Meet learners where they are...probably gaming

7 of every 10 Gen Z’ers play video games. Duh. What I hadn't quite grokked...it's for an average of 3 hours per day.

"Gen Z is the first to grow up as digital-natives, meaning there are stark differences with any that came before. It’s imperative for games industry companies, consumer brands and advertisers to understand how to communicate and engage with the most technologically plugged-in generation in history." - Ben Cousens, Chief Strategy Officer of a posse of Bitcoin-obsessed gamers with a really cool domain name: ZBD.gg.

Corporate blah blah can certainly be made more engaging (or at least less unpalatable) by gamifying it. But just because you can gamify, doesn’t mean you should.

One YouTuber recorded his week in the Walmart trainer simulation game, Spark. It is hilarious (the YouTuber) for all the wrong reasons (Spark). Warning: don't drink coffee when you watch if you don't want it coming out your nose at some point – especially when reading the comments section afterward.

To effectively leverage the obvious hold gaming has over the world for the lofty purposes of learning, expert Karl Kapp, PhD advises focusing on what a game requires the participant to do in order to win. If this core dynamic mirrors what the player/learner needs to do IRL, then it’s an excellent choice for gamification. In Play to Learn, he provides this handy at-a-glance chart I really like: