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Gamify your company: here’s what next-gen gaming means for business.

Mobile game revenues could exceed $20 billion in the next decade, and that’s just in the U.S.

According to a recent Ovum report published by Intel, the gaming industry’s sweeping transformation—fueled by 5G technology—will offer a new, tactile dimension to entertainment to bring audiences and content closer together.

State-of-the-art enhancements in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) capabilities could make for remarkable multisensory, immersive user experiences for gaming enthusiasts. And this has major implications outside of gaming too, with opportunities to transform a variety of other industries and boost business outcomes beyond media and entertainment.

A new narrative for customer engagement.

“Where I see the business value is through the confluence of all these technologies and the end result being an entirely new way of consuming content,” says Amy Peck, technology strategist and CEO of EndeavorVR. “It’s storytelling that goes back to gaming constructs where, instead of a linear story, you’re taking branching and interactive narratives like the way games are constructed and making a story out of it.”

Instead of content creators telling stories with a beginning, middle and end, for instance, future experiences could allow for more immersive, exploratory, and nonlinear worlds for users to explore.

“I think that doing this in the wild and having an interplay of digital and real life through future wearables will enable all kinds of different experiences—many of which we haven’t even thought of yet because we still don’t really understand what captures the hearts and minds of the consumer,” says Peck.

However, for the company aiming to leverage AR or VR to improve business, no single solution exists today. As experts continue to explore how to integrate these technologies into business, Peck advises companies to first build a high-level vision.

“Rather than looking at a specific use case for taking VR or AR and crafting a solution out of that, you need to look at the bigger picture,” she advises. “Ask, ‘What is the future of your workforce? What is the future of your product? What is the future of your business? What does your future customer look like?’ And then work backward from the future. With this technology, we’re blowing the doors off of everything that we think we know and understand—an entirely new medium.”

Elevating customer experiences with immersive tech.

The first step in creating a gamification strategy for business, says Peck, is to start with the practical—or what she calls “discovery week.”

“You can do this internally,” she explains. “You don’t need consultants for that. You want to engage all of your business lines. You want to turn it into a design-thinking methodology.”

During this process, companies should consider a variety of questions: What are the ultimate goals? What problems are we trying to solve? Which of these technologies serve us best?

Next, Peck urges creators and companies to consider how user experiences will come to life and then deliver those interactions by engaging customers in ways that they don’t expect.

As leaders aim to adopt immersive technology that excites and surprises consumers without upending current business processes, Peck suggests starting with simulation and training—because almost every company must train employees anyway. Whether the training focus is compliance, leadership, or soft skills, organizations can also use this time to introduce and explore new tools.

"That’s one of the ways to get those early wins—not only from an ROI standpoint but also from a data standpoint. We still need to learn how to bring this technology into the fold and to engage the workforce in a way that doesn’t disrupt their current workflows.”

Next-gen networks in a gamified enterprise.

Whether it’s a VR headset or AR through a device not yet imagined, next-gen mobile networks will transform business by delivering content to an abundance of devices at once.

“The 5G era will completely transform the ways people consume content,” says Ulf Ewaldsson, senior vice president of technology transformation at T-Mobile. “Whether it’s entertainment, education or on-the-job training, the faster speeds, ultra-responsiveness, and connectivity enabled by next-generation networks will drive innovations that will take AR and VR to the next level.”

How will businesses and consumers respond to and capitalize on gamification trends in the next-gen era? Peck predicts that VR trends will drive the innovations businesses make to engage customers, while for AR, consumer needs and preferences will fuel what’s next. And as AR and VR advance into the mainstream, both could touch every line of business, with consumers accessing realities or experiences based on a business’s objectives.

According to Peck, branding experiences might even become organic because consumers will always have their phones and wearables. “Eventually, the use of AR and VR will merge because consumers are the workforce and the workforce is the consumers,” she says. “As soon as consumers are fluent in both of the technologies, we’re going to start to see it influence the way businesses interact with their customers.”

Originally published on Forbes.com.

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