Gamification In The Photo Industry - A Modest Proposal

An email came through today that wanted to us to go on a course dedicated to gamification. It was a new word - I tried to look it up. Webster's and the New English dictionaries were no help so I resorted to opening the hatch of hell and peering in. Sure enough - "gamification" refers to bringing game rules and concepts to other aspects of life. It spoke of engaging people's attention by making things fun.


Anyone who remembers standing in the rain on a soccer pitch while the school coach screamed at you has a pretty good idea of the sort of fun that games bring. It wasn't just the rain, and it wasn't just the soccer, because when we moved indoors to the smelly gym the coach screamed the same fun at us during basketball. I regret not being back in my home town as the dear old gentleman was buried some years ago and I wasn't there to do it. I would have screamed with fun.

But we must bring some of the fun of games here to the trade, and to do this I think we should capitalize upon the sort of team spirit and loyalty displayed by users of different camera systems - Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Fuji, etc, etc. We are going to go to Red Dot and get a set of colour-coded fly swatters and distribute them to the teams - 5 a side - and set them upon each other in a round-robin system. A whack on the body counts for 1 point  and a whack on the head counts for 2. If you knock the other contestant's glasses or hearing aid off you get 3 points. There are four quarters of five minutes apiece and in summer  we'll distribute orange segments at half-time.

I am hoping to interest some of the professional sports shooters in covering the event and with a bit of luck it may be included in the Olympics.

Note: No fouling of other contestants is permitted. If anything of this nature is observed the offender will be shown the 18% grey card.

The only sticking point at this stage is coming up with a suitable name for the game. I should be grateful for any suggestions from readers.