Behavioral Insights, Motivating Action

The art of applying gamification

December 4, 2024 | by

The art of applying gamification.

Welcome to the “Becoming a B.S. Artist” series, where you will learn the fine art of using behavioral science tools to motivate action. This is the final post in the series. So far, we have covered Feedback Loops, Choice Architecture, and Scarcity.

This B.S. Tool: Gamification.

“Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts.” – Deterding et al. (2011)

Gamification is a behavioral science tool I knew I had to cover since it has exploded in popularity over the past several years.

Its growth is partially due to the fact that game design elements can feel like easy and simple ways to engage and motivate audiences. Gaming is also growing in popularity, meaning people are increasingly comfortable with – and even desire – game-like elements in non-game settings.

However, a big issue has emerged from gamification’s popularity: the tool is frequently implemented inaccurately or insufficiently to see results.

Most practitioners incorporate gamification through badges, point systems, and leaderboards. While these techniques are “game design elements” that can provide helpful feedback loops, they do not deliver enough motivation or engagement to constitute a complete gamification approach.

Multiple papers recommend practitioners move away from thinking of gamification as individual tactics that can be selected á la carte and applied (or “slapped onto”) existing projects. Behavioral scientists urge the field to adopt a user-centered and behavior-centered design approach to avoid jumping immediately to badges, leaderboards, and points.

Following an intentional design process prevents us from repeating others’ mistakes of using game-like elements that:

  • Are not aligned with our behavior change goal;

  • Produce extrinsic motivation that overrides intrinsic motivation;

  • Diminish in value and meaning over time;

  • Miss the core elements of what makes games engaging; and,

  • Annoy audiences instead of engaging them.

“When we describe gamification as “adding game-like elements,” we are automatically boxing ourselves into a process where we identify what these game-like elements are and then force them to fit any non-game context.” – Preeti Kotamarthi, The Decision Lab.

Since gamification is more complex than we may have initially thought, it’s important to learn the fine art of using it to motivate action.

Is gamification a good fit for your project?

Gamification is a good fit for projects where you must increase and sustain the audience’s motivation toward an end goal. I know that sounds like every single behavior change project out there, but it works best for these types of scenarios:

» Your project has an app or software program you want audience members to use consistently over a long period of time. Like participatory science apps that need a steady stream of data or nature engagement apps (e.g., BirdNet) that benefit from consistent user activity.

» You have an existing educational program with goal-oriented activities, like nature scavenger hunts, that could be more fun, playful, and engaging.

» Part of the behavior change program includes repetitive (and slightly boring) processes, like completing a daily logbook for catch reporting.

  • In this case study, researchers used gamification to encourage teenagers to log driving practice sessions consistently.

» You need to bridge the gap between “The Invitation” and “The Ask” in your outreach plan by creating an exciting way for the audience to engage with the topic and behavior change goal.

If gamification feels like a good fit for your project, the next critical question is: Are you prepared to design a gamified program from the ground up as a comprehensive, user-centered, audience-first process?

If you replied “yes,” you have successfully unlocked the next section of this post. (That’s a gamification joke…I think.)

Why gamification works.

There is a simple answer to why gamification works: because games are fun!!! 🙌

But as I’m learning, nothing is simple when it comes to gamification. Fun and play are two central reasons people are drawn to game-like experiences.

“Play can be a powerful way to motivate people. And this is exactly the same kind of thinking behind gamification – using play to motivate. Except that gamification draws more specifically upon video games, rather than just play. Because simply put, games are incredibly engaging.”  – Zac Fitz-Walter.

Beyond fun and play, there is a laundry list of ways games, play, and gamification provide value and benefits to its players, from the social aspects to the unpredictable surprises to the challenges that must be overcome.

Gamification experts are still unraveling which components produce the most engagement and motivation, which is hard to do when most games feature five or more elements per game (Cheng et al., 2019).

Here are some reasons people enjoy playing games and interacting with game-like elements.

With roots in entertainment and motivational psychology, gamification is much more than receiving tangible rewards like points and badges.

“Consider something more complex—for example, popular games like Fortnite or Animal Crossing. You don a new avatar and become a new person; you work towards goals like achieving new personal bests or upgrading your house; you encounter random rewards and form relationships with other players (whether real people or cute computerized animals). You can once again see many psychological effects at play here: self-image, intrinsic motivation, unpredictability, social norms, and so on.” – Preeti Kotamarthi, The Decision Lab.

What you need to get started.

