Case example: Kickstarter.com

There are many examples of how gamification can achieve better results than any ordinary form of the same activity. An interesting example of this is the website Kickstarter.com where would be entrepreneurs can submit their ideas for funding. It contains the same basic model as a venture capital firm - if the venture is promising enough they'll get the appropriate funding, but with a much better framework!

First of all, anyone can invest. And private investors doesn't invest in shares or future profits, they invest in promises of goods or services to come if the venture is successful. The entrepreneur submits their idea, which often is a tangible product, along with a target sum that needs to be raised for the project to start in a given time limit. If the project then manage to hit their target sum within the given time limit, the business is started and the investors gets the promised rewards (which often is the product the company is built upon). But if the the project doesn't hit its target for funding, everyone gets their money back and nothing is produced.

This is quite brilliant, through progress bars and social cooperation they make the entrepreneurs goal everyone's goal.  If the target is reached, then everyone wins. If it isn't, well then nothing is lost. There are many success stories that originates from Kickstarter.com. There is everything from the independent film Rise and Shine: The Jay DeMerit Story which managed to raise over $220 000 to the new model of an iPhone dock that managed to raise the quite staggering amount of $1 464 000 - just through crowdsourcing and the ingenious use of game-design mechanisms.

This is just one example of what is coming. The future is games.