Just add points? What UX can (and cannot) learn from games
Just add points? What UX can (and cannot) learn from games
1. Just add points?
what  ux designers can
(and cannot) learn from games

Sebastian Deterding
UXCamp Europe
Berlin, May 30, 2010

cbn
 2. The Fun
            Theory                                                       Problems...
               1                                                                3




                                            2                                                                 4
                                    Why games                                                          What we
                                     are fun                                                           can learn


There‘s a meme currently circulating in the UX community that the best way to motivate user behaviour is to make it fun – and the best
way to make it fun is game mechanics. Today, I‘d like to (1) present this meme, (2) summarise the research on why games are fun, (3)
show some problems with applying game design in other contexts, and (4) point out what we can actually learn from game design.
 3. The Fun
           Theory
              1




So on to point number one.
 4. Can we get  more people to use the
              bottle bank by making it fun to do?




The most articulate version of »The Fun Theory« is a recent viral video campaign by Volkswagen Sweden that runs by that name.
Here‘s one example how they use game mechanics to motivate users to use the bottle bank.
 5. Play video
  6. »Fun is the  easiest way to
                change people‘s behaviour.«


      Thefuntheory.com
On the campaign website, you‘ll find more videos, a (now closed) competition and the core idea: »Fun is the easiest way to change
people‘s behaviour.« (One thing I always wonder is: What happens on day 2? What is the »replay value« of these designs? But more on
that later.)
 7. 1982: Thomas Malone
To  wit, the idea that we can deduce heuristics for designing more enjoyable applications from video games is nothing new. If you look
up the scholarly HCI databases, you‘ll already find papers on this in the early 1980s, the first heydays of video games (http://bit.ly/
csscek.)
 8. Work made
                                                      fun gets done!
      1994: The Fish! Strategy
In the 1990s, there was a business bible craze around »The FISH! strategy«. Briefly, it states that for employees to be productive and
creative, they have to be intrinsically motivated, which is best achieved by a playful attitude towards their work. (In a sense, Dan H.
Pink‘s recent business bible »Drive« is just a reiteration of this focus on intrinsic motivation.)
 9. Research                                          Design                                   Application

Yet there is also a growing amount of serious research (especially within the learning sciences) on creating more motivating work and
learning environments by leveraging game design. Within the design community, you find no shortage of presentations and blog posts
on the topic, and there are already some applications explicitly using game mechanics (links at the end of this presentation).
 10. Games With A  Purpose
Maybe the most well-known application are the »Games With A Purpose« by re:captcha inventor Luis von Ahn, like the »ESP Game«:
On the surface, players earn points by guessing which word comes to mind of an anonymous counterpart when seeing a picture. In the
background, the inputs are used as highly accurate image tags.
 11. Book Oven
Another example  is »Book Oven«, a web platform for book publishing. The platform crowdsources the otherwise tedious act of proof
reading by presenting users with small snippets of text. Users earn points for every snippet checked, and can compare themselves with
other users on a leader board – to apparently amazing effects:
 12. »One editor told  me: Your
             bite-sized edits is Crack
             Cocaine for proof readers.«



                                  Hugh McGuire
                                  cofounder, bookoven.com
According to co-founder Hugh McGuire, a lot of professional proof readers who do this kind of thing for a living during daytime log into
Bookoven in the evening to do it for free.
 13. twitter
In a very  similar way, Twitter has recently crowdsourced its translation – again with small snippets, points earned per snippet, and
levels. Even these bare bones mechanics seem to work quite well: To achieve level 11, one has to translate 1484 snippets – and I know
quite a number of people in my twittersphere who are at level 10.
 14. 2
                                     Why games
                                     are fun


So the obvious question is: Why? Why is this so motivating, so much fun? What exactly is at work here?
 15. Just add points!




