Intro to Gamification

Last year I had the opportunity to put together a gamification preso for the Denver ColdFusion User's Group as well as Placewise Media. I've finally got around to posting the results online. The slides are ~~embedded below but I'll warn you - they won't make much sense in a vaccum. Be sure to click on the 'gear' and click "Open speaker notes".~~ below.

Update 2025-03-10 - Revisiting this was quite the trip down memory lane (3x4 aspect ratios! Turntable.fm! Fantasy football before rampant sports-betting!). While gamification as an enterprise attention-grabber no longer is a thing, there were some aspects that seemed to hold up enough to jusitify the work to bring this presentation back. I want to thank Martin for pointing out that the Google Slides embed no longer worked and this page needed some attention.

This presentation was originally developed in October, 2012.

This is a presentation about gamification. While the transmutation of mundane tasks in games(!) may seem like a recent hype cycle, application of gamification has been around for some time. In this introduction I’ll be giving an explanation as to what it is, the importance of understanding a user’s journey in using a piece of software, and how we can use game design elements to support that growth.

So why should anyone listen to anything I have to say about gamification?

Currently I’m a Creative Principal for Vox Pop Design and a Senior Application Engineer at placewise media. Previously I’ve worked for Microsoft Game Studios. But, perhaps most importantly, for 18 years of my life the photo above was my backyard. I love the solace and isolation of South Dakota when I return to visit. But not having much to do meant that much of my adolescence was spent trying to find the fun in the mundane. Without knowing it, I was adding gamification elements to help get things done.

Much more recently I’ve become interested in the formal study of game mechanics as a means of motivating employees in workplace situations. In my experience the difference in one place being great to work at and another being a grind has less to do with the actual nature of work and everything to do with the culture of play (or lack thereof) surrounding it.

So what is gamification?

Simply put, it is a means to motivate. As the great game developer Mary Poppins said “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap! The job’s a game.” This is the “spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down” approach to getting things done. It is not about making a game, but using game-like elements to make a process better.

Fun is not just beneficial to learning but, by many reports, required for authentic learning and long-term memory.

Neurologist and educator Judy Willis’s book “Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a Neurologist and Classroom Teacher” (ASCD, 2006) is one of many that have highlighted the learning benefits of fun. Here are just a few excerpts:

The highest-level executive thinking, making of connections, and “aha” moments are more likely to occur in an atmosphere of “exuberant discovery,” where students of all ages retain that kindergarten enthusiasm of embracing each day with the joy of learning.

So fun actually seems to promote learning. It increases dopamine, endorphins, and oxygen.

The human brain and body respond positively to laughter with the release of endorphin, epinephrine (adrenaline), and dopamine, and with increased breathing volume (more oxygen). When a lesson starts with humor, there is more alerting, and the subsequent information is attached to the positive emotional event as an event or flashbulb memory.

To be clear gamification is not the same as designing a game. While they may share several elements a game exists for its own sake. Gamification is the enhancement of an already existing task, process, or system.

There are several aspects to “FUN”. Different people find enjoyment in the process of doing different things, mentioned above. The list is by no means comprehensive.

Many of these things are self-evident. To clarify somewhat, however, ‘winning’ is about overcoming an obstacle whereas ‘triumphing’ is not only overcoming an obstacle but doing so against other players.

Smarter people than me have taken the vast array of “fun” things and have categorized them into major themes.

Nicole Lazzaro is one of these thinkers. She has 20+ years as a Player Experience Designer and she categorizes fun in one of four ways (poster: http://xeodesign.com/4k2f/4k2f.jpg, white paper: http://xeodesign.com/xeodesign_whyweplaygames.pdf)

* easy fun - not taxing, "the bubble wrap of games" - vehicle for imagination
* hard fun - challenges, overcoming obstacles, competition - feelings of accomplishment - sense of mastery
* people fun - working together on a team, the fun of socializing - social bonding
* serious fun - some kinds of fun tie into serious real objectives, doing things that have meaning for you - provides meaning of value

Another game designer, Marc Leblanc, puts things together slightly differently in the list to the right. These two lists, while interesting, are by no means conclusive.

