Gamification is one of the best ways to encourage desired behaviors among your team members – employees, volunteers, students or clients. The benefits of gamification are well-known, and it’s common to add game elements to all kinds of team activities – in a private, educational, or corporate setting.
There are many team gamification apps available on the market today that can help you gamify anything – from to-do tasks at work to adventure challenges at leisure.
There are many apps out there that are built for gamifying specific things. For example, Nitro is an app meant for engaging corporate employees that use the Salesforce CRM. Duolingo is an app for making language learning fun and competitive.
But what if you need to gamify something else? Here are four apps that let you gamify.. Well, anything at all.
Zelos
Zelos is a private team gamification app that lets you create a list of tasks for your team members, either as simple challenges or as scheduled shifts with a beginning and an end time.
You can assign points for each task completed or each hour worked, and display leaderboards for custom time periods. If you want to make sure that everyone has a chance to reach the top of the leaderboard, you can set up separate competitions for different groups.
You can also rename points according to what makes sense to your game – for example you could hand out cookies or tokens.
Zelos has a fully functional free package, and you can subscribe to paid packages to gain access to advanced features. For larger projects you can also order your own branded game app.
Gametize
Gametize lets you create an online game experience for anyone – projects can be public or private. You can group multiple challenges under a single topic, and hand out points and achievement badges for completing the required steps. You can also set up a reward system and a shop where players can exchange their points for actual items.
The gamification app offers a wide selection of templates, so it’s easy to set up a game with their pre-filled content if you’re out of inspiration. The challenges on Gametize can also be completed multiple times, which is great for practicing recurring habits and routines.
Gametize lets you test the software with a 7-day trial. Their pricing starts from 100 USD / month, and multiple other packages are available with custom apps and enterprise support.
Pointagram
Pointagram is a gamification app where quests can be one-time or recurring, and they can have start and end times. You can also request players to fill in forms and quizzes for each quest. There are many built-in integrations including Zapier, so it’s easy to connect Pointagram to your existing software stack.
The leaderboards on Pointagram are very versatile, and can be set up to display both individual and collaborative progress. You can also set up a reward shop where players can exchange their points for actual items.
Pointagram pricing starts from 4 EUR / player, but you can also choose an unlimited monthly plan.
Loquiz
The strength of Loquiz is gamifying anything location-based. Tasks and challenges can be pinned on a map, and solved only in the vicinity of the pin. Players can answer questions or take photos to complete each challenge and earn points.
While the game building interface is quite simple, it allows to build quite complex rules about in which order tasks should be completed, and create multiple paths for completing the game experience.
Loquiz starts with a two-week trial period, then offers options of 499 EUR / month, or an ongoing bill based on the number of active players.
Best practices to gamify your team experience
Always define the goals and objectives clearly: communicate what the gamified experience is intended to achieve, and ensure that these goals are understood by your team members.
Tailor the experience based on the preferences, interests, and skill levels of the team members. This helps you design a gamified experience that is engaging and challenging for them.
Figure out the right rewards – provide incentives to motivate team members and try to understand how they want to be recognised for their achievements.
Remember to provide opportunities teamwork and social interaction among team members when designing the experience – exercises of collaboration and communication are a great way to bring the team closer together!
However awesome your prizes, try to avoid excessive competition. While some level of stress can be motivating, avoid creating an overly competitive environment that could undermine team morale or productivity.
Test and iterate: Pilot test your gamification app with a small group of team members and gather feedback, and use this feedback to refine and improve the experience before rolling it out to a larger audience.