Badges are the Backup Quarterbacks of Game Design - Interaction 13

January 28, 2013Badges are the Backup Quarterbacks of Game Designhugeinc.cominfo@hugeinc.com45 Main St. #220 Brooklyn, NY 11201+1 718 625 4843

@kunaldpatel +500 pts

Badges are the backupquarterbacks of game design.

Badges are the backupquarterbacks of game design. More on that later.

The gamification question.“How can games make my product more engaging?”

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 UX Problems Patterns

Game whisperer.Game Design UX Problems Patterns

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.

Level 1-1:Poking the system.

Give users a chance.• 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.

How an Interaction Designer mightexplain Pac-Man to users1. 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 3 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.

Pac-Man doesn’t explain shit. He just starts moving.

Poking is fun! Keep it that way.• 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.

Level 1-2The InvisibleTutorial.

Teach through your design.• 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.

Bounces off pipe so you run into itMoving in oppositedirection of Mario

Remember when I made funof ID’s explaining Pac-Man? Shoe, meet the other foot.

No one’s perfect, not even Mario.

The mistake. Sweet redemption.

No idea. You’re onyour own, buddy.

Whoops.

Best. CTA. Ever.

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

Set the foundation before trying todecorate the interior.• 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)

Level 1-3Immersivetutorials.

Help that knows when to leave.• 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.

What’s good for the game is good for thetutorial.• 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 you’re me).• Look for smart ways to opt a user out of this. Have they been here before? Do they already have an account?

Knowing when tohelp.

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?

Balancing pace and content is essentialto gameplay.• 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.

Rewardingengagement.

The Gamerscore filled the void leftbehind by arcade machines.• 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.

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94different Q&A networks.

A tale of twobackups.

2nd-year backup.

4-yr pro. Signed to be a starter.

Led his team to the Super Bowl.

Didn’t start a single game.

Let’s break it down:Colin Kaepernick. Matt Flynn.• Controversial move to start • Sought by multiple teams, him over a successful QB signing seen as good move• 8 Pro Bowlers from his team, • Played with arguably best WR 5+ elite teammates on offense core with his old team• Low expectations, just needed • Needed to be the offensive to fit into a successful team leader and star for new team• Drafted by head coach, plays • Had to learn a new offense in offense suited to his style open competition

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, arethe 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 ______ inthe game, and what happens before & after?

Accountability.What is _______ asked toaccomplish in the game?

Evaluation.What are good and bad examples of _______ at work?

If you believe _______ arethe answer for your product, bring its teammates along.

hugeinc.cominfo@hugeinc.com45 Main St. #220 Brooklyn, NY 11201+1 718 625 4843

Thanks.This would not have been possible without friends in thegame design community who provided theexpertise, inspiration, and advice needed to pull this off. Iwould like to thank the following people, in no particularorder:Nicholas Fortugno (@nickfortugno)Zach Gage (@helvetica)Joe Kowalski (@codeloss)Kan-Yang Li (@ghettokon)Peter Knocke (@gustavthree)

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Badges are the Backup Quarterbacks of Game Design - Interaction 13

by Kunal Patel on Feb 04, 2013

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Badges are the Backup Quarterbacks of Game Design - Interaction 13 Presentation Transcript