All of that deep thinking about what people find fun gets into some very deep and varied disciplines. Trying to get one’s head around the theoretical approaches out there can be overwhelming, as this diagram of Nicole’s Lazzaro’s seemingly simple 4 keys 2 fun shows. But while there might be vast volumes of thought that goes what might make something fun, the actual implementation should be deceptively simple.

This is the progress bar for profile completion on LinkedIn.com.

Usually, filling out a profile is the antithesis of fun. On too many sites it is a long form that leaves you more fearful of what the marketing department is planning with your data rather than excitement on filling it out.

To solve this problem LinkedIn didn’t program an immersive game. Instead, they added the profile completion status bar that seen above. It’s not a game. Yet, by using game elements LinkedIn saw a profile completion rate increase 20%.

So what elements of fun does the bar have? What elements from the ‘ings’ we talked about before does a progress bar incorporate? * realtime feedback of accomplishment * a demonstration of approaching “mastery” * a surprise at what the completion percentage will be, and what task might be next * taps an innate human desire to complete things

A progress bar implies there is a path that a person is on - that their action is part of larger series of steps toward a positive outcome.

Fun, without purpose, can be engaging for a limited time. But how can we maintain a high level of engagement for software over time? How do we keep something that was initially fun from becoming tiresome and repetitive? At a very high level, we need to consider the player journey. That journey, much like a good book, is divided into three steps:

* onboarding
* scaffolding
* mastering

Even in the case of LinkedIn and the seemingly simple progress bar, there was the implied path from empty profile to completion. The progress bar was the means by which to demonstrate it.

Let’s break down each of these steps in the player journey into each of its component parts. First of these is Onboarding.

Onboarding is vital to getting a player’s “buy-in”. Consider the case of Angry Birds. A player doesn’t start with every bird type. Gameplay begins with one type of bird with no ability other than to be flung from a catapult. The enemy types are simple. The structures you are tasked with toppling are straightforward. It is approachable for a new player because the number of options have been purposely limited.

Consider another popular mobile game, Plants vs. Zombies. In much the same way as Angry Birds, the options facing a new player are purposely limited to the most fundamental elements - a single path for zombies to approach, a single type of zombie, and a single ability to defend their approach.

In either case, onboarding is about simplifying a process to the core elements to make fun apparent.

After a user is on board it is vital to support their growth as a participant in the system. The scaffolding provided not only needs to give a person the increasing nuance to a system that they’ll desire but the support they’ll need to overcome the increasing complexity.

An example on successful scaffolding is seen in the classic strategy game Alpha Centauri. The screenshot above is one of a series of governors a player is confronted with during the course of the game.They notify you of major events, alert you to new and more complex challenges, and manage things if you’re distracted elsewhere. It’s not Clippy. Clippy was an attempt at an onboarding experience that was intrusive. Alpha Centauri’s governors support a player’s increasing involvement with an app.

If a system is properly scaffold then its users will eventually reach a point in which they obtain mastery. The path to mastery requires balance on part of the game systems builder. If it is too easy, people will get bored. If it is too hard, people will get discouraged. In either negative case people will leave for experiences that are more fun than what they are currently doing.

There are many ways of demonstrating mastery. In some systems that may mean allowing users that have achieved a high level greater permissions or responsibility within the system (like StackOverflow). In the image here, the rewards, or badges, that I’ve accrued here are on display. Each represents a different an action taken in the system during the progression from a new account.

[As an aside, there’s clearly sponsorship opportunities for brands in this approach, as many of these badges are Toyota themed (Toyota “pickup of the week”, the “Venza Head Turner”). These are a much more interesting brand integration than only having a sidebar ad.]

The way that we accomplish that pathway, from the onboarding experience through till mastery, is through actual game elements.

There are numerous sites online that allow you to listen to streaming music. Whether by music genome (Pandora) or relevance algorithm (Last.fm) music sites are pretty much the same: pick an artist or genre, click play, and listen.

Turntable.fm is different for the way they incorporate game elements into the commonplace practice of streaming music. These elements applied to collaborative listening make something fun.