The  answer I find reiterated over and over in most of the current debate in UX design is: »Just add points (and leaderboards)!« Points
are seen as a kind of monosodium glutamate you can spice up any interaction or product with.
 16. Foursquare
Foursquare best exemplifies  this approach: To motivate a desired user behaviour (check-ins), users earn points for performing it. The
points are then displayed on leaderboards to stimulate competition, and users can achieve levels or badges with a certain number of
points or combination of check-ins.
 17. »Fun is just  another word
                           for learning.«



                                 Raph Koster
                                 a theory of fun for game design
However, this approach is way too simplistic if seen in context of the wealth of thought and research in game studies and game design.
Personally, I think that Raph Koster most concisely summed up what we currently know about why games are fun when he said: »Fun is
just another word for learning.«
 18. »Fun from games  arises out of mastery.
             It arises out of comprehension. It is the
             act of solving puzzles that makes games
             fun. With games, learning is the drug.«




                                  Raph Koster
                                  a theory of fun for game design
Now, »fun is learning« sounds quite counterintuitive at first. What Koster means (and what is backed up by research on intrinsic
motivation) is that the fun of games is the positive experience of mastering something: a new skill, a solved puzzle, a recognised
pattern. We win a game by noticing and then mastering the rule patterns – and this experience of competence creates fun.
 19. http://www.flickr.com/photos/photonquantique/3364593945/sizes/l/
                                                                                                           http://www.flickr.com/photos/sulamith/1342528771/sizes/o/




       We flee from                                                            We flee into
To give you an example: The same kind of mathematics that school kids usually despise in school is actively sought out and performed
by them with intense focus and joy in Trading Card Games like »Magic: The Gathering«, where mastery requires complex
multiplication, fractions, and statistic analysis of which card combinations form a winning deck. So what makes the difference?
 20. »Fun is just  another word
                           for learning.«
                                                  under optimal conditions


                                 Raph Koster
                                 a theory of fun for game design
What separates games from school (and what we have to add to Koster‘s definition) is that games create optimal conditions for
learning. Fun is learning – under optimal conditions. And games show us just what exactly those optimal conditions are.
 21. »Reality is broken.
             Games work better. …
            Games are the ultimate
            happiness machines.«


                                 Jane McGonigal
                                 ux week 2009
In a sense, this is the point researcher and game designer Jane McGonigal makes: Games take to heart many principles of positive
psychology, which is why they are far more enjoyable than everyday life. So – what are those principles? Let‘s return to the
crowdsourced twitter translation. Even this simple interface already shows many of the most important design principles.
 22. S.M.A.R.T. goals




Principle #1:  Games set specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and timed short- and long-term goals (you might say they do time
management 101 for the user). Short-term: I am level 4 and want to get to level 5. Long-term: Level 11! In contrast, think of how often in
life (or school) we have no, unclear, vague or even conflicting goals? Not so in games.
 23. Clear, bite-sized
                                       actions and choices




Principle #2: The available actions to achieve our goals are made explicit – and prepackaged so that we can directly execute them.
Twitter presents the text we have to translate directly and in small doable portions: 1 Action = click & translate 1 sentence. Game menus
in point-and-click adventures are overviews of objects and verbs – we »just« have to decide which action is the right one (cf. designer
Sid Meier: »A game is a series of interesting decisions«). In everyday life, the actions and choices available to us are mostly unclear,
vague or not packaged into immediately doable steps, i.e. »lose weight«, »write that novel«, »get rich«, ...
 24. Clear action–goal
                                                    relations




Principle #3: The relation between the available actions and choices and our goals are clear. It is uncertain whether we succeed in
performing the action (here: translate the text), but how success brings us closer to our goal is immediately visible with numerical
exactitude. Conversely, do we know in everyday life whether a chosen action will really bring us closer to our goals, and how much so?
 25. Clear status




Principle #4:  Our current status ist absolutely clear. In games, we always know »where« we stand – spatially (via map displays), in
terms of our skills and possessions (listed in menus, inventories and character sheets), in relation to our goals (points and mission
stats) and in our relation to other players (visualised in leaderboards or social graphs).
 26. Excessive positive feedback




Principle  #5: Games give instant, unambiguous, excessively strong positive (and negative) feedback. My favourite example is the
Pachinko-like game »Peggle« by Popcap Games. The goal is to shoot all orange pellets from a screen with a bouncing metal ball.
Here‘s what happens if you clear the last orange pellet of a level:
 27. Play video
  28. Scaffolded challenges


That‘s the  kind of feedback I‘d like to get for a successful project. But on to principle #6: The challenges we face, the goals we strive for
get a little more difficult with each step. On twitter, we have to translate a little more each level to reach the next one. Why is this
important?
 29. anxiety
                                                                                                       lo w«
                                                                                                 »f
      Difficulty




                                                                                                     boredom


                                                               Skill/time



                                  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
                                  flow: the psychology of optimal experience
The answer comes from psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: We usually feel best when the challenges we face perfectly match our
skills. More, and we are stressed, less, and we‘re bored. Since we constantly learn and improve our skills, the challenges must grow
with our skills – otherwise, boredom ensues.
 30. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1524/the_chemistry_of_game_design.php




