Power of gamification

THE POWER OF GAMIFICATION

SEBASTIEN ARBOGAST

WHAT IT'S NOT!

GAMIFICATION

• Throwing scores and badges around without any consistent design

• Using game metaphors all over the place

• Using a game to advertise or market a certain product

• A quickfix for a bad system

• A way to make something boring more "fun"

• A gadget gimmick that can only have marginal effects

• What it really is: "the process of game-thinking and game mechanics to engage users and solve problems"

PRINCIPLES

WHAT IS ENGAGEMENT?

• Recency: you want a constant input stream of new couriers to compensate for turnover

• Frequency: you want couriers who keep coming back to decrease the cost of acquisition, training and onboarding

• Duration: you want couriers to stay with us as long as possible so that they acquire experience and improve their craft

• Referrals: you want couriers to talk to other potential couriers about how great it is to work with TEE because then onboarding is less expensive

• Feedback: you want couriers who are so engaged that they help us improve our service to them, but also to restaurants and consumers with their feedback

• Involvement: you want couriers who are consciencious and really care about their job and the impact it has on TEE as a whole

AND HOW CAN YOU POTENTIALLY MEASURE IT?

THE GAMIFICATION LOOP

Engagement

Challenge

AchievementReward

WHAT GAMERS REALLY VALUE

HIERARCHY OF REWARDS

• Status: recognition based on experience, expertise, like titles, badges, levels and leaderboards to value and make contribution visible. Think credit card color, army grades, boyscout badges, etc.

• Access: privileged access to some parts of the game, like priority access to the calendar, priority assignation of orders, priority access to new versions of the app, exclusivity on some features, etc.

• Power: over other players, like training and shadowing, evaluation, moderation of the community, etc.

• Stuff: bonuses, higher pay, vouchers, disappears after consumed

STIC

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UNDERSTANDING PLAYER MOTIVATION

THE CONCEPT OF FLOW

AND HOW IT AFFECTS OUTCOME

REINFORCEMENT

Reward\Interval Fixed Variable

Fixed Factory worker Frustration

Variable (Courier pay today)

Slot machine

BARTLE PLAYER TYPES

• Killers: winning, others losing, everybody witnessing

• Achievers: mastery, skills, high proportion of entrepreneurs, small proportion in general population

• Explorers: discovery, curiosity, first to be there, there can only be one first

• Socializers: social interaction, building relationships through collaboration, building character

PLAYER PROFILE QUADRANT

5% exclusive20% non-exclusive




You have to identify your own proportions and adapt your game design accordingly

PROGRESSION TO MASTERY

• Novice: courier just registered

• Problem solver: courier has attended information and training sessions, and has already done a shadowing session

• Expert: courier has already done a few deliveries and he can work on his own

• Master: courier with a very high rating, a lot of kilometers under his belt, feels like he is in control

• Visionary: understands so much about the system that he thinks of ways to improve it, and gives a lot of feedback

PRINCIPLES OF MASTERY

• You should never expect every player to become a visionary, so the game should make it possible to stop at any level

• Socializing actions should allow for lower levels to get in touch with higher levels

• Higher levels can inspire lower levels

• You should have actions for every level of mastery, some of them exclusive to higher levels

• The game is not the same at every level

• Anticipate the "boss level" effect

• You are not the mountain, you are the Sherpa

THE MDA FRAMEWORK

• Mechanics: levers that you can use to interact with players, and that players can use to progress, and know how to progress

• Dynamics: interactions between players and the game, and responses from players to the mechanics of the system

• Aesthetics: how the game makes the player feel during those interactions, how you create emotions that drive dynamics

MECHANICS

THERE ARE A MANY!

POINT SYSTEMS

• Experience points (XP): can only increase, are accumulated by performing positive actions, are typically used in leaderboards, to rank players against each other, can expire over time (to level the playing field), can never max out

• Redeemable points (RP): can fluctuate, "earn and burn", create a virtual economy, can be challenging from a regulatory standpoint, special attention to the economics of it

• Skill points: to insist on some special objectives and skills you want players to develop, like speed, reliability or customer service for couriers, you can associate special rewards with each skill score

• Karma points: designed to be given away, for example when one player helps another one, are often given for check in activities, good for altruism and socialization

• Reputation points: proxy for trust, players will try to game this before anything else, typically associated with rating systems

• Life points: or energy bar, each time you do something negative, you lose a life or some energy, as time goes by you recover some of it, when you reach zero, you are out

SCORING PRINCIPLES

• You should always combine several kinds of scores for different purposes

• The moment you create a point system, one of the parallel games becomes to cheat it

• The less transparent your point system, the more inefficient it gets because people don't know how to progress, and they try to guess how to progress and guess wrong (and if their guess was wrong, it creates frustration and players leave the flow)

