1. Building Health Behaviors Online
Frameworks From Social Gaming
using Video on Facebook
motivate
enable trigger
amuse story
social simple easy to
hook goal
reward specific
do
intuitive
task
complex simple natural
Lily Cheng & Benjamin Olmsted
habits.stanford.edu
June 3, 2010

2. The Game: Veggie Wars
motivate
Plot - Evil vegetables are trying to
create a predatory vegetable creature
amuse story called the Preying Eggplantis to take
over the human race....
Goal - As part of Rewards - Earn promotions
Commander FORK’s army, and complete challenges to
you are given missions to increase your rank among
help defeat this evil ploy the team.
social
hook goal
reward

3. The Game: Veggie Wars
simple easy to
enable specific
do
task
Stab Veggies
w/ FORK
(hot trigger)
EXAMPLE MISSION
Watch video
@ lunch/dinner
H ot!
Get Mission Leave comment
“ME vs Veggie
Score: 1 - 0”

4. The Game: Veggie Wars
reminder - when the users sees
trigger intuitive a FORK, it acts as a vivid
reminder to eat vegetables
Stab Veggies
w/ FORK
(hot trigger)
HOT TRIGGER
@ lunch/dinner
H ot!

5. Player Participation:
Members | Active Users | Daily Users
20 7 4
Did you eat more Did the Fork remind
Types of Responses: veggies? you to eat veggies?
Comments | Photos | Video Yes | Maybe | No Yes | No
50 10 1 4 2 4 3 6
Mission 1: Fork Mission 2: Mission 3: Mission 4: Battle Mission 5:
Player Agents Rescue Mission How’d ya Begins Preying
do it? (weekend) Eggplantis
Heather
Marilyn
Ben
Rachel
Nancy
Kichelle
Ye Shen

6. Insights completing mission
Levels of difficulty:
(easy) watching video << commenting < posting photo <<<< posting video (very hard)
Facebook? good for Users are middle- Team tasks increased
prototyping, but limited aged women? participation
feature set & integration social gaming demographic
Clear Task > Reward link
Private game play increased engagement
important for some helped overcome barriers to more
users difficult tasks e.g. posting a photo
More pictures of food
than of people posted fun to be called out Tasks should match ability
by name in videos - but varies by user
“challenge” tasks worked well
Some triggers resonate better than
others for different users
try something like “chose your own weapon”

7. How to Improve: We say:
Users say: Add explicit game
structure & rules
“Would have liked more
specific tasks e.g. eat Improve timing &
these colors” consistency of videos
“More Star Wars Transfer to Photo-
references” enabled mobile game,
helps increase content
integration
“different way to prompt
videos”
More specific tasks that
are “just simple enough”
“Non-war theme, please”
Build up engagement
“I don’t want it to end”
Integrate video & text

8. More to explore
The right level of “Simple”
too simple seen irrelevant vs too
hard prompts excuses not to
participate
The right ratio of passive to
active users
passive users watch videos and
sometimes complete tasks, but do
not comment - active users keep up
the energy and contribute content
Balance violence &
rebellion with positive tasks
violence in games can be fun and
familiar, but some users prefer
positive tasks - can a game
incorporate both without sacrificing
one or the other?

9. THANKS!
Let us know what you
think of Veggie Wars
Comments welcome!
Please contact Lily with any questions
at: veggiewars@gmail.com
motivate enable trigger Lily is a master’s student in the Earth
Systems Program. Her current research
is in energy use and behavioral change.
Benjamin is a Junior in Architectural
Design with a strong emphasis in
product design for behavioral change.