I believe my examples of gamification to be rather standard ones, but, for me, they are special because they are examples of how gamification was used in Russia, so I just feel proud for my country.

The first example is a Russian online platform for learning English called LinguaLeo. It was created in 2010 and is available for Russian, Brazilian Portuguese and Turkish speakers. In May 2017, the company announced their expansion to Spanish and Latin American markets.

How LinguaLeo works? – It is designed like a game, where the main character is Leo, the Lion, who conducts the user into the Jungle – the English language. Going through the Jungle with Leo, the user learns English. Basically, this is the core description of the service.

Why LinguaLeo is a gamification example? – In fact, when LinguaLeo was being created, there was no gamification trend in education in Russia. Most of services, online and offline, imitated the learning process at school: there were lessons during which you could step-by-step learn English with a teacher, (based on what we call the Soviet system of language learning). LinguaLeo, in its turn, offered immersion into the language environment. Users were free to enter the Jungle in the way they wanted and thought to be the best for them.

For that, LinguaLeo uses gamification approaches. Here are some of them:

· Firstly, a game world was created. The English language became the Jungle, the users became the Pride, the points of the game became Meatballs for Leo to eat.

· Secondly, the more you play (learn English), the more the character of Leo is developed. For example, if you do a task correctly then Leo is awarded by some clothes, using which you can “change” the character, making him more fashionable. The scheme is similar to leveling up characters in other games.

· Thirdly, the tactic of using the deficit of the game currency to motivate users buy premium accounts was also used for some time. But, it was inefficient and lead to users quitting the game, so some time ago LinguaLeo dropped doing this.

As for an example of gamification in marketing, in 2010 the Russian company «MTS» (which stands for Mobile TeleSystems), launched a quest for its users to promote new tariff plans for mobile phones. Playing this quest, users needed to team-up with other users from their hometown/region and then go around their hometown (the quest used Google.Maps) finding and capturing “enemy” units, (it’s somehow similar to the mechanism in Pokemon Go). Having captured the “enemy”, they needed to go to the nearest MTS office and “de-activate” it. During the fight with the “enemy”, MTS offered different services that could help to defeat your enemy. What’s more, for every defeated enemy users got some points which then could be converted into bonuses that could be used, for example, to buy brand products like T-Shirts, mugs, caps and others with the logo of MTS or they could be used to pay for mobile communication. Thus, this as an example of gamification in marketing which, among other marketing strategies, led to the increase in the company’s revenue in 2010 by 36%.