Rise of Gamification: Playing your way through life! (Part 2) 👾
Gamification techniques for work & life + Thought Leaders + examples.
Hi, Ravdeep here. 👋
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In continuation from our conversation on Monday, I bring you the second part of my piece on Gamification. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, you can access it from here. Today we’ll talk about some gamification techniques, thought leaders of Gamification, a few more examples and resources.
To understand how we can use gamification in life, we have to take another look at how gamification actually works. Let’s take a deeper dive into this and see what drives people in life. Just bear with me through this part as it might seem a little heavy, but this sets the premise on how we can use gamification principles in real life:
Extrinsic v/s Intrinsic Motivations 📝
Extrinsic Motivations 📤
When the focus is on encouraging users just using rewards, like we see in today’s startup scenario, we are relying on using “Extrinsic Motivation”. We are extrinsically motivated when we perform an activity in order to attain a desired outcome, or to avoid a negative one. Like a carrot and a stick, this is the kind of motivation that can work very well to motivate us in certain contexts.
On the flip side, research does suggest that value of these rewards diminish over time. Once these rewards are removed, we’re less inclined to continue the activity. (As is the case with apps like CrownIt, CRED etc.)
Intrinsic Motivations 📥
Another type of motivation that helps explain why games are so engaging is called “Intrinsic Motivation”. Intrinsically motivated means that you’re motivated not by a reward or you’re avoiding punishment, it means you’re doing it because you find enjoyment in the activity itself. This is the case with Video Games, no one pays us to play these games or punish us if we don’t play them, we play them because we enjoy the game itself.
Intrinsic Supporters 🌂
How do we get games to support intrinsic motivation more efficiently? We look at three basic psychological needs proposed in self-determination theory and promote these through game mechanics. These are:
#1 Autonomy
Refers to the choices people make and why they make them. Autonomy is high when we choose to take on an activity, because we are interested in it, rather than doing it because of a reward or punishment.
#2 Competence
Refers to the ability to be challenged appropriately. This generally happens when we are given a challenge that matches our skill level, something that is not too easy that it becomes boring and not too difficult that we leave the task in the middle.
#3 Relatedness
Refers to our connection to provide support and get support from others. It has to do with our development and maintenance of close personal relationships.
These three supporters determine the extent of enjoyment and motivation while playing a game. When these three supporters work in harmony, people achieve ‘Flow’ which is described as a state of full immersion. Flow has been witnessed in people who rock climb, dance, play chess, and also those who play video games. When you're in a state of flow you often experience many things such as:
An intense and focused concentration.
A sense of great control over the activity you are undertaking.
A distortion of time often occurs. You may have experienced a flow state if you've ever sat down to read a book or play a game for just five minutes and then when you looked up, 4 hours had passed and you hadn't realised it.
Gamification Techniques for life! 🤓
There are a few steps that we need to take to encourage a state of flow which are:
Clear goal that you’re working towards
Clear progress towards completing that goal
Clear and immediate feedback to tell you how you’re doing
Balance of challenge and skill
Supporting these things can help promote intrinsic motivation.
In most games we have four things:
Goals, which gives us something to aim towards or to complete.
Rules, which describe the ways we can achieve the goal.
Challenge/Conflict which arises from the unique combination of goals and rules.
Feedback, to tell us how well we're doing or how close we are to completing the goal.
This is what we apply to our life as well. It’s easy to stay in the same position every day but progress only happens when we create obstacles in our life and in turn try to cross those obstacles to reach newer levels. But just like we prefer different type of video games than other people, circumstances in life also make us prefer certain challenges. Some might want to climb the corporate ladder, some might want to create their own products, or some might just want to stop for a moment and appreciate the scenery, just like you would with missions in a video game. One size doesn't fit all. And this is really important to consider when it comes to designing effective gamification. You need to think about who your player is and what kind of games they like to play.
Gamification Thought Leaders 👩🏫
Yu-Kai Chou
Yu-Kai was one of the first prominent figures in gamification. He rose to popularity with his 2014 TED Talk linked below.
The 8 Core Drives of Gamification that I mentioned in the previous post were taken from his book ‘Octalysis’
Jane McGonigal
Jane is a game designer and author of the book ‘SuperBetter’. Her TED Talk on ‘How Gaming can Make a Better World’ established her well in the gamification world.
