The Gamification of Everything (Part 1) - Why every product should be designed as a game?

A product manager who ignores the ongoing gamification process across all products globally is akin to burying their head in the sand. Gamification isn't just a recent phenomenon; its roots trace back to the dawn of life on this planet. Today, its adoption spans various sectors: B2C, B2B, hardware, marketplaces, etc. This post series will explore:

1. ?Part 1 - Why every product should be designed as a game?
2. ?Part 2 - Gamification: Dos and Don'ts, Examples, Selection Bias and Tragedy of the Commons.
3. ?Part 3 - Linkedin, Doulingo, Netflix, and the Future of Gamification

What is a GAME?

Games have been around since ancient times, but what is it? A clear and comprehensive understanding of this term is essential, as it not only highlights the expansive nature of games but also provides insights that can guide the design of gamified features in every product.

The Philosophical Answer:

Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: “To play a game is to voluntarily take on unnecessary obstacles for the sake of making possible the experience of struggling against them.” ?

So, a game is about obeying a set of rules. If I try to get from point A to point B but while bouncing a ball, then it's a game. I obey some kind of rule that was not there before. We invent struggle and obey ourselves into it. You tweak the activity to maximize satisfaction. Examples:

• Falling asleep is boring, but if I obey myself to ‘count sheeps’ while doing it, it would be a game.?
• Studying Spanish on Duolingo isn’t a game, but if I obey myself to do it better than my friends on the leaderboard, it would be a game.?
• Paying off my loan isn’t a game, but if I obey myself to do it as early as possible so I can get points I can redeem on Amazon, it would be a game.

In Bernard’s eyes, some struggles are beautiful and satisfying. What games do is they let you tweak the activity to maximize that satisfaction. Our abilities and the world don’t fit very well in real life. Most of the challenges are too big or too boring and little for us. And in games, we get to modify the world of the game and the abilities we’re allowed in the game until they fit just right. So, in a way, all life is a game, but some parts of life are just games that are not fun to play.?

C. Thi Nguyen, University of Utah, claims that “by playing different games, what we're doing is giving ourselves different capacities of agency.” Those capacities are usually fairly well-defined, and they include different choices we can make, different strategies we can deploy, etc. He also explains that in games, you know when you've won or lost, unlike in life.

I recommend reading the above part(“The Philosophical Answer”) twice. It’s just brilliant and can significantly inform our focus on what to build and how.

The Legal Defenition:

Recently, in the well-covered Epic Games v. Apple case, the court acknowledged that there was no commonly accepted industry definition of games, as "no one agrees, and neither side introduced evidence of any commonly accepted industry definition." The court rejected Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney's narrow definition of a game as one that "involves some sort of win or loss or a score progression" and requires "trying to build up to some outcome that you achieve."

Instead, the court defined it more closer to C. Thi Nguyen’s definition:? "At a bare minimum, games appear to require some level of interactivity or involvement between the player and the medium. In other words, a game requires that a player be able to input some level of a command or choice, which is then reflected in the game itself. This gaming definition contrasts with other forms of entertainment, which are often passive forms enjoyed by consumers (e.g., films, television, and music).”

The common definition nowadays:

Games are just a subset of ‘Play’ - Play means to engage in recreational activities like exploration, discovery, and experimentation, often in a symbolic representation of the real world. Games direct the natural human inclination to play.

Will Wright, maybe the greatest game designer of all times, said: “Each of us sees a slice of the world from our own different lens; gaming is the vehicle to allow players to see a different bunch of perspectives. You can take almost anything and make it a fascinating experience… I’m giving a player a toy, and the player is turning it into a game.”

Games all involve (1) players, (2) interacting within (3) a defined set of rules to achieve (4) a formalized outcome. Often, those interactions involve decision-making, uncertainty, and low cost of failure.?

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

According to Maslow's theory of basic human motivations, games fulfill essential psychological needs such as (1) achievement, (2) belonging & identity, and (3) power. Gamification leverages these innate desires for socializing, learning, mastery, competition,? achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, etc.?

From all those definitions, we can agree that games have to include struggle, rules, interaction, agency, and potential for desire fulfillment. Additionally, they could include reflection on the real world, uncertainty, and a low cost of failure.?

What is a GAMIFICATION?

Gamification is “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts with the intent of injecting fun, play, and passion into tasks and processes.” (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, & Nacke, 2011, p. 10)

This doesn't mean creating an actual game but rather incorporating game elements into the product. For example, the technique can encourage people to perform tasks they usually perceive as boring, such as filling out surveys, making purchases, completing tax forms, and so on.

The main reason the hype around the concept of gamification is so widespread is that every product manager dreams of their product engaging users as deeply as games do. This is user behavior that we don't see anywhere else. To illustrate, consider Phillip Toledano's project , which captures users playing a game and the emotions it evokes in them.