       Chunking
And this is where twitter partly fails: Harder challenges are not just »more of the same« (i.e. earn more points), but different and more
complex ones. Good games let you master one simple thing, then another one, and then they chunk both into a more complex
combination of the two which you have to master, and so on. (Above is a skill atom and the complete chunking chain for Tetris.)
 31. Social comparison

Game designers  test and balance this difficulty curve of their game until it perfectly matches the learning curve of their audience; often,
the difficulty dynamically adjusts to player performance. Now to the seventh and last principle: Games create social comparison to
facilitate both social learning and motivating competition. Twitter does this subtly by displaying who‘s in the game and at what level.
 32. http://www.flickr.com/photos/30279269@N04/3946300019/




       The well-formed action
Personally, I call these the principles of well-formed action, as they not only apply to games, but capture part of what makes any
everyday action satisfying and motivating – »optimal experiences« in the terms of Csikszentmihalyi or Jane McGonigal. Games provide
a kind of crutches purpose-built to facilitate and guide well-formed action.
 33. Quick recap
       • Clear status, goals, actions, decisions,
        goal-action relations
      • Excessive feedback
      • Scaffolded challenges matched
        to the users‘ growing skills
      • Chunking
      • Social comparison
So if we just follow these principles when designing our applications, they will be just as much fun as games – correct?
 34. Problems...
                                                                                    3




Well, yes and no. These are certainly generally valid and valuable principles for the design of any interaction. But I see three broad
problems with the direct transfer of game design to software or websites.
 35. bl em
    ro 1
  P #

                                                                                          game design
      Difficulty




                                                                                                      usability
                                                              Ability/Time
The first problem is a conflict of cultures and goals: Usability and UX come from the world of tasks and productivity. Our primary goal
has always been to make applications as easy as possible, to keep the learning curve as flat as possible – boring, but simple. If you‘d
ask a usability engineer to optimize a video game, this is what probably would come out:
 36. http://lostgarden.com/2008/10/princess-rescuing-application-slides.html

On the other  hand, game designers come from the world of fun and leisure. If you‘d ask a game designer to craft a bus ticket machine
that is »exciting«, his solution might look like this:
 37. Ticket




                                                                                             Drag point through
                                                                                            maze to receive ticket




Imagine the engaging suspense of this game with the added time pressure when you see that your train will arrive in just a minute …
And to ensure that this doesn‘t get boring once you figured out the labyrinth ...
 38. Ticket




                               Level 2
                                        Drag point through
                                        maze to receive ticket




… there‘s level 2!
 39. game                                                                  work
                        Emotion                        Conflict of                             Tasks
                        Intensity                       interest                             Efficiency
                        Duration                                                              Speed




Behind these different cultures of thinking and design is a manifest conflict of interest: The whole point of games is to create intense
emotions, and to prolong their experience as much as possible. By contrast, productivity software is all about getting your work done as
efficiently and quickly as possible. How you feel is at best a secondary consideration.
 40. game                                        work
            Only                          Emotion                                      Tasks
          sometimes                       Intensity                                  Efficiency
                                          Duration                                    Speed




Only sometimes, ensuring intrinsic user motivation is so essential that emotion becomes conducive to or even a prerequisite for task
completion – say, in creative work or unremunerated user work. Another case are end-user products where the quality of experience is
part of the selling proposition or market differentiator. In those cases, we have to ensure usability and fun/emotion.
 41. bl em
    ro 2
  P #




      Game Designers are mightier
Problem number two: Game designers are far more powerful than designers of software or websites. What do I mean with that?
 42. Let‘s assume for  a minute that Microsoft Word would be Super Mario Bros.
                                                                                                                  =
                                                                           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Super_Mario_Bros_box.jpg   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Microsoft_Word_Icon.svg
 43. Image: Joshua J.  Sloan http://bit.ly/2R4KHx, purestylin http://bit.ly/3gkXMb
If this screen would be a typical screen of a user typing a document on Microsoft Word, which elements of this screen would an
interaction designer be able to design?
 44. What we design
                            (the tool)




Answer: The interaction designer would only be able to design Mario: the tool the user uses to affect his/her world.
 45. What the user/manager  designs
                                                           (goals)


                          What we design
                            (the tool)




