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Principles of Game Design in Real-Life Solutions
The document discusses the application of video game principles to real-life tasks, emphasizing the importance of enjoyment and engagement through design features like challenges and rewards. It highlights examples such as Pokémon Go and collaborative gameplay elements in games like World of Warcraft, demonstrating how these principles can motivate specific actions, such as exercising or resource gathering. The document also addresses pitfalls in user experience design and offers strategies for improving task completion through gamification and clear goals.
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Principles of Game Design in Real-Life Solutions
- 4. Video Game Real-lifeapplication
- 5. Video Game Real-lifeapplication General characteristics • Deliver an enjoyable experience. General characteristics • Support day-to-day tasks. • Purpose is contained within the realm of the game. • Uses challenges, reward systems, storytelling and competition to keep players engaged and invested. • Purpose is anchored in real life mechanics. • Uses carefully planned design to reduce friction and allow the user to pass through as seamless as possible.
- 6. Progress tracking Rewards program Scoreboards Points Points,points, points….
- 7. ”Find a wayto make people exercise more” Some health organisation
- 8. Something similar toNike Run Club Pokémon GO
- 9. Pokémon GO Design approach •The goal is to run, move and get some exercise. Design approach • The goal is to have fun catching all Pokémon. • Premise: getting up in the morning to exercise is difficult – we must reward the user with golden stars. • Premise: in any game there must be rules as well as challenges between the player and their goal. Goal: to run How to get there: by running Goal: Catch all pokémon How to get there: by running Something similar to Nike Run Club
- 10.
- 11.
- 13. Obstacles Rules ofgravity Less intuitive mechanics Super Mario Bros. level 1-1
- 15. Play around andfind out 1st principle
- 16. Pitfalls • We feellike we need to explain every option, scenario and risk, before the user can proceed to the next step. • We forget to consider the context and the timing of our message. • We explicitly signal to the user that we have no faith in them. Apply for or renew passport What we could have asked ourselves… • How do we make the first task the easiest task? • How do we limit options? • How do we make failure enlightening?
- 17.
- 20. If something feelslike a chore, make it part of a desirable goal 2nd principle
- 21. Break the monotony! Recognizeexcellence! “Gamification was a big plus for friendly agent competition (…) we had 5 top winners who received a gift card. Freshdesk
- 22.
- 23. Collaboration and communication Voicelesscommunication (Journey) Donate your redacted to aid others (Nier Automata) Anonymous messages (Souls series)
- 25. World of warcraft •2 factions are at war. • Each team is for the most part minding their own business. • If players from opposing teams cross paths, they will probably try to kill each other.
- 26. • The twoopposing factions must pool together their resources in order to progress in the game. • The opposing factions are still at war with each other. • The opposing factions can’t communicate in-game. • Individual rewards limited to the duration of the event. “The war efforts” event
- 27. • Establish warfree zones where required resources were in abundance. • Policing violators of the peace treaty. • Pacing and stalling the progression to ensure that limited-time-only rewards were achieved. • Newer players saw an opportunity to get rich from gathering resources from low-level zones. So… what happened?
- 28. The goalwas clear and it was obvious why it should be pursued 3rd principle Why was the war efforts a succesful event? Collaboration was a mandatory prerequisite for success Perhaps gamers are just really good at problem solving
- 29.
- 30. Morgenbooster June 152022 Want to hear more? Catch me on LinkedIn
Editor's Notes
- #4 But before we get that far I want to discuss this strange realm inbetween the digital gaming world and what I have, in lack of a better word, called real life.
- #5 In case any of you are unfamiliar with these two just know, that in Donkey Kong you try to rescue a princess from a giant ape, while the DSB app can show you schedules for trains and metro and let you buy tickets.
- #6 The video game is expected to deliver on an enjoyable experience. The user, or player, has probably set aside time to play with it, without much external persuasion. The real life application on the other hand, is designed to support an everyday activity. The user would probably not use this solution, if the real world didn't prompt it. As such, the purpose of the two also differ, as the video game's purpose is contained within the game, whereas the other is anchored in real life. And finally, in the way they differ in the design approach, (…) and the other solution is using carefully planned design to reduce friction and quickly passage through.
- #7 And I'm not saying that this is inherently bad. I'm actually confident, that most applications that gamify the experience does actually have more engaged users. To be honest I probably wouldn't be so vigilant towards phising emails, if I didn't find it amusing to rack up gold stars and earn my shields.