LEVELS

• Levels indicate progress on the path to mastery

• Sticky because there is no shortcut

• Must be more and more difficult (number of points to get to a level is not linear)

• Using a progress bar or percentage can be a good idea

• You can use metaphors like colors, precious metals or even bike types (pedalo, cuistax, tricycle, scooter, BMX, VTT, race bike, speed bike)

• Make it visual

LEADERBOARDS

• Really speaks to killers and achievers

• Show ranking in context (player in the middle)

• Slice it socially (amongst friends), geographically (by city) or globally, over time (eg last week), or even by skill score

• Make interactions easier between players at the same level since they are playing the same game

• If possible give hints as to how the player can move up one rank

• Be careful about privacy and safety

• Keep it positive: no public shaming for bad scores

• Make it social, easily shareable

DYNAMICS

BADGES

• Used to brag about achievements to other players

• Allow you to create challenges for players

• Can add an element of surprise (Foursquare badges)

• Can be used as milestones for progress

• Encourage social promotion (make it shareable)

• Can be used instead of levels

• Too many badges kill badges

• Can be used as a sign of belonging (eg fixie, pizza box, helmet, electric bike, TEE exclusive, etc.)

ONBOARDING

• Insist heavily on the first few minutes

• Give points right away

• Don't force people to register to enter the game

• Give them a taste of what the game will be about from a get go

• Give information and rules progressively, not all at once

• Make your players win directly

• Design a very clear path at the beginning: action, reward, action, action, reward, register, action, action, share, …

CHALLENGES AND QUESTS

• Can be used to cope with fluctuations in the game (for us the Euro cup and other special events), or to compensate seasonality (July-August versus winter), or for special events (eg launching a new city)

• Break the monotonous nature, the routine of the game

• Better specific to given group of players at a certain level

• Encourage cooperation and/or competition

• Let players join if they want, or leave them alone if they won't

SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT LOOPSDifferent loops for different levels, increase virality

AND HOW TO POLICE IT

GAMING THE SYSTEM

• « people attempt to exploit any system in which there is something they deem of value »

• no market is self-policing

• make all your levels configurable to be able to adapt them as you discover abuse

• make all changes as transparent as possible

• policing the system is a power you can award to some players themselves once they have reached a certain level

• cover your ass in terms of service

• log all the actions and their consequences on game dynamics and mechanics in order to analyse the behavior of players

• Police iteratively as you discover new abuses, you can't get it right the first time

HOW TO DESIGN A GAMIFIED EXPERIENCE?

LIST ALL THE ACTIONS YOU WANT TO ENCOURAGE IN PLAYERS

STEP 1

• Register in advance to shifts

• Show up

• Accept a delivery

• Be at the restaurant on time

• Be at the customer's on time

• Rate the restaurant

• Smile to the customer

• Take good care of the food

• Stay until the end of his shifts

• Bring in another courier

• Train a newbie courier

• Help another courier

• Fix their bike themselves

• Etc.

RANK THOSE PLAYER ACTIONS

STEP 2

• From the most important to the least important for you

• Keep the five top ones

• Place those five top actions on the Bartle quadrant

PLACE YOUR ACTIONS ON THE SCALE OF MASTERY

STEP 3

ASSIGN A VALUE IN POINTS TO EACH ACTION

STEP 4

Experience Redeemable Skilleg reliability Karma Life

Join 1000 100

Train 2000 3

Register for a shift 2000

100 for each advance

week

Show up 500 500 10 -1/3 if they don't

Do a delivery 100 10

Reputation points are usually given by others

DESIGN BADGE SYSTEM

STEP 5

• Think of a badge series to guide people to reaching each level (eg first order, first five orders, first twenty orders)

• Think of a series of badges to show community belonging (eg fixie, electric bike, etc.)

• Think of a few surprise badges that people only discover when they get them

• Identify a logo for each badge

• Make those badges visual on courier profiles

DESIGN YOUR ONBOARDING EXPERIENCE

STEP 6

• What questions will you ask your players first?

• What actions will they be able to perform even before they register?

• How many points will you give them right away?

• Which rules are you going to reveal at each step of the onboarding process?

• Which opportunities to fail can you remove at the beginning?

• Design a first challenge for newbies

DEFINE A SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT LOOP FOR EACH LEVEL

STEP 7

• What is the motivating emotion? (eg Twitter: connecting and expressing)

• What's the social call to action? (eg Twitter: tweets)

• How do you reengage players? (eg Twitter: @mentions)

• How do you make progress and rewards visible? (eg Twitter: followers)

STEP 8

• Decouple the game implementation from the business implementation in order to be able to change them independently

• While making the overall experience as integrated as possible

• Even better if you combine game mechanics and dynamics with the basic features of a social network:

• User profiles

• Connections between players

• Action feed for each user

IMPLEMENT A BASIC GAME

GAMIFICATION BY DESIGNGABE ZICHERMANN

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Power of gamification