I didn't go to SXSW this year - I was busy (so have no view as to whether it is so over, etc) but was rather interested in the view that apprently this year Gamification was "In". (Gamification is the setting of game type mechanisms on other types of interactions to modify - typically attract, addict - people to that service). Keeping to today's trope of
Old Wine, New Bottles I can say that "Gamification" was being talked about in the small-room sessions at SXSW 2009 (which I did attend) although the term "Gamification" wasn't used at the time. My experience of SXSW 2009 was that the New Things were not in the large panels, the plenaries, the corridor conversations - it was in those small room sessions.
Anyway, Gamification was one of those, ansd the debates were twofold:
(i) How to do it?
(ii) Will it last?
I won't dwell on the "How To Do It" piece, a number of people went through that at the time and the first main adoption was in the 2nd generation Location services (Foursquare, GoWalla etc) and now everyone is at it. All you need to know is the reasoning is that a game environment creates higher user addiction and also tends to make them hand over more money/information for datascraping than they would otherwise if they were of "sober" mentality.
The real question is "Will it Work" - the view at the time was that it would be like privacy (again, sessions in SXSW 2009 eerily predict the Privacy Wars of 2011) ie you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time - and there may well be a backlash when those fooled feel foolish. I was thus rather interested that an early part of the backlash would be part of the gaming community -
Adam Loving:
There is good gamification and bad gamification. Bad gamification is slapping extrinsic rewards (or a contrived story) on top of an interaction. Good gamification amplifies the intrinsic rewards of a particular behavior – to increase the feeling of fun, flow, or accomplishment of the player. Players know bad gamification when they see it, because it doesn’t take their interests into consideration. Good gamification aligns the needs of both designer and player.
Gamification needn’t look like a game. If your application domain is movies (Netflix), auctions (eBay), or social connections (Facebook, LinkedIn) – simply highlighting the right numeric counters and lists is sufficient. Gamifying acknowledges your user’s inner drives, their ability to learn, and increases their receptiveness to your application’s benefits.
As Adam notes (and the SXSW panel by and large also found) you cannot increase the intrinsic value of something by adding game mechanics, all you can do (at best) is make the value more visible, change the context of your site somewhat and increase the engagement - but it has limits:
- Air miles programs are bad gamification. Do you play the air miles game? I didn’t until very recently, because it is a poorly designed game. Rewards (free flights) are only available to expert players. Most programs are hard to sign up for, track, and claim. It does not making flying more fun. So, until recently I’ve ignored them.
- CityVille is brilliant (but bad) gamification masquerading as Game design. Zynga has perfected the gamification of inviting and buying (disguised as sharing and building). CityVille is certainly not optimized to be a fun virtual city planning game. It doesn’t maximize your creative building pleasure, though it does offer some intrinsic rewards:
- guided creativity
- feeling of building something (with friends)
- blingyness, positive feedback
As Adam points out, the turning point is when the metagame - that the gamified application's aim is to increase user suck-in and then "monetise" - becomes clear to said suck-ees:
It doesn’t take long before you run into a wall where your fun ends and doing things that benefit Zynga become a requirement (you must pay or invite to continue). The sinking feeling you feel at that moment, is the line between good and bad gamification. It isn’t bad to expect players to pay (or send uncomfortable invitations), but at this point the rewards all swing in Zynga’s favor. You realize you aren’t playing a game, but participating in the gamification of inviting and buying – and it ceases to be fun.
And my view is that the backlash will probably be stronger, because people have been asked to input far more of themselves (one of the SXSW 09 participants said gamification can be seen as a "mental drug" - possibly overstated, but you can see how this will play out.....). Look at some of the backlash we are now seeing on social network privacy, and imagine that as a magnified, ex-Gamified phenomenon. Thus it becomes obvious why the Gaming community is probably an early concerned observer, as the backlash will probably hit them too, and that is their entire livelihood.
(Update - I forgot to write - I think its temporary phenomenon, a user experience blind alley, as it will be pretty tedious if everything is a game, rather than just delivering the service required. )
