Gamification ⚔️ Game Design
An overview of gamification and game design — key elements, differences and similarities.
Game design, gamification, badges, leaderboards, streaks, super funny avatars have been one of the most popular discussion topics for quite some time. There are a numerous posts and articles describing how gamification can help boost engagement and make products more interesting.
But it seems that real meaning of gamification and game design still gets mixed up.
I had many discussions about gamification and game design in various phases of the design process. I discussed it during the stakeholder interviews and design sprints and it was part of the process for defining better engagement strategy. That is why I want to map the fundamental elements, key differences and similarities between gamification and game design so it can help you next time you are having discussion with a client, colleague or while you are working on project.
Chapter One: Gamification.
Gamification is a method that focuses on triggering elements of human behavior and psychology in order to provide rewarding, engaging and exciting experiences for the users. While most of the elements that gamification uses are borrowed from the games (streaks, badges, leaderboards etc.) the gamification is not a game design.
Gamification lays on a foundation of utilizing the well established patterns of human behaviors in order to create the exciting, fun and habit-forming products.
The real power of gamification lies in the human psychology and consideration that users have feelings, motivation and beliefs. Therefore detecting these motivators will not only help your products increase retention and grow but they can provide meaningful and contextual experience for you users.
To me one of the best explanations of the gamification is given by Yu-kai Chou in his Octalysis Gamification Framework where he classifies eight different types of human motivation triggers or “core drivers” that help drive users towards different activities.
These nine core drivers are:
- Epic Meaning and Calling — focuses on providing the notion of being on a mission and/or being special. It could be articulated through strong narrative, immediate awards, unique prizes etc.
- Development & Accomplishment — motivates users by targeting their need to track, visualize and achieve progress. It could be articulated through leaderboards, badges, status points, progress bars, quests, “kudos” etc.
- Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback — motivates users by providing them platform for continuous exploration and creativity which means that your product enables users to constantly try with new options or combinations, create new content and get rewarded by doing so. It could be achieved with rewards for trying different approaches and combinations, streaks and boosters, instant feedbacks, unlocking milestones etc.
- Ownership & Possession — motivates users by providing them sense of ownership. It could be achieved by virtual goods and currency, exchangeable points, building items/places, collection sets, avatars etc.
- Social Influence & Relatedness — focuses on providing the channel for social connection and relatedness among the players. It leans onto the elements of social acceptance, mentorship, responsibility. It can be achieved by becoming friends, giving gifts/likes/kudos, group quests, mentorships etc.
- Scarcity & Impatience — motivates users by creating the notion of exclusivity and need to have something limited. It could be achieved with timers, prize pacing, appointments etc.
- Unpredictability & Curiosity — motivates users by creating the atmosphere of wanting to know what is going to happen next. It can be achieved by mini quests, visual storytelling, easter eggs, random rewards etc.
- Loss & Avoidance— focuses on providing the notion of “fear of missing out” or missing previously collected items. It could be achieved by progress/streaks loss, visual graves, being locked out etc.
To summarize, when talking about the gamification there is a wide array of tools and motivators we can use and design in order to create better experiences. We should look beyond specific gamification elements (we know now that badges are only one way to trigger the sense of accomplishment 😉) and focus on the primary mission and goal of our product and then see how we can make designed experience more meaningful for our users.
Chapter Two: Game Design.
Game design is a process of creating and designing games which includes different stages and elements (such as gamification).
To me personally game design is more like creating a movie, there are many different variables that need to be defined and ultimately tested in order to make successful game.
Before starting to design and develop the first, beta release of the game you need to define couple of key goals by answering the following questions:
- What do you want to achieve with the game in terms of entertainment, creativity and business?
- What is the general idea around the game?
- What is your target audience?
- And what are your success metrics?
After you have defined the core requirements to the game you can dig deeper into the process of the game design.
Usually during the game game design process you need to define and design following elements:
1.Game Genre, Concept and Mechanics
Before starting to do any kind of game design the genre, general concept and core game mechanics needs to be defined. It could be from arcade, action, action-adventure, to role-playing, platform, simulation, strategy, sports and from many other game genres.
The game mechanics refers to the principles on how the characters or the player moves in the game, how do they relate to the environment and obstacles.
Lastly, the general concept needs to be clear, i.e. you want to design the RPG game about the famous witch slayer on a quest to find a token of youth.