It’s time to gather the materials we need to design and implement gamification. The five essential items you need are:

→ A clear end goal for what the audience should achieve through the gamified program. The goal can range from learning a new skill to achieving a more sustainable lifestyle (e.g., creating an energy-efficient house).

→  An audience segment already interested in achieving the goal mentioned above or a plan to cultivate an interested audience.

→ A sense of how you want the gamified audience experience to look and feel. Consider if there is an existing game you can draw parallels with to help envision the end result (e.g., Mario Kart, Wordle, Legend of Zelda, etc.)

→ A shared understanding within the project team of gamification’s role and purpose (why it’s the right choice to engage audiences) and a commitment to adopting an audience-first approach.

→ A traditional, non-gamified option for achieving the same end goal for audience members who do not want a gamified experience. Mandating games or play can backfire with some audience members; therefore, providing opt-out options is ideal.

How to implement gamification.

It’s like making a collage but so much harder. Sorry!

Reframe the end goal.

Typically, when we define the “clear end goal” from the previous section, we write it from our perspective: We want the audience to reduce their energy consumption. To use gamification in a compelling way, we should reframe the goal from the “player’s” perspective.

For example, the “Reduce Your Juice” gamified program helped renters save money on electricity bills by proactively managing their energy usage. Saving money and lowering the cost of bills is more compelling for the audience than “reducing energy consumption” or “increasing their energy efficiency.”

Create the challenges.

Every great game, sport, or story features challenges that must be overcome. Zac Fitz-Walter uses the following formula to create challenges when gamifying programs:

Goals + Rules = Interesting Challenges.

 

Even though we have an overarching end goal for the gamified program, we can also set smaller goals (or quests and levels) throughout the process. We then define the rules for how the user can or cannot achieve the goal.

The Reduce Your Juice program contains three mini-games that users should complete sequentially, featuring their own set of goals, rules, and rewards to keep the challenges interesting.

Design the experience.

This is arguably the hardest step in the creation process since there isn’t a formula to follow or a “right answer.” The gamified design should appeal to your audience, be aligned with the behavior goal, support best practices in motivational psychology, include multiple game-like elements, and be engaging AF.

That’s no small order! 

Amon Rapp (2015) used an ethnographic approach to create the following set of recommended design elements aimed “to support the development of intrinsic motivations, producing cognitive, social and emotional drives, instead of fostering mechanical behaviors through extrinsic rewards.” The linked paper gives detailed descriptions and explanations for each recommendation if you want to go down that rabbit hole.

Add feedback loops.

After identifying the experience and challenges, we can design relevant feedback to make the accomplishment more meaningful and engaging.

Interesting Challenges + Feedback = Meaningful Experiences

 

This is when points, leaderboards, and badges make sense to use. However, feedback can come in the form of unlocking new quests and levels, providing rewards (as seen in the Reduce Your Juice diagram), offering new accessories or skills for avatars, adding more time increments to time-based challenges, and more.

Plan for the future.

Consider how the gamification elements should change as time goes on or as the audience makes progress. For repetitive tasks like entering workouts into an app, the gamification elements should change over time to keep things interesting. On the other hand, journey-based programs may need to increase the challenges for audiences who reach advanced “levels.”

Test, test, and test again.

Since behavioral scientists are still determining which game-like elements work best to motivate action and engage audiences, and since those correlations will likely vary per behavior change goal, it’s helpful to continually test your program to ensure it is motivating the desired behaviors and is not creating barriers to action.

Watch out for that dragon!

Here are a few lava-filled moats to avoid.

For behavior change efforts, quality is greater than quantity when it comes to rewards. Several papers mentioned the risk of warped motivation when the goal is to rack up rewards. This can lead to players finding shortcuts, hacks, or optimization angles that prioritize external rewards over developing skills and intrinsic motivation. High-quality rewards doled out less easily and frequently can keep the audience on track.

Clearly define the competitor. For the most part, our gamified programs for behavior change should encourage collaboration over competition. But a dose of competition may be necessary to create interesting challenges. In this case, we want to clearly define WHO the player is competing against and why.

If you’re using leaderboards to motivate usage, try to balance out the point system with other game elements so there are multiple ways to “win” and gain advantages. You can also design the program so participants compete against themselves by improving their score, time, or performance in future rounds.

 

You’re now on your way to becoming a certified B.S. Artist! 

→ You can revisit all 4 B.S. Artist posts here at any time.

Here are some of the papers and posts I linked to above if you want to dive deeper into the world of gamification.

Related posts:

The art of crafting scarcity
The art of shaping choice architecture
The art of designing feedback loops