All of us (at-least the guys) have played games that require you to reach a certain place and complete a certain objective to achieve some level or points. These games are mostly mysterious and require you to explore the world. Now if you combine this Game play with your real life, what you get is a sweet piece of Gamification combined with tours and travels.
Explaining Gamification
In the most simplest terms, Gamification can be described as making use of the gaming logic and thoughts to create an environment or a product that is totally non-gaming. Gamification is a new concept that is being used by the companies and developers around the world to improve user interaction, data quality and making learning fun. As per Wikipedia, the term was coined by Nick Pelling in the year 2002 when gamification was first uncovered.
Gamification takes advantage of the competition instinct that is naturally built in every human being. This instinct makes us follow all the instructions given to us to achieve some status or mere points. The developers cunningly craft quests and achievements within the game or the environment that are unlocked only on completion of a specific objective.
Making My Tour A Quest
Most of us love to travel to new places and explore the new cities. Even if you don’t love to travel, you must at least be knowing each and every corner of your own city. Well, what if I made your experience of exploring your own city or a new city much more fun filled and interesting with just a small amount of Gamification? Many companies have come up with sweet little pieces of code that we call applications for mobile devices which present the city you are going to visit in the form of a puzzle or a quest. They ask you questions and make you travel to the most remote location to find answers and thus improving the over-all travelling experience. Although the main aim of the app is to improve your travelling experience, you are not able to drop the app because unknowingly your brain takes these tasks an a challenge and do not let you sit down unless you have unlocked the achievement hidden by it!
These apps are built so that you visit each and every place in the city worth seeing. And they keep you engaged by either putting up questions that provoke a thought in your brain or create/maintain your interest in the exploration or literally a quest by linking the next question to the previous one somehow and creating a story out of it.
Personal Opinion
Being a hardcore gamer with a love for travelling, this is one thing that I am looking forward to. The next time I am going to a new place, I will make sure I sign up for a similar quest for my group and explore the city with a new and fresh outlook. I love the concept of Gamification and how cleverly the researchers have caught the people by their instinct with such a technology is truly praiseworthy.
Conclusion
If implemented correctly by the travel companies, this idea can be the next big thing in the physical world – a real life travel video game. Although people tend to depend less on such technologies and most of them consider these techs as a waste of time, the companies should take this up as a challenge and make sure users indulge in this with their heart. Personally, I am the one, who will support this new way of exploration. Also, it will be interesting to see how the developers bring more gaming character into this kind of an application and what will be the final product that the travelers will play with.
Image Courtesy: shopify.com
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