Badges Are The Backup Quarterbacks of Game Design

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info@hugeinc.com

45 Main St. #220 Brooklyn, NY 11201

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February 07, 2013

Badges are the Backup Quarterbacks of Game Design

Badges are the backup

quarterbacks of game design.

Badges are the backup

quarterbacks of game design.

More on that later.

The gamification question.

“How can games make my product

more engaging?”

Game design is more than a rug.

© 1998 Universal Studios. All rights reserved. Please don’t sue me.

My first wireframe.

Photo courtesy of Meejin Hong

Cross-discipline collaboration ✓

Photo courtesy of Meejin Hong

Paper prototyping ✓

Photo courtesy of Meejin Hong

Agile development ✓

Photo courtesy of Meejin Hong

Minimum viable product ✓

The most epic user journey.

Board a giant monster that is a

massive, moving level. Travel inside &

out of its body until reaching the head to

destroy it.

Game Design

TechniquesUX Problems

Game Design

TechniquesUX Problems

Game whisperer.

How can games make my product

more engaging?

How can games make my product

more engaging?

How can games help me

design a better product?

Level 1.

v

Poking the system.

Level 1-1:

• Allows players to figure out how things work by providing

limited inputs with clear feedback.

• Physical games – like tag - are great examples of this.

They’re an extension of your body, and the game space

can be adjusted to match your situation.

• Board games – like Monopoly or Settlers of Catan – don’t

allow for poking because they usually have fixed rule

structures and game spaces.

Give users a chance.

1. Pac-Man is a maze game that consists of 256 levels.

2. Each level in Pac-Man is a different maze.

3. You control a yellow character (“Pac Man”) using the stick in front of you.

4. The stick allows Pac-Man to move in 4 cardinal directions.

5. To advance to the next level, Pac-Man must collect (“eat”) all the circles in the maze.

6. Sometimes, fruit will appear. Eating fruit is worth extra points.

7. Walls will stop his movement.

8. Absence of walls mean Pac-Man will re-appear on the opposite side of the screen.

9. There are 4 enemies – “ghosts” - that will try to stop you.

10. If the enemies touch you in their normal state, you lose a life.

11. You start the game with 4 lives.

12. You can earn more lives by collecting circles.

13. Eating a larger circle will make the enemies stop chasing you. In this mode, you can eat them.

However, it only lasts for a limited time.

14. They will temporarily return to their holding cell for a pre-determined time.

How an Interaction Designer might

explain Pac-Man to users

x

Pac-Man doesn’t explain shit.

He just starts moving.

• Games that do this well reward your curiosity, like Angry Birds. There

is immediate feedback and satisfaction granted.

• These games also often have a high tolerance for failure built-in. The

investment in an individual action is brief, so you don’t feel as bad

about starting over.

• Makes it a natural fit for services that require upfront engagement to

reveal content (ex. search engines), and less so for discovery portals

that just put it all in front of you (ex. news sites).

• A nudge in the right direction can be helpful, as long as the user can

self-correct it quickly.

Poking is fun! Keep it that way.

The Invisible

Tutorial.

Level 1-2

• Design part of the game experience – start of the game,

start of a level – to serve as a “learning area” without an

explicit tutorial.

• Useful when there are multiple inputs that can be

explained sequentially.

• Conceptually similar to what we see in industrial design or

architecture, where the product must stand on its own

without an ever-present guide.

Teach through your design.

v

Moving in opposite

direction of Mario

Bounces off pipe

so you run into it

Remember when I made fun

of ID’s explaining Pac-Man?

No one’s perfect, not even Mario.

The mistake. Sweet redemption.

No idea. You’re on

your own, buddy.

Whoops.

Best. CTA. Ever.

Why don’t you take a break, you’re not needed here yet.

• Like poking at a system, this works well as a model to fundamentally

explain how something works. You don’t need to get the full feature set

across yet. Your user probably lacks context for those other actions

without a foundation.

• Many games that employ levels as a design and narrative structure

assume a single play-through experience. That’s not true in our case, so

the context in which “Level 1” appears for repeat visits should be well

defined.

