This article discusses the role of narrative element in gamification towards value co-creation in a crowdsourcing application system. The discourse addresses the gap of knowledge to understand the user motivation and experience to co-create value in a gamified system. Value co-creation is an interactive engagement process that refers to the act of collaborating with a group of intended consumers through a crowdsourcing approach. As the decentralisation of the web enables participation of people to shape the future based on their contributions, understanding Internet users' motivation and experience to co-create value is crucial in ensuring that the initiatives are reciprocated by the intended parties. As gamification has been widely utilised in numerous contexts in order to encourage users to contribute their resources of knowledge and skills, the effectiveness of its elements, namely narrative, remains questionable.
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The gaming industry is one of the fastest growing and emerging industries that connects Internet users from all over the world. Anyone with Internet connectivity is able to experience an immersive platform that offers fun and enjoyable moments. Understanding the penetration that the gaming industry has on the players, firms are leveraging on numerous gaming and gamification platforms to ensure the sustenance of their business through the customers value co-creation.
As the fourth industrial revolution (termed as Industry 4.0), is transforming communication from all areas, understanding online user engagement is crucially important to achieve effective collaboration between the firm and its target market for any intended purpose. Given its rapid growth, research efforts to extricate the complexity of digital communication between humans to humans, humans to machines, and machines and machines is intensified more than ever. For instance, the deployment of artificial intelligence (A.I.) is changing the immersive state of user during connectivity. Each smartphone user nowadays is carrying a personal A.I. in his or her pocket, which makes acquisition and dissemination of knowledge conveniently and swiftly. Advanced technology tools that rely on rich interactive media to connect with online users are gradually blurring the line between the virtual and real-world experience. The information that is found on numerous online platforms are based on the contribution of the users to other users. As users are more likely to engage with the information provided from other users, firms and content providers are heavily relying on the knowledge possessed by other users. One of the effective ways that firms use to motivate the initiative of other users to contribute their knowledge and skills in a collaborative platform is through the use of gamification, a process that draws the potential of games in non-game contexts.
Understanding the potential of gamification would be beneficial for firms in leveraging the game design elements to encourage engagement and induce immersion among its users to co-create value in marketing communication approach. In brief, a game refers to physical or mental contest that has goal or objective, whereby an individual or a group of individuals will play according to a pre-determined framework or rules in the game world (Huzinga, 1970). The use of game elements in practical context is called gamification. The fundamental understanding of how and why certain users behave in a gamified environment is only at the tip of the iceberg. Therefore, researchers are calling for more in-depth research into this context that was derived from the rapid progress of the world wide web technology.
The advancement of Semantic Web, which is also referred as Web 3.0, that witnesses more intelligent and intuitive application system is empowering users towards seamless user experience to reach more targeted communication goal. Such democratisation of the Internet enables all users to connect dynamically with each other, including in the context of business to consumers (B2C) and consumers to consumers (C2C), in which the connectivity between users happens in split seconds to reach the intended objectives. At one time, countless of information exchange processes takes place that help firms to understand its users or consumers better. For instance, a search engine understands the thinking patterns of the users better than the users would aware. It is able to predict the user’s search patterns thereby offering possible findings of consumer behaviours at a rapid pace. From the firm’s perspective, developers and marketers are able to understand users in greater detail with the assistance of big data, which is intensified by the decentralisation of the Internet.
As the decentralisation of the web enables participation of the people to shape the future based on their very own behaviours, understanding Internet users’ psychological aspects, namely their motivation and experience in the dissemination of knowledge is crucial to spread the message on pressing global issues, such as on sustainable development in the age of urbanisation in emerging countries such as Malaysia.
Malaysia is holding the number one position in terms of its economic standing among the emerging markets due to her stable economic growth according to Bloomberg (2018).