Author|Salted fish
Executive Producer|Wu Shu
After Pinduoduo "carried forward" the gamification method in the e-commerce field, invisibly, Internet products began to embed various mini games.
On Meituan's "My" page, there are more than 40 games such as "Tuantuan Love Elimination", "Food Town", "Guard the Sheep Village", "Answer Questions to Make Money", "Digital Coloring", and "Karma Sheep".
In the entrance of Alipay, even people who do not play games know about Ant Forest and Ant Manor.
If you open Taobao, the layout of the game is more specific. Under the "Happy Interaction" button, use a full two-screen space to place these small games, and the rich variety of games can be called a large summary of game types, from tower defense games, management games to board games, synthesis games to strategy games, almost all in APP stores, and there are also here.
Games are no longer the exclusive domain of game manufacturers, e-commerce, social networking, local life, and Internet products in many fields have embarked on the journey of gamification. Product managers move gamification concepts from demand to prototypes and put them into practice, while marketers think about the potential impact of gamification from a growth perspective.
In a more secret corner, a number of large-scale and mass SaaS solution service providers have even been born, who embedding gamified interactive scenes in their apps as a selling point, amplifying the magic of "gamification" while peddling growth stories.
But can these transplants, these embeddings, really be a key part of disrupting and reshaping business, as they say?
01
The two trends of gamification of Internet products
The combination of non-game APP and "gamification" is mainly divided into two types, one we can call it embedded, and the other is scene-based.
For example, Meituan, Taobao, Jingdong, just list a single page, specifically embedded in complete mini games, these small games are not necessarily related to the product itself, the industry, but often have the characteristics of repeated opening and easy to use, such as the small games embedded in the Meituan APP, gluttonous dragon, group love elimination, etc., most of which are some classic and common small games.
Scene-based gamification, on the other hand, is more implicit, combining game elements with products, which has already been proficient in major apps.
For example, in e-commerce APP, there is often a task center set up with point rewards, when users browse goods, collect goods, share goods, there will be a point +10 prompt or effect, in educational APP, users can get the corresponding badge after each part of learning, especially in the word memorization APP, which is the most common gamification method.
The book "Gamification Thinking" has specifically elaborated on this, the book points out that the three elements of PBL: points, badges, and leaderboards are the most basic game elements, and are also commonly used in gamification, and almost most gamification systems are built from PBL.
However, although these three gamification elements are common in Internet products, in the eyes of most people, they are not as effective as described in the book, and more of a conventional existence. There are even many users who believe that although Internet products adopt gamification design, the end effect is often gamification as a cheap marketing technique.
Taobao's gold rush coins, Alipay's ant forest, and Pinduoduo's Duoduo orchard are indeed successful gamification designs, but their success is closely related to the user volume of the product.
In more general practice, how much revenue gamification design can bring and the impact on overall app data is still full of debate.
Some people think that after many products have worked hard to join a bunch of functions such as growth systems, leaderboards, badges, etc., users do not pay, and the activity has not increased, or users just heat up for a while, and then cool down and never wake up.
Another part of the people believe that for some tools and information products, low-frequency and serious content can rarely retain the attention of users, which requires a "grasp" to strengthen the connection between APP and users, and gamification is obviously the immediate choice.
02
Business diversion behind philatelic gamification
However, although the public has polar evaluations and different views, from the actions of Internet products one after another to pile up small games, gamification is indeed regarded as a weapon.
From Baba Farm and Sports Bank, which cannot fit on both screens on Taobao's "Happy Interaction" page, to the more than 40 types of entertainment and gluttonous dragons lying in Meituan, stamp-collecting gamification design is not only common, but also more and more intense.
So, the question also arises, although these simple and simple click-through addictive games can leave some users behind, but what is the meaning of staying?
In fact, all "philately" has a purpose to follow, behind the shelf-like mini game page, is the platform's secondary distribution of traffic.
