If gamification is about ‘applying the art of games design to things other than games’, marketing metagamification takes what games designers do when they ‘go beyond the boundaries of a defined game’ and apply THAT to branded social apps

Metagamification in this context is not so much about ‘games within games’ as it is about ‘blurring the boundaries’ between your app and life itself. This talk compares metagamification at Instagram, Pinterest, Codecademy, Strava and Rapha.

Here’s the introduction to the talk by Jonathan Greene of RG/A Digital:

“Game designers for the longest time have embraced the “Metagame” to extend a game experience even when users aren’t actively playing the game.

How can designers of branded social apps borrow a similar approach to create “Metagame” experiences around their apps, producing continuous long-term social engagement with consumers?

How do we blur the lines around when a user’s experience with a social app begins and ends, so that the social app experience can be happening all day, everyday?”

He has a slide showing the “Player Lifecycle” (onboarding, habit-building and mastery) and he talks about the ‘levels’ that Instagram, Pinterest, Codecademy, Strava and Rapha are at.

Here’s a video of a talk by the originator of that Lifecycle chart, metagamification guru Amy Jo Kim: