Actionable Gamification

by Yu-kai Chou

  This is also why companies like Procter & Gamble and General Foods often run contests where people write “25-, 50-, or 100-words or less” testimonials for them, starting with, “I like the product because…”. As people describe enthusiastically how amazing these products are, they start to own up to their statements and see the products more favorably. Of course, they also start to see themselves as, “People who like the company product prizes so much that they are willing to participate in a testimonial contest.”

  This type of ownership over your identity, past decisions, and commitments can be one of the more subtle elements of motivation within Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession. After all, you already know that you are heavily motivated by making more money, collecting stamps, or protecting your expensive assets; but you likely will not recognize it when your decisions were simply based on what your name is and what you ate last week.

  Game Techniques within Ownership & Possession

  You have learned more about the motivational and psychological nature of Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession. To make it more actionable, I’ve included some Game Techniques below that heavily utilize this Core Drive to engage users.

  Build-From-Scratch (Game Technique #43)

  When you create a product or service, it is often desirable for your users to increase their vested ownership in the process of its creation. This is why it is useful to have them involved in the development process early on – to “build from scratch.”

  Building from scratch means that instead of giving them the entire setup – giving them the fully furnished house and the developed avatar from the beginning, you want them to start off decorating the house from scratch. Pick and place the beds in the house for themselves, choose a hair color and style for their avatars, and select their preferred fashion statement. When people are building something from scratch, they feel like, “I own this. This is my thing.”

  But if you start off by giving them a perfectly enchanting character or a fully decorated home, they may not become as involved otherwise. Even if you tell them, “Hey, you can redecorate or add things to it,” people will likely feel less ownership and be less engaged.

  Studies126 indicate that people feel more attached to their cheap IKEA furniture even compared to their expensive high-end furniture, primarily because they spent more time building the IKEA furniture with their own hands. That feeling of personal ownership also motivates them to talk about their IKEA furniture more often with friends. The same can be said of small carpentry projects like building a garden box, bench, or birdhouse.

  In fact, behavioral scientists Dan Ariely and Mike Norton started to term this phenomenon “Ikea effect.”127

  One thing to note, if the Build-From-Scratch technique distracts people away from the First Major Win-State (where users first exclaim, “Wow! This is awesome!”), then it is not a good design. Either you should give users the option to Build-From-Scratch with some quick template options that will allow them to move forward quickly and customize later, or you want to ensure that the Build-From-Scratch Technique itself is a First Major Win-State that users will feel excited about.

  Collection Sets (Game Technique #16)

  One of the most powerful and effective ways to utilize Core Drive 4: Ownership and Possession is through Collection Sets. Say you give people a few items, characters, or badges, and you tell them that this is part of a collection set that follows a certain theme. This creates a desire in them to collect all the elements and complete the set.

  Now it’s Personal, My Deer

  An excellent example of a Collection Set is in the game Geomon by Loki Studio, a game company I advised from 2010 to 2012 (they were later acquired by Yahoo! and unfortunately the game was discontinued).

  Geomon was a monster capture and training game, similar to Pokemon, except the monsters you could catch relied on your physical location as determined by your mobile device. For instance, if a player were on the beach, they could capture sea Geomons, while a player hiking in the mountains could capture mountain Geomons.

  In the game, there’s the theme of the Four-Season Deer, with four unique creators to capture. There’s a Spring Plant Deer, a Summer Fire Deer, a Fall Wind Deer, and a Winter Ice Deer.

  If a player by chance captured two or three of these four deer, they immediately felt compelled to capture the entire set. After all, it is rather awkward to only have two of the Four Season Deer. The problem was that a player could only capture a particular deer during the actual calendar season. This meant that players would have to wait three to six months to complete the set. In the gaming world, that is a torturously long period!

  As a result, many players became obsessed with trading off rare and high valued pets in order to obtain the missing deer - some would even spend real money to obtain them. What is surprising is that these Four Season Deer aren’t even that powerful - most players would never use them in a real battle. People simply wanted them because…well, they had to.

  The mind-blowing thing about this level of ownership is that people felt extremely attached to the Geomons that they had captured and trained during the game. When the game announced that it was shutting down, players (mostly consisting of students) banded together and raised $700,000 to see if they could keep the game going. That was quite an impressive figure, mainly motivated by Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession as well as Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance. In fact, in higher-level Octalysis studies, you will see that building Core Drive 4 often reinforces the power of Core Drive 8, and that the Endowment Effect connects directly to our irrational sense of Loss Aversion).

