Sunday Edition: Gamification

Since I’ve seen the great gamification debate pop up in Twitter discussions, forum boards, and unfortunately real life conversations I’ve always politely bowed out. Okay - perhaps not politely but regardless, I’ve bowed out. But there’s always a straw that breaks the camel’s back - or in this case a news article that won’t let me keep my opinion to myself. 

This past week, TNW wrote an article about Piictu , a new photo sharing mobile app. The title read “Just launched: TechStars’ Piictu iOS app gamifies photo sharing”. Now before I go on I want to make it completely clear that I’m not criticizing Piictu or TNW. My opinions are solely based on society’s current semantics around the word gamification. With that aside, society’s semantics regarding gamification are wrong. That’s all that really needs to be said, but allow me to elaborate. 

It seems that the context in which gamification is being used insinuates that gamification yields results and it does. However, this isn’t because the behaviors that lead to these results have been made into a game - it’s because the overall system design reinforces or causes particular behaviors thus yielding the desired results. It just so happens to be that the games have a lot of system designers and games have been focusing on design that yields results since the beginning of games (not just video-games).

Piictu “gamifies” photo sharing by providing context for the type of pictures you should upload. Example suggestive titles include “Show me your shoes”, and “Your favorite food”. Uploading pictures within the category of that suggestive title and earning a reward could be called a game by some but in truth it’s as Jesse Schell would put motivational design. The titles “Show me your shoes”, and “Your favorite food”, although simple are extremely powerful and provide the context that users need to understand how to use the service. 

A great example of recent motivational design would be Get Amen. Their service recently launched and a gamification description of it would be: “Get Amen gamifies your strongest opinions”. But, what it really does is a great job at motivational design. It limits what you can post about, as well as the text you can post. Therefore, you end up with updates such as “Sandals and socks are the worst combination ever”, or “New York City is the best city ever”. Your replies to the updates are also limited. You can either agree by amen-ing an update or selecting hell no and then writing a counter opinion. Get Amen has brilliant motivational design but it is not a game. 

I’m not upset about what we want gamification to mean. I understand the value and quite frankly feel that this movement should have come earlier. It’s about time we start thinking about our services with motivational design in mind (See my post “The Lost Features And Services” for more on that). But layering on badges, on points, on statuses isn’t a game nor is it good motivational design. In fact when a system is created with a poor set of rules and relationships the results desired aren’t yielded. And then, not only is the term game being misused but since the system wasn’t properly designed it could lead to yielding undesired results and in the end, crippling a service or product. 

The improper use of game mechanics - such as points and badges - devalues and could potentially de-syntheisze us from the true meaning of what a game is. Something as organic and special as play could simply become the act of a check-in. Is that what we want? Are we to assume that anyone who makes badges and rewards available through some medium is a system designer who creates an intricate set of rules and relationships and then fine tunes them to perfection over the course of months? I fear the day when a parent asks their children, “Have you played your toothbrushing game yet?” I’d hate my children to associate play with brushing their teeth. The meaning of game and play is sacred and should be kept as such. So for it’s sake remember, it’s motivational design not gamificaiton that you seek. Speaking of which, don’t forget to like this post so you can achieve the status of mayor for this blog post.