When I wrote about the gaming layer recently, I pointed to a few reasons why it will become increasingly important in our lives, concentrating on the existing scale and the awareness that an increasing number of businesses now have about how gaming mechanics can improve interaction and revenue.

But there are reasons why this is the moment when gamification really hits. There are technical reasons, such as the rise of high speed internet access to a reasonably large part of the developed world, and the increasing access to technology, whether it’s sneaky social gaming during the lunch hour at work, or the Xbox or Playstation as the provider of entertainment in the living room.

But all of this has come together to effectively create the gamification layer. It’s a generation which contains a large proportion of people who grew up alongside gaming, and are now reaching the stages of their lives and careers where they’re adapting those values and outlooks to their business, much as the elements of Web 2.0, flexible working practices, and hacker/geek culture have all contributed.

I was exposed to early videogames before the age of 5, getting a ZX Spectrum for my fifth birthday, and gaming through Nintendos, Segas, Amigas, PCs, Playstations and currently an Xbox 360.

And I’m not alone:

Xbox Live:

• 23 million members (Feb 2010)
• 61% male, 39% female
• 70% 18-34
• 20% 35-44
• 37% household income over $100,000

Playstation network:

• 50 million members (June 2010)

Stats from Wikipedia and Microsoft Advertising.

We’ve grown up with a form of entertainment that encourages us to load up a game, explore to find the rules and tricks which aren’t in any manual (although they rapidly appear on sites like Gamefaqs), and feature a very regulated work and reward structure.

We use gaming as both a solitary form of entertainment and an online social gathering place to come together with offline and online friends, form groups (‘clans’), find ways to ‘grind’ up through levels and solve problems, and to gain social standing through ranks. It’s as integral as families gathering around the radio or coming together to watch the one TV in the street when the World Cup was being shown.

1925 radio image with thanks to Ylvas on Flickr (CC Licence).

And this is the generation that are now running companies, in middle management, and particularly those with a disposition for technology, digital business, ecommerce and social activity online.

And now our children are growing up in a world with even more interactivity (on-demand tv and audio) from all entertainment.

The next few years are definitely the time when the gamification generation comes of age. The first challenge is to realise that this is happening and to think about how it can benefit your customers/audience. The second is that videogames have evolved massively from PacMan to Starcraft 2, and for even the simplest game mechanic to succeed, it’ll take a lot of complexity and knowledge in the background.