The goals the user has to achieve with said tool are not set by the designer, but by the user her/himself (or a third party – like his/her
supervising manager): Write a report of X pages about Y until Z.
 46. What the user/manager  also designs
                    (objects and environments)




Likewise, the objects that the user works on with his/her tools and the broader environment of his/her task is set by the user or a
supervising manager: the texts to be referred to, the colleagues who can be asked, etc.
 47. game design
                                                                                       (HR) Management!
      Difficulty




                                                                Skill/Time
Yet the difficulty curve emerges from the relation of skills, tools, objects, environment and goals: How difficult something is depends
on what I try to achieve with which tools in which environment. In games, this complex whole is designed by the game designer. In
work life, it is »designed« by our supervisors and HR people (a.k.a. »job rotation«, »job enrichment«, etc.).
 48. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=3225718




       Business Process Reengineering?
Put differently, if we as designers wish to craft a fun, engaging difficulty curve in productivity contexts, we have to step away from
designing the application in isolation and tackle the whole work context – which isn‘t interaction design anymore – it‘s business
process reengineering.
 49. How might we  ...
             let users easily integrate
             their environments and
             goals into our systems?

One middle step might be to ask ourselves who we might help users to integrate their environments and goals into our rule systems –
just like a GTD time management application helps users to organise their life by offering a structure and workflow that they then
populate with their own tasks.
 50. Two examples for  this approach are the time management application RescueTime, which essentially tracks the amount of time you
spend with different applications (and on different websites) and allows you to set goals (e.g. »no more than two hours of YouTube per
day«), or Chore Wars, which allows you to make household chores a part of an Online Roleplaying Game.
 51. bl em
    ro 3
  P #




                                                                                                          http://www.flickr.com/photos/musebrarian/443103590/sizes/o


The third and last problem I like to call the »Tom Sawyer problem«: In the famous novel by Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer has to paint a
fence white and is derided by some passing friends who go fishing. By insisting that he‘d rather paint the fence than go fishing, Tom is
able to persuade his friends that painting is actually fun – and has them pay for the privilege of painting the fence for him.
 52. »Tom ... had  discovered a great
            law of human action, without
            knowing it – namely, that in order
            to make a man or a boy covet a
            thing, it is only necessary to make
            the thing difficult to attain.«




                                Mark Twain
                                the adventures of tom sawyer (1876)
There are two things happening in this story. One is the psychological mechanism known as the »hard-to-get« phenomenon: If
something is hard to get (e.g. expensive, almost sold out, etc.), we usually conclude that it must be very valuable.
 53. »If he had  been a great and wise
            philosopher, like the writer of this
            book, he would now have
            comprehended that Work consists
            of whatever a body is obliged to do,
            and that Play consists of whatever
            a body is not obliged to do.«




                                 Mark Twain
                                 the adventures of tom sawyer (1876)
The second (and in our context, more relevant) thing is a core psychological and social difference between work and play: We usually
experience as work what we have to do by some external force, whereas to experience something as play, we must feel that we have
chosen to do it voluntarily. (kthx @stephenanderson for pointing me to Twain‘s story.)
 54. »First and foremost,  then, all play is a
             voluntary activity. … It is done at leisure,
             during ›free time‹. Every child knows
             perfectly well that he is ›just pretending‹,
             or that it was ›just for fun‹.«



                                   Johan Huizinga
                                   homo ludens (1938)
This actually goes back to the earliest definitions of play. According to the doyen of game studies, Johan Huizinga, the two core features
of play are: (1) It is done voluntarily, and (2) it is a »make-believe« activity without serious consequences. (There‘s a rich discussion on
how games often do have consequences – think Russian Roulette – but we don‘t have the time to dive into the scholarly details here.)
 55. voluntary
                                                                                  no serious
                                                                                 consequence


Now if you take a second look at all the examples where game mechanics work just fine – ESP Game, Bookoven, twitter translations –
you‘ll find that they are all voluntary »leisure« activities that don‘t have any serious consequence for the user. They are indeed »just a
game«.
 56. Work                                                                        Play
This explains why one and the same activity – analysing spreadsheets – is experienced as work (and people demand payment for it) in
one case, and in another case (like the Online Roleplaying Game »Eve Online«), it is experienced as fun (and people pay for it). In the
game, analysing spreadsheets is done voluntarily and has few serious consequences (the same is true for Trading Cards vs. school).
 57. http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliandibbell/234192868/sizes/o/in/set-72157594279649151/




