Gameful Design (Part II)

In Part I of this article, game designer Chelsea Howe explains the difference between gameful design and gamification. In Part II, she lists more reasons why gameful design is more compelling than what's popularly known as gamification. 

SOCIAL CONNECTIONS

GAMIFICATION
Tokenizes social relationships

GAMEFUL DESIGN
Creates & strengthens social relationships

THE GAME DESIGN BEHIND THE SCENES
In many social games and social services, gates are put onto mechanics that force you to be viral and connect with other players before you’re allowed to continue (for example, you need 3 friends to expand your land in FarmVille). This is tokenizing – or only considering how many connections you have, and not the type, depth, duration, or any number of other facets that make each human relationship unique. Almost every social network game is like this. Even Twitter is like this.

Tokenizing is not actually social. For something to be truly social, the experience of playing has to be different depending on who I’m playing with. Mechanically, social means other people impact the game meaningfully; they’re making interesting decisions and expressive choices too, and my game is unique because of their unique contribution to it.

Again, this comes down to remembering that people are people and not numbers in a DAU or CTR graph or mindless click-machines
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SEE IT IN SUPERBETTER
When you invite allies to join you, we ask you to give them a mission – something unique that you need and would be grateful for and something specifically suited to that person’s talents. We also ask that you check in – that is, have a heart to heart or face to face conversation with them – at least once every two weeks. These aren’t just numbers helping you towards some other purpose; the strength of your relationships matters and has a real and measurable effect on your well being. Each friend is a unique ally.

CHALLENGE AND SKILL

GAMIFICATION
Requires little to no skill

GAMEFUL DESIGN
Trains up skills of players’ choosing

THE GAME DESIGN BEHIND THE SCENES
This is closely linked to learning a system – when developing skills is seen as learning and mastery can be either knowledge-based or skill-based. Most services that employ gamification aren’t challenging or fun to do. They require no skill. In the tired example of frequent flyer miles, for instance: is it fun to click on a flight scheduler? It is challenging to pick Virgin over Delta? No, of course not.

And believe it or not, we love a good challenge – 80% of the time we’re playing, we’re failing. And we love it! We like failing, struggling, and utilizing our skills to succeed. We play games because they challenge us. And when they don’t? We just stop caring altogether.

SEE IT IN SUPERBETTER
In SuperBetter, YOU choose how you want to improve, and the whole game is about getting stronger. Power Packs are custom tailored to challenges, and focus on different skills across the board: social, physical, emotional, mental. Not challenging enough? Add another Power Pack. Overwhelmed? Take a break, or just do a single move (3 quests, 1 battle, 3 power-ups) a day.

VIRALITY

GAMIFICATION
Promote sharing indiscriminately, constantly, to everyone

GAMEFUL DESIGN
Promote sharing meaningfully, at major moments, to whom it matters

THE GAME DESIGN BEHIND THE SCENES
Gamers are great at tuning out irrelevant information, and if they’re constantly spammed with the same canned messages, they’re not going to get engaged. Novelty is a huge component of engagement (it’s something new to figure out, to learn, to master) and unique content adds value. As much as you can, let players add their own messages, and prompt virality when it matters: when the player has accomplished something difficult, when they’ve expressed something unique, when they’ve really made a difference. And don’t blast it to everyone if it doesn’t apply to them: send it to the people to whom it matters most.

THE BIG IDEAS

Phew! Long post! Those were just a few examples, but I hope they helped clarify the difference between what most people call gamification and what we consider the “right” way to borrow from games (gameful design). Looking over the list, here are the three key bullets I’d pull out next time you go out and try to design a great experience:

• Keep it intrinsic 
• Players are people 
• Agency, agency, agency 

Now go make it gameful

[This article originally appeared on the SuperBetter blog.]

Chelsea Howe likes making games that make a difference. At Zynga, she designed and analyzed features that touched tens of millions of people, and at SuperBetter Labs, she used research on positive emotion and social connection to make those touches more powerful, evocative,and meaningful. By night, Chelsea designs award-winning indie games, runs the San Francisco Global Game Jam, and works with developers at Cornell University on experimental gameplay demos and youth outreach, all without a bat signal.