Amy Jo Kim of ShuffleBrain gave a presentation at last year’s GDC conference called Putting the Fun in Functional, in which she explained how to use game design to improve non-game software. (Frankly, I thought I’d blogged on it then, but I can’t seem to find such a post.)
Yi-Wyn Yen summarizes Kim’s points in Using game design to build the next Digg or Flickr:
1. Collecting. Hoarding stuff is a fundamental instinct. That’s why one of the first words to come out of a two-year-old’s mouth is “Gimme.” Iminlikewithyou does an especially good job capitalizing on this game mechanic. Users collect friends by picking a winner from their own games and collect points by answering yes or no questions like, Have you ever gone to work with a hangover? (The answer: Yes.) They can also add other users to their watch list or invite people to start games within IILWY. “For people at work who don’t have much to do, this is a good way of capturing their eyeballs,” Forman says. “I want to make something that users will find value.”2. Points. Earning points is a way to keep track of your nerd score. Points give users incentive to improve their standing and serve as a reward for new privileges, access or power. It’s also a big motivation to compete for points when you find out someone has more than you. Kim worked on eBay’s power seller program for its members who sold a lot of merchandise. Says Kim, “Once you have points, you can then start building levels. eBay power sellers is an exclusive level, and it was really motivational for members. It’s analogous to frequent flier miles. You want to work hard to get to the next level.”
A good reward system encourages both ends of the spectrum. It should be easy for anyone to attain the lowest level and very difficult to master the highest level. Entellium, a customer-platform software company, recently launched Rave, a gamer-influenced application, that exploits this concept. Entellium CEO Paul Johnston hired ten game developers to work on the software, which uses a leaderboard to encourage sales productivity. “The wonderful thing about gaming is that you can regenerate. If you fail, you get a second chance,” Johnston says. “We’re encouraging risk taking in salespeople and the ability to go back and improve.” Johnston says companies like Cold Stone Creamery and Seriosity, which makes enterprise solutions software, are using game design to develop training and learning systems for its employees.
“A lot of applications are designed to make things easy. Fun comes from challenge. It’s about taking risks and taking risks that are wrong,” says Areae president Koster, who speaks to packed audiences at tech conferences about what makes sites fun. “If you look at eBay, a huge reason that it’s addictive is because you can lose. You get hardcore users who can swipe things from people in the last three seconds.”
3. Feedback. Digg cofounder Kevin Rose knew that in order for his site to work, it would take a very active community (more than 17 million visit the site each month), and he tapped into this powerful tool early on draw users. When a Digg member submits an article, the expectation is that the user’s contributions will be recognized – whether the submission reaches the homepage or others comment or vote on it. Digg’s feedback system is a metric of how good you are at finding and discovering unique stories. “There are parallels between the gaming community and the Digg community. Like gaming, a reward system is used to keep people pecking away,” says Digg VP of marketing Mike Maser. “One reason that Digg members are so passionate is because our site gives them a unique way to gain recognition. A user’s contributions to the overall community are worthwhile, and it keeps people coming back for more.”
4. Exchanges Explicit and implicit exchanges, like taking turns in a chess match (explicit) or giving someone a virtual Facebook gift (implicit), encourage interactive behavior. Photo-sharing site Flickr took off because it wasn’t just about posting pictures, but also exchanging social interactions. Flickr, which evolved from a lightweight MMPORG called Game Neverending, lets its members tag photos. “You can tag a photo as ‘sunset’ or ‘bicycle’, but then you quickly find quirky, interesting ways to associate photographs with objects and finding things that have been tagged by other users,” says Doug Tygar, a computer science professor at UC Berkeley. “It’s a bit like shopping in an antique store. You treasure that serendipitous moment when you find that gem.” Like when you find a Flickr tag of old ladies stretching at the beach.
Well-designed games employ the simplest social exchange. You make a move, and something else happens. Consider Amazon’s one-stop checkout process. You click once, and you’ve suddenly purchased something. Hooray! “We’ve done studies where one-step checkouts have approximately twice the volume of multi-step checkouts,” says Tygar, who specializes in e-commerce. “It’s more fun than going through many intermediate steps. It’s almost obvious that the more fun a website is, the more people want to hang around that site.”
5. Customization Letting your user have some control over preferences (ie. being able to personalize your MySpace page or Google homepage) increases their investment and creates barriers to exit. The more you let users try to exploit the system, the more interested they’ll be in sticking around. One afternoon Forman was riding the subway and overheard two girls talking about his website, IILWY. “This one girl was highly competitive, and was looking for a way to get more bids. She studied all the other girls in New York and figured out that 27 was the optimal dating age, so she changed her stats,” Forman said. “One thing that I’ve learned from this whole experience is that people like to know how games work and then find the way to be the best at it.”