        Chinese Gold Farming
Another example: In China and elsewhere, there are employed professional players who earn virtual items in Online Roleplaying Games
that are then resold for real money on platforms like ebay. Although these players definitely play a game, they experience this as work.–
It is not done voluntarily (they have to sit their 8 hours), and they get into trouble if they don‘t achieve their daily quota of virtual gold.
 58. »Just pretending«
So how  we experience a situation very much depends on how we and the people around us frame it. Think of the movie »Life is
beautiful«, where a Jewish son and father are held in a concentration camp. The father is able to present this situation of utmost
consequence and involuntariness as a game of hide-and-seek to his son – hence the son experiences the situation very differently.
 59. Games With A  Purpose
And this is not just a matter of fiction. Take the ESP Game. Google was so fond of the concept and its success that it bought the idea
and rebranded it as the »Gooogle Image Labeler«.
 60. Google Image Labeler
What  was presented as a fun game of mind reading is now presented as work for Google. The game mechanics stay the same, but the
framing is different – and the user stats tell us that the Image Labeler is much less successful than the ESP Game in engaging users.
 61. What we design



http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrlerone/405730185/sizes/o/


To  summarise: Again, what we designers craft is merely the tool.
 62. Who decides whether  this is play




                                                                               (or playing is allowed)

However, whether the interaction with that tool is experienced as fun, engaging play or not depends on the user and his/her social
context. Together, they define whether what they currently do is »just a game«, voluntary and without consequence, or a serious matter,
no joking around. I can say for myself that meeting XYZ is »just a game«. But if my colleagues don‘t play along, I won‘t succeed.
 63. How might we...
              induce a playful
             attitude?

This means that if we want to create the experience of play, the design challenge is not how to include game mechanics, but how to
induce a playful stance in the user towards the activity they are engaging in – what game philosopher Bernhard Suits called »the lusory
attitude«.
 64. http://www.flickr.com/photos/indy138/2852103473/sizes/o/




       Easter Eggs
One possible way to achieve this are easter eggs – small, surprising, delightful details that the user will only discover by chance and that
have no functional value at all (like this lawn gnome in Half-Life 2). There is something about such intentional non-functional excess
that signals a momentary license be non-serious, non-instrumental.
 65. http://www.flickr.com/photos/titanas/1051688629/sizes/o




       Easter Eggs
The business card printing service moo.com does a good job in this: Not only is their copywriting and design with little drop characters
consistently playful, but there are many lovingly-crafted-yet-nonfunctional details that surprise and delight – like this imprint inside the
cardboard box around a set of cards that you only discover when you take the box apart before throwing it away.
 66. Quick recap
      Tutorials
       Social
                                                                                Productivity
     Networks
     »Leisure«
                                                                                software

     Music etc.
To summarise again, game mechanics and inducing a playful attitude to create »fun« experiences usually works best where (1) the
designer can craft the goals and environment as well (e.g. tutorials), and (2) the usage context is one of voluntary, consequence-free
leisure time, like social networks, music recommendation sites, etc. Game and play are less suitable for hardcore productivity contexts.
 67. Ribbon Hero
Microsoft‘s Office  tutorial game »Ribbon Hero« for instance is a good application of game mechanics in productivity contexts. The
game sets the goals and the materials to work on. Also, learning a new tool usually happens under less supervision and is a more self-
structured activity than other work tasks.
 68. Attent
On the other  hand, I assume that the e-mail management application »Attent« by Seriosity, which adds a virtual currency to e-mail, will
likely clash with instrumental attitudes and demands in the workplace and hence not produce a similarly engaging experience (though I
have no data to prove that and am happy to be disproven).
 69. 4
                                                                                                          What we
                                                                                                         can learn


But all is not lost: As I said, there are contexts where game design can help in designing engaging applications, and there are general
design principles to be learned from game design. More specifically, I think that UX designers can take three things from game design.
 70. ss on
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          Collecting                    Points                  Social comparison                        Narrativity




           Intermittent                      Customization                 Real Money Trading                Baroque visuals
          reinforcement



      Design Patterns (of course)
The first thing are design patterns like the principles of well-formed action. I won‘t go into detail here because (1) there are too many of
them and (2) other people have covered this area, so have a look at the resources referenced at the end of this presentation.
 71. http://www.flickr.com/photos/8147452@N05/2913356030/sizes/o/




