#gamification summit

Following a successful event in 2011, this October's GDC Online is beginning to take shape. Developers looking to submit a proposal for the Austin-based show should act soon, as the call for lecture and panel submissions ends this Wednesday, May 2. This year, the conference is accepting submissions for main conference tracks in Business & Marketing, Customer Experience, Design, Production, and Programming. Keeping in line with the conference's online theme, these tracks all emphasize the development of connected games such as social network titles, free-to-play web games, kid-friendly online titles, and large-scale MMOs. In addition, GDC Online is also seeking proposals for its four Summits, which each focus on a prominent or emerging sector of game development. The 2012 show will see the return of the ever-popular Game Narrative Summit and the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, alongside the brand new Game Dev Start-Up Summit and the GDC Gamification Summit. The new Game Dev Start-Up Summit presents a comprehensive step-by-step look at the issues, challenges, and realities getting a new game studio off the ground. This one-day program will identify key challenges and arm attendees with knowledge that can help new ventures succeed. The Gamification Summit, meanwhile, will discuss the debatable and sometimes problematic process of building game-like incentives into non-game applications to address issues like productivity, health, marketing, and customer engagement. The full-day event will bring fresh discussions about blending games and technology, and will highlight inspired and successful case studies from today's forward-thinking businesses. To oversee and evaluate the numerous submissions across all of these main conference tracks and Summits, GDC online organizers have recruited a notable roster of advisors hailing from all realms of the industry. This year, GDC Online welcomes new advisors such as Zenimax Online technical director Bill Dalton, community expert Valerie Massey, iWin vice president Laralyn McWilliams, Zynga principal software engineer Robert Zubek, and Attorney Jim Charne. GDC Online will take place October 9-11, 2012 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, TX. For more information about the show, including the submissions guidelines and conference topics for the call for submissions, please visit the event's official website. GDC Online is owned and operated by Gamasutra parent company UBM TechWeb.

Sessions include: 

•  Bringing Games to the Enterprise: How Microsoft Ribbon Hero Makes Productivity Engaging – Sarah Faulkner of Microsoft on how to engage users in a B2B setting.

• Loyalty Goes Virtual: Driving Behavior with Gamified Rewards & Location – Geoff Lewis of TopGuest will showcase how brands are being effected by the transformation of traditional loyalty programs via location-based consumer behavior.

• Gamifying the Classroom: An Inspirational Teacher’s Story of Making Education Fun – Educator Ananth Pai on how gamification can transform classrooms and cater to the various learning styles of children.

Last week, I flew to sunny, 60-degree San Francisco to attend the first-ever Gamification Summit, a conference dedicated to game mechanics and engagement science. Various speakers and panels (including one featuring our client Zynga) explored how gamification principles can be used to increase loyalty, drive sales or even change the world. I was very impressed by the amount of girl power on stage, which can be rare at tech industry events.

My personal favorite session was by Jane McGonigal, who created a game that the audience could participate in while she talked. When you texted your name to a certain number, it would text you back instructions such as, "Take off your shoe" and once you completed each task, you would move to the next level and receive another command. McGonigal was a particularly enthusiastic and engaging speaker who has created some really cool initiatives devoted to the cause of changing the world through gaming, which I really admire.

The summit also presented case studies of branded gamification successes, such as USA Network's online Club Psych and Jay-Z's Decoded scavenger hunt (the latter of which was orchestrated by area/code, which was just acquired by our client Zynga). For me, the conference was a great glimpse into the world of gamification and I'm looking forward to learning more about how it can be used to promote a brand or improve our communities.