Do's and Don'ts of Event Gamification

So far, you have learned about the overall concept of event gamification and its necessity. In order to derive maximum benefits from your event gamification strategy, there are certain guidelines that need to be followed.

All the technology released come up with both pros and cons. We should never forget about the cons and keep on improvising and implementing it in a real-time scenario. In order to help you create a roadmap for strategizing when it comes to gamifying your event with tech, here is a list of dos and don’ts for you to follow:

Do’s of Event Gamification

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1. Plan based on event objectives

The first step to planning any event is to decide the objectives that you wish to achieve through your event. While planning your engagement activities, mainly gamification, make sure that these activities and the event technology tools that you use for the same are planned around those objectives.

The end goal of the gamification strategy for your event has to work towards achieving the overall goals that you set for your event. Maximizing attendee ROI to in turn maximize the event ROI is the driving force that will help you create an effective event gamification plan.

2. Strategize based on your audience

While planning activities and the tech in regards to event gamification, one of the main factors to consider is your audience. In order to create an effective strategy that will work planners must understand their target audience and plan the activities keeping in mind whether or not this gamification will feature will gain traction and apt participation from the attendees.

You must consider the age group, familiarity with technology and the mindset of your attendees on an average before you plan.

3. Keep it to the point

Always plan activities that you know would work and will go with your overall objective of gamifying your event. Planners must research and understand the activities that they’d like to execute align with their overall tone of the event and their event branding process.

Apart from this, the gamification features and activities that you plan should not drag long or take up unnecessary time away from your event where attendees eventually tire and stop participating. Hence, plan these activities keeping it precise and only those activities that seem relevant and engaging for the type of event and the audience that you have.

4. Integrate it into your overall event experience

The purpose of gamifying your event is mainly to enhance the overall event experience along with other objectives that you may have in mind. Therefore, as event planners, you must keep in mind that the gamification aspect of your event is a part of the experience rather than a standalone element with no event ROI.

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Your attendees’ focus must not shift from the actual objective of the event, leaving them talking about only the activities and the gamification tech you’d enabled rather than the overall experience and the agenda of the event. Thus plan your gamification elements integrating them within the event.

Don’ts of Event Gamification

1. Don’t overdo it

Planners often tend to go overboard with gamification. It may happen at times that you see certain examples of gamification that has worked for other events while researching and you feel that the same might also work for the kind of event that you are organizing. Or you may have certain ideas of your own that you would like to be executed.

Gamification on its own has a wide range of possibilities within an event. Hence, it is absolutely necessary that you keep in mind the budget and resources that you have along with the actual objective with which you are facilitating event gamification and not overdo the aspect. This will help you create a memorable yet balanced event experience.

2. Engagement not distraction

The main idea of gamifying certain aspects of your event is to engage attendees and have them interact with your event. I have mentioned this before; integrate the gamification aspects within your overall event experience rather than keeping it a separate activity altogether.

Event gamification should be a tool for attendee engagement, not taking away from all the other activities, sessions, exhibition, etc. that you have planned within your event.

3. Don’t go overboard with the tech

Gamification is basically bringing in the elements of computer games such as a point system, rewards, etc. to your event for the engagement. The question that arises when you actually plan to gamify your event is that of the tech that you would like to use to enable this concept.

One of the big no-nos of event gamification is to get blown away by the high tech gamification elements available in the market and bite off more than you could chew.

Estimate the scale of your event, your event budget, the ability of your overall team to manage the tech and the interest of your attendees in the same before you decide to bring in your tech elements and gamify your event.

4. Don’t make it all about the rewardsRewards are a part of event gamification and not the whole concept. Do not make all your activities all about the end reward for your attendees.

Bringing out the competitiveness of your event attendees to engage them is a good thing but the end goal for them should be to gain some form of ROI from these gamification activities rather than just the reward. If possible, balance out your activities with some neutral gaming activities as well with no general reward.

These are just some basics of preparing an effective gamification strategy for your attendees. In our next chapter, we shall be helping you out with a few ideas to take inspiration from while gamifying your next event.

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