4_legalSince marketer’s interest in social media gamificationprogressively growsand it is in the nature of gamificationto aggregate data,it is necessary to start looking intolegal risks and restrictions. In any case, operators of gamified systems need to strike the balance between the right user experience and business opportunity by protecting the assets as well as its users, besides avoiding legal responsibilities.

 

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For that reason, Asian eMarketing is welcoming the guidelines of Robert McHale, who provides companies with some practical dos and don'ts that aim tominimize legal riskswhen using social media.In Chapter 9 of his bookNavigating Social Media Legal Risks: Safeguarding Your Business, he gives his readers the following legal tips for social media gamification:

Regulations companies should be concerned about are mainly regarding data privacy and basic constitutional rights, but we recommended keeping an eye on labor and banking laws, too.

Don’t forget that based on these grounds the term "gamification" and the practices it describes have already received negative attention fromgame industry professionals, business consultants, academics, and communications professionals.  Therefore, we believe that the key question is to clarify how advertisers take advantage of the technology to influence user’s behaviour and how brands capitalize on the current sophisticated technology,by complying with the rules.

I don’t have to get granular and explain why sloppy gamification implementation can easily violate rules and regulations at this point. Especially data privacy laws that regulate the collection and use of personally identifiable data should not be jeopardized. Always recall the general principlesof keeping access to and retention of personal-identifiable data minimal and using it only internally, since maintaining and preserving the privacy of user data is an important value. Thus, games provider have to safeguard the security of the limited user information that is collected and retained on their servers to the best of their knowledge.

By Daniela La Marca