Scott Dodson's Gamification presentation at the Gamification Augmentation event

1. Scott Dodson
@Gamebiz
Head of Marketing, Business Owner
Virgin Poker, Gamesys.co.uk

2. Relationship between Design,
Motivational Design, &
Gamification
 Design
 Motivational
Design
 Gamification

3. MeMe Me

4. Me
 Chronic Entrepreneur

6. Used ‘Game Layers’
/Layer of Abstraction
 Weren't manipulation
 Playful Perception
 Mind numbing jobs
 Dating
 Holding a conversation
 Sales – Cold Calling
 Raising Angel/VCMoney
 Game layers worked.

7. OMFG

8. You’re doing it wrong

13. Copernican Turn

14. Copernican Turn

15. Copernican Turn

16. User
Viewer
Customer
Reader
Customer
Viewer
Media/Brand
Copernican Turn
 The Media/Brand set the terms of
engagement

17. Copernican Turn
 New engagement methods are needed
AppBrand
Property
Site Service
Media
User, Viewer,
Reader Customer

18. Not just for Readers/Audiences:
Identifying the ‘player’: Who do
you want to motivate?
 Readers
 Authors/Content Creators
 Amplifiers (platforms, influencers)
 News organizations/media companies
themselves
 And what do you want them to do?

19. Kick Ass Motivational
Designers

20. Rest of this talk:
 Some Pitfalls
 Designing for Sustained engagement
 Different User Contract
 Using the Flow Channel
 Types of Motivation
 Intrinsic Needs Satisfaction
 Power of Habit
 UI & UX

21. Four Common Pitfalls
 To use motivational design most
effectively, remember that:
 Pleasure is contextual
 No one methodology is a panacea “One
size does not fit all”
 Rewards can backfire
 Being creepy, controlling or manipulative
has a cost

22. 1. Pleasure is…
CONTEXTUAL
Credit: Jesse Schell: The
Pleasure Revolution

23. 1. Pleasure is…
CONTEXTUAL
Credit: Jesse Schell: The
Pleasure Revolution

24. 2. No Single Solution: “Choco-
fication!”
Credit: Jesse Schell: The
Pleasure Revolution

25. Credit: Jesse Schell: The
Pleasure Revolution

26. Credit: Jesse Schell: The
Pleasure Revolution

27. Credit: Jesse Schell: The
Pleasure Revolution

28. Credit: Jesse Schell: The
Pleasure Revolution

29. 3. Rewards can Backfire

32. The Undermining Effect:
Deactivation of Bilateral Striatum as a Function of Rewards in
Subsequent Performance
Control Group
Reward Group

33. The Undermining Effect:
Deactivation of Bilateral Striatum as a Function of Rewards in
Subsequent Performance
Control Group
Reward Group

34. 4. Unchecked, “Data Driven
Design” Can Drive Bad UX

35. What do I mean by Data Driven
Design?

37. Developer, Site, Journal
Cherished
Customer

38. Pitfalls of Behavioral AB testing
 You can often get someone to do something
once
 Why we take action is as key as that we take
action

39. Discomfort ≠ Sustained
Engagement
Kill the puppy
Spam my friends

43. Subtle Language of

45. Designing for sustained
engagement –fundamental
theories

46. “Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome
unnecessary obstacles” – Bernard Suits
A Goal
Rules
Voluntary
Obstacles
A Feedback
System
Credit: Jane McGonigal:
Reality is Broken

47. Designing for Sustained
Engagement
 I. Establish a different user “contract”
 A game is voluntary framework for the user
experience
 Obstacles desirable!

48. In the right context work is highly
satisfying

49. Designing for Sustained
Engagement
 II. Design for flow; segment the
experience
Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
Amy Jo Kim

50. III. Good UI/UX
—the ‘game-y stuff’ can be subtle
 <Ninja Level 11: Cat>

51. …Subtle and “Domain
Resonant”
1 2
3
66% more people than normal chose
the stairs over the escalator.
+
=

52. …Subtle and “Domain
Resonant”

53. Two Types of Motivation
 Extrinsic Motivation – Behavior
that is motivated by contingencies
(rewards, punishments) that are
separate from the enjoyment of the
activity itself
 Intrinsic Motivation – The activity
itself is its own reward because it is
inherently satisfying. In particular,
humans have specific intrinsic needs
that motivate.

