Posted by:
Nick
Below is a video of Jesse Schell's talk from 2010's DICE Conference, where Schell discusses the incredible growth of social gaming and the potential behind integrating game functionality into other real life applications. Take the time to watch it if you have 30 minutes to burn.
This was probably the first I had heard of "gamification" from anyone who wasn't a drone in a suit, and over time the roar of gamification has gotten louder and louder in a number of industries, particularly the web design industry.
As a long-time fan of video games and a Mr. Manager-type at a web design agency, the idea of mixing in game elements into everyday life or as a secondary function to a website's core fascinates me. But with any hot new concept, businesses and developers have begun to roll these elements into products in ways that are barely effective, costly, and provide little to no value to their users.
The central idea to gamification is the precept that injecting game mechanics into everyday areas of life can help incentivize people and, potentially, aid in solving real world problems. There are
websites that use game mechanics to encourage personal health,
iphone apps that get you off your butt to do simple tasks, and
cars that poke you in the face to tell you how you're saving the world at the low starting-price of $27,000. These ideas, on paper, are neat because they each provide an extra feature layer that can foster engagement and invariably motivate.
But for every good idea a trend produces, 100 bad ones follow suit. "Gamification" has slowly introduced thousands of poorly thought-out examples into the marketplace that
don't engage or interest because they
don't elegantly tie together the ideas of purpose and meaningful play.
The Problem
Let me be real clear: In spite of what Schell believes in that video, gamifying a product is
not game design (even if game designers are best suited to do it). Understanding that is important in understanding why gamification works and why it doesn't.
Games, especially video games, play off our intrinsic desires to keep us motivated. Leveling systems, achievements, and incremental point systems are used to help signify progress to the player. Each of these systems, by themselves, aren't all that interesting. But when they're baked into an overarching play space with a purpose tied to it (ex: save the princess), they work as a motivating device so that the player doesn't quit. If I hear swelling music and receive a piecemeal reward every time I level up in an online game, I'm going to be that much more interested in continuing. In business terms, it's a "value add" for something that was already pretty damn good to begin with.
Gamification assumes that we can take these principles of play and adapt them into other mediums. But many of these gamified products have shown a shocking amount of disregard for the quality of the customer experience, because they aren't built from the ground-up so that the game elements completely intertwine themselves with the end-goal or purpose. This application winds up betraying the very idea behind gamification because it implies that experiences that are rooted in something other than games can/should be dressed up to resemble them. And it's no surprise that a number of very recent applications amount to nothing more than tacking on a poorly designed points system to an existing underlying system.
A Great Example of Crap Web Gamification
When Google rolled out their
news badges, it
seemed like a novel idea on paper; encourage social sharing amongst Google News users by incentivizing them with profile badges. In practice, though, Google's approach should be considered "faulty" at best.
From the way that the system is implemented (tacked on to an existing system) to the reward itself (badges that signify nothing spectacular), the whole idea behind Google's badge rewards seems to be wrapped around the need to foster user engagement by providing a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. It doesn't provide any real sense of mastery to the user (how do I get better at wasting time at work); the reward is meaningless in of itself; and because it fails to fulfill the purpose/mastery motive, it doesn't actually complement the system it's built on.
A Great Example of Web Gamification Done Right
With that said, if our prerequisites for "gamification done right" are a finely-tuned combination of purpose, mastery, and implementation, then look no further than Mint.com.
On top of Mint.com's existing functionality of tying together all of your financial information, the site also provides its users with a "Financial Fitness" system. This entire system is tied directly to the information that Mint.com has on-hand, allowing the site to provide goals, scores, and progress over time to each to of its users.
Each of these goals and their scores are tied to five principles that everyone notes when dealing with their personal finances:
- Know your Money
- Spend Less than you Earn
- Use Debt Wisely
- Invest Your Savings
- Prepare for the Unexpected
These five axioms are important because they define both the purpose and the system that needs to be mastered. By reinforcing each of these items with points and a scoring system, users are able to track their own progress over time and become that much more motivated to comeback to the website.
That last point is very important from a business-perspective. Not only is Mint.com providing all of the tools that their users need to be properly engaged, they're effectively increasing their ability to generate leads and referrals. That's what we call a win-win, and it wouldn't have been possible had Mint.com half-assed this implementation.
Final Thoughts
As much as I'd like to believe it were not true, the introduction of gamification into our lives is not slowing down. And as more and more companies continue to push forward on all of their web endeavors, it's inevitable that this concept will eventually translate from a simple novelty and throwaway fad, into a formal process and study. That means that as designers and developers, the onus is on us to recognize when gamification works and when it doesn't, so that our products are able to touch audiences in ways that are substantiative and meaningful.
