Gamification

Overview

When you have an application that has nothing to do with games, you may want to introduce some game like elements to the app to increase user enjoyment, encourage participation in app activities, and, in general, improve user engagement with the app. An example of gamification can be found in the language learning app Duolingo. In the app, users lose health every time they miss a language question and they also gain experience points and levels whenever they complete an exercise (with more points awarded for speed and accuracy). All of these features and more lead to a more “fun” and “engaging” user experience that would be absent if the app simply had users cycle through memorization exercises.

Examples

Fitness

  • Fitbit:

    • Service: Tracks user steps and sets daily step goals

    • Gamification:

      • Rewards users with achievements when they reach milestones.

      • Users can compare against other users on a leaderboard

Language Learning

  • Duolingo:

    • Service: Teach users new languages

    • Gamification:

      • Users are rewarded experience points based on how well they perform in their language learning exercises

      • Users have a number of hearts. Users lose hearts when answering questions incorrectly. When a user is out of hearts they can no longer take lessons until their hearts refill after several hours

      • Users can compete against other users in a battle royale. Users that have earned the least amount of experience points each day are eliminated. Top users are shown in bronze, silver, and gold borders.

      • Users that use the app daily are awarded streaks for the number of days in a row they have used the app. Users on streaks are given extra rewards.

      • Users can use in game currency called gems to purchase experience boosts and streak freezes.

Web Extensions

  • The Email Game

    • Service: Encourages users to read their emails

    • Gamification:

      • Presents a timer to the user to challenge them to respond to each email as fast as possible

      • Gives you points based on your performance

      • Displays a progress bar showing you how many emails you have left

Advertising / Marketing

  • Coca Cola

    • Service: Selling People Soda

    • Gamification:

      • Marketing campaign where people could win a free coke by hugging the vending machine or pronouncing different phrases

      • Interactive TV game where people would download an app and shake it during a cocal cola advertisement on TV as if they were catching prizes on a TV screen.

Food / Restaurants

  • McDonald’s

    • Service: Selling people fast food.

    • Gamification:

      • Monopoly game where players won monopoly property spaces with the purchase of several food items.

      • Some properties would offer customers discounts and free drinks.

      • Collecting a series of properties would grant users access to cash prizes and other prizes like cars.

What Motivates Gamers

Types of Motivation

  • Extrinsic Motivation

    • Definition: Users are extrinsically motivated when they perform an activity to attain a desired outcome or to avoid a negative outcome

    • Use Cases: An app can reward a user with an achievement or badge for reaching a milestone.

    • Drawbacks:

      • Research suggests that value of rewards diminish over time. So bigger and bigger rewards may be needed to keep users motivated.

      • If rewards are removed from an app, users are less likely to continue using the app.

      • Badges and rewards are usually not the primary motivation for people to play games.

  • Intrinsic Motivation

    • Definition: Users are intrinsically motivated when they find enjoyment in the activity they are performing

    • Use Cases: People typically play video games and board games because they enjoy the experience in playing the game.

    • Drawbacks:

      • Often when you want to Gamify an app, the app itself is not intrinsically motivating by default.

Cultivating Intrinsic Motivation

  • Support a user’s basic psychological needs:

    • Autonomy: Freedom for the user to choose to do an activity without the pressures of rewards or punishments.

    • Competence: Supplying the user with a proper challenge. Not too easy to be bored. Not to difficult to cause anxiety.

    • Relatedness: Providing a connection to other users. Allow users to support each other. Foster a sense of community.

    • These needs can be broken down further into:

      • Meaning: The desire to feel that our actions have purpose

      • Accomplishment: The drive to achieve and overcome challenges

      • Empowerment: The desire to choose one’s own direction and try a variety of solutions to a problem

      • Ownership: The desire to own / have posession of things

      • Social Influence: The drive to interact with, help, learn from, and compete with others

      • Scarcity: The drive of wanting things you can’t have

      • Unpredictability: The drive of wanting to know what will happen next

      • Avoidance: The drive to avoid pain or negative consequences

    • Examples:

      • Points make us feel like we have meaning, purpose, and a sense of progression

      • Badges tap into our needs for accomplishment

      • Leaderboards appeal to our need for social status and influence.

  • Encourage the user to enter a Flow State:

    • Definition: When the user is fully immersed in an activity. The distance between thought and action is nonexistent. Hours can fly by while current experiences feel like they are happening in slow motion. The user also experiences that they are in great control of the situation.

    • Ways To Get The User There:

      • Have the user seek a clear goal

      • The user understands how they progress towards the goal.

      • Supply clear and immediate feedback to tell the user how they are doing.

      • The challenge of the task is not too easy or difficult.

Would Your App Benefit From Gamification

Users

  • Gamers have different tastes. Some prefer story driven games, others strategy games, others simulation games.

  • Before gamifying an app, you must must think about what kinds of users will be using your app and what kinds of games they like to play.

  • It may be that your target audience is not typically in the mood for participating in games and would be put off by the game like features you want to implement.

Product

  • Gamification is a useful tool to increase motivation and engagement.

  • For tasks involving learning and fitness, gamification can provide the encouragement the user needs to run that extra mile or complete some additional language exercises.

  • For tasks involving finance and healthcare, gamification may distract users from the services that are being provided and may be off putting for users that just want services provided in a quick and efficient manner.

What is A Game

Game Structure

  • Goals

  • Rules

  • Challenges / Conflicts (that arise from the combination of goals and rules)

  • Feedback (To tell us how well / poorly we are doing)

Common Elements

  • Points

  • Badges / Achievements

  • Leaderboards

  • Performance Graphs

  • Story Mode / Narrative

  • Avatars

  • Teammates