54. Designing for Sustained
Engagement
 IV. Motivational Psychology
 Shift from purely extrinsic thinking

55. Why People do things
 Taiichi Ohno’s (Toyota): ‘Ask “Why?” 5
times and the nature of the problem as
well as its solution becomes clear.’
 Avoid or Relieve Pain (easy one)
 Experience Pleasure (trickier)
 But as humans, we have a *need* to
experience pleasure
 Either way= satisfying a need

56. Sensation
Fantasy
Discovery
Laughter
Story
Challenge
Thrill
Triumph
Expression
Credit: Jesse Schell: The
Pleasure Revolution

58. 3 Drivers of Intrinsic Motivation
Scott Rigby - Immersyve
• Feeling “good at”
• Expanding capability
• Learning
• Mastery
COMPETENCE
• Freedom and agency
• Exercising volition
• Choosing
• Many opportunities for
action
AUTONOMY
• You matter to others
,they matter to you
• Meaningful connections
• Competitive, cooperative,
• Even removed:
characters in a book or
movie, developers of an
app.
RELATEDNESSC A R

59. Competence, Autonomy & Relatedness:
most reliable predictors of engagement
• Multiple longitudinal studies
with 20,000+ subjects
• Underlying psychological
causality vs. solely outcome
metrics (e.g., “clicks” or “fun”)
PENS predicts
sustained engagement...
“Fun” does not.
(PENS) Methodology: Personal Experience of Needs Satisfaction
Approach uses statistical regression analysis to predict long-term engagement
Competence, Autonomy,
Relatedness
Predictive power
with p values <.01

60. Month 1 Month 12

61. PENS design: Competence
 Scaled challenges (flow)
 Clear & juicy feedback
 Level=expanded capabilities

62. Competence Satisfaction in
Journalism
 Learning
 Sense of Completion (article, paper)
 Leveraging knowledge in other
situations—noticeably on top of current
events

63. PENS design: Autonomy
 Mechanics of Choice and Opportunity
 Open Environment - Playground
 Progression choices (focus, tree-structure)
 Sense of purpose/volition

64. Autonomy Satisfaction in
Journalism
 Personal goals might include:
 Becoming smarter, well informed
 Gaining depth in a particular subject/domain
 Being up to date, current, hip, in-the know
 Relaxation, decompression, comforting ritual

65. PENS design: Relatedness
 You matter to others, they matter to you
 Competitive cooperative
 Reciprocity awesome; synchronicity, meh
 Player to Player; P2NPCs; P2Dev; P2Brand
 Clear effort applied on my
behalf=Relatedness
Hey! It’s the
Hero of
Kvatch! I
can’t believe
it! Wow!”
“…Brave,
brave Sir
Robin…”

66. Relatedness Satisfaction in
Journalism
 Interacting with writers, reporters, authors,
editors
 Being known by other readers
 Being invited to contribute/being interviewed
 Knowing people involved in the story
 Meeting staff, subjects, other readers

67. Final Concept: Power of
Habit
 Nir Eyal: Hooked
 Best set of Distinctions I’ve seen based
in a Behavioral framework

68. The Hook Model

69. Trigger
 Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Trigger

70. Action
 Fogg’s Elements of Simplicity
 Time – how long
 Money – financial cost
 Physical Effort – labor involved
 Brain Cycles – mental effort
 Social Deviance – how accpeted
 Non-Routine – how disruptive

71. UI crash course
 Its never fun if you can’t figure out how to
play
 Confusing UI will bounce people in a
heartbeat
 Concept of “Distinction”
 Pattern recognition
 Distinguishing something from its background

72. What is this?
2

73. How about this?

74. What is this?

75. This?

76. Random shapes around which
everyone shares the same
distinction

77. Lesson Learned
 Banking App on facebook
$?

78. UI: lowering the threshold for
action
 And not creating an experience of anti-
competence

79. The Fundamentals of UX
 Understand the reason people use a
product or service
 Lay out the steps the customer must
take to get the job done from
Implementation to Outcome
 Start removing steps (or failing that,
making each step as easy as possible)
until you have the simplest process
possible

