I’ve been reading a couple of similar posts recently (links below) which have been talking, roughly, about the same thing. That, on the whole, successful websites are using gaming rules. Or the coolest ones anyway. I do find this interesting. We’re in an age where the first generation of gamers are now grown and well into careers. We hark back to the glory days with some excitement, we now see the 118 118 commercials going for the 80s theme tunes (A-team, Ghostbusters) and Mr T and david Hasselhoff are stars once more. It makes sense!
Anyway, read these articles to get the general idea:
Coding Horror: The World’s Largest MMORPG: You’re Playing it Right Now
9 reasons Japanese interactive work is awesome (you only need to read point 3)
Ratings, reviews, reputation make one want to contribute. If you look at my current favourite geek site Stack Overflow it is based on making people want to contribute because they get a reputation mark if they get the answer right for the person asking. Some sites even allow you to unlock certain sections once they have enough points.
Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube do something similar in their own different way. Youtube, for example, has number of views your video has got and a scoring panel. Flickr allows favourites, adding photos to groups. The general concept is there. And the best sites? The BEST ones? They are simple to just pick up and play.
Fantastic. It makes one want to use and contribute to the site with a very simple premise which is generally free and built into a lot of our psyches.
