How to motivate through gamification?

Competence and the need to have an optimal challenge are key motivators for engagement in gamification as well. Gamification should foster feelings of achievement and competence. Badges, leaderboard, levels, and progress bars are all game elements which can be used to facilitate feelings of competence and achievement in gamification for the users. Badges are signifiers of achievement. Leaderboards allow users to compare themselves against each other. Levels and progress bars allow users to track their own progress over time. The game elements allow gamification to foster feelings of achievement and competence differently, more comparatively through leaderboards for example or more individually through progress bars and levels. It is important that each gamification user feels optimally challenged, hence a one size fits all approach is unlikely to be as effective as a mixed approach.

Beyond the needs for achievement and self-expression, gamification can be made more effective by imbuing users with feelings of social belonging.  As a game element, teams can be used to foster the social bonds players feel for example. The cooperation can also be induced more organically, such as through a shared virtual platform. Regardless of how cooperation is implemented, it can have a positive impact on player engagement because players are more motivated if they feel that they engaging together with users.

People are motivated to seek power through leadership. Leaders also inspire those around them. Both leaderboards and teams can imbue gamification users with feelings of leadership and followership. Leaderboards directly create a distinction between users at the top (leaders) and users towards the bottom (followers). Team dynamics also often lead to team leaders, and those users which take control. As mentioned above, good leaders also help motivate followers to engage more. Hence it is important for gamification to give users the chance to develop as leaders. It is important here to stress that competition and cooperation are both important within gamification. Gamification is most effective when both the possibilities exits for players to compete and collaborate.

Induced emotions and affect are motivational factors typically found in video games. Gamification can also make use of emotion and affect through virtual environments and narratives to engage users. Both virtual environments and narratives imbue a sense of immersion in gamification, adding an extra layer of meaning. They can replicate reality or create a new fantasy world, which gamification players can enjoy. As such, narratives and virtual environments can add a stimulating layer over gamification to increase user engagement. Importantly, both virtual environments and narratives are typically not performance relevant. Avatars (as part of a virtual environment) can also be used to be help build an immersive experience.

So far, we have discussed how game elements are used in gamification to engage users. But user engagement is not usually the end goal of gamification. Instead gamification wants to motivate a desired target behavior such as learning a language, increasing sales, or more physical activity.

When implementing gamification to motivate these desired target behavior, there are various aspects that need to be considered. Here we discuss three key implementation criteria.

Player choice

First and foremost, it is important that gamification is implemented with the approval of the players. Players should have the active choice to engage with the gamification. It should not be the default option, or an imposed choice. If players feel they have a lack of choice, they are more likely to try and reimpose control by undermining the gamification through misbehavior and cheating  (Woodcock & Johnson, 2017). Therefore, to make sure that gamification is successful and does not get undermined, players need to be given an active choice in whether or not they want to participate.

Player playfulness

A second important consideration to make when implementing gamification is how appropriate gamification will feel to the players. Playfulness manifests itself as a personality trait as “the predisposition to frame (or reframe) a situation in such a way as to provide oneself (and possibly others) with amusement, humor, and/or entertainment” (p. 955, Barnett, 2007). Younger people and more experienced video game players react more favorably toward gamification than older people and less frequent players (Bittner & Shipper, 2014; Koivisto & Hamari, 2014). Playful individuals are more fun-seeking (Shen, Chick, & Zinn, 2014) and are also more likely to be younger (e.g., Clarke & Basilio, 2018). Therefore, it seems that gamification is more effective at engaging more playful individuals. Hence, when implementing gamification, companies should consider to what extent their intended targets are typically going to be inherently more or less playful.

Implementation duration

The third and final consideration companies need to make when implementing gamification is the duration. Research shows that the impact of gamification on motivating behavior is unlikely to last past the implementation stage (Jones, Madden, & Wengreen, 2014). When implementing gamification therefore, companies should consider the behavior they want to motivate and consider whether it is a long- or short-term change they want to achieve. Arguably, gamification is better designed to motivate short-term changes in behavior.

Conclusion

To conclude, we have discussed how game elements can be used to motivate user engagement, by imbuing users with experiences typical of games. We have linked game experiences with the most appropriate game elements for imbuing them. Furthermore, we have highlighted key contingencies when implementing gamification, that companies need to take into consideration.

Do you need more guidance or an expert opinion on how use gamification to motivate your team or to increase the desirability of your product? We are happy to help – send us a message to have a chat!