80. The Fundamentals of UX
 Identify a Desire
 Use technology to take out the steps

81. Reward
 According to Nir:

82. Nir’s Framework for Rewards
(Needs Satisfaction)

83. 3 Drivers of Intrinsic Motivation
Scott Rigby - Immersyve
• Feeling “good at”
• Expanding capability
• Learning
• Mastery
COMPETENCE
• Freedom and agency
• Exercising volition
• Choosing
• Many opportunities for
action
AUTONOMY
• You matter to others
,they matter to you
• Meaningful connections
• Competitive, cooperative,
• Even removed:
characters in a book or
movie, developers of an
app.
RELATEDNESSC A R

85. Forming Long Term Habits

86. Think about your habits
 Hygiene, Nutirtion
 Exercise
 Facebook/Instagram/Twitter
 Media Consumption

87. Roadmap for sustained
engagement
 I. Focus on satisfying Intrinsic as well as extrinsic
needs
 II. Establish a fertile context for the experience:
Align with an Epic Quest and offer Voluntary
challenges and a foundation of support.
 III. Design with the power of work/Investment in
mind
 IV. Be Mindful of Flow- segment the experience for
satisfying challenges if necessary
 V. V. Keep it Simple
 VI. Establish Habits

88. Sensation
Fantasy
Discovery
Laughter
Story
Challenge
Thrill
Triumph
Expression
Credit: Jesse Schell: The
Pleasure Revolution

89. You CAN make experiences
better
 Ask yourself these
simple questions:
 Given what I know about
my guests…
 Why will they like this
experience?
 How can I get them to like
it more?
Credit: Jesse Schell: The
Pleasure Revolution

90. Thank You!
 scott.dodson@gamesys.co.uk
 @Gamebiz

91. Framework/Context Critical

92. Concrete : Explicit
Extrinsic Intrinsic
Creative : Imaginative : Abstract
Engagement Layer
Continuum

93. More Domain Specificity

94. More from thefuntheory.com

95. Credits
 Scott Rigby- CEO Immersyve, author, Glued to Games (with Richard Ryan)
 Nir Eyal- Consultant, Author, Hooked
 Jane McGonigal- Creative Director, Social Chocolate, author, Reality Is Broken, Ph.D. Berkeley
 Sebastian Deterding-PhD at the Research Center for Media and Communication at Hamburg
University
 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Claremont Graduate University, former head of psychology at
the University of Chicago
 Amy Jo Kim- designer of social gaming systems, PHD University of Washington
 Wanda Meloni, M2 Research: http://slidesha.re/gg49nb
 Dr. Byron Reeves of the Department of Communication at Stanford &
J. Leighton Read, Executive Chairman, Seriosity, Inc., authors of Total Engagement
 David Edery Principal, Fuzbi co-author with Ethan Mollick of Changing the Game: How Video
Games Are Transforming the Future of Business
 Gabe Zichermann and Joselin Linder authors of Game Based Marketing
http://gamebasedmarketing.com/ Chair of Gamification.co
 James Currier of Ooga Labs who also credits Clay Shirky and Bret Terrill
 Jesse Schell, Professor of Entertainment Technology CMU, CEO Schell Games. Jesse’s talk from
DICE: http://tiny.cc/TebRw The pleasure revolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PkUgCiHuH8
 Keith Smith, & Carrie Peters of BigDoor.
 Rajat Paharia & Mike Earhart of Bunchball
 Scott Schnaars & MattHart of Badgeville
 Eric Eastman, John Bito, Nathan Affolter, Jason Griffith, Jimmer Sivertsen, Julie Hill & Mike
Kerr of Bobber
 My sincere apologies to anyone on this list or otherwise who feels they were not properly
credited. Kindly point out my error and I will edit accordingly.

96. Appendix

97. The Challenge
 Great games are hard enough:
 Only 4% of games that go into production are
profitable
 Add a “real world” activity and you
multiply the difficulty of success
 Often not enough just to have the “form of
a game”

98. Unicorn poop is still poop

99. Concrete : Explicit
Extrinsic Intrinsic
Creative : Imaginative : Abstract
Engagement Layer
Continuum

100. Concrete : Explicit
Extrinsic Intrinsic
Creative : Imaginative : Abstract
Engagement Layer
Continuum

101. What’s coming?
 Psychological Technology &Motivational
Design
 Tablet as console
 “Subscription based” console
 Augmented Reality

102. What’s coming?

103. What’s coming?
 Platforms as Subscription/F2P
 Ouya

104. What’s coming?
 Augmented Reality