Remember the days of Ludo, Snakes and Ladders or even Monopoly? Remember how these games made us experience an adrenaline rush while they sharpened us in our numbers, calculus and colors! Remember the days of Scrabble and how it sharpened our vocabulary? Ever realized the benefit these games could have on your kids or simply just turn a simple gathering into a memory?
Then came the age of Xbox, PlayStation and Wii throwing challenges on long evenings, defeating hordes of aliens and saving the world before that pizza arrived.

Games have always been a part of our lives and we don’t realize how strong an impact they create. Games capture and hold our attention in ways that have guaranteed individual or organizations will take an interest!

When someone plays a video game, they are challenged mentally and stimulated to solve a problem. Through playing they will discover many different ways to solve problems they will come across. Often, players will find that they require these skills later on in the game as well, and thus are required to maintain and hone their skills for later use. Video games typically provide instant rewards for succeeding in solving a problem. This is in contrast to classroom environments where students wait for graded tests and are only rewarded occasionally with report cards to report their progress. Owing to the same, games show four types of positive impact that video games have on the kids who play them: cognitive, motivational, emotional, and social.

Gameplay has cognitive benefit because games have been shown to improve attention, focus, and reaction time. Games have motivational benefit because they encourage an incremental, rather than an entity to strive hard and go for more. Games have emotional benefit because they induce positive mood states; in addition, there is speculative evidence that games may help kids develop adaptive emotive regulation. Games have social benefit because gamers are able to translate the social skills that they learn from co-playing or multiplayer gameplay to “peer and family relations outside the gaming environment.

Similarly for an organization, games offer the chance of creating the experience to engage with a brand, remember it and provides an impetus to engage with the brand all over again! Applying game design techniques can increase software quality and motivate employees to improve the complex a given process or protocol that is being followed in the organization.
Gamification can start with internal as well as external initiatives. Internal gamification processes are aimed at keeping employees greatly satisfied and excelling in creating quality work products. External gamification is aimed at maintaining a happy customer base and in turn achieving business goals. Games go beyond one’s imagination and provides the stimulus that can trigger the best mood or even the right conversation at a work environment.

The idea of interactive, highly-engaging training and education is ancient. Gaming and gamification tools of teaching and learning are now witnessing the next wave of innovation. Summarized rightly by a Chinese proverb, ‘Tell me, and I'll forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I'll understand.’
Well, it’s time we explore the new age tool for learning and create that impact!