  Monopolizing Billions

  Another great example of Collection Sets is seen in McDonald’s Monopoly Game128. McDonald’s wants people to buy more fast food from them - the Desired Action, so it created the McDonald’s Monopoly game where every time you hit the Win-State of “buying more burgers and fries” you will get a piece of property on the Monopoly Board.

  Once you accumulate all the properties, McDonald’s will give you great cash prizes and rewards. Now, like most of these collection games, there will be a few pieces that are extremely rare, and as a result, people are willing to spend real money to acquire these properties. That’s somewhat odd, because people are not even paying real money in exchange for the reward. They are paying real money in exchange for a “part” of the reward, which by itself is technically worth nothing. But because people are so desperate in completing a set that is almost finished, they are highly motivated to complete it as a strong Endgame play.

  What makes Collection Sets so effective is that often a company cannot give out tangible rewards to every user, but every user expects some type of reward when they performed the Desired Actions and hit the Win-States. By giving users a piece of the reward instead of the full reward, every user feels that they are making progress towards the ultimate win-prize while the company maintains control of its budget. When you give users rewards, don’t just give them physical items directly, for those generally have less motivational longevity. More often, giving them collection pieces will result in longer-term engagement.

  One thing to note is that, when a user expects a full reward either due to your own advertising or because of what your competitors are advertising, giving them a Collection Set piece can sometimes backfire and end up insulting that user. Always be mindful that gamification is not a cookie cutter solution; it always relies on thoughtful design based on context and the profile of the players within your system.

  Exchangeable Points (Game Technique #75)

  As mentioned in Chapter 6, there are two main types of points that a gamified system can grant its users. The first type consists of Status Points (Game Technique #1), through which users can increase and keep track of their scores in order to see how well they’re doing. Status Points for the most part can only go up as the user hits more Win-States and it cannot be traded for other valuables. This appeals more to Core Drive #2: Development & Accomplishment.
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br />   The second type is represented by Exchangeable Points, where users can utilize their accumulated points in a strategic and scarce manner to obtain other valuables. Exchangeable Points can have various types of uses. There are points that can only be redeemed within the game economy for valuables, or points that can be traded with other players in the same system. Some exchangeable points allow users to trade with people outside of the gamified system where they were originally earned in. Each of these types of points has pros and cons, and many good gamified systems (as well as games) have a combination of the above to ensure their economy maintains its value for its users. Many companies think that just giving users Exchangeable Points, which can be redeemed for rewards will make their system motivating. After all, now there is an in-system “economy!”

  What companies don’t always realize is that it is very difficult to run an effective economy. You have to carefully consider the correct labor-to-time-to-tradability-to-reward ratios while constantly adjusting the balance to ensure that people continue valuing your points and currency system. If the system no longer rewards the appropriate labor with the commensurate perceived value, then the economy loses its legitimacy.

  The Federal Reserve Bank or Central Bank of any country knows that an economy is extremely sensitive and requires finesse. They understand that a change in interest rates by a modest 3% may result in substantial, even drastic behavioral changes with consumers, banks, insurance companies, real estate developers, and businesses. This complexity must be respected when attempting to introduce a market economy for tradable points. A company which believes that just having an economy will naturally lead to engagement with its users is relying on a very dangerous assumption.

  Without writing a separate book on this subject (after all, this book is titled “beyond points, badges, and leaderboards”), one of the key points to pay close attention to is the scarcity control of the economy. This means that users should never feel like the exchangeable currency or goods are excessively abundant. This is often controlled by the true scarcity of time where labor in the system is balanced against the resulting rewards. We will dive more into this topic in Chapter 10 on Core drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience.

  Monitor Attachment (Game Technique #42)

  Monitor Attachment is a game technique that allows people to develop more ownership towards something, such that they are constantly monitoring or paying attention to it.

  When users are monitoring the state of something, they naturally want that state to continually improve. If you are constantly looking at the progression of some numbers, you automatically grow more engaged with the success and growth of these numbers. This was definitely a driving force behind why I cared so much about my Tamagotchi. By being its steward, the Monitor Effect increased over time and it became my sole responsibility to keep the little dinosaur fed, healthy, and safe.

  This can also be identified in the relationship developed over time with a favorite local coffee shop. You become friendly with the staff, learn the entire menu, and have your “favorite spot” where you go to regularly at set times. You build familiarity with the shop, which in turn makes you feel like you partially “own” the place as a committed community member and customer.

