Free Tools to Visualize Gamification Projects

Although Gamification mainly works on psychology rather than graphics and technology, yet these elements give a vibrant essence to any gamified project and excites its users. We have been asked frequently in our trainings about some easy to use and free tools that would help in designing gamification projects visually. So, here we go we’ve completed our research to facilitate for you a bunch of free tools and how they can be used in your gamification projects, So Enjoy these brilliant game elements and get Creative!

Badges

A badge is usually an element that is used to distinguish a person who achieved a particular accomplishment. It can be created in the form of stickers, metal, pins, plastic or can simply be used virtually online. MoodleBadges is a free library of expertly designed gamification badges for use in your own learning management software. Better than digital chocolate, these badges represent awards, skills and achievements in a fun visual fashion,not only but you can also suggest a badge to their community.

Avatars / characters

A character/ avatar or creature is a virtual visualization that is created to represent yourself in a computer game, on the internet or in a gamified project in a virtual world where people interact and participate in activities through their avatars.

You can also read about the do’s and don’ts when designing avatars for your gamification project in our article: Strategies to adopt when choosing avatars in Gamification

You can easily create a look alike avatar or even create imaginary aliens at avatarmaker as shown above.

If your gamification project is more into action then kick it up and create your superheroes, zombies, vampires, pirates, star Trek, Goths etc at Superherotar.

If you are building characters that need more clothing and accessories options then you have to hit Avachara. If all the above options didn’t fulfill your desires yet then check out more free avatars creations at Top 15 Best Websites to Create Avatars Online.

Leaderboard

The purpose of a leaderboard is to show players where they rank in a gamified system. When it comes to cost-effective gamifying tools, nothing beats a leaderboard. The trick to leaderboards is designing them in such a way that they encourage players to stay in the game, therefore creating a leaderboard that contains not only points but also badges, rare items and different scoring techniques will motivate the players more rather than just one scoring system, contact our team to get a demo of a brilliant gamified leaderboard created for L&D project that can serve a numerous amount of users.

Follow the next steps to create a simple Leaderboard just by using google drive!

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Step 1- Pick a background that suits your theme, you can pick backgrounds from these free sites- Unsplash, Pexels, Picjumbo, Pixabay, Picography or Stocksnap then upload it on power point and insert a table.

Step 2- From the design tab – pick the transparent table, so that your background is visible.

Step 3- Pick effects – cell bevel (optional) to make it look more like tabs.

Step 4- Insert your trainees/employees/ students or users names in the table as well insert the avatars previously designed, coins, points, rare items, accessibility benefits or anything you want to add and update this table frequently.

Step 5- To share the file with all the players – use google drive

Step 6- Upload your file – any format.

Step 7- open the file and click share

Step 8- Insert all the emails you would like to share it with but remember to choose “Can View” or “ Can Comment” if you want users to comment but not “ Can Edit “ as you don’t want anyone to mess with the scoring.

Step 9– Write a message for the team or any instructions or just check your scores updates.

Step 10- This is how it will be previewed in the email Inbox.

Step 11- This is how your message will be seen when the email is opened

Step 12- And this is how the LEADERBOARD will be previewed by your players.

Narration

Narration is one of the very exciting game elements that keeps your users thirsty for more, there are two ways to share knowledge- you can either push information out or pull them in with a story. Narration helps in capturing the attention, highlights objectives, unifies a theme and give birth to new scoring ideas, it also glues together the whole project in an interesting scenario. makebeliefscomix is a platform that helps create comics they have a few of characters with different postures as well as backgrounds.

Storyboard, helps you create fun comics and will help you out to build your stories in any gamified project!

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Storybird lets anyone make visual stories in seconds. They curate artwork from illustrators and animators around the world and inspire writers of any age to turn those images into fresh stories. Not only that but their process is interestingly gamified where you earn crowns when you do certain stuff to unlock different features, downloads and more. Enjoy the gamified experience while creating your stories!

Awards ( Tangible or Intangible)

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I saved my favorite Last! Canva is a remarkable graphic-design tool website that uses a drag-and-drop format in a very user friendly way and is widely used by non-designers as well as professionals and provides access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts, as well as you can upload any png that you would like to add to your design. If you didn’t find the icons and pngs you are looking for then go ahead and check out Flaticon, icon8, iconfinder, freepik and you can also have 2 free pngs per day at pngtree. You can also upload your own logos, photos or backgrounds from the theme links mentioned previously.