Why every product should be designed as a game?

Because of the FLOW. Good games must have a perfect flow. The JBTD (Job to be Done) is the flow itself, so they have to master it. What is so special about game flow? The Sacred Seven conditions for gamification. It took me so much time to compile this list after many failures. Features that follow this list will be able to create this perfect flow where users get so absorbed that they forget everything else—time, space, you name it. **This list should inspire you while designing features (gamified or not), but it’s okay if your feature fulfills only a few, especially in its MVP phase (Minimum viable product).

1. REPEATABLE: Build small, repeatable game loops. Each time you play, the experience feels as good as the last time (or better). The game core loop is a series of actions repeated over and over to eventually achieve the win condition; it’s the core essence of why we return to playing games over and over again.

Examples of a Game Loop:?

• Structure: [Clear rules] → A simple but challenging action → receive immediate feedback → earn a meaningful reward after completing the task → (? Repeat)
• Plant → Harvest → Sell → (? Repeat)
• Spot → Deafeat Enemy → Collect Resource → (? Repeat)

2. UNDERSTANDABLE: Clear goals and rules. Users ALWAYS know what to do next and how to do it. That’s why the FTUE (First Time User Experience, aka Onboarding) is such a big thing in every game/feature in the gaming industry.??

3. RESPONSIVE: Immediate feedback on the success of attempts to reach that goal. If players encounter fail states, they have to be quick, understandable, and immediately factored into the next loop (they can even be funny and humorous).?

4. CHALLENGING: Balance between challenge and skills. Surface a challenge the player would be confident they have the skills to handle. Gradually ramp up difficulty and complexity.? Start with a few options, then start adding more. In a way, that’s a desired friction in the core loop.?

While the common theory suggests a linear progression in the balance between challenge and skills, my experience indicates that other shapes, such as an S-curve, can also be effective. An S-curve allows for variable rates of challenge acceleration, where the difficulty increases more rapidly at certain points and more slowly at others. This can create a more engaging, dynamic, and volatile experience for the player.

5. AGENCY: A sense of control over interactions. Going back to C. Thi Nguyen’s definition of a game - Every gamified experience should involve giving users different capacities of agency. A balance between high-capacity interaction to low-capacity interaction (semi-defaulted interactions/outcomes).?

6. LEARNING & PROGRESSION: Mastery. Your learning from past experiences is useful in the new experience. A great example of progression is levels: Mastery → Level Up → Unlock more challenging tasks.

7.

RISK & EXPECTED REWARD:? Balance between risk and expected reward. Intrigue the ‘expected reward’ chemical, dopamine. It’s not about reward; it’s about anticipation of reward and the goal-directed behavior it’s able to fuel. The reward could be any value from the experience. Don’t rely on material rewards like coins or points. Examples:

• Discovery is a powerful incentive: Offer your users a glimpse of a larger world they can access later in the experience.?
• Self-expression
• Badges
• Ability to choose -? Let users pick their own teams and decide their own avenues, or design a strategy and watch it succeed or fail.

**This condition is pretty old, traced back to Harvard in the 1930s. The psychologist B. F. Skinner and his famous “Skinner box” taught us lessons that were validated hundreds of times afterward. The experiment: Birds in a cage, with a food dispenser controlled by a sensor or button. The goal was to make the birds as engaged as possible, which was measured by the number of times they packed the button. Lessons:

(1) Immediacy - The birds pecked most when doing so yielded immediate, rather than delayed, rewards.

(2) Variance (aka Risk) - The birds pecked most when it rewarded them randomly rather than every time.

(3) Reward types vary - The birds continued to peck the button long after the food dispenser was empty, provided they could hear it click. The birds had become conditioned to associate the click with the food and now valued the click as a reward in itself.

So, some people would say that I forgot one key condition. And I agree SOCIAL is a key element in most games nowadays. Super powerful tool. But I argue it’s not a MUST. No one can tell me my experience playing Story/Campaign Modes on a game like GTA isn’t a fascinating gamified experience. Funny I say that, as I work at Zynga, the pioneer of SOCIAL gaming. Zynga’s vision is to “connect the world through games". Create games that families and friends could enjoy playing together online. It’s a strong vision, and there are hundreds of examples where social is the main driver for success, but not all games need to be social.?

Main examples of SOCIAL elements in gamified experiences:

• Leaderboards
• Guilds
• Social Challenges
• UGC (User-Generated Content)

Throughout this series, we'll explore examples of these seven fundamental conditions deeply ingrained in every gaming PM's mind.

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In summary, we covered the definition of a game, the definition of gamification, and the sacred seven conditions for gamified flows. Next time, we’ll cover Gamification: Dos and Don'ts, Examples, Selection Bias, and Tragedy of the Commons.