Mindless Gamification Vs. Mindful Game Thinking (Level Up, Not Down)

Why Do People Play Games

As important as this first question is, let’s not overthink it. Games are a reprieve from the most challenging things in our lives. A break from the mundane, as a typical gamer is transported to a different reality. According to the Entertainment Software Association, it’s quite intuitive to think that as technology advances, games will be better with improved graphics, storylines, and engagement strategies.

Let’s not forget the fact that “three out of four Americans play video games.”

Not just any games, but video games. Three out of every four, wow. Games are fun, sure, but they are so much more than that. Games are uniquely able to connect us: to entertain while inspiring teamwork, cooperation and sometimes a little competition. It’s not about who you are, but how you play–and, as our research shows, anyone can play.

Good Games are Important (Here’s Why)

Okay, so now that we established that games are popular, why is that important? Because games get people’s attention and with the right technique, form habits. They act as a magnet as they retain players to come back day after day. Or if you like food analogies, good games are sticky. They stay with you like honey. In fact, 65% of adults in the US play video games…daily.

Good Games are Sticky like Honey

So now that we know games are great for engagement, it is no wonder why every company started (or should have by now) trying to incorporate elements into their business practices and software. Over the past ten years, we have seen EdTech skyrocket (think Kahoot!, Duolingo) and CRMs such as Salesforce and CRMGamified for Microsoft CRM, have both jumped on the gamification trend. Like with any hype train, you have to be very strategic on introducing gamification or else your product will quickly go off the rails.

Essentially, putting all the bells and whistles in your platform can just as easily disinterest customers if the core concepts aren’t laid out properly.

Why Gamification is an Overused Buzzword

There it is. Overused and outdated like “dialing a number” by using a rotary dial. Remember using those? Me neither.

Gamification is only as good as the intrinsic motivation and personal satisfaction the engagement brings from within the customer. If you have a service or product that has gamified elements in it, then it might even be exciting for a few levels or weeks, but may not be sustainable and intrinsically rewarding enough for a user to want to form a long-lasting habit. The relationship the product has with the user needs to steadily grow over time and allow the user to be stimulated while they overcome new challenges.

The final piece to the puzzle is the personalization factor. Without going overboard, the path should be fairly simple at first to reduce freezes in thought (decision fatigue). However, as the user gets more comfortable with the product, there should be strategically placed points in the product that have more personalized gamified elements to help form the bond more so over time, you know, like glue.

Just as a newly planted tree is very susceptible to external forces such as wind, drought, disease, and insects; over time the tree gains larger roots and covers more ground, making it sturdier. This is very similar to how a new user is progressing from the initial discovery phase onto the onboarding phase and so on. Through proper choice architecture, the user can develop a strong habit and eventually mastery, enabling them to overcome challenging cliffs and stay engaged over several months and years down the line.

Discovery > Onboarding > Habit Building > Mastery

Enter Game Thinking: Gamification with Purpose

Game Thinking is a fairly reasonable evolution from the simple idea of adding gamification in the first place. I won’t go into detail on the process of prototyping here, just check out gamethinking.io if you want to read that afterward. Over the next sections, we will go through examples of improving the concepts of purposeful gamification and why gamified products without one fail. They fail because they aren’t receptive to their users’ needs.

The product needs to grow with their users as they are walking down their journey with the product. As Deloitte kindly points out, much like what a foundation is to a house, a conductor is to an orchestra, and a canvas is to an artist’s masterpiece — a clear purpose is everything to an organization, or in our case, it’s product. Purpose-driven companies witness higher market share gains and grow on average three times faster than their competitors, all the while achieving higher employee and customer satisfaction/engagement.

Game Thinking Examples

Regular Games

Reaching the next level, getting the badge you’ve been chasing for weeks, or saving up with the game’s digital currency to buy extra virtual lives/coins or even that superfluous outfit for your character. Sound familiar? These are common tactics of keeping users engaged, even allowing for users to use real money to “get ahead” and acquire some of these rewards. In Rock Band, the user starts off playing on old guitars in a garage, eventually progressing through a journey leading to large venues around the world for thousands of people. For all the gamer musicians, that is a pretty powerful story right there.

Non-Traditional Industry Concepts

Whereas a CRM or educational companies may have badges, levels, and leaderboards. What is the real point to getting to the next level? In work settings, it may come with increased social pressure to do what it takes to get higher on the leaderboards instead of focusing on actually getting more quality work done. Since the dividing line may rest between productive fun and mindless distractions is always a moving target for companies, it is important to ensure a fun yet product experience that is personal to the proper extent.

Now does a CRM or financial learning company, like Zogo, need a personalized virtual character that can have different outfits and Role Playing Game (RPG) elements intertwined into the system, perhaps not. Does that mean then that having a pseudo gamified system is worth it (i.e. Zogo’s laughably low $5 gift card reward) if there seems to not be any real productive purpose or intrinsic motivational factors at the foundation? In this sense, the user is leveling down if there is little to no intrinsic benefit to using the product more.

Every time the user is using the product, they will be subconsciously analyzing it and assessing whether they are enjoying the experience. They are judging internally whether there is a proper balance of challenges and exciting new facets personalized for them. As a developer or game designer, making sure to have strategically placed expansion and personalized points are key to enabling a sustainable growth path for the user over the weeks and months of usage.

Game thinking requires Thought

AS A <user type> I WANT <unique system feature> SO THAT <value or benefits>.