We’ll return to this example in a moment once we’ve explored some of these elements.

There are numerous elements that we can borrow from games to apply during our gamification of a system. It is the application of these elements which provide repeatability to a system.

While certain games have made the transition to mobile devices Tic Tac Toe isn’t one of them. It’s because once we’ve figured out how to force a draw regardless of who starts (usually sometime in elementary school), the game is no longer fun. The game elements limit the replayability (and thus fun) of the system.

Compare this to Hangman, which is vastly more enjoyable. The simple act of growing one’s vocabulary adds greater challenge to the game itself. An element, like the number of letters an opponent needs to guess, varies as a child gains “mastery” of progressively harder words.

Many game theorists divide game elements into three tiers.

These tiers can be thought of as a pyramid. Starting at the top are the dynamics of a game. These are the things that after the game has concluded you’re most apt to share with friends. It is how you felt after learning “the cake is a lie”.

Good gamification starts at this high level, not with individual features. What emotions do we want the user to have? What is the story they’ll experience? What relationships will they develop having progressed through the software?

With our broad motivations set, we move down the pyramid to the second level: dynamic-creating interactions. Again, these aren’t specific features but more tactical means for accomplishing our high level dynamics.

For example, how do we create the highest-level goal of relationships within a software system? Well, those relationships may come about from competition between players over a scarce resource. Or people may get to know one another from feedback left by other users/players/accounts.

The final, bottom, level of our pyramid is actual functionality places before people. In many cases these items are merely keepers of score. Things like badges, points, and leaderboards (for example) are ways of representing where a person is within their own progression from new user to master.

Application of points, badges, and leaderboards are so common within gamified systems that they have their own acronym - the PBL Triad.

Be aware - points, badges, and leaderboards all appeal to the achiever type. They may not be appropriate for other types.

So now that we’ve examined gamified elements let’s return to our turntable.fm screenshot and identify the game elements present.

Working around the screen in a roughly clockwise manner we see:

A room whose theme is a particular style of music, allowing people of shared taste to find each other
Avatars of varying status, with cooler avatars unlocked with higher point totals
A display of points, or favorable reactions a DJ has accumulated during the course of playing music
A collection of songs (the song queue) an individual has amassed during their time on site
A realtime feedback gauge showing the popularity of a song

Of course, a gamified system doesn’t need to be the sole domain of cartoonified avatars and casual consumption. Here we see a dashboard of tenXer, a site that helps developers be more productive. In this screenshot we see many of the same elements that were present on the turntable.fm site. These include an avatar (in this case, a profile picture) and a leaderboard containing a number of “points” (in this case, hours in meetings).

Stackoverflow has been incredibly successful in incorporating game elements into its system. Stackoverflow obviously wasn’t the first site on the Internet that allowed users to get answers to their questions. However, their gamified system provides motivation to users to provide the best possible answers. The result is consistent placement near the top of search engines for nearly any development query.

Here we see game elements on an e-learning site, Code School. Each course has a series of obtainable badges that can be obtained while progressing through the course. Acquired badges can then be displayed on a user’s profile to demonstrate mastery.

Codeacademy is a similar site. It too offers online programming classes. Beyond badges they also include things like progress bars, points, and feedback encouragement via streaks.

Perhaps one of the greatest illustrations of what gamification can do for a company can be demonstrated by two otherwise nearly identical services.

Dodgeball was founded by Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert in 2000. It was acquired by Google in 2005 and Crowley left in 2007. In 2008 Crowley founded Foursquare. Not only were the founders the same, but the core functionality and logos were shocking similar. So with so many similarities why is Foursquare still with us but Dodgeball not?

Foursquare implemented a gamification strategy that made it initially successful. They learned some key lessons from Dodgeball:

- dodgeball (db) had an engagement gap - it was only useful if a number of people were using it
- db had a lack of choice; there just wasn't a whole lot of things to do - if the entirity of "meaninful choice" is to do something or not do it, people won't be engaged
- db didn't have progression - you didn't get anywhere by what you did - the 100th checkin was the same as the 1st time
- db had some social interaction but they weren't powerfully tied to games - there wasn't the ability to compete and/or collaborate with friends
- db didn't make the action a habit - if you have to think "oh I need to check in" then it won't catch on

What did foursquare do differently?

