Game designers have been designing for digital behavior change for longer than just about anyoneGame designers have been designing for digital behavior change for longer than just about anyone
Games have long recognized the truth that comes from The Kurt Lewin Equation:
The player is interacting with the in-game world in order to get what they want and further their goals.
Game thoughtfully designs rules and interactions to influence how you get what you want
As such, they The goal of game design is to influence user behavior to create an intended experience. People need to play games in certain ways to make the game fun for themselves, so games are designed for behavior ch.... They design the environment that the users interact with and the rules through which all of the user's actions are interpreted. The goal of game design is to influence user behavior to create an intended experienceThe goal of game design is to influence user behavior to create an intended experience
See Mark Brown's brilliant video on protecting the player from themselves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L8vAGGitr8::rmn Game designers recognize that they can't just design a game and expect the player to enjoy it. If you play Xcom in a risk-averse way, then you won't have as much fun as if you lean into risk and play aggressively. However, the rules of the game and its feedback systems shape the most likely playstyles.
See: Progress monitoring and feedback systems
See MDA: A Formal A.... They understand Behavioral Product StrategyBehavioral Product Strategy
The way a product is designed shapes the way that people use it. Every app is designed for behavior change, intentionally or unintentionally, so the questions that drive behavioral product strategy must be addressed. User Involvement is a set of metrics whose success is defined by the combination of user behaviors that contribute towards creating a desirable outcome. Behavioral product strategy is making product decisions to influence user behavior and improve user involvement.
It doesn't ma..., even if they don't use the same words to describe it.
Given game design's profound and intentional influence over player behavior, it astounds me that gamification is in the state that it is in. It's as though gamification designers said to themselves, "Points, badges, and leaderboards are the only things worth learning from!" Mechanics as motivators are a red herring. Think about mechanics as facilitatorsThink about mechanics as facilitators
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and Design systems of influenceDesign systems of influence
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It's unclear to me why gamification has become so homogenous. Maybe gamification designers are too old and were influenced by the wrong games. They played games when "Galaga" and "Pac-Man" were cutting edge, and then "grew up" and stopped playing games. They aren't looking at games from the perspective of a gamer/game designer. They are parents, watching their kids sit in front of a game console for hours, asking themselves, "Why is our child so addicted?" and "Why are they playing so many games when they could be doing their schoolwork?" Meanwhile, I was asking questions like “How can I improve my skill in this game to beat a boss?”
Gamification designers aren't asking the right questions. Game designers and behavioral scientists are asking many of the same questionsGame designers and behavioral scientists are asking many of the same questions
Game designers have been designing for digital behavior change for longer than just about anyone. They design the environment that the users interact with and the rules through which all of the user's actions are interpreted. The goal of game design is to influence user behavior to create an intended experience. They are doing Behavioral Product Strategy.
As such, game designers are asking many of the same questions as applied behavioral scientists.
How do we design meaningful choices? A fr..., and we should be focusing on those. We should be asking ourselves "What can we take away from game design and behavioral science to influence user behavior so that we co-create an intended experience with the user?" We don't have a choice whether we ask this question or not, because Every app is designed for behavior change, intentionally or unintentionallyEvery app is designed for behavior change, intentionally or unintentionally
As described in The Kurt Lewin Equation, people’s behavior is influenced by the relationship between who they are and the context of their situation. While the user is paying attention, the app controls a portion of the user’s digital context. As such, app design exerts significant influence over user behavior, whether you designed it intentionally with this purpose in mind or not.
The large majority of behavioral science research can effectively be summarized as “here’s how this environment....
Games have grown up since the 80s and 90s and many distinct genres have been born. Gamification never grew up. It copied itself rather than drawing from game design and behavioral science. Despite the heterogenous set of problems, a homogenous configuration of points, badges, and leaderboards has been touted as a universal approach. Gamification didn't adapt to its goals and challenges because the designers didn't understand the behavioral science of how and why it worked. The designers mistakenly believed that Foursquare’s mechanics would simply lead to engagement, even when taken out of Foursquare's context. This is Lazy gamificationLazy gamification
Lazy gamification is what happens when you slap a relatively homogenous configuration of points, badges, and leaderboards onto a heterogenous set of problems. This is done without thinking about where, why, and how those interventions work to influence user behavior given the parameters of the who the users are and important contextual factors.
It's a common trap to think about game mechanics as motivators. I prefer to instead think about them as Think about mechanics as facilitators.
Gamif.... There could be many genres of gamificationThere could be many genres of gamification
A genre of games is a set of games that deal with a common set of problems and attempt to deliver a similar experience while varying a range of common conventions.
Let's go ahead and lump points, badges, and leaderboards together into the "Foursquare genre" of gamification. What might other genres of gamification in software products look like?
We need more genres because most of the gamification we have is Lazy gamification. A relatively homogenous configuration of points, badges, and lead..., and yet most of what we have is just Foursquare over and over again. Gamification is not one monolithic thingGamification is not one monolithic thing
When people think of gamification, they tend to think of points, badges, and leaderboards. They make claims like "gamification is good for engagement” or “gamification should only come in at X stage." Academic researchers will research questions like “is gamification effective?” This is based on the assumption that gamification is a monolithic thing.
However, gamification can be done without feeling like gamification, without points, without badges, without extrinsic rewards. This is becaus....
I love video games. Not only are they enjoyable, but they're a form of research when you analyze them through behavioral science lenses.Take that, Dad. Who's wasting time now? When I started working in gamification, I was amazed at the possibility of behavioral scientists and game designers learning from each other's theory and findings. What I found when I looked for examples was so thoroughly unimpressive that I knew immediately I would need to develop my own understanding of gamification.
There is no curriculum that encompasses everything you should knowThere is no curriculum that encompasses everything you should know
People often ask me what they need to read in order to work in Behavioral Product Strategy. My answer? There is no curriculum of everything you should know.
I’ve found the following useful:
Behavioral economics helps me to understand how people make decisions and judgments around concepts of value
The study of individual differences and personality helps me to understand users better, how to interpret that information better, and how to translate that into behavior change
The study of... because gamification has been systematically misinterpreted and misapplied since its inception. I explore the areas where Game designers and behavioral scientists are asking many of the same questionsGame designers and behavioral scientists are asking many of the same questions
Game designers have been designing for digital behavior change for longer than just about anyone. They design the environment that the users interact with and the rules through which all of the user's actions are interpreted. The goal of game design is to influence user behavior to create an intended experience. They are doing Behavioral Product Strategy.
As such, game designers are asking many of the same questions as applied behavioral scientists.
How do we design meaningful choices? A fr....