       Configure, don‘t add
One caveat though: As with interaction design patterns, »more« does not equal »better«. Take Chess: Chess has a very unique
experiential quality of intense focus and ratiocination. If you add the game mechanic of time pressure (i.e. speed chess), the experience
does not just become better, it completely changes. Game design is about such configuration of mechanics, not mere addition.
 72. ss on
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      Rule Design
The second lesson to be taken from game design is rule design. If you are on facebook, you will undoubtedly have noticed these
recommendations displayed in the sidebar of your dashboard. There‘s a rule (and recommendation engine) deciding when and where
which recommendations are displayed in reaction to which user behaviours.
 73. »In designing transactional  and content-
             rich web sites, rules provide an
             underlying structure that governs the
             experience: what is displayed, when it’s
             displayed, and how it responds to user
             actions.«



                                  Daniel Brown
                                  designing rules, ia summit 2009
As Daniel Brown pointed out in his talk at the 2009 IA Summit, more and more elements on websites and web applications become
dynamic in this sense. It is no longer one interface to every customer, but the interface dynamically adapts in reaction to user behaviour
– and this adaptation is governed by underlying rules.
 74. Mechanics                             Dynamics                             Aesthetics




                                Marc LeBlanc
                                mda: a formal approach to game design
How do we design these rule systems so that we achieve an intended user experience? This is the core competence of game designers.
They offer us models to understand these relations, like Marc LeBlanc‘s MDA model. Put simply: The game rules (mechanics) afford
the interaction between user and system (dynamics), which affords the user experience (aesthetics).
 75. mechanic                                dynamic                               aesthetic


                 +$             +                          Poverty                            Frustrating
                 -$             -                           Gap                               end game




      Monopoly
One example: In Monopoly, you buy streets and houses with money, which earn you more money. Conversely, if you lose money, you
have to sell houses and streets and hence earn less money. In the game, this leads to a slowly growing but largely irreversible poverty
gap, which makes for a frustrating end game for the losing player. Other games have a more balanced and hence enjoyable end game.
 76. Mafia Wars
Another example:  On login, the facebook game Mafia Wars allows players to gift one virtual item to their friends on Mafia Wars, and
every item one receives can be reciprocated once. (Letting you gift another person first without any immediate benefit to yourself is a
smart use of the persuasive principle of reciprocity, by the way.)
 77. mechanic                               dynamic                             aesthetic


                     Free gift                            Mutual                               Bond,
                     on login                             gifting                            obligation




      Mafia Wars
Overall, what this game mechanic does is spur a dynamic of mutual gifting among players, which affords a mutual sense of bonding
and obligation among players that effectively binds the players to the platform itself.
 78. Testing & Balancing
Again,  a caveat: In its first version, this mechanic produced a very »spammy« dynamic and hence not the intended aesthetics, which is
why Mafia Wars recently redesigned it. The lesson here: Rule systems need just as much iterative testing and optimising like any other
design aspect, and this is what separates good game design from bad or mediocre.
 79. Depth: Foursquare ...
Another  important quality of rule design is depth. As game designer Sid Meier said, a good game is »easy to learn, difficult to master«.
This is why foursquare often becomes boring quickly: Once you understand the basic mechanic, there‘s nothing new to learn and
master. Whatever fun remains is derived from the social metagame of competing with peers for the mayorship of some place.
 80. … vs. Foodspotting
Contrast  this with Foodspotting, a kind of foursquare-meets-Yelp! where people recommend specific dishes in specific restaurants to
each other. Again, there‘s a desired behaviour (spotting foods), there‘s points and badges …
 81. … vs. Foodspotting
…  but if you take a look at their »About« page, you‘ll see that the rule system actually introduces two different kinds of points – »noms«
and »reputation« – that interact with each other. I haven‘t used Foodspotting enough to qualify how successful this system is, but it‘s
definitely a move in the right direction of »deeper« rule systems.
 82. ss on
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      FarmVille
The third and final lesson is that not all games and gamers are alike. Game design offers us a greater precision and clarity in speaking
about just what we mean when we say »fun«. FarmVille for instance is the most successful social game so far that definitely delivers
fun to tens of millions of users.
 83. Fallout 3
Now look  at Fallout 3, one of the most successful recent roleplaying games, which again most definitely delivers fun to its millions of
users. But is it the same kind of fun as with FarmVille? Most certainly not. So the question is: Which different kinds of fun are there?
What kind of fun appeals to which demographic? And which kinds of fun might not mix so well?
 84. Hard Fun                                                                                    Easy Fun
             Fiero                                                                                      Curiosity
                             emotion < choice < mechanic > choice > emotion


