Fire Tiger reinforces the consulting and support of its clients in the gamification of their management
Clément Muletier, gamification expert and author of two books on the subject, shares his vision of gamification for management. In his interview, he explains the extent to which gamification is taking hold in companies and how he puts it into practice with a method that is now proven. He also comes back to the different profiles of employees and how his method allows to address them all.
I discovered the concept of gamification through an article published in the newspaper "Le Monde" in 2011. At that time, this term was not well known on this side of the Atlantic. This notion immediately aroused my curiosity even though I didn't directly make the link with video games.
As part of my studies, I studied a lot of economics, especially behavioral economics. During that time, I discovered the work of economist Richard Thaler, who won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for his research on behavioral finance. When I discovered gamification, I saw it as a concrete application of the behavioral theories outlined by Thaler and Sustein in their best-selling book Nudge.
This transition to gamification naturally led me to the tech sector, which is the main sector of application for gamification.
When I first became interested in the concept of gamification in 2011, few people knew the term.
I was then a student and I started to write articles on blogs specialized in marketing and web design. This allowed me to adopt the method and the rigor to quickly become competent.
My first real experience with gamification was translating a wiki about gamification. This wiki was sold to Badgeville, at the time the American leader in gamification solutions.
I was then recruited by AstuceClub for an internship at the end of my studies. It was a community dedicated to Facebook players (Farmville for example) gathering tens of millions of players in France.
One of my missions was to develop a gamification consulting business. That's when we launched El Gamificator. We wrote the book. After that I started as an independent consultant.
Today, many more people know about the subject. It is necessary for me to continue my research in order to stay abreast of the many advances on the subject.
Gamification is not a very academic concept, I hope it will become one day. Nevertheless, it is a concept that is based on academic teachings like sociology, psychology and of course behavioral economics.
El Gamificator is a strategy and consulting agency specialized in gamification.
The initial idea was to create a kind of gamification laboratory by learning from the AstuceClub community. The latter included several million players whose behaviors and reactions to a given game mechanic we could observe.
My main mission was to bring a structure, a quasi scientific basis to game design and gamification.
The idea for my first book came from this research work. My goal was to bring this knowledge to as many people as possible. This book gave me a certain legitimacy. That's why El Gamificator gradually became a consulting company.
Of course! Gamification is a concept that has matured. I find it more and more sophisticated.
I'm thinking of the Duolingo app for example, which is always one step ahead. This free Learning platform offers a very gamified experience like daily quests and unlockable items. The techniques it employs have continued to evolve since its launch in 2012.
Gamification has also become very widespread. Ten years ago, only a handful of American companies were involved. Today, it is used by all tech giants. Some examples, like the GPS Waze, are known to all.
Moreover, it has become almost indispensable in certain areas such as learning (LinkedIn for example or the Salesforce Trailhead Academy).
There are lots of different profiles, lots of typologies, but it's important not to rely too much on that.
Be careful with these typologies, they are primarily a design technique used to reflect on participants' motivations and generate ideas. Your profile only defines a trend.
For me, the type you belong to really depends (mostly) on the context. It can happen that a person is a Hunter in his professional life and an Explorer in his personal life for example.
Another example is that an Explorer profile does not necessarily apply in a sales context; rather, we will find Hunter profiles via the bonus system.
On the other hand, you are never just one type of player. Being a Killer means that you are certainly sensitive to competition but it does not mean that you are indifferent to other levers. Thus, using only one source of motivation can be ineffective (e.g., only a ranking for Slayers). The most effective way is to multiply the sources of motivation of different kinds.
I got to know Fire Tiger via its CEO Jonathan Leduc, whom I met in 2019.
From a personal point of view, I had the desire to work in a team after a rather solitary work phase during which I wrote my second book.
I liked the product offered by Fire Tiger and the positioning of the company.
At Fire Tiger, we work on very operational use cases with the desire to support all employees in achieving their performance objectives. These projects allow for direct collaboration with customer account managers. This dynamic is perfect for creating gamification that works and a lot of value for the customer. From the perspective of my research and application of my design methods, this is very exciting.
The consulting service within Fire Tiger is very good, and positioned close to the end users.
I am very happy to have finished writing my second book which will be published at the beginning of the second quarter of 2023.
Compared to the first one, this one will be much more practical. It includes many exercises and templates to guide the reader, step by step, in the creation of a gamification program from A to Z.
Thus, the book offers just the right amount of theory to understand gamification and its techniques, in order to apply them in a concrete way. There are also many case studies to inspire the reader.
Its title is: "Gamification, how to use game mechanics to engage and build loyalty" and is published by Eyrolles.
Gamification in companies is booming and continues to prove its impact on employee engagement and business results. The integration of Clément Muletier allows Fire Tiger to reinforce its expertise in this field and to better assist its clients in the design of their management strategies. You can find our article on gamification in the enterprise by clicking here.
