Gamifying Events: Experience, Agency and Role playing - part 2

This is the second part of a multipart article. Click in the link above to read the first part.

In the first part of the article we covered the use of narrative in both events and how it was crafted according to the needs and the context of the event. In this article we will cover the character creation mechanics used in both events, and the power of the Avatar!

Having an avatar should be meaningful

It is amazing how avatars have taken over the world, and still, so few people really understand what an avatar is really for. Avatar means in Sanskrit descent, and it referred to the gods taking a body to walk the world. An avatar is about possession, about taking a puppet and use it as your own.

Avatar's are natural to gameplay, as in many games the purpose is for the player is to be someone else. The player possesses a character which now serves as a puppet for the player's desire, which keeps the player safe while the character is the one at risk. But avatars are fun because you are capable of transferring yourself to your character, to the point you say stuff like "I'm climbing the cliff" instead of "my character is climbing the cliff". The level of connection between an Avatar and a player can vary and take different forms, but there is always a connection, as your decisions become the cornerstone to what the character becomes with time.

And one of the basic strategies to create a connection between a player and its character is allowing the player to decide how the avatar should be built and how it should grow. That's why character building and level up mechanics are so important in Role Playing Games (RPGs), because is in those moments where you are deciding the most fundamental aspects of your puppet, and, in a way, of yourself in the game. So the motto here should be: "decide who you wanna be".

Character design for our wedding

Choosing a character should be an interesting thing, filled with connection but also a bit of fear or limitation. It tends to be more engaging when its not a "perfect decision", when you feel that anything you choose takes something away as well. To make this possible, there must be some tension within the choice itself, and that's what we did.

A character revolves around a main attribute that helps you then make subsequent choices. For our wedding, we decided that main attribute would be the dress code! Both Nata and me have always hated the rigidity of weddings dress codes: the search for aesthetics takes the agency away, as having a uniformed dress code makes everyone look good and elegant, but this leaves only a small window of opportunity for creativity (specially for men). Now, we wanted to keep the aesthetic value of the dress code, but without making it a one-fit-all choice, so we created different character classes, each with its own style: these were inspired of course by fairy tales, but were not "costumes", as again that felt more restrictive (not everyone likes to wear a custom, the same not everyone likes to were a tie). So we came up with this:

• Royalty: the elegant type that loves the idea of formal-ware for a wedding, or hated the idea of thinking outside the box.
• Arcanes: the formal-elegant typical of Sillicon Valley. How would you dress if you were a tech company CEO?
• Fairies: the creative types that wanted to wear clothes as if picked from a fashion show.
• Elves: for the people that liked loose clothes, like sundresses, or, why not, tunics.
• Satyres: elegant hipsters or bohemians, with plaided shirts, hats, suspenders and so on.
• Changelings: for our geek friends that wanted to be elegant but geeky: clothes based on pop culture characters or with geeky stamps.

What would you choose? For many people being able to choose their dress code was fun, as they could go as they prefer, but within the boundaries of what we found acceptable: a win-win. But there was no tension in this decision, so we added a couple of attributes to each character class: a power and a curse. I will give you some examples so you can imagine our design process without making this article a rule book:

• Royalty: the power was to receive a special gift from the newly weds, and they could have access to a special drink. Their curse was that each witch (remember, the bridesmaids) would select two of them and would make them wear a non-flattering bow-tie.
• Fairies: their power was to be included on a special whatsapp group were they could upload their photos: some of them would be printed on site to make a wall. Their flaw was that the witches would select two to take some embarrassing photos in front of everyone.
• Satyres: their power was to be able to sing or play a song for us during the party, their flaw was that the witches would choose two of them to make a special "karaoke" with a song selected by the witches.

I can't stress how fun this was for the witches, as they had a lot of choice in the matter of the curses, but the best part was to see how many people would write to us telling us that they were indecisive on whether to choose for the dress code or for the curse! Of course, the odds of landing a curse were low, but it gave enough spice to make it an imperfect choice. And for us it was fun to see what people were selecting, as many we thought were more conventional chose less conventional outfits, and it became a great onboarding experience for people to get to the wedding and see how other people chose.