• Users might stray from that journey, but don’t they always? There should

be enough cues to lead them back, or adjust the context based on

decisions they make (ex. deleting my Welcome email in Gmail)

Set the foundation before trying to

decorate the interior.

Immersive

tutorials.

Level 1-3

• Guides the player through the early part of the experience

with explicit help and instruction.

• Instruction occurs within the game space, after which

users are allowed to continue on their way.

• It’s like someone pushing you on a swing set, or holding

the bike as you learn to ride. Eventually, they let go but

your momentum keeps you moving forward.

Help that knows when to leave.

• Absolutely requires a 1:1 relationship between tutorial action

and in-game action. There is no difference in their execution or

their effect on the game space.

• Use real data to make the actions meaningful. You wouldn’t

want to attend a cooking class where you don’t get to eat what

you make (unless I’m your partner).

• Look for smart ways to opt a user out of this. Have they been

here before? Do they already have an account?

What’s good for the game is good for the

tutorial.

Knowing when to

help.

No.

Barrel rolls are not the answer.

Wait a minute...don’t we all know a

lovable character that tried to

be a *little* too helpful?

• Keeping pace high to maximize enjoyment, like in some of our earlier

examples (Canabalt and Temple Run), means sacrificing opportunities

to educate users during play.

• Especially for educational games and applications, people need to

time to pause, catch their breath, and reflect on what they’ve done.

• The slower the pace, the more education you can build into the

experience, like Turbo Tax.

• Otherwise, pick your moments wisely. What are the natural breaks in

digital products? Loading screens, Landing pages, etc.

Balancing pace and content is essential

to gameplay.

Rewarding

engagement.

• Microsoft took a relative gamble by decreeing that every game

released for the Xbox must offer a standard amount of

Gamerscore points.

• It became high score lists for a networked generation; an

informal social way to compete with friends and anonymous

foes alike.

• Succeeded because it found a meta user group (Xbox Live

users) outside of a single game that could still appreciate the

value of the engagement.

The Gamerscore filled the void left

behind by arcade machines.

...of what, exactly?

© 1994 Miramax Films. All rights reserved. Please don’t sue me.

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A tale of two

backups.

2nd-year rookie back-up.

4-yr backup. Brought in to start.

Led his team to the Super Bowl.

Didn’t start a single game.

Colin Kaepernick. Matt Flynn.

• Controversial move to start

him over a successful QB

• Sought by multiple teams,

signing seen as good move

• 8 Pro Bowlers from his team,

5+ elite teammates on offense

• Played with arguably best WR

core with his old team

• Low expectations, just needed

to fit into a successful team

• Needed to be the offensive

leader and star for new team

• Drafted by head coach, plays

offense suited to his style

• Had to learn a new offense in

open competition

Let’s break it down:

Context matters a lot in sports.

Context matters a lot in sports.

It does in games, too.

They’re both delicate, complex systems

of connected pieces. Individual parts

are incredibly hard to judge on their

own.

Badges, like backup quarterbacks, are

the easy thing to identify and take from

their former successful environments.

However, success in one system

doesn’t guarantee it in another.

Keep in mind...

Hypothesis.

Why do I think _______ can

solve my problem?

Context.

What types of games are

_______ typically found in?

Choreography.

How do players encounter ______ in

the game, and what happens before &

after?

Accountability.

What is _______ asked to

accomplish in the game?

Evaluation.

What are good and bad examples of

_______ at work?

If you believe _______ are

the answer for your product,

bring its teammates along.

hugeinc.com

info@hugeinc.com

45 Main St. #220 Brooklyn, NY 11201

+1 718 625 4843

This would not have been possible without friends in the

game design community who provided the

expertise, inspiration, and advice needed to pull this off. I

would like to thank the following people, in no particular

order:

Nicholas Fortugno (@nickfortugno)

Zach Gage (@helvetica)

Joe Kowalski (@codeloss)

Kan-Yang Li (@ghettokon)

Peter Knocke (@gustavthree)

Thanks.