Gabe Zicherman
Gabe has written three major books on gamification and done numerous live videos and events.
Gamification examples in various media 🎒
Gamification in Marketing 👩💼
→ Transmedia: This is the practice of taking a media property and extending it into a different medium to either expand upon the material or bring greater attention to it. Eg. In 1997, '007: Goldeneye' was launched on the N64 to bring more attention to the film and it actually ended up making a lot of money for the studio as well.
→ Brandification: This in its simplest form consists of in-game advertising for real-world products & services. This could look like messages, images or videos promoting a brand, product or service within a video games' world. Eg. Counter-Strike was one of the first games that allowed movie posters to be promoted on the walls of their maps. Currently, Tesla is promoting their in PUBG Mobile with the latest v1.5 update.
→ Advergames: These are online video games that promote a particular brand, product, or marketing message by integrating it into the game template, created expressly for promotional purposes. Advergames are often commissioned to support other media, not replace them. Eg. Anybody remember the classic 'Pepsi Man' from the PS1 days. Now, mobile games such as Temple Run are being reskinned with company branding and themes to promote their products and services. Advergames have been proven to get higher levels of engagement than traditional ads.
Gamification in Health 👩⚕️
→ Physical Health: Nike launched Nike+Run in 2010 as a gamification platform that tracks and gamifies your run time, distance covered, health levels and compares yourself to your previous recordings and others within your social field. They have a leaderboard, points and badges. This is a classic example of live feedback and micro-measuring progress to helping runners to improve and progress in their personal goals.
→ Mental Health: Headspace comes in the form of an app that uses gamification to increase user completion and mastery of a level of meditation before moving on to a more advanced section. Each session is about ten minutes long and usually in audio format. Gamifying the process helps users to track their progress in bettering their mental state and in truly seeing the strides they've taken towards being better balanced.
→ Group Workouts: Les Mills 'Be Moved' utilises gamification to another level. They do group classes on stationary bikes with a computer screen in front of them, simulating a futuristic roller coaster. Once you log in, it tracks your scores, provides leaderboards and if you don't show up to class it gives you a warning (an example of loss aversion).
Gamification in Education 👩🏫
→ Computer Games: Minecraft: Education Edition teaches students how to code through one of the most popular game formats in the world. If you're a teacher you already know a lot of your students love this game and the game mechanics that come with it.
→ Apps: “Read Along” by Google uses Google's voice technology to encourage kids to read and follow along with stories. It has great reviews and is used around the world. The only drawback at the moment is it only being compatible with Android at the moment.
→ Classroom: Kahoot allows you to create a multiple choice quiz through a quick website link share. This allows for students to use their phones in a productive manner, participating in selecting or typing their answers to in-class quizzes in real-time.
→ eLearning Platform: Archy Learning is a simple gamified eLearning platform. Teachers can cut and paste YouTube links and classroom notes into a learning pathway. Where it gets really fun is with the addition of gamification strategy in the form of class quizzes, educational video games, mixed media exams and awarded certificates upon completed courses for an all-around gamification learning experience.
Gamification in Websites 👩💻
→ Physical and Online Locations: Foursquare was the original website and brand which not only built their company around the premise of gamification but grew 10x in size in just five years of implementing game elements into customer onboarding. Bringing both real life and online elements to their brand, store and website.
→ Website: DevHub announced an increase in the number of users who completed their online tasks from 10% to 80% after adding gamification elements. Social websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn now have implemented game elements into their sign-up & account processes as a result of DevHub's success.
→ Social: Using badges, points, leaderboards, personalisation/avatars, coins and many other elements and mechanics to increase engagement, Reddit took a basic blog website and transformed it into one of the top 10 most visited sites in the world through gamification. Through gaining points for the amount of time you write, interact and have simply been a member on the site, you can buy "coins" and “gift” them to article writers.
Gamification has the potential to transform boring procedures into something that people look forward to, through a well thought out system of rewards. I strongly believe this has a lot of potential when applied to life as well. Let me know your thoughts on Gamification and if you have applied in it in your life or work. Just send a reply back on this newsletter to get started.
Recommended reading this week
Get the Most in Life and Work with Gamification | Product Tribe
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