hedonic treadmill – panictank

Introduction

People are motivated by well-designed game features
The game itself is a reward

Gamification: The use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-game contexts.

Internal Gamification / Enterprise Gamification
- Improve productivity, innovation, etc. within a organization
- Players a part of a defined community
- Motivational dynamics
  - Organizational citizenship behavior
    - Do it because you want to be a good citizen not because of money
    - External Gamification
      - Involves Customers / prospects
      - Behavior-Change Gamification
        
        Involves larger undefined groups
        
        Game Elements
        
        Objects
        
        Relationships
        
        Abstract concepts
        
        Game-Design Techniques
        
        „Why should I care about this?“
        
        New users are maybe discouraged
        
        Games should be
        
        Fun
        
        Addicting
        
        Challenging
        
        Emotionally resonant
        
        Reasons
        
        Engagement
        
        People love solving puzzles
        
        Getting feedback
        
        Reinforcement
        
        Engagement leads to iniation
Experimentation
- Mastering the game by try and error
Results

Game Thinking

What’s in a game?
- It’s voluntary
- Ability to make choices
  - Which have effects
  - Give a sense of control
Rules of a game
- New „reality“
- Game Thinking = engaging expierence that motivates desired behavior
- Ask the following questions:
  - Why do people use your service in the first place?
    - What is their motivation?
    - What makes them want to do business with you?
    - Can you make it more fun / compelling / interesting?
    - Gamers try to win the game
      - Try to design a desirable outcome
      - Sense of progression is important
      - Game itself is a process, a journey
      - Choice give a sense of empowerment
      - Design goals
        
        Motivation
        
        Needed for
        
        Creative work
        
        Mundane Tasks
        
        Behavior changes
- Is going to
  - Passionate
  - Engaged
  - Focused
- Provides a
  - Measure of meaning
Meaningful choices
- Player autonomy
Structure
- Measure (of quality) and respond to action
- Track user’s activities
Potential Conflicts
- Leaderboards can be harmful if they are in the wrong environment

Why Games Work

What means motivation
- From latin: serving to move
- Amotivated = indifferent
- Intrinsic = wanting
- Extrinsic = needing
- Cognitivst
  - Self-Determination-Theory
    - Ext. Environment needs to support internal wishes
    - Three factors
      - Competence
        
        Effective dealing with ext. Environment
        
        E.g. learning to dance
  - Relatedness
    - Interaction with others
  - Autonomy
    - Control of own life
  - => Always focus on building authentic engagement
Reward can crowd out fun
- See post about Punished by Rewards
Boring can be engaging
- Extrinsic motivation works on boring dull tasks
  - i.e. tasks that are non-intrinsical
- Focus on learning and development instead of competition
Feedback loops
- Should be fast
- Reinforcement of „good“ actions
- FB: near real-time feedback score
  - Data from
    - Coworkers
    - Progress towards goals
    - Coaching
    - Supervisors
- Lessons
  - FB should be unexpected + informed
    - Increases autonomy
    - Increases intrinsic motivation
  - Reinforcement should work toward progress
  - Metrics will determine actions
Different stages of motivation
- External = punishment
- Introjected = „I must …“
- Internalized = „I should …“
- Integrated = „I want to …“
- Intrinsic

Game Elements

Points, badges and leaderboards (PBLs)
- Basic but not everything
- Points
  - To effectively keep score
    - „how well am I doing?“
    - can define levels, i.e. represents the true „play space“
    - To determine the win state
      - E.g. to give away a prize
      - To connect progression and extrinsic rewards
        
        X points will give you Y
        
        To provide feedback
        
        Quickly & easily
        
        To externally display progress
        
        Status
        
        To provide data to game designers
        
        Analyzing tasks
        
        Badges
        
        Visual representation of some achievement
        
        Motivational characteristics
        
        Provide a goal to strive toward => positive effect on motivation
        
        Provide guidance as to what is possible => engagement
        
        Signal what user cares about and what they have performed => capability
        
        Virtual status symbols
        
        Tribal markers => sense of identity with a group
Very flexible
Leaderboards
- Most troublesome
  - Can be motivating or demotivating
  - Turn of players (zero sum game)
  - Usually reduce performance rather than enhance it in business
  - Game Elements
    - Dynamics
      - Constraints
      - Emotions: curiosity, competivieness, happiness, etc.
      - Narrative: consistent, ongoing storyline
      - Progression: player’s growth and development
      - Relationships: social interactions generating feelings of camaraderie, status, altruism, etc.
Mechanics
- Challenges
- Chance: elements of randomness
- Competition
- Cooperation
- Feedback
- Resource Acquisition
- Rewards
- Transactions
- Turns
- Win states
- => combinations, for onboarding (new participants) and interest curves (exp. Players)
Components
- Achivements
- Avatars
- Badges
- Boss Fights: especially hard challenges
- Collections
- Combat
- Content Unlocking
- Gifting
- Leaderboards
- Levels
- Points
- Questions: predefined challenges with objectives & rewards
- Social Graphs
- Teams
- Virtual Goods

Hierarchy of all game elements

Six Steps to Gamification

Design process
- Define business objectives
  - Specific performance goals
  - List objectives
  - Rank them
  - Delete means to an end
  - Justify objectives
Describe target behaviors
- Which behavior helps achieving your objectives?
- How can you measure these behaviors?
Describe your players
- Who are they?
- What is their relationship to you?
- What might motivate your players?
- What demotivates them?
  - Volition: perceived lack of desire => Engagement
  - Faculty: perceived lack of capability => Progression
- How can you segment your players?
  - Achievers, explorers, socializers, killers
    - See other post
- Write a small story of (some) players (basically personas)
  - Which Bartle player types are they?
  - What are their hopes and fears?
  - Their talents?
  - Their hobbies?
Devise activity cycles
- User actions provoke some other activity, which in turn provokes other user actions, etc.
- Engagement loops (Micro)
  - What your players do
  - Why they do it
  - What does the system do?
  - Feedback as an important element
    - Actions immediately produce visible responses
- Progression stairs (Macro)
  - What’s the player’s journey
  - Start out simple
  - „boss“ villain = major challenges which gives a sense of pride
  - Incorporate some randomness
  - Small surprises help to escape the hedonic treadmill

Don’t forget the fun
- Would players participate in the system voluntary if there weren’t any extrinsic rewards?
- Types of fun (Nicole Lazzaro)
  - Hard fun = challenge or puzzle
  - Easy fun = casual enjoyment
  - Experimental fun = trying out new personas and new experiences
  - Social fun = interaction with others, even competitive
Deploy the appropriate tools
- Start picking appropriate mechanics and components
- Then iterate, iterate, iterate

Epic Fails

Problem: Focus too heavily on the rewards instead oft he experience
People will go to the limits
Legal constraints

If nothing else, gamification may make business more fun.