Taking Taobao mini games as an example, most of the mini games embedded in Taobao are pastime games that can be seen everywhere on the Internet, they are simple, easy, single-celled, but unlike other mini games, the rewards of Taobao embedded mini games are often platform physical red envelopes and commodity coupons, and the game resurrection links many actions related to the business on the site, such as adding physical strength, you need to share the mini game with friends, or watch e-commerce live broadcasts, browse 10S goods, etc.
The same is true of Meituan, the restaurant operation mini-game acceptance page is Meituan takeaway, Xiaomei orchard is linked to the coupon collection center, even if there is no direct link to the specific business, users can also obtain the common points - "small group coins" in different mini games to cash out when purchasing other goods or services.
In addition to philatelic big outdoor such as Meituan and Taobao, other Internet products have also made a lot of efforts on the road of gamification, Gaode built-in "Xiaode Love Elimination" and "Collar Fruit", QQ Music has launched music zone dress up space and M-pets to raise kittens, dogs and rabbits.
However, from the actual experience, these homogeneous games do not wake up the user's fingers most of the time. The philatelic gamification design of Meituan and Taobao cannot be copied in batches, and the cost and user base are a gap, and small and medium-sized Internet products should bury their heads in quality instead of chasing quantity.
Recently, the popular keep organized online running competitions, selling medals for 500 million yuan, which is a close example. Sports and fitness products to engage in badges, ranking upgrades have long been the industry common formula, but why only keep's badge became popular, and even among the idle fish became hard currency, the key is actually user insight, badges are everywhere, but there are not many cute joint badges such as cinnamon dogs and dream catchers.
Of course, the example of keep does not mean selling beautiful badges, the sharing motivation, acquisition mechanism, number of sales, and the type of online running it matches together constitute the 500 million sales, not just selling beautiful badges. There is also the most critical point, it is Keep, is the top product of the sports and fitness pendant, so it is the online run it organizes to sell the badge.
03
Two sides of the same coin are still angles that need attention
While gamification is embedded in the fabric of most non-gaming apps, Amy Joe King's warning in Product Gamification is still worth listening to.
"Trying to promote long-term user stickiness through external rewards is a fool's errand. If metrics and rewards are the main events that occur in product design, it means that your product is shallow or easily manipulated, and will not have long-term appeal to users. Worse, you may be stifling your creativity and enthusiasm without knowing it. ”
At present, a number of large-scale and batch SaaS solution service providers have been born on the market, they have established a huge library of small games, and claim that "gamification has become the standard for non-game apps", and strive to render the multi-level experience and value brought by the product after accessing various mini games, but do not mention deeper problems.
In fact, the advantages of gamified marketing stand out, and the disadvantages are equally obvious. Taking the annual node promotion of the e-commerce industry as an example, its pursuit of gamification marketing for several years has set off too much popularity, once caused a lot of disgust, the task that can never be completed, and the price can not be cut to the end, not only attracting the attention of users, but also stimulating the user's anger value.
British game developer Margaret Robertson also commented: "Today, the use of the word gamification has led to putting the cart before the horse in game design, and we take out the least important parts of the game experience as the core." Points and badges are no closer to the game itself than the designed websites, apps and loyalty cards, they are the least important in the game and have little to do with the rich cognitive, emotional and social factors that gamification wants."
Non-game apps embrace the essence of gamification, which is actually a kick in the door, the icing on the cake, it will bring interaction to the product and bring traffic, but it cannot make a product that lacks user value succeed through gamification.
Third, a boundary that needs to be clarified is whether there is a corresponding boundary when Internet products choose to gamify design to increase the frequency of app opening and online time. Game media "Game Grape" once pointed out that "if e-commerce marketing activities are identified as online games, they need to operate stricter compliance measures, and the biggest problem is the version number." ”
In the past few decades, the Internet industry has been making rapid progress, from last year's meta-universe to this year's Chat GPT, the imagination triggered by new technologies, while updating the cognition of ordinary people, has also made Internet companies extremely anxious, and behind this, it also reveals the cruelty of "digital Darwinism".
Not all Internet products need an orchard, nor is it too much to eliminate the charm of games, behind the batch embedding of small games, how much out of real needs, and how much from the fear of being left behind?