Gamification is hot.

The word on the street is that 70% of the corporations on the Forbes Global 2000 list (the 2,000 biggest businesses in the world) are expected to gamify in 2014. Think of 1,400 giants deciding to play the same game and hope you’re not the goalkeeper – that’s what seems to be going on out there on the world’s field of play.

So, what is gamification, and why would those very large businesses want to play?

Games have existed forever. Cavemen threw rocks to knock rocks off rocks – most modern professional sports teams still engage in this form of gaming. Cavewomen searched the underbrush to find new foods and were rewarded with a better dinner and award points from the diners – many game applications have players running through mazes capturing carrots and low-hanging fruits for golden reward currencies and fan-fares of recognition. So, gaming is not new, having fun doing something is not new, and being rewarded for doing something well or finding something new is not new.

So, what is new?

In the early 1970’s electronic gaming made its big advance. In the arcades and on the TV screens, we took turns blowing up spaceships, stacking blocks and eating dots. Then, in the late 1970’s, some smart kids in the back room figured out a way for players to play the same game at the same time. Through the 1980’s and 1990’s multi-player video gaming took off: “BANG! ZOOM! Straight to the moon,” as Jackie Gleason never imagined. The honeymoon was over.

Multi-player video gaming moved into its home in the suburbs and commuted to work each morning, because computer gaming had a job.

Businesses were using computer-based gaming applications to promote their products. Schools were using gaming softwares to teach their students. Politicians, like Howard Dean, were using video games to convince caucusing Iowans to vote for Dean. TV shows were using gaming approaches to hook viewers. Sweden gamified traffic laws to slow down drivers and fund a lottery for safe drivers.

These gaming applications were fine and good, but wasn’t it marketing to promote old ideas? Nothing new was happening, right? People might call this stuff “gamification,” but with due respect, isn’t it the Fuller Brush Man with an old brush and a new spiel. I’m for better marketing, but where’s the new vacuum cleaner.

Then, in 2011, something happened.

Scientists at the University of Washington, a public research university in Seattle, Washington, had been scratching their heads for a decade over the correct structure of a protein. Proteins make up about 75% of the dry weight of our bodies, so they are very important to us and our proper functioning. Well, those eggheads at the University of Washington couldn’t figure out how this one protein was folded.

Now, a protein starts as a long chain, composed of some twenty or so basic amino acids mixed up in an extended sequence, like a string, a very long string – say ten feet long. Then, this string of amino acids folds itself back and around on itself, like a stuck-up and wound-together ball of twine, but a ball with a unique folded structure that is critical to the proper performance of its protein function.

Those scientists were sitting around folding that string for ten years, and they just couldn’t get it right.

One day, and this is the important part, someone said, “Let’s try a game.” Folks were skeptical. Then, the voice in the back of the room added, “Let’s try a multi-player, computer-based, video-game-type, competitive contest, open to all and anyone, to see who can fold our string the best?” “Okay,” someone else chimed in, “but what do we call it?” “’Foldit,’ of course.”

And, they did and the game did it.

57,000 players played Foldit, and in ten days that crowd of gamers came up with folded results that allowed the scientists to map successfully the structure of a protein to fight infections and save lives.

A crowd-based gaming approach had produced a new idea, not promoted an old one.

Two heads are better than one, or 57,000 gamers may beat a roomful of PhD’s at their own game.

True gamification had been born, and the world’s corporations are lining up for the new ideas those gamers may just produce.

Have a productive day, and have fun at whatever you’re doing.

You may want to let the kids keep playing.

Who knows what may result,

Grandpa Jim

PS: An overarching observation with respect to gaming in its many forms may be that the common and shared purpose of all games and gaming is simply “to find something.” That’s it: Find Something. The first “find-something” of computer-based, multi-player video gaming is to find the prize and, in so doing, to be entertained. The second expression of the “find-something” principle is the use of gaming to help potential customers find the product of their dreams, to use video gaming technology to market an existing widget. The third application of “find-something” to video gaming is the use of gaming maneuverings to find a thing that was only a possibility but then becomes a reality, to establish a new idea which can become an entirely new product, like electricity, the telephone or space exploration — a key on a kite for Benjamin Franklin, a can with a string for Alexander Graham Bell or, if you really want to get crazy, an equation, E-mc2, from the greatest game developer of all time, Albert Einstein, as a way to get everyone to find the new physics. Now, that third “find something” is really exciting, and it might be suggested that only the third is true “gamification.” But, then, what’s in a word? It’s the results that count or electrify or ring your phone or blast a colony to Mars and beyond. . . .