries. You know your chances to win are ridiculously small, but you buy your lottery ticket or place your bets because you believe you have a chance, and sometimes you even consider what you will use the price for, encouraging you, even more, to keep betting.
By using gamification, you can change behaviours radically. Here is one example from Stockholm. It's called the Speed Camera Lottery. By setting up a speed camera and a screen, the system rewards you depending on your speed. If you drive to fast, you will get a thumbs down, and it will send you a fine. If you drive according to regulation, you will get a thumbs up, and the collected fines will be split with the drivers not speeding. Here is a small film explaining the concept.

The same lottery method is also used by banks to encourage saving accounts. These type of accounts are called PLSA or Prize-Linked Savings Accounts. 

Gamification finds its way into so many applications that some may not even think about it. An example is the GPS app, Waze. It used to be an Israeli startup. It has a compelling user-interface, but it has some other great features, like being awarded for using the app. By the way, Waze was sold to Google in 2018 for a 1 billion dollars, and at least when Waze was introduced, it used gamification in navigation like nobody before - I would even say after!

Will gamification find ways to the printing industry? Well, of course, all the B-to-C applications will take advantage of all the models already used in other sectors. Is the Komori-tune used when plates are exchanged gamification? Well, in Japan, sounds are used everywhere, so maybe the intention was not to "change behaviour", but more to have fun, but the sound is an element, of course. Colin McMahon from Keypoint Intelligence wrote this great piece on WhatTheyThink showing some numbers of how much games are used in general, and he concludes "Gamification is only expected to become more prevalent as time goes on.", and I totally agree.

One of the things that came to my mind while writing this article is, of course, whether gamification will be dominating the press-operation rooms before AI and robots. That's, however, an entirely another story.