Welcome Corner Blog Posts
Go a little bit deeper into the Welcome Corner with blog posts. Learn how to get started in SAP Community and get tips on maximizing your participation.
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Former Member

Gamification is coming to SAP Community Network!  We’ve been working to bring this new element to the SCN experience and it’s so exciting, I want to share a sneak peek.

You might remember at SAP TechEd Las Vegas in 2011, we invited gamification expert Jane McGonigal to join us for a guest keynote.  That year we “gamified” SAP TechEd itself with the Knowledge Quest game and our InnoJam theme that year was all around gamification.  SAP has also been exploring gamification topics in our product teams and there’s more and more buzz about the topic as more organizations embrace the ideas of gamification with valuable results.

We’ve had such a great response to gamification, that the SAP Community Network team has been eager to bring game mechanics to SCN itself!  Our SCN new platform project last year put us in the right position to bring gamification to SCN, so last year we took it on.  We started the project last summer led by laure.cetin with major support from oliver, scott.lawley, johannes.unnewehr, oddss, jodi.fleischman, sean.yang15, and jeanne.carboni and we’re getting ready to launch in the coming weeks.

Continuing to Build a Platform for Engagement, Participation, and Reputation

While gamification introduces new concepts of missions, badges, and leaderboards, the concept of earning points and building your reputation in SCN is not new to SCN members.  SAP implemented our first reputation system for SAP Developer Network with points for contributions almost 9 years ago.  The original concept was simple and we’ve made regular improvements throughout the years.  Like in 2005 when we created a leaderboard for top contributors by topic areas, in 2010 when we added the Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum reputation program levels, or more recently when we added social sharing and improved exposure for great content with the popular content widgets.   Members have always appreciated that their hard work helping other community members also earns them the honor of building their reputation in the community.

The new platform launched last year gave us a single experience for community members, made it easier for people to contribute, and provided built-in mechanisms for ratings and likes to identify the best content. Over the last year, members have provided over 33,000 ratings and 18,000 likes for good content (Thank You!). While those are impressive numbers, when we typically have nearly 2 million unique visitors every month, there are opportunities for even greater engagement in SCN.

Gamification will continue that path of encouraging positive behavior and content contribution that resonates in the community and we encourage everyone to enthusiastically participate. Members have told us many times how SCN helps them in their daily activities, and this project will give all members more opportunities to pay it forward, appreciating the value the community brings with their contributions.

Gamification Platform

We’ve been working with the leader in gamification, Bunchball on implementing game mechanics on SCN to make it easier to engage, get feedback, and participate in fun - yet serious - missions and challenges that will help us all make the most of the community.

With gamification, we will:

  • Add some fun, excitement, and challenge to the SCN experience.
  • Encourage participation for everyone, including people who are strictly observers, by presenting missions that get people involved and engaged in SCN.
  • Celebrate achievements as members complete missions, add badges to their trophy case, and build their value and reputation in the community
  • Help community members identify experts that excel in the over 400 different topic areas in SCN
  • Improve reputation information for all members by showing expertise in topic spaces highlighting members’ achievements and interests.

Examples of game elements we’ll have in the SCN points and reputation system include:

  • Continue earning points (like you do today) for your contributions through blogs, discussions, answers, likes, ratings, and shares
  • Show your reputation for top level achievements of Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum (BTW, we’ve heard your concerns about the negatives of 12 month rolling points.  We’ve been working on it and will have somegood news there as well.)
  • Earn badges and additional points by completing missions SCN-wide or focused on specific topic areas and spaces.
  • Choose the badges you’re most proud of to show in your hover-card with “me-in-three”
  • See your ranking relative to friends you follow and that follow you
  • Work your way up SCN leaderboards (like today’s Top Participants lists) across SCN and within all of our SCN topic spaces

Ready, Set, GO!

We are all very excited to launch this new level of engagement, fun, and energy for the

community!  We’re looking forward to seeing gamification help us engage with SCN members and members engage with each other, to bring new connections, buzz, energy, and fun to the experience of connecting and sharing in the SAP Community Network.


We’re on track for launch in early April, 2013.  Watch for more information over the next few weeks including more detailed blogs, training for moderators, SAP Mentors, and SCN community members.

Please feel free to provide your thoughts, comments, and suggestions in the comments below.

Game on!

55 Comments