  This tendency of liking something we feel familiar with is described in famed Psychologist Robert Zajonc’s paper on “Attitudinal Effects of Mere Exposure129. Because our subconscious minds are bad at differentiating between things that are safe, comfortable, desirable, truthful, easy, or familiar, when we feel like something is familiar, our brain automatically associates it with something that is safe and desirable. Cognitive ease plays a substantial part towards what we decide to care about and spend time doing.

  Google Analytics brings Gamification

  Building on Monitor Attachment, often a very good way to get users engaged is to constantly show them stats, charts, and graphics of things they care about. As an example, I personally believe that the biggest motivator that fuels the blogosphere is not any blogging platform, but Google Analytics130.

  The early days of a blogger are lonely and discouraging. You spend hours upon hours pouring out your heart and insights, feeling that you are contributing your uniqueness and value to the world; but you also know that barely anyone will read your posts. You may share it with your friends on Facebook, and some might click the “Like” button. However, you also know that it would have been more time efficient to just call these people up and tell them about the same insights, one by one.

  During this time it is very easy to give up and decide to do other things with one’s life. However, what often keeps a blogger going is the Google Analytics dashboard and the constant staring towards it to see whether the visitor numbers increased from three people to four. Google Analytics allows any blogger to see how many visitors were on their blog, how long each person stayed, and what posts they read, all without paying a single dollar.

  Because of this simple tool, many bloggers log into Google Analytics over a dozen times a day, monitoring the barely existing activities for their blogs, and paying attention to any possible changes (incorporating Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity). When one spends a lot of time monitoring the outcome of something, they will likely develop new ways to improve those outcomes, developing into even more engaged activities within Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback (Core Drive 3).

  People started to see how providing many links to other posts and other sites increased traffic by a modest amount; they saw how writing catchy and controversial titles attracted more click-throughs; and they saw how posting at certain times of the day generated more traffic. The Monitor Attachment opened up a whole new world of White Hat Motivation, despite the blogger being nowhere close to “popular.”

  If you could design your experience where users are constantly monitoring the progressive output of something (even if the numbers are going down at times), you have a good shot at absorbing the user into much deeper levels of ownership and engagement.

  The Alfred Effect (Game Technique #83)

  The Alfred Effect is when users feel that a product or service is so personalized to their own needs that they cannot imagine using another service.

  As we march towards a fast-food world of more convenient and off-the-shelf options, people start to long for a deeper experience that is uniquely their own. That’s why some wealthy people would spend ten times more to customize a product to uniquely fit their style and preferences.

  Through Big Data, we are now able to provide users that sense of personalization by tailoring options based on what smart systems collect on users preferences and habits.

  In a game, the system is constantly learning about the user and customizing the experience based on past behavior. A game would know, “This player is on level 3; he has learned these four skills, but not these six, picked up these three items, defeated these monsters, talked to these two characters, but not these other three characters. As a result, this door does not open.”

  A game remembers almost everything a player does in the game and modifies the experience accordingly. Gamers take this level of personalization for granted: if at level 3, the game forgot some details of what the player did in level 1, the player would often become furious and quit the game.

  In the real world, most sites just give you the same static experience, no matter what you do. Some more advanced sites present different experiences based on region or gender, but most provide a very shallow experience. But when a user feels like a system has been fully customized to fit their needs, even if another service out there offered better technologies, functions, or prices, the user has a strong tendency to stay with this system because it now uniquely understands them.

  These days, some of the biggest sites are implementing the Alfred Effect into their experiences, though most are still not ideal. Sites like Amazon are known to understand your preferences based on all your activities and recommend different products to you131, while Google Search now shows pe
rsonalized search results based on your search and browsing history132. Facebook also shows content that you or your friends would most likely care about133, while Netflix can predict which movies you will enjoy better than your friends can134.

  Beyond automatic system customization, some people have spent time adjusting their Operating Systems or Browsers manually to suit their needs and preferences. Others have their own systems of customized Dropbox Folders in place that perfectly fits their workflow needs - picture switching to an entirely different file management platform from the one you currently have; a difficult prospect I’m sure. Even a person’s workstation is often customized to meet their needs and habits, creating more engagement and attachment.

  One great example is seen in the navigation app Waze. Beyond all the saved addresses and historical destination data (which strongly contributes to the Alfred Effect), with sufficient usage, it will remember your favorite spots based on context. If you open Waze at 6PM, it would immediately know that 6PM is return home time and ask you if you want to go home; if you open it at 8PM, it may remember that 8PM on Wednesday nights is gym time, and ask you if you would like to go to the gym. Personalized and customized experiences like these create strong attachment towards an experience.

  Core Drive 4: The Bigger Picture