2.Story and Gameplay
When creating the story and the gameplay for your game couple of things need to be defined:
- What is the main game goal? I.e. To slay witches and find the token of youth.
- What is the intro story and the context? The intro story usually appears at the beginning of the overall game. It can display the general narrative and it should guide the player into the game narrative. I.e. Once upon a time the token of youth was stolen by the notorious witch order.
- How can player transition from one level to next? I.e. By completing a mission — which means slaying the most powerful witch in each level and collecting scrolls which open new mission.
- How does the the gameplay scenario? It is a detailed scenario on what kind of obstacles, challenges and experiences player needs to overcome in order to complete the level.
3. Gamification
In order to facilitate the gamification and trigger some of its core drivers couple of key elements need to be defined such as:
- Collectibles. Game designers need to define what collectibles mean in relation to the overarching story. Also exact definition of what player needs to do in order to get one collectible needs to be clarified and and the end of the day the look and feel of the collectibles needs to be created.
- Avoidables. In contrast to collectibles aviodables are elements that player needs to avoid. Game designer needs to define what happens when player hits the avoidables and how to they look like and behave.
- Rewards. Besides in game collectibles and avoidables the rewards (badges and trophies) can be designed to facilitate gamification and Development and Accomplishment Core Driver. These rewards can be very easily utilized to boost different kind of user engagement.
4.Level design
Besides the story and a gameplay many games have a sense of progression embedded in their core gameplay. This progression is usually defined as levels or missions. In order to define levels when working on game design following elements need to be designed:
- Number of levels/missions. If your game has levels or missions the number of levels for different releases need to be defined.
- Level design. The first detail that needs to be defined when it comes to the level design is whether the level designs will be generated or custom made. Generated levels means that there will be specific set of segments what will be randomly generated by code (script). Custom made levels mean that every detail, coordinate of collectible/avoidable, environment, layout will be manually defined for each level. Both scenarios have their pros and cons, the generated levels can be faster to create but can seem repetitive and generic while creating custom takes more time to design and develop but if done right they usually provide better gaming experience.
- Level Specification. In case you have custom made levels you will need a detailed specification on where each collectible/avoidable is and what are the main movement directions for the player.
5.Character
Not every game needs to have character and the fidelity of character design can very from game to game. It is important to note that when designing a game with the character(s) designer needs to provide detailed specification and visual design on how that character looks like. The character behavior needs to be defined along with the possible customizable items.
6.Environment
When it comes to the environment every game has one to some extent. Even Tetris had simple black background which simulated the coldness of abstract “logical and mathematical” world so players could focus on interlocking the elements. When working on the environments designer needs to pay a lot of attention to the game type and define how the environment is going to look. (Is it going to be 3D, 2D, fake perspective etc.?)
7.Animations
Animations are one of the key elements that make games interactive and fun. There are several types of animations that need to be defined in order to create a game:
- Gameplay animations — How characters or elements behave and move while player plays the game.
- Level transitions — which give answer whether your game should have default intro and outro scenes when specific mission or level is completed.
- Pre-loaders — define if there are any additional animations when the level and game is launching.
9.Sound design
And last but not the least important element of the game design is sound. In order to provide the best possible interactive and sensational experience game and sound designers need to define what kind of sounds and music is going to be included in the game. There are two main categories of the sound design that need to be defined for each game:
- Background music — define if there is going to be any kind of the music during the gameplay and what it is going to be?
- Sound FX — define what kind of sounds are going to appear when player has some kind of interaction within the game. I.e. sword clash, jumping etc.
Chapter 3: Takeaways
At the end of the day gamification and game design do lay on the same foundations — providing experiences that relate to human psychology.
On the other hand game design is a discipline and belongs to an industry which is very unique and has its own rules while gamification is more like method that facilitates engagement and entertainment.
When working on game design and/or integrating gamification into your products the most important thing to remember is to always keep in mind about your users motivations, feelings and contexts and to understand what really drives them and what can make their life better.
Postface
I need to note that every project no matter how big or small includes a team and people with whom you work, learn with and learn from. My journey to game design was intertwined with super creative people from Five team to whom I want to share gratitude for motivating me and inspiring to write this article.
Vildana is experienced UX, UI and Product Designer with Masters degree in Architecture and Urban Planning. She is the founder of Sarajevo Designs Meetups, and currently works with Five Agency in Zagreb and New York.
