Business Gamification For Dummies

Chapter 5

You Win! The Rewards of Rewarding

In This Chapter

Identifying types of rewards

Exploring the use of badges

Choosing rewards

Deciding when to give rewards

Odds are, your local bowling alley, shopping mall, or supermarket features what we like to call the Claw of Death, so named because it’s a game that’s nearly impossible to win. If you’re not familiar with it, the Claw of Death — also called a Teddy Picker, Candy Crane, Grab Machine, and Claw Crane — features (wait for it) a claw, which the player manipulates using a joystick in an attempt to grab any one of a variety of prizes, such as plush toys, jewelry, hats, balls, dolls, shirts, candy, and so on. Usually, in order to “win” (that is, to successfully retrieve one of the prizes), the player must make several attempts — this, despite the fact that the prize is inevitably of poor quality and will almost certainly be discarded in the near future.

The Claw of Death stands as a powerful testament to the power of rewards: Even the mere hope of receiving a reward — even a really lousy one — can motivate a player to perform ...