But character creation didn't end there: not only each person would receive a bracelet with a 3d printed charm that represented their character class (a fleur de lys for the royalty, a medieval lute for the satyres, a leaf for the elves and so on), but they actually had to use a point assignment mechanic to build their character skills. Now, this was not an RPG, so we decided to use the mechanic to create some attributes that would allow them to tell us how they felt their connection was with us. For example, a skill was "nostalgia", for those who thought we weren't seeing each other enough, or "friendship", for those that felt we're close friends, and so on. They had 14 points to distribute, and in return, they would get another surprise in the wedding depending on their points distribution.

Not only this allowed us to personalize the experience for our Sivili in some meaningful ways, but they made a connection to their classes and it helped us create some meaningful moments, like the elvish words of wisdom, or the changelings path of honor, were people from different families would unite in simple but meaningful activities.

The four orders of Coca-Cola

We took this experience with us to the Coca-Cola event and gave it some twists. Our client had some "Harry Potter"-esque idea of having something like houses, and we had the four keywords to play with: magic, legacy, heart and growth. So we used this to create our main attribute.

Of course, we needed to make the choice meaningful to the players, so they could feel they had an avatar with a clear description, so we used a motivational approach to build the profiles (something like the four player types of Richard Bartle, but more based on self-determination theory). The four orders ended like this:

• Keepers of Magic: the social butterflies, the people that wanted to play with others (and the ones that would help us move the networking mechanics). Driver: relatedness.
• Diggers of Legacy: the ones that wanted to learn more about the company's past, but also the ones that wanted to follow scavenger hunts. Driver: autonomy.
• Valiants of Heart: the ones that want to participate in meaningful group activities around the brand. Driver: purpose.
• Masters of Growth: the ones that would love to analyze and decode information, receive missions and form parties. Driver: mastery.

Instead of curses we gave them "flaws", which were more mechanical in nature, as this was more of an RPG type of game, so, for example, diggers would have a better chance to get collectibles, but would not get as many power tokens; keepers would be required in almost every mission to be able to complete them, but they would not receive missions themselves; valiants would get more "event banner missions" and would be less required in regular missions; masters would get more missions than others, but would get lower chances to get collectables.

Everything we designed around the characters were to incentivize team building, because most of the flaws would lose their "flawness" once they built a party to complete missions, and this helped us nudge the type of social behavior we wanted to achieve in the event, to a great level of success! But I need to explain the mechanics before you can understand how (to be done in another article).

And again we used the skill building mechanics, but this time it would have more of that RPG style, where skills are essential for the game mechanics. The four attributes for each character were, again, the four keywords (we really wanted it to be a theme), and each skill would increase or lower their chance of completing the missions successfully. The idea was to make them do skill checks by actually rolling dice! But it had a more social component as you will see when we get there.

Something new and the most powerful thing

When we created the character sheets for the people in our wedding, we wanted it to feel magical, so we wanted to give them "avatars" in the sense of the little picture, and we had a new tool at our disposal: Midjourney!

We selected a style for the prompts and began working on creating an avatar for each person using what they chose for their characters, and what we knew of each of them. For example, a friend of ours that loves cars and selected an Arcane got an avatar of a magician on wheel chairs; or a cousin that just had a baby they called "Violeta" got an alchemist that played with violet liquids.

Midjourney gave us the technical possibility of creating custom made, high quality images for all of them (something that would have been impossible one year before!), but it was the prompts that gave life to their portraits, all based on the points that they chose, the character class and their personal story with us.

We accompanied this with a personalized legend, a small piece of writing for each of them that again was written using all the information they provided. For a couple of friends who studied literature with me, we used a more "poetic" style, with others we were more geeky, with the family of Nata we used more moon-like metaphors, like one being the queen of the Mare Tranquillitatis.

But what we really gave them was something to share! While they waited for us to enter the reception, they received their sheets and the began reading them and sharing them with the people at their tables. It became a topic of conversation, and, later on, a reason to approach us and tell us about what they liked about their legends and portraits.

