Gamify Your Virtual Events in 5 Creative Ways!

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”

~ Gloria Steinem

Bored with conferences, tired of webinars and tired of good old ebooks? Would you like to make your webinar more interactive and engaging? 

Did you know that post-COVID- 19, 92% of companies continue hosting virtual events even after physical events resumed? Gamification is the technique of applying game-thinking and game principles to non-game problems. Perhaps you could develop an entertaining game that would get people involved in the virtual gamification stage. Well, we have the idea and are sure that the concept would entertain your audience as well.

There are multiple ways to gamify your virtual event, be it gamification for virtual conferences or any meetings at all. Just take a look at it and pick up the gamification ideas for virtual events that will best suit your particular situation.

Related Article: Gamification in 2022: Future of Immersive Technologies

1. Quiz Questions

Quiz questions are a great way to test attendees’ knowledge, creative thinking and critical thinking skills in a virtual event. They can also be used to assess problem-solving abilities and teamwork, or leadership in general.

Since these quizzes will be available online (for example, on an event website), you’ll need to ensure that they’re accessible from any device—including mobile devices. You’ll also want them to be easy to administer: while live presentations may work well with paper-and-pencil tests, this isn’t so practical when it comes to virtual events.

2. Audience Polls

• Ask a question and allow the audience to vote.
• Use polls for feedback on a topic.
• Use polls to get the audience’s opinions on what they like or don’t like.

3. Scoreboard

A scoreboard is a great way to encourage participation because it gives your audience motivation to participate in a virtual event. Your attendees will be more likely to share their ideas or ask questions if they know they’ll get points for doing so.

A scoreboard can also be used to foster competition among coworkers and employees of different departments, which can help build camaraderie among them. If you’re hosting an internal event for your company, this could be a fun way for teams and departments of different sizes (or even from different companies) to compete against each other in real-time!

4. Rewards in Gamification

In addition to earning badges and points, there are many other ways you can incentivize your virtual event participants. If you have a budget for prizes or gifts, consider giving away something valuable to your virtual event attendees. Here are some ideas:

• A free product or service (e.g., an ebook, online course, webinar)
• A gift card (to Amazon or Starbucks)
• A subscription to your blog/newsletter/podcast/etc., so they’ll continue to receive the content they enjoyed during the event! 

5. Scavenger Hunt

A scavenger hunt is a great way to gamify your virtual event. Firstly, you’ll need to create a list of items that attendees should find. You can do this in any way you want, but here are some ideas:

• Create a list on Google Docs and ask people to add their own entries as they find them
• Create an image with several objects inside it, then ask people to identify what each object is (this is called “spot the difference”)
• Use emoji clues that require the attendee to guess what phrase or word goes with the picture

You can make this more fun by giving out prizes for finding all the items on your list! Make sure you have enough prizes so everyone gets one—you don’t want anyone feeling left out or frustrated. You could even split up into teams and have everyone compete against each other for who finds everything first.

Related Article: Science Behind Game-based Learning and Gamification

Take your Creative Engagement to a New Level

Gamification is a great way to engage your audience, increase participation and engagement, and even drive loyalty. Gamification can help you create a memorable event that will leave your attendees with a positive brand experience.

Add elements of virtual gamification in your next virtual event:

• Make it competitive: Have attendees earn points for completing certain tasks (like registering for the webinar) or games for virtual events (like playing a trivia game). The person with the most points at the end wins something special from the organizer (or maybe everyone who participates gets something).

• Make it social: Connecting people through social media has become second nature for many of us, so why not incorporate this behavior into an event? You could set up an online chat room where attendees can talk among themselves about what they’re learning at the event, share links related to content presented during breakout sessions, etcetera.)
  

Conclusion

If you’re new to gamification, it might seem like a lot of work. If you’re used to gamifying events, you might be wondering how to bring that same level of interactivity online. 

But no matter where you are in your gamification journey, we hope these ideas have given you some inspiration for the next time you need an engaging virtual event. Remember: It doesn’t take much effort or money to make things more fun for your attendees. It just takes creativity and willingness!

For more gamification ideas, visit eVULX.