The document describes a gamification case study of the San City project for a large bank. Key points: 1. San City used an engaging virtual game world to motivate employees and achieve business goals like sales targets. 2. It achieved high user recruitment rates, frequent logins, and engagement over 10 months, exceeding the bank's targets. 3. The game closely linked in-game progress and rewards to employees' real-world business performance. Major plot twists further increased engagement. 4. The project was seen as a major success, exceeding the bank's annual business plan and leading the bank to invest more in future editions. Its approach of closely integrating gamification and business goals could potentially be

1. CASE STUDY

2. Why is the San City Project Worth Your Attention?
• The gamification that relies on rich gameful world* can generate extraordinary user
engagement
– Frequent logins, game missions realization, readiness to react on communication etc.
• A strongly engaging game world is an effective tool of influence on employees
– A business goals realization, team integration, employer branding, costs optimization
• Combining rich game world and business tasks relies on universal psychological mechanisms
and for that reason it may be sucessfully employed in other business areas
– We’ve noticed similar effectiveness in gamification projects for clients from different industries
• The unique feature of our gamification programs is the advanced game world
similar to worlds known from commercial games

3. Spectacular Results

4. Users’ Recruitment
65%
80%
97%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
120%
Target - expectations Target - challenge Fulfilment

5. Daily, Weekly and Monthly Logins
(percent of registered users)
70%
89%
98%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
120%
Daily Logins Weekly Logins Monthly Logins

6. DAU / MAU indicator
as a way to measure the attractiveness of application
71.1%
68.7%
53.2%
31.0%
11.0%
20.0%
0.0%
10.0%
20.0%
30.0%
40.0%
50.0%
60.0%
70.0%
80.0%
SanCity Facebook (USA) Snapchat (USA) Gambling Games (poker
etc.)
Educational Games Good Results for Mobile
Apps

7. The Percentage of Users who Played the Game
(min. 5 activities in a game world per month)
• The expected level of engagement amounted to 75%
• The challenge level of engagement amounted to 85%
92%
94% 93%
89% 89% 89% 89%
93% 94%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
April May June July August September October November December

8. Users’ Engagement over 10 Months Period
Permissible Engagement
Decrease
• The planned level – at most
40% decrease
• The challenge level – at most
20% decrease
-
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
number of users logins per user

9. The Starting Point of the Project

10. Project’s Main Features
• The 12 month project involved employees who worked in bank branches
• The progress in the game was fully relied on a business performance
• Users received virtual and material rewards

11. Our Client
• One of the world’s biggest banks
• Over 350 branches in the country (towns and cities)
• Every branch employs from 2 to 6 employees

12. Banks’ Employees
• Over 1 200 employees
• 88% of them are women
• Average age: 40
• Significant number of 50+ employees
Women
88%
Men 12%

13. San City’s Main Goals
• Motivate employees to observe and analyse sales KPIs
• Draw at least 65% of employees into the game and keep them engaged for 12
months
• Fit the game to the bank’s specific features (story line, business mechanics, special
role of branch’s supervisors, different sizes of branches)
• Switch the focus from material to virtual rewards (reduced budget for material
rewards)
• Integration of all motivational practices at the gamification platform
(leaderboards, sales target realization feedback, rewards etc.)

14. Recruitment
- the first step to build engagement

15. Teaser Campaign
• Tools of recruitment
– Intranet teaser campaign
– Demo game at annual event
– Movie trailer

17. The Recruitment Effectiveness Over Time
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
Day1
Day2
Day3
Day4
Day5
Day6
Day7
Day8
Day9
Day10
Day11
Day12
Day13
Day14
Day15
Day16
Day17
Day18
Day19
Day20
Day21
Day22
Day23
Day24
Day25
Day26
Day27
Day28
Day29
Day30
The number of registrations The percent of registered employees

18. Gamification Mechanics

20. Game-like Motivational Schema
20
Flow
As a welcome package user gets enough free resources to complete initial part of the
game. It consists of dozens of plot missions of increasing difficulty. After completing them
most users get drawn into the game
Virtual Game
User gains access to customize game world
.
Business progress
Once the user has been drawn into the game, the starting resources run out. From that
point onwards, the only way to get sufficient resources to continue the game is the
fulfillment of business goals.
Game progress
The better the player fulfills the business goals, the more
resources they get and the faster they can progress in the
game world.

