Gamification is not a Game!

Gamification is the future. It’s undoubtedly a brilliant way to engage people. We want to build gamification in our product too!

Unfailingly, everyone has this perception. From a HR Head of a consulting company who is concerned about employee productivity and work life balance, to a Start Up Product Manager who wants to have stickiness to the app – everyone realizes the importance of Gamification. And rightly so – gamification has proved to make quantifiable, positive business impact.

The problem, however is, people do not understand what gamification is. And that is a very big issue – because gamification done wrongly can impact business metrics in a negative way.

What is Gamification?

We love to play. We don’t like work that much.. why is that? We can spend hours on video / computer games or our favorite sport, on our favorite social media, without realizing how much time we have spent, or trying to cross a various level / perfecting a technique, or just scrolling down. Why?

Gamification attempts to understand this ‘why’ and how to leverage this answer to make our work more play-ful. There are arguments around the exact definition of gamification. To quote the World No. 1 Gamification Guru, Yu Kai Chou, Gamification is Human – Focused Design.

A lot of studies have gone into ‘why’, into the human psychology, into finding out the motivations behind human action, into establishing why certain apps become habits. The most fundamental answer comes from the self-determination theory, according to which an individual will be motivated to take up a task if three things are provided –

Competence - or ability to perform the task

Autonomy - or the freedom to choose to opt in to the task (not forced into)

Relatedness - to a larger cause, purpose, other people

There are some brilliant studies and work done by scholars, scientists and gamification professionals to further apply human – focused design in different contexts and constraints. Nudge Theory by Nobel laureate Richard Thaler, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s theory on state of flow, Yu Kai Chou’s Octalysis Framework, Nir Eyal’s Hook Model… the list goes on!

What Gamification is Not?

Gamification is not about points, leaderboards, badges. Unfortunately, due to massive buzz but limited understanding around Gamification, a lot of gamification tool and techniques are being wrongly used.

Some of the product managers I meet, would quote – we have enough gamification build on our platform. We have points, badges and leaderboards to drive competition with self and with others. We have a community where people can interact with each other.

While points or rewards could be a good way to attract people initially, these are just extrinsic motivators that die out with time. And they do more harm than that. Let me quote a study and then give an example.

In a painting class in Grade 3, a teacher started giving a golden star to the top 3 drawings of the class, to motivate all students to take active interest in paintings. For the next couple of weeks, the teacher saw great participation which started to fade away. The teacher stopped giving the golden stars, and to her surprise, some the students who were earlier interested in painting (before she started giving out the golden starts), were not that interested in painting anymore. The students had replaced their intrinsic motivation towards painting, the fun and joy they found in painting, with their motivation to get a golden star – which slowly died down. Painting is fun, exciting, something new every day. Whereas, golden star is the same golden star – there is less surprise or spontaneity and hence psychologically, not interesting after some days. Sad but true.

Now if we apply the same example to a health app that for eg. translates the miles, a user runs, into equivalent points; the focus of the user shifts from enjoying the run to gaining points. It becomes a trade-off between the benefits and inherent fun in running, vs points or badges. And after a certain time period, points are not that fun. Which means, neither we could keep a user engaged on the health app, nor we helped the user develop a healthy habit of running.

To be true to the cause, and more sustainable in the long run, the user should get the kick from dopamine release after a good workout (intrinsic motivation) and not from the points he/she accumulated (extrinsic motivation).

So now, if you wonder, why did the employee engagement drop when you had leaderboard and scores on internal knowledge collaboration platform in place, or why only 20% of employees completed their gamified reward based e-trainings, you know the application of gamification has not been done right. Gamification is not a game!

Do reach out if you need any advice on gamification or it’s applications in your context. Would be happy to help!

About the author -

Saamir is the founder of FITology. He creates alternate reality games to nudge people towards a healthier lifestyle. Over the last five years, he has developed and executed fun, engaging and gamified concepts for people across geographies, cultures and ages. As an ex-strategy consultant, he has advised world’s largest oil, chemicals and electricity companies on growth, cost reduction and operations optimization. He is also a Crossfit L1 Trainer, ACE Certified Group Instructor and trained Bollywood dancer & actor. He loves to travel around the world and make new friends.