- #9 Make an app with an established goal: to run. And sprinkle it with gamification, by rewarding the user with gold stars based on how long they ran, how frequent they ran and how they ranked compared to other users on these parameters. "The Running Game: challenge your friends". … What I could have made instead, if I truly wanted to leverage what make video games engaging, and not just sprinkle some gaming-esce features on top of a run-of-the-mill product.. Was something this: At least in the beginning of the game's life cycle back in 2016, the impact was unmatched - also in terms of both physical, mental and social health of the millions of players.
- #10 On the other hand the goal of Pokemon GO is to catch pokemon and have fun while doing it. So the reward of using the product is already inherent in its reason to exist. And because we are dealing with an actual video game, the premise we design on is that games must have rules and challenges. And because of this, everything is served to us on a silver platter. If my Client wanted me to get people to exercise, that would be a rule or challenge the player had to overcome, to catch pokemon. It could also be to pick up trash, water flowers or filing your tax report on time. The point is, my options in terms of encouraging a certain type of behaviour, is not limited to the incentives i put on top of my product - because the incentive is already there; because it's a game.
- #13 This is the original Super Mario game from 1985. And the level design of the first few minutes of the game is a textbook example on subtle onboarding, learning by doing and have fun in the meantime.
- #14 Without any text, formal intro or the likes thereof, we learn about the world around us , it's obstacles, rules and how we navigate in it.
- #15 And it's not as if there was no manual - it came with the box, so if your mom didn't throw it away, you could consult it at your convenience. But the game never needed a manual. Because it was designed with the principle of play around and find out applied to it
- #16 Play around and find out The Learning process must be part of what makes the experience enjoyable But does that mean I think we should turn everything into a game? … would be cool. So does this mean that we should let users run their head against a wall until they figure out how to reach the goal of a task flow? It may sound a bit counterproductive - and definitely not something you lean in UX school.
- #17 Let’s look an example from borger.dk – the page you go to when you need to renew or apply for a passport. If we apply this principle of playing around t find the right path, and learn the rules of the universe – or rules of passport applications - and not see mistakes as end of the road, but rather part of finding the right path, we may rid ourselves from the dependency of these virtual manuals.
- #19 This is an image from World of Warcraft. An almost 20-year-old game that is still one of the most played online role playing games. I played this game like crazy back in the day. Which is interesting because… for the most part it's rather boring. At least on paper.
- #20 Throughout most of the game you solve mundane and repetitive tasks, that you track using a quest log - as shown in this image here. So why is this still an aspirational example? When a well structured narrative surrounds the so-called mundane tasks, it becomes less about what you do and more about why you do it.
- #21 So what does this mean in terms of real-life-solutions… Is it about constructing a narrative around why we go to work and go about our day? Should we turn everything into a quest, whenever we aknowledges that we are trying to get people to do something boring?
- #22 Well if you ask Freshdesk, this is exactly what we can learn from our quest-log example. What I find interesting about this is how explicitly they acknowledge, that you may have a boring and mundane job.
- #23 The 3rd and final prinicple is going to be a little different than the previous two. Because what I want to talk about is collaboration and communication.
- #24 There are many interesting examples: In the Souls series, a single player game, players can leave messages around the world, to players they will never meet or interact with. In Journey you are paired up with a random player, who you can’t explicitly communicate with, other than through actions And in Nier Automata, the aid you will get on your quest to complete the game depends on sacrifices other players make in their game. And vice-versa.
- #25 But I think the single best example to draw inspiration from is, yet again, from world of warcraft– and a specific event that happened during the game’s life cycle. But more on that in a second.
- #27 But a few years into the game's life cycle, an event was triggered, that required both factions to collaborate on pooling together a lot of resources - in order for them both to progress in the game. And I unfortunately have no idea how Blizzard, the company behind the game, tested the concept prior to launch, or if they just prayed and hoped
- #28 I think of this example whenever I struggle with creating transparency across project tracks. Or when it's clear that there are dependencies across a company's organisation-silos that just seem impossible to align on a daily basis.
- #29 And back to me aknowledging the fact, that simply copy/pasting these factors into a complex organisation isn’t as simple as such. Sure, ok. But think about this. The gamers, and players who achieved this, were not project managers. They were not designers, a significant chunk of the players base wasn’t even adults. So as a final thought, just as we can extend the inspiration we can draw from game design principles, perhaps we can draw just as much inspiration from the gamers themselves, and the mindset they assume when it comes to problem-solving and overcoming opstacles.