Seeing how this was a big thing in term of its emotional value, we tried something like this with Coca-Cola, but again, giving it a well deserved twist: you need to read the context! After the character creation we asked the participants to upload a photo that we would use to create a custom avatar. We used the power of Midjourney as well to create a memorable experience: it worked like this:

• We first tested with some photos of the team to build the prompts we wanted to use for the avatar creation. We wanted them to work like avatars from an archeology adventure movie, so we wanted the avatars in a jungle or with ruins and temples in the background, and dressed like archeologists. We tested many, many styles and prompts until we got the one we wanted (this is not an easy feat) and we used the "prefer" option in Midjourney to save the prompts and weights.
• Then we passed each photo to Midjourney using the prompt and trying different things if we didn't like the result. Some people we got at the first try, others we had to spend many credits getting something we hoped they'd like. And we used the fact that Midjourney created four versions to print four stickers, so people would be able to choose one of them.

The avatars were a thrill and created a lot of hype even before the event. The VIPs would get their avatars before the event (other people would get to see them with their welcoming kits), and they would start asking for requests, or they would share their avatars with their teams and lot of excitement was built upon this simple mechanic. It was true Surprise and Delight, as Monica Cornetti would say. We had to spend many hours and credits on Midjourney getting it right, but even the speakers would end up using their avatars in their presentations.

An actual emergent story that is worth mentioning was this one. One of the speakers got a skinny version of himself, and that became part of the conversation with his peers. He was not that happy with that so, in the midst of the event he asked Alex, which was serving as game master, if he could have his avatar improved. He gave a us a new photo, and, being a speaker and a VIP, we decided to make the exception. We send him a new avatar and he was more pleased, but he wanted it to be more "buffed", so we gave it muscles with the prompt. He was so happy with the result, that we not only made his day, but he actually began his presentation showing his new avatar on the screen saying "as you can see, my avatar has been working out". He created the story-telling from just a few pictures and experiences, and this became one of the most memorable moments in the presentations!

The digital and the print media

In both cases, for the creation of the character we developed a web app, that we hope to continue using in several projects, so people could get both an intro into narrative elements and could assign points, gender and portraits to their characters. Nothing new, as there are many, many apps that can do the same thing. The app helped us get the information we needed in great scales, and gave time for the participant to choose what they wanted. But the experience of the digital was overshadowed by the experience of the analogue!

To this day, I know of many people that treasure their character sheet from our wedding (my sister actually has a little shrine in her apartment with stuff from the wedding, her character included!). There is something magical in converting information that you can keep in the digital world into something more... tangible! So we used what we learned and improved on this idea for Coca-Cola.

Following the "expeditionist" theme, we designed "Passports" for the players. In the first page they had a place to paste their Midjourney generated avatar, and fill the passport with their names and signature (the small details make the experience). This passport also had five slots for some "sunstones" (more on that on a follow up article), some pages for "travel seals" (collectible stickers), some pages with instructions, and a page with a simple networking mechanic. Again, people loved their passports, and filling the pages with their sunstones and the travel seals became a big driver: they would take this passports home!

I now believe that the analogue experience triumphs over the digital one in these contexts, and, as you will see from the mechanics we created, getting the "real life" stuff was a big big part of the experience. Getting the real life experience right was 90% of the success, and while we support the design using technology, the "presence" of the interface and game elements create powerful connections and become memorabilia.

Game Structure: Chapters and Meta

This will be the topic of the next article, if you feel like you are learning something new from this posts. As a preview, we organized both events in chapters, each chapter containing narrative and structural changes. As this kinds of events happen in "time", having a structure that follows the "schedule" of the event creates narrative and mechanical milestones.

In the weeding each chapter would be dedicated to one of the character classes and allowed us to create small but meaningful rituals that would drive the narrative forward, until the culmination in the "Euphoria", the party.

In the Coca-Cola event the chapters allowed us to balance some elements in the mechanics, but also to create changes in the missions content to keep things fresh. While I think this is the point were we can improve on on these longer 3-day events, we did manage to avoid losing the interest of the players overtime to a good degree. If you want to know how we managed this, don't hesitate to subscribe to this newsletter!