Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps

What do Foursquare, Zynga, Nike+, and Groupon have in common? These and many other brands use gamification to deliver a sticky, viral, and engaging experience to their customers. This book provides the design strategy and tactics you need to integrate game mechanics into any kind of consumer-facing website or mobile app. Learn how to use core game concepts, design patterns, and meaningful code samples to a create fun and captivating social environment.

Whether you're an executive, developer, producer, or product specialist, Gamification by Design will show you how game mechanics can help you build customer loyalty.

• Discover the motivational framework game designers use to segment and engage consumers
• Understand core game mechanics such as points, badges, levels, challenges, and leaderboards
• Engage your consumers with reward structures, positive reinforcement, and feedback loops
• Combine game mechanics with social interaction for activities such as collecting, gifting, heroism, and status
• Dive into case studies on Nike and Yahoo!, and analyze interactions at Google, Facebook, and Zynga
• Get the architecture and code to gamify a basic consumer site, and learn how to use mainstream gamification APIs from Badgeville

"Turning applications into games is a huge trend. This book does a great job of identifying the core lasting principals you need to inspire your users to visit again and again."
—Adam Loving
Freelance Social Game Developer and founder of Twibes Twitter Groups