In games some enemies or objects can be killed or moved, a few however are un-killable and also unmovable. As I was playing the new Mario Run on iPad this weekend, I got grabbed by quite a few moveable enemies, but what usually killed me is missing the platform and landing in the air. The platform was not moving and I should have jumped sooner or higher to have made it. It cost me a few lives before my jumping technique improved. In some games touching certain objects or running into them is game over and those should be avoided. You typically only find out after you have lost a life in that scenario. It doesn’t even have to be fatal, think of sitting out a round in Monopoly because you landed on the jail square.
In real life it is like making that one comment that kills the conversation or is a clear sign of a cultural faux-pas, you don’t know until you have hit it, that it was wrong. Most of us adapt our strategy according to the feedback or seek feedback to learn from the scenario. In enterprise gamification especially in learning creating some of these unmovable obstacles with the risk of having to start again can be useful. It is one way of learning for sure with the risk of having to go to square 1.
Very often we try to be too kind and positive in enterprise gamification with not enough real life analogies of pitfalls and stumbling blocks, which ironically taught us more lessons than anything that went smoothly first time around.
Where have you used this gamification mechanic or where will you be using it?
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