             People Fun                                                                                 Serious
             Amusement                                                                                  Fun
                                                                                                        Relaxation




                                 Nicole Lazzaro
                                 four fun keys
Nicole Lazzaros »4 Fun Keys« are but one (good) answer to such questions (for another take, see Marc LeBlanc‘s 8 kinds of fun). Put
more generally, game design gives us models, theories, empirical data and vocabularies to better understand and thus design for the
different kinds of fun that exist.
 85. Recap
1. The core  fun in games is learning
   under optimal conditions.
2.To create it, we must be able to design
  goals and environments as well.
3. Play depends on voluntary contexts
   without serious consequence.
4.Game design gives us patterns, models
  and words for emotion and rule design.
 86. If you read  just one book ...

             on Game Design, make it
             Jesse Schell‘s The Art of
             Game Design: A Book of
             Lenses. Smart, inspiring,
             comprehensive – even
             beyond games.
             Link: http://bit.ly/1GHeP5
             Review: http://bit.ly/14Ieri
 87. A close second  ...

             is Tracy Fullerton‘s Game
             Design Workshop. Delivers
             lots of interviews with
             game designers and in-
             depth methods for offline
             game prototyping.
             Link: amzn.to/dfRsyS
 88. Read more books!
     Raph Koster                   Johan Huizinga
    A Theory of Fun               Homo Ludens
    for Game Design



    Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi       David W. Shaffer
    Flow: The psychology of       How Computer Games
    optimal experience            Help Children Learn



    James Paul Gee                Byron Reeves & J. L. Reyd
    What video games have to      Total Engagement
    teach us about learning ...
 89. On Slideshare
     Amy Jo Kim                       Jane McGonigal
    Putting the Fun in Functional:   The User Experience of
    Applying Game Mechanics ...      Reality



     Dan Saffer                      Nicole Lazzaro
     Gaming the Web: Using the       The Four Keys to Fun
     structure of games ...



     Aki Järvinnen                   Stephen P. Anderson
     Game Design for                 The Art and Science of
     Social Networks                 Seductive Interactions
 90. On Slideshare
      Daniel Brown            Holger Dieterich
     Designing Rules         What can we learn from
                             game design?



     John Mark Josling       Kars Alfrink
     Playing On! Interface   Playful IAs
     lessons from games



     Nadya Direkova          Amy Jo Kim
     Game Design for         MetaGame Design
     Web Designers
 91. On Slideshare
      Philip Fierlinger*                                               Jonathan Boutelle
     Designing a Game Changer                                         Game-inspired
                                                                      RIA Design
     * with kind thanks for the cover »inspiration«




     Aki Järvinnen
     Workshop: Game Design
     for Social Networks                              Want more?
                                                      You might follow me on Slideshare
                                                      to receive updates on slides I favorite.
     Vily Lehdonvirta
     Why do people buy
     virtual goods?
 92. Even more stuff
      Daniel Cook               Daniel Cook
     The Princess Rescuing     The Chemistry of
     Application               Game Design



     Marc LeBlanc              Jane McGonigal
     Mechanics, Dynamics,      The engagement economy
     Aesthetics



     Stephen Anderson          John Ferrara
     When data gets up close   Playful design (book in
     and personal              progress)
 93. Even more stuff
      Jesse Schell             Playful
     Design Outside the Box   Conference series




     Jesse Schell             David Carlton
     Gamepocalypse blog       Critical Compilation
 94. You should follow  them on twitter
   aquito           Whatsthehubbub
   Aki Järvinnen    Kars Alfrink




   NicoleLazzaro    amyjokim
   Nicole Lazzaro   Amy Jo Kim




   avantgame        getmentalnotes
   Jane McGonigal   Stephen P. Anderson
 95. You should follow  them on twitter
   raphkoster       jesseschell
   Raph Koster      Jesse Schell




   danlockton       ibogost
   Dan Lockton      Ian Bogost
 96. If you liked  this ...




 persuasive design                 you can do better
 Or: The Fine Art of Separating    Lessons Learned from Government
 People for their Bad Behaviours   meets SNS
 97. Thanks.
  Short  URL for this presentation: bit.ly/justadd


@dingstweets

sebastian@codingconduct.cc

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