Gamestation Tries Gamification Tactics with Achievement-Style Points

Gamification is something that we’ve spoken about before on Nukezilla and I personally find it a fascinating subject. The basic definition is the use of game mechanics in non-game products and services to manipulate the user into doing something that furthers the use of the product. An author on the subject, Gabe Zickerman described it as “the most powerful force in the human universe” because it allows companies to “make people do things that are fundamentally against their self-interest without the use of force, in a predictable way.”

The points card (or loyalty card) has been cited as one of the first forms of gamification; things like frequent flier miles, for example. You spend money and in return you get a ‘something’ back, even if that’s just £2.50 off of a £39.99 game. You feel like you’ve beaten the system, taken some cash from the faceless corporations. Take that capitalism! The reality is very different, of course. You’re being psychologically tricked into thinking you’ve won, but you still just gave them £37.49. You see it every day services like Twitter or FourSquare, too. Follower counts and mayorships all promote use except you get nothing in return other than the joy/achievement of getting them. It’s a little creepy when you think about it.

And it’s in Gamesation’s rewards system. I went into the UK retailer looking to buy a cheap American football game and found Madden 09 for £5. Bargain, I thought, and went to give the guy my money. As I did, he asked whether I had an Elite card, basically a card where as you purchase and trade-in games, you get points – nothing new there.

In the booklet, however, it highlights a novel feature of the card: an achievements system. My friend and I were bemused by the idea that we could get achievements for trading our games in. With every “Accolade” there’s a set amount of points you can redeem for games. 400 points equals £1. Speed Demon, for example, requires you trade-in 100 games within 14 days of their launch, worth 4,000 points. Others are to do with how long you’ve been an active member and online community points. (You can see the full list here.)

This, I thought, was an extremely clever way of tapping into the achievement system that games consoles have adopted. The guy even said to me: “We’ve got our achievements, too!” Gamers are used to scrambling for valueless points in the form of the Gamerscore so when you add real currency to the deal it could be quite compelling.

Most of the Accolades are ridiculously ambitious, (trade-in one hundred games two weeks after you buy them!?) and as always you’re always going to lose money when you trade stuff in, but it’s a very clever mechanism to get you going into the shop, especially as publishers start piling on the pressure to cut down on used games sales. Whether it’ll work is another thing. I normally use Game, mostly because of the rewards system, but at £39.99 per game, you’d have to spend almost £4,000 to buy 100 games. That’s insane. Obviously there are smaller milestones (5, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100) but even that’s a staggering amount of money.

Whether it’ll work or not, it’s an interesting tactic, we’ve got the gamification of buying videogames, which is in itself really meta.