www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Gamification by Design Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Gamification by Design Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham Beijing · Cambridge · Farnham · Köln · Sebastopol · Tokyo www.it-ebooks.info Gamification by Design by Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham Copyright © 2011 Gabriel Z, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (safari.oreilly.com). For more information, contact our corporate/ institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com. Editor: Mary Treseler Production Editor: Kristen Borg Copyeditor: Marlowe Shaeffer Proofreader: Kristen Borg Indexer: Ellen Troutman Zaig Cover Designer: Mark Paglietti Interior Designer: Ron Bilodeau Illustrator: Robert Romano Printing History: August 2011: First Edition. Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Gamification by Design, the image of rhesus monkeys, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the informa- tion contained herein. 978-1-449-39767-8 [TI] www.it-ebooks.info This book is dedicated to the designers of the scavenger hunt, tag, bridge, chess, poker, and solitaire. We may never know your names, but you truly made the world a whole lot more fun. www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Contents Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii 1. Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Fun Quotient 2 The Evolution of Loyalty 5 Status at the Wheel 9 The House Always Wins 13 2. Player Motivation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Powerful Human Motivators 15 Why People Play 20 Player Types 21 Social Games 24 Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Motivation 26 Progression to Mastery 29 Motivational Moment: Be the Sherpa 33 3. Game Mechanics: Designing for Engagement (Part I) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 MDA Framework 35 Game Mechanics 36 Points 36 Levels 45 Leaderboards 50 4. Game Mechanics: Designing for Engagement (Part II) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Badges 55 Onboarding 59 Challenges and Quests 64 Social Engagement Loops 67 www.it-ebooks.info viii Contents Customization 70 Gaming the System 72 Agile and Gamification Design 73 Empty Bar Problem: Foursquare 74 Dashboards 75 5. Game Mechanics and Dynamics in Greater Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Feedback and Reinforcement 77 Game Mechanics in Depth 81 Putting It Together 94 6. Gamification Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Nike Plus: Making Fitness Fun 96 Gamify Questions—or Answers 98 Health Month 105 Conclusion 109 7. Tutorial: Coding Basic Game Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Planning a Gamification Makeover 112 A System for Tracking Scores and Levels 116 Badges 125 Displaying Player Scores and Levels on the Site 128 The Trophy Case 135 Summary 139 8. Tutorial: Using an Instant Gamification Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Game On 141 Critical Elements of an Online Rewards Experience 142 Planning a Rewards Project 142 Developing a Rewards Program 156 Analytics 165 The Game’s Just Beginning 168 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 www.it-ebooks.info [...]... with the Gamification Master Class (also available from O’Reilly, at http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920017622) and the supplemental videos, exercises, challenges, and resources available at http://GamificationU.com, this book becomes even more powerful You can take a concept for gamifying your product, service, or idea and bring it to fruition using the techniques we describe Gamification by Design takes... www.it-ebooks.info x Preface When done well, gamification helps align our interests with the intrinsic motivations of our players, amplified with the mechanics and rewards that make them come in, bring friends, and keep coming back Only by carefully unpacking consumer emotions and desires can we design something that really sticks—and only through the power of gamification can we make that experience predictable,... wrote this book to help demystify some of the core concepts of game design as they apply to business, written from the perspective of what a marketer, product designer, product manager, or strategist would want to know In that regard, we are indebted to the work of notable game designers who helped clarify and amplify the process of game design, making it into a quantifiable art and science We have leveraged... There’s even an emerging scientific idea that games can help you live longer by staving off dementia and improving general health Therefore, seeing business and product designers embrace the concept of gamification should come as no surprise As our society becomes more and more gameobsessed, much of the conventional wisdom about how to design products and market to consumers is no longer absolute To further... unequal, gamification and the loyalty it engenders—is much less meaningful But when you have great product-market fit, gamification can provide a powerful accelerant to your efforts As with broccoli and children, if given enough time and incentive, we can overcome our natural programming Not to put too fine a point on it, but why wait? What Gamification Isn’t As we begin our journey into what gamification. .. purpose Instead, we will share an understanding of the design process used by some of the world’s biggest brands and hottest startups to gamify their customer interactions We’ll start by looking at what drives users to play and the core psychology that makes games so compelling We’ll separate the wheat from the chaff within the social and video game design rubric, and share what’s relevant from the discipline... terms—how to architect and implement various core elements of gamification on the Web and mobile platforms, including some practical implementation concepts from one of the world’s leading gamification technology pioneers www.it-ebooks.info Introduction xix Our objective is to give you the tools, techniques, and process-thinking you’ll need to design gamification into your unique experience It’s not unlike... DevHub (www.devhub.com), thinks it’s found the answer: gamification By deploying some of the basic tenets of the discipline—and with the judicious use of game mechanics such as points, badges, levels, challenges, and rewards—DevHub has quickly differentiated itself as a market leader The company has raised various engagement metrics, such as time on site, by as much as 20% over pregamified levels With a... hope you’ll find it as useful as we enjoyed writing it Acknowledgments We want to recognize the game -design writing and work of key thinkers, including Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses (Morgan Kaufmann), Jon Radoff’s Game On (Wiley), and Ralph Koster’s A Theory of Fun for Game Design (Paraglyph Press) We are also lucky to have been able to access and distill the insights of Sebastian... is quickly becoming the way we interact Games are the future of work, fun is the new “responsible,” and the movement that is leading the way is gamification www.it-ebooks.info xiv Introduction Gamification Bandied about as the marketing buzzword of our time, gamification can mean different things to different people Some view it as making games explicitly to advertise products or services Others think . www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Gamification by Design Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Gamification by Design Implementing. Inc. Gamification by Design, the image of rhesus monkeys, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by