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event gamification

4 Common Gamification Mistakes That Quietly Kill Engagement

Most event games don’t fail because of bad technology. They fail because of a few avoidable mistakes.

After building hundreds of event games over the past 18 years, we’ve seen the same issues quietly reduce engagement again and again.

In this post, we’ll break down four of the most common gamification mistakes and how to avoid them.

The 4 most common issues that quietly hurt game performance: 1. Lack of planning 2. Lack of promotion 3. Too complex 4. Ineffective rewards

If you've ever had a game fall flat, it was probably because of one or more of these. Let’s start with the most common issue: planning.

Jeannie Power March 20, 2026
SocialPoint Trivia Leaderboard with teams playing together
audience engagement

60 Team Building Ideas For Key B2B Corporate Events, Meetings and Conferences

For many B2B corporate events, team building is Job #1.

Your management wants their meeting attendees to transform from a group of strangers and acquaintances into a unified team aligned with your company culture and strategy.

Because after the meeting’s over, they’ll be much more willing to help their new friends than their unknown coworkers. Plus they’ll be less likely to leave, reducing turnover and increasing productivity, sales, and profits.

To help you achieve your team building event objective, we’ve assembled 60 team building activity ideas you can build into a digital game your attendees can play on their smartphones throughout your event.

Many of these ideas have been used by actual SocialPoint customers in the games we created for their corporate events, while others are further ideas tailored to key use case games we can design for your attendees with our game platform.

Samuel J. Smith April 16, 2024
Cheat Sheet Event Gamification National Sales Meeting
event gamification

Cheat Sheet: National Sales Meeting Event Gamification

Sales reps love to compete and win. Savvy Sales Leaders reinforce the event's objectives by aligning game activities to the event content.

Each year sales leaders pull their sales organization together for a national sales meeting or a sales kickoff.  

The goal of these meetings is one part inspiration, one part education, and one part team-building. Leaders want to put their teams through the paces and get them invigorated and ready for an exciting and challenging year ahead. 

The agenda could look something like this.

Samuel J. Smith October 9, 2019
annual national sales meeting themes 2019
event gamification

52 National Sales Meeting Themes Actually Used In 2019

Need the best national sales meeting themes? Of course, you do, because the stakes are so high.

At your annual sales meeting you’ll have your entire high-powered sales force and senior management team all in one place. Likely making it the most visible event you’ll plan all year. But hey, no pressure!

We’re here to help you with proven sales meeting themes for today's business reality. We’ve gathered 52 national sales meeting themes that were actually chosen by your peers in 2019. Themes that multi-billion dollar corporations have recently invested big money in.

Samuel J. Smith September 30, 2019
Merck Animal Health trivia leaderboard with top scorers
event gamification

7 Secrets To Successful Multi-Player Group Live Event Trivia Games

On Facebook recently, a friend of mine shared a photo of a conference room that made me cringe. It was a ballroom filled with tan chairs in rows.

I felt sorry for the 600 people who were going to be stuffed into those uncomfortable chairs in rows for hours on end listening to somebody ramble through 130 slides.

Contrast that with a friend of mine who is the VP of Marketing for a Manufacturing company. He is responsible for his annual sales meeting and wanted to pump up the energy in the room. He wanted cheering, excitement, and energy.

Samuel J. Smith August 16, 2019
Event gamification tactics
event gamification

5 Simple Tactics to Gamify Virtual Meetings and In-Person Events

I don’t know about you, but personally, I have a hard time sitting in a general session listening to speakers go on and on and on. If I am not sitting near the front the whole thing turns into blah, blah, blah. And, my mind starts to wander. In virtual meetings, it’s even worse.

However, if there is a way for me to participate in the session, I am much more likely to stay connected to the content and the message.

That’s where event gamification can help tremendously. Event gamification creates a fun way to gamify virtual meetings and let attendees participate in the session.

Samuel J. Smith June 26, 2019
trade show passport game extreme makeover
event gamification

Give Your Trade Show Passport Game an Extreme Makeover with Event Gamification

Many meeting planners have the trade show passport game in their toolbox of tricks to drive attendees to their trade show floor. While some criticize the game as boring or out-of-date, the truth is that it seems to work.

Perhaps it’s time to give the trade show passport game an extreme makeover?

What is the Trade Show Passport Game?

For those reading that don’t know this trade show game, the trade show passport game is a simple game designed to get attendees to visit multiple exhibitor booths in exchange for a chance to win a prize. Attendees are given paper passports that they can get stamped at exhibitor booths. Once your card has been filled up, you can go enter the drawing.

Samuel J. Smith June 14, 2019
audience participation games for corporate events and meetings
audience engagement

13 Audience Participation Games for Corporate Events

When it comes to audience participation games, these are some of the questions that our potential clients bring to us in our first meetings. Ultimately, they are searching for the best game for their needs:

  • What are some simple and fun, games for audience participation?
  • How can you create audience participation games that are relevant to your content?
  • How can you create audience participation games that keep attendees engaged over multiple days of your corporate event?
  • If you are a speaker (or facilitator) trying to spice up your session, how can you implement these games yourself?
  • How can I use the data collected to make better business decisions?
  • What should I keep in mind when creating a game?
    • Create a simple game title or theme
    • Game rewards
    What common mistakes should I avoid?

    To help you with your brainstorming, we pulled together a list of audience participation games and provided a short explanation of how they could work inside your event. Use this list as one input for your own sales meetings, customer events, and conferences. We grouped the games into three different game families:

Samuel J. Smith June 5, 2019
Event Gamification - 4 common mistakes to avoid
event gamification

Event Gamification: 4 Common Mistakes To Avoid

Have you ever created an Event Gamification element for your event that didn’t work? Perhaps you felt like you followed the advice on other blogs or what was intuitive to you — but the game was still a bust.

Perhaps you are here because you are creating your first game and you want to learn from the experiences of others and not make a mistake.

With thousands of games under our belt, we have seen a lot of game patterns that work and several that do not work. Here are 4 common mistakes that we have seen (and heard about from others) regarding Event Gamification.

Samuel J. Smith May 30, 2019