As anyone with agile experience knows, the above resembles a standard user story. When thinking about game design and gamification in general, it’s vital to address the user’s perspective throughout the different stages of the product that you are developing. Avoiding too much repetition and becoming boring is another key aspect to watch out for, as the initial onboarding phase is arguably the most crucial area. Once reaching the habit building phase, the designer needs to formulate several paths of opportunity for the user and reinforce the reasons why they came to the product in the first place.

By providing answers to the user’s wandering subconscious, they can continue to satisfy the thirst and solidify the habit within a month. Long term success relies on the challenges we touched on previously.

If the content and personalized paths are engaging, then the user will consistently find joy in selling, communicating, learning, or whatever industry the product resides in. Remember, fewer initial choices are ideal, but they need to expand once entering the maturity/mastery phases.

Otherwise, the honeymoon phase wears off and the mechanics of the gamified product will no longer be rewarding enough. User generated content, social aspects, and notifications can all be extremely efficient when strategically implemented. Plus, remember honey > sticky > purposeful user growth > good game thinking…so keep the honey flowing even after the honeymoon. All jokes aside, the lesson here is for the elements to have an evolving purpose throughout the phases.

Duolingo Deep Dive

Duolingo Background

Fresh off another $35 million raised at the end of 2020, Duolingo is routinely one of the best examples of engagement language learning apps. It’s consistently growing at a rapid pace. It has everything it needs to get users engaged and keep them for years.

By using a freemium model; the app and the website are accessible without charge, although Duolingo also offers a premium service for a fee. It takes a somewhat challenging task of learning a new language, and breaks it down into bite sized pieces that are easily digestible snacks that can fit right into one’s daily schedule.

What “Duo” Does Right

1. Onboarding involves giving the user a placement test so you feel right in place (optimal zone), challenged enough, but not too much where you feel inadequate and want to quit on the spot.
2. Fantastic, now you can set your notifications to remind you to practice at a convenient time for yourself. Nice!
3. Invite friends to track their progress and see how much they’re learning in different languages (accountability, I like it!).
4. Leaderboards advance you with a set group of people and progress the top three every week (Bam! Friendly competition). That’s engaging enough to get to the next crystal…hmmm.
5. There is also the daily streak, can’t miss a day or you go back to zero! There are “streak freezes” though so that daily streak is…well, not really accurate. But going a whole year by practicing “almost daily” is a nice motivational tracker.
6. Did you mess up five times and run out of hearts? No problem, pay for premium to get rid of ads and also unlimited hearts. (Pro Tip: Just save the web version on your phone’s home screen to avoid the heart dilemma).
7. Stories are a nice break from the lesson grind and provide some funny and interesting conversations, no doubt. Earning XP and achievements can be exciting, sort of. There are some benefits for such, but the coins are rather plentiful and given generously so there is little to no need to worry about them.
8. Alas, forums are also available and can be helpful to spark conversation from time to time.

What Could Make it Better

Caught up in the smoke of all the fantastic engagement strategies and social interaction, lays the artificial motivation beneath. Pseudo personal transformation techniques take the system only so far. The following ideas would be fantastic to add to the app in some way or another to add more levels to the experience.

There seems to be little to no point in the leagues. Once reaching the highest diamond league, the game simply has no further league to advance to, and should I say no reward whatsoever for reaching so high. At this stage, the gamification intrigue wears off significantly, relying purely back to the intrinsic motivation of just learning the language for their own reasons. The app is set up well enough to keep the spark going, but does fall off steeply after four months to a year.

1. Duolingo could incorporate intelligent chat bots to make it more engaging. The bots could have a personality that grow with the user level and interests. This is not a call for “Her”, but some sense of advanced communication would be welcomed.
2. There used to be open chats in Duolingo a long time ago between users, but that option was deprecated over time. So therefore it means you are left with the lesson plans in the app, can’t communicate with another person. By definition, these two limitations rule out reaching even level B2 proficiency.
3. The user is left to personalize their Duo owl with three different outfits…three whole options. The Duo owl has a load of potential, but has little to show for it so far. Imagine if the owl could be a part of the user’s experience in some story with more depth.
4. Imagine if the characters in the story interacted with the user. A picture scene (i.e. kitchen, living room, classroom) that is interactive where learners would have to select the right word to the matching object, that’d be nice.
5. This is not requiring the user to have its own fully customized character (a la bitmoji), but having a sense of character development in the game would further reinforce the real life character development for learning the new language.
6. Having common sentences sections or other building blocks would be nice to have in the app, as there are currently tips and lesson overviews, but no other ways to reason why rules and sentence logic is written in the way they are for a particular language.
7. Having different multiplayer games is one of the easiest additions Duolingo could make to incorporate a more social effect. Whereas it stands the current journey is rather individual. Introducing video in spats may have benefits and drawbacks, as to not distract from the initial purpose of the app. However, mini games are relatively straightforward and can provide several opportunities for engagement with new friends around the world.
8. Learning a language in the traditional sense is easier when immersed in the culture or interacting frequently with other people, hence the call for adding multiplayer features. Short clips of people talking in real life or RPG is not necessary perhaps, but quick mini-games even would be a start in the right direction.

Start Phasing in Game Thinking

For better or worse, it seems that we are always aiming to gamify many aspects of our lives. By introducing game thinking into products, there will be better reasons to level up our characters (in reality and virtually).

While this article focused primarily on digital game thinking, there are several concepts that are unplugged in the sense, which can be, believe it or not, just as engaging and rewarding. Considering games aren’t going anywhere, make sure to implement user stories and capture the art of game thinking phases through proper engagement techniques. Otherwise, you’re just another wave rolling into the beach. It may be exciting for a while, then gone forever.