Raw notes: Gamification summit 2011

I attended the Gamification Summit 2011 a couple of weeks ago in San Francisco. I couldn’t stay through the whole thing because of a couple of things that came up, but I enjoyed what I could attend.

Summary:

• The goal was to try and put some structure around gaming design and techniques, and review techniques, applications, successes and failures.
• Some interesting, and not-very-interesting, insights from practitioners.
• Great afternoon keynote by Jane McGonigal about trying to understand what makes a great game (going beyond obvious gaming tactics) - i.e. “Can we replicate the spirit of game, not just the technique?”

Panel on Gamification in the Real World: Location, Commerce and User Experience:

• Well-moderated by Jenn Van Grove

• Blake Scholl, CEO, Kima Labs (Barcode Hero)
• A game layer is the face of our reputation system.
• Expert status is the motivation to share more and get more reputations
• What’s the usage like?
• Very few people actually capture their opinions and recommendations. We’ve addressed that problem through UX and game mechanics.
• 30% of users leave recommendations vs. ~1% on Amazon.
• Recommendations become social
• Users have a heirarchy system based on how their recommendations
• simple levels
• kept it simple (you scan your first)
• tell users what they need to do to get to the next level:
• show a leaderboard and how you can rise within a certain category
• Not uncommon for a user to spend an hour scanning stuff the first time to see how far they get.
• What didn’t work?
• gaming rewards that don’t tap into particular passion (and are just financial) - they rarely work.
• i.e. Financial incentives for rewards do not work!!!
• saw similar behavior with recommendations at Amazon.
• Repetition (is everyone doing the same thing? game fatigue?)
• need to ask: what is the evergreen motivation?
• e.g. if you tap into a journaling behavior its likely to continue for a very long time.

• Geoff Lewis, CEO, Topguest: check-ins with traditional loyalty programs:
• trying to associate new forms of engagement (e.g instagram etc. ) with traditional loyalty programs
• Had a 2.0 relaunch and partner with Virgin America (you get Virgin Elevate points for Checking-in via Foursquare)
• Whoa, I need to remember to do this on my next pilgrimage to the Mothership.
• when someone partners with TopCast, they see social volume double
• Companies give rewards not only for actions, but how influential they are based on their social influence
• I kept thinking..hmmmm I understand that klout investment better now. :)
• What doesn’t work: People just want don’t want to spam their friend
• tried to send a “gift” (25% off on a room reservation) to 10 friends and it didn’t go well.
• What’s next?
• Give brands a sense of how users are really engaged with their brand across social tools.
• Copycat behavior is great: because eventually there’s going to be just a couple of winners.
• Evan Tana, VP PM Shopkick:
• Driven to drive shopping behavior: Finding a bargain is equivalent to a “win” in gaming.
• earn virtual currency of checking-in stuff.
• trying to drive motivations such as harvesting, collecting, “winning” when you get a deal.
• “What is the elder game?”
• Positive feedback comes in different forms:
• Kickbucks are one form
• but donating to a cause also works.
• People just want to “level-up” - even when they’re not sure what it gets them next
• People need to not think about shopping as a game
• There are interesting game mechanics at play event with Groupon
• people need to describe it as fun and easy, and not see it as a game.
• Brian Morrisroe (Co-founder, Booyah) - MyTown: similar to Monopoly-style game.: Be a real-world gaming company (focused on location now)
• Gives you a window into what’s happening at a place (people. prices of goods etc.)
• Multiple things for the users to do
• When the game mechanic has failed?
• Chose to solve validation (in a roundabout way)
• more points for better GPS signal etc.
• but the needle just did not move.
• because iPod signals weren’t great.
• distance did not matter to users as much as general interest.

• Case Study: Gamification welcome:
• This preso wasn’t that solid and was a stretch to fit into the “Gamification” theme, but still some interesting data points. I like the USA network and still struggled not to roll my eyes when some buzzwords were used. :) However, really interesting how they’ve built an entire other loosely-related business.