- introduced badges - demonstration of mastery of their system - had mayorships, a competitive element that players could compete with each other for
- choices and progression are important, checkin becomes much more granulated (health club verses conference - singular act becomes rich and complex and nuanced) 
- but not just type of location, but quantity to "level" up

Image from 2009 Mashable article

We’ve been talking about simple, low level techniques. Let’s now switch to looking at a large-scale, real world application of gamification on an existing, popular web property.

The NFL is, at its core, a media company. A goal for its website would be to maximize revenue through maximizing user engagement and minimizing visitor bounces. The screenshot above is for their NFL Fan Rewards program. This page is the portal describing the game elements across their site. But chances are this isn’t the first exposure a vistor to NFL.com has.

A much more likely experience is like what is shown above. Here I browsed to the site to get a quick update on how the Denver Broncos are doing. In the lower right a subtle box pops a message pop You’ve received +2 coins! My point total goes up. I’m getting feedback that just by doing this thing I would have done anyway I’m accumulating points.

Clicking on the green total scrolls an overlay into view giving me a bit of info about what is going on.

If I continue interacting with the content I achieve higher levels of status. Here I’ve managed to watch enough NFL.com videos, read NFL.com news stories, and left a comment (all accomplishing the NFL’s goal of greater engagement with the site) that I’ve unlocked a badge. The “Rookie 2” shows that I have progressed on my path to mastering the NFL.com experience. I also have a clear call to action to spread the game to my friends. In doing so, I can continue progressing along my own path.

Much like the Yahoo dashboard, the NFL also has a dashboard where my various accomplishments are on display. At the bottom of the screenshot you can also see they have the concept of “drives”. These are much like quests in a traditional video game. Each drive involves visiting a different part of the site and (sometimes) taking an action that I might not normally take (exploration was one of our ‘ings that people find fun). From initially checking the games progress I’m now suddenly signing up for a fantasy league because I want to complete the progress bar (again, completing can be fun).

The NFL.com site is extremely deep with numerous options for interaction. At the bottom we see that we are given a meaningful choice - we can either read about the points system and how it is linked to rewards (the left option) or visit the NFL.com store for points (the right option). Meaningful choice is important because it helps the visitor still feel that they’re in control.

And the variety of rewards continue. What was supposed to be a quick five minute checkup suddenly turns into 45 minutes of exploration, collecting, and delightful surprise. The experience was fun and, as a result, I used the site much more than I would have otherwise because of its gamification.

But these concepts don’t just have to be about externally facing sites. What about internal teams? That’s a focus for Salesforce’s Work.com (formerly called Rypple). It is a platform for motivating employees.

A precursor was “the Distributor” (also known as the ‘Lovemachine’), used by Linden Labs (who are best known for creating the virtual world Second Life). From wikipedia:

“Linden Lab utilizes another internal tool, known as the Distributor, that enables all employees to distribute “points” to projects that they deem to be worthy of development and resource support. Each point has a financial value that is based on each quarter’s financial performance. As a result, key stakeholders in the projects with high point values receive a distributed monetary payoff at the end of the quarter for successfully completed projects. The Distributor was discontinued after Rosedale left the company.”

More on the Lovemachine which was spun off into its own angel-backed startup.

So how does one begin implementing a gamified system? There are some “off the shelf” solutions:

Bigdoor - http://www.bigdoor.com/
Bunchball - http://www.bunchball.com/
Badgeville - http://www.badgeville.com/

However, be aware of what these are - a sprinkling of PBL onto an existing experience rather than an integration identifying what people want and what their expectations are. They start with features at the base of the game element pyramid when a compelling experience starts by defining goals at the top.

If you are interested in learning more there are plenty of resources available online and in the books listed above.

Getting deeper, “Getting Gamification Right (2011)” builds on the concepts introduced with the PBL triad and looks at motivation factors in why sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t.