21. Business Mechanics
• Three main types of business challenges:
– Sales targets (5 obligatory KPIs, 2 targets of choice)
– Monthly business rankings
– Sales League (a synthetic indicator of branch’s business
performance)
• Every business success (a target fulfillment, an
advancement to ranking’s TOP 3 or an advancement to
top sales league) is rewarded with bricks and gold thalers
(the game currency exchangeable for material goods)

22. The Game Mechanics
• The mechanics of building a city includes up to 49 buildings with upgrades (up to 184 unique buildings’ levels)
• The integrated option of unlocking buildings depending on user’s level
• Changing seasons and a day and night cycle
• The major task of the player was to develop the city in a balanced way. The player had to take care of 6 city’s
parameters (population, residents’ happiness, availability of food, work, health care and entertainment). The player
could choose different building strategy to develop city’s parameters

23. Team Cooperation
• Different game goals for front workers and supervisors:
– The branch built the city in quarters
– Employees built their own city’s quarters
– Supervisors built city’s centre with buildings that influence every quarter in the city
• The game balancing mechanisms (options that deal with a variable size of branches, a
changing structure of branch, a workers’ migration, a temporary replacements and so on)

24. Dosed Activities
• Limiting time spent by user on playing
– The game was balanced for 10 minutes daily play, but if one logged in once per two days, they
were able to compete with the most engaged players
• Precisely defined time of interaction with the game
– An average player was able to build and upgrade from 8 to 12 buildings per month
• Slow game’s pace
– Upgrading higher level building lasted for a few days
• Brick hunger
– Usually active users run out of their bricks 10 days before the next charge

25. The Linkage Between Virtual and Real World

26. Real world flowers on Women’s Day for female employees working in branches
where first 40 florists were built

27. The real world lemonade for the first 250 players who built a bar (we’ve planned to send beer)

28. The post card from player’s city sent during
Holidays

29. Rewarding Mechanics
• Users received bricks and gold thalers for every realized monthly sales target. Gold
thalers were exchageable for material rewards avalaible in the e-shop (a part of the
platform)
• The amount of gold thalers was symbolic and equalled 2 euros for fulfillment of
monthly sales target (users had around 7 sales targets per month). We gave more
gold thalers for realization of contests business tasks and winning sales league
• The catalogue of buyable rewards included material goods, monetary vouchers, fuel
vouchers, cinema tickets and virtual goods (packages of bricks, instant build option
etc.)
Note that one may receive gold thalers without playing the game,
even though 90% of users actively played the game

30. The Popularity of Virtual Rewards
• 8% of gold thalers received by users was
spent on virtual goods (bricks, an instant
build option)
• 38% of users spent gold thalers on virtual
goods
• The most engaged users spent over 200
Euro on virtual goods
8%
Virtual goods Material goods

31. The Great Final
- the main plot twist and user engagement accumulation

32. The Main Plot Twist
• Goals:
– The increase of players’ engagement in last quarter of a game year
– The increase of game’s influence on major business indicators
– The determination of 15 winners who would receive the main prize (a trip to Sweden)
• Execution:
– New game in the game – the cross-country skiing championships
– The Plot Twist – an introduction of new story line connected with cross-country skiing
– The wholly new mechanics directly linking a business tasks’ fulfillment with the championships
performance
– Increase of business targets and virtual rewards

33. The new game in the game
– the view of the cross-country track, built and upgraded by every player in the game

34. The game in the game
– the interface for training a player’s cross-country runner

35. The Great Final
• The last final run that determined the champion
• There was a ”live” broadcasting of the final run at the annual event
– All potential winners were invited to attend the annual event
• We prepared special animated coverage from the final run
– We finished the movie one day before the final run
• The attendees of the annual event were informed that they could root for runners
from their regions
– Every region had its unique colour code assigned

37. Summary

38. San City’s Business Results
• The main KPI’s annual plan noticeably exceeded
• The project highly rated by users
• A bank decided to invest more in next edition

39. The Main Sources of San City’s Success
• High significance of the project
– Strong recruitment campaign, business results instant feedback, integration of most of
motivational activities with gamification, bonus system integrated with the platform
• Advanced game world
– Popular and well-tested game mechanics, attractive story line, player’s autonomy, high level
game dynamics (special sales actions, events, storyline etc.), social cooperation and competition
• Close connection between the virtual game and the real world
– Game reflected a bank branch’s structure, business layer reflected the structure of employee’s
business goals, game reflected seasons, a day and night cycle, it quickly became a popular topic
among employees

40. Is it possible to repeat the success of San City in other business
areas?

41. RockTown
• Mobile game for ROCKWOOL Polska addressed to employees of external net of building shops
• Strong educational mechanism – direct education (quizzes) and indirect education through the
story line (3 insulation technologies in the game)

43. Thanks for your attention
www.oskarwegner.pl
gamification@oskarwegner.pl