Productivity Games Have a Purpose

Bangalore businessman Vikram Agarwal may have nicked the Attent™ model (which was surely swiped from somewhere else), but his efforts to popularize game elements in the workspace earn him one million spacebucks in our book.

This intercontinental Michael Scott recounts the impetus for his efforts:

“My team used to go overboard with useless emails, thus burying the few important ones somewhere within. And sadly, thanks to the overload, replying to those few important emails would take forever,” said Agarwal, “On the other hand, they loved video games. So when I found an email solution that borrows from games like World of Warcraft, I knew I’d struck gold.”

It seems obvious: encourage employee engagement and productivity by appropriating those experiences that cause employees to _disengage_ from their full time gigs — namely, social networks, shopping, and (you guessed it) games.

We’ve hung our hat on games, given the tendency for sophisticated games to become a lifestyle. Facebook’s Farmville, with far more regular users than Twitter (and across all demographics), might be the most paid-attention-to “activity dashboard” in existence. When companies leverage the psychology of motivated gamers — and subsequently align gameplay with job performance — they’ll be swimming in rupees.