Gamification Mechanic Monday: Cross-section battles

Gamification Mechanic Monday: Cross-section battles

In games you will sometimes find that several battles are going on in different sections at the same time and one may well impact the other. If an area below or beside you goes on fire, you visibility may be diminished. Spreading resources when doing team combat is also a strategy a lot of teams will take. Each team member will have their own armour and section to defend or conquer.

In the business world this game plays out pretty much for all departments and teams at any given time. The work you do is impacting another team and vice-versa. Production challenges could well cost sales and marketing may have to adopt other communication approaches to ensure the reputation is kept in tact.

In terms of designing gamification for this purpose, creating transparency or an overview will assist all teams to have an overview and address activity according to the views given. I would envisage a heads up display solution of all sections and resources with progress won or lost. If you have the option to create real-time vision of progress, then players know at any given time what is happening. A lot of systems may be slower in giving overview in which case there is a time lapse to be taken into account and some of it is dependent on users adding their data and progress timely and correctly.

Feedback is the key driver for visual results. When you play blind the level of trust for each team to deliver should in an ideal world be high, however reality tells us that this is rarely the case and blame culture is often prevalent. An active overview of each teams productivity would eliminate some of that and allow for understanding in case a major stumbling block is encountered and reported straight away.

In games managing multiple territories and resources is played out agains other teams. In a company all departments can face the outside world as one. The more aligned teams are to concrete goals that make departmental sense, the more a multiplayer online game dashboard makes sense.

Where have you seen this kind of game play successfully in action?