Kevin Werbach - The Gamification Toolkit: Dynamics, Mechanics, and Components for the Win

As video games have grown from an obscure hobby to a $67 billion industry, management theorists have begun to return the favour. Video games now have the dubious honour of having inspired their own management craze. Called gamification, it aims to take principles from video games and apply them to serious tasks. The latest book on the subject, For the Win, comes from Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter, from the Wharton Business School and the New York Law School respectively. [T]heir central ideathat the world might be a better place if work was less of a necessary drudge and more of a rewarding experience in itselfis hard to argue with.

The Economist

Heres a conversion worthy of a Transformers movie: Take buttoned-down, MBA-toting business professionals and turn them into video game designers. Thats the goal of a new book about Gamification, changing behavior of employees and customers by appealing to their sense of fun and their competitive instinct, video game style.

David Brancaccio, Marketplace , American Public Radio

Werbach and Hunter arent playing around with this book on how to add the joy of gaming to your enterprise. This is a quick but thoughtful look into the pros and cons of gamification, what works and what doesnt, with plenty of insight into what really motivates and engages customers and employees.

Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind

For the Win is the best overview of gamification out there. Direct and to the point, the book is chock-full of solid, studied examples illustrating both best practices and pitfalls to avoid.

Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games and author of The Art of Game Design

For the Win is a total win! In the 21st century, business must shift from push to pull to get the best out of their employees and to entice their customers. This book brilliantly explains how to design and use gamification techniques to that end. I highly recommend this useful and fun to read book.

John Seely Brown, coauthor of The Power of Pull and A New Culture of Learning ; Co-chairman, Deloitte Center for the Edge; former Chief Scientist, Xerox Corporation and Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)

If you prefer realism to hype and rationality to bandwagons, this is the gamification book for you. As a work about gamification today, this book is excellent; as a work about gamification tomorrow, its staggeringly excellent.

Richard Bartle, Professor, University of Essex; creator of MUD1, the first multiplayer online game; author of Designing Virtual Worlds

Like gamification, this book is a fusion of human nature and good design. Far and away the best book on the subject, with the most examples and the best intellectual grasp of the topics.

Bing Gordon, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; former Chief Creative Officer, Electronic Arts

As business becomes more complex and information-intensive, so managers must learn to rely on their employees intrinsic motivations and self-direction rather than traditional command and control. Gamification is a vital tool in that shift. In For the Win, Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter have written an entertaining and immensely practical guide to this rich managerial opportunity.

Philip Evans, Senior Partner, Managing Director, and BCG Fellow, Boston Consulting Group; coauthor of Blown to Bits

Every business executive, small business owner and public servant should read this book; the public and private benefits would be enormous. Im not kidding. If youre even half as blown away as I was by For the Win, itll be your best book purchase of the year. Applying game thinking to everyday life might just change well, everything. Read the book and youll see what I mean.

Jessica Mulligan, online game pioneer and Cofounder, Themis Group

If you want to understand one of the most important trends in business today, go out and buy For the Win. Werbach and Hunter reveal the secrets to powering up your organization through game thinking. Read this book. Its a game changer.

Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group; coauthor of Do More Faster

At a time when so many of us have grown up with video games, game thinking belongs at the center of discussions about business and management. In For The Win, Werbach and Hunter eloquently and practically explain how to apply one of the most important shifts in our cognitive models.

Joichi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab

This fantastic book shows how to motivate your customers, employees, and partners using the techniques that game designers have employed for years. For the Win is the perfect title, because businesses that understand these techniques will be the standout winners in their markets. Do yourself a favor and read this deep yet practical guide before your competitors do.

Rajat Paharia, Founder and Chief Product Officer, Bunchball

A wonderfully written, funny, and timely work. Should be required reading for anyone pursuing a modern undertaking utilizing these concepts. As the concept of gamifying continues to grow, the importance of this text will continue to emerge.

Professor Andrew Phelps, Director, School of Interactive Games & Media, Rochester Institute of Technology

For the Win hits a home run in illustrating the business value of gamification for both small and large companies across the globe.

Kris Duggan, CEO, Badgeville

For the Win is the smartest book written on the practical potential of gamification. With eyes wide open to both the promise and the risks inherent in yoking business practices to the power of play, Hunter and Werbach may have singlehandedly saved gamification from collapsing under the weight of its own hype.

Julian Dibbell, author of Play Money and My Tiny Life

Also by Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter

For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business

For more information, please visit http://wdp.wharton.upenn.edu/book/for-the-win/

The Gamification Toolkit

Dynamics, Mechanics, and Components for the Win

Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter

Philadelphia

2015 by Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter

Published by Wharton Digital Press
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
3620 Locust Walk
2000 Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Email:
Website: http://wdp.wharton.upenn.edu/

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without written permission of the publisher. Company and product names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Web ISBN: 978-1-61363-069-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61363-068-6

Contents

Introduction

Jeff Atwood, a software entrepreneur, found most online discussion forums useless. The problem, he realized, was that participants were only involved to serve their own needs. They had no incentives to work together to create the best information resource. Atwood found the solution in a surprising place: Counter-Strike, a team-based, first-person shooter video game. In Counter-Strike and similar games, he realized, cooperation was the optimal strategy. Players who wanted to win had to excel at working together. Atwood and his cofounder, Joel Spolsky, put those insights to work in creating Stack Overflow, now one of the largest question-and-answer sites on the Web.