• USA Network: how they’ve tied to gamify some of their properties.
• Focus on characters; how can they bring users into their brand
• USA Character arcade:
• Looked at demographics of their shows: same as casual games demographics
• Developed a bunch of properties as games.
• e.g. Monk’s Mind game: 13 million plays
• With the metrics that they saw attracted more advertiser revenue
• the philosophy is not around page views, its about engagement.
• Advertisers started asking them to build custom games.
• July 2009: leaderboards/points/redemptions
• Surprising amount of traffic to USA comes from people looking for Mahjong vs. Monk/Psych etc.
• Trying to redmmend virtual and tangible goods for points.
• Goal is really to create Brand Ambassadors for the channel and the producs.
• Psych Case Study:
• Pushed Psych for 2 mins.
• Club Psych
• Nitro platform:
• “UI is key for us”: Some mioreye-rolling, but ok...
• Using Oauth: Yay!
• Triaining users to
• take a poll, get points
• do somthing, get points.
• share content, get points.
• like somthing on FB, get points.
• complete a challenge, get points.
• use points to redeem something...
• drives repeat usage.
• Leaderboards:
• how many points people have etc.?
• Virtual office and virtual living room.
• Then introduced redemption for real goods -> helped the program take off.
• Metrics: key to the system.- monitor closely
• 8 min average on the siie to 16 mins.
• 40% return visits
• Rolled out real (physical) goods redemption and then saw a huge spike in points redeemed.
• Noticed uptick in college viewers, so launched CAMPUS WARS:
• BYU won and beating out 1100 other colleges (5% of the school signed up.)
• Bringing gamification to the iPad
• While watching your show you see the code to unlock content
• Trying hard to boost live viewership.
• Drove the 2 screen experience.
• Interesting data and perspective and application: but a little orthogonal to the rest of the summit.

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Jane McGongigal - Reality is broken

• Really great preso.
• Dir, Game research developement at Institue for the Future
• Launch of new book “Reality is Broken” (she was also on Colbert last week, and has a great TED talk)

• Gameful vs. Game-like (what we have today)
• Gameful: making it feel like a game:
• i.e. have the spirit, not just the mechanics.
• What does it FEEL like to play a good game?
• points, leaderboards, badges etc. are just mechanics.
• Defining a game: Games are unnecessary obstacles we volunteer to tackle.
• Let’s look at golf
• EUstress - positive stress
• identical physiologically to negative stress,
• but under this state we’re more motivated - heightened version of ourselves
• which is why play games when we’re bored.
• we want to tap into a feeling of being challenged
• We want to be challenged:
• Noel Coward: “ Work is more fun than fun.”
• e.g.
• Angry Birds:
• Dance Central:
• Farmville: Farmville was work to many people, but it actually felt productive to people - like it was effort, but they got something done.
• Call of Duty: No.1 passtime for soliders in the military: but it generates positive feelings. generate EUstress
• World of Warcraft: 600 hours of gameplay just to get to the fun part. So far we’ve spent 5.93 million years playing World of Warcraft.
• about the same time human ancestors showed up.
• We invest 3 billiong hour weekly playing online games.
• “The oppostie of play isn’t work - its depression”
• 4 quintessential feelings of game success
• Urgent Optimism
• Social Fabric
• Blissful Productivity
• Epic Meaning.
• If you get a game right, you get “Super-empowered hopeful individuals”
• This is what you should try to turn your users into this.
• 4 examples of sites that do this well:
• U of Washington (Xfold it.)
• result: published a paper with 50K gamers into nature.
• new game: Eterna: make RNA and if it scores well, the scientists make
• Investigate your MPs expenses:
• by the guardian in the UK.
• 27K gamers looking for evidence of corruption.
• Groundcrew:
• if you’re walking in a place, it’ll tell you there’s a task to be done nearby.
• Secret??
• Way to encourage usage of libraries
• If you play the game, you write a book and it goes into the libraries collection.
• Ok, too many plugs for stuff she’s involved in. :)
• Look for delighted users: that’s your sign your dynamics are working.
• To learn more: Gameful.org
• Questions:
• How do you create games for yourself?
• E.g. game to get better after her surgery, edge of depression.
• Superbetter (socialchocolate) - making it possible to feel gameful about getting better - playable in beta over the summer; meant to play it with close friends and family.
• Create unnecessary obstacles that you enjoy getting over.
• How do you draw that line? a Game vs. a job?
• Important not to put real results on another side from gameplay
• keep the sense of voluntary participation;
• What are you uninspried by?
• more inspired by co-operative game play than competitive game play.
• games pushing co-op are doing extremely well.
• backlash against achievement badges: need to consider that carefully.
• What games do you play?
• FB/Zynga games: personal happy spaces - Farmville, City
• WoW - need to spend a day playing that game.
• Games that help people take:
• Evoke! - a 10-week crash course in changing the world and starting an enterprise.
• Can you create a game to make people better human being?
• Quote of the day: “College kids lack certain skills: like purpose, integrity...”