Gamification and Centering Play

Gamification and Centering Play

[00:00:00] Ela Miranda: Holi Holi, and welcome to Building Blocks and Puzzle Pieces. This is a Rain or Shine podcast, and I am your host, Ela Miranda. I’m so excited to welcome you here under our umbrella and to dive into how to build your own accommodations, the building blocks you need to get there, and the puzzle pieces that you might need to solve along the way.

[00:00:17] All right. Today, we are recording with a whole page of notes and I am really excited for today’s episode. We are going to talk about gamification and how we can apply it to our work and to our lives. So we’re going to dive right in here and talk about the history.

What is Gamification?

[00:00:40] So to get started I’m going to pull out my favorite definition of gamification. Which is by Gabe Zichermann. And he states that “gamification is the process of using game thinking and mechanics to engage an audience and solve problems.”

[00:00:57] I really like this definition because I think it really helps illustrate the fact that gamification as a whole is focused on motivation and engagement and solving problems. Whereas games themselves are more about immersive experiences, right? And like navigating a narrative or a specific set of rules as your sole focus. Instead of focusing on a result or an action. I think this is especially important because I think a lot of times people confuse gamification with game-based learning.

[00:01:38] I am a pretty big proponent of that as well. Right. Frankly. I love anything that makes learning fun. But I think there’s a difference. The point of gamification is that you are applying gaming mechanics and principles and design thinking to an action or a process that you would be doing either way. Whereas with a game there are probably other ways of learning it. But your focus is not so much on the result or the action as it is on navigating a story or a set of rules.

[00:02:16] This is really interesting to me, especially because like, As an autistic person one of the main points that I often relate to others on is feeling like I am navigating a set of rules that nobody explained to me when I am interacting with society. So in that way, sometimes the work that I am doing feels like my primary objective is simply to understand the rules and the narratives that are happening around me. But that to me, Is not fun. I think a lot of times that comes down to choice. When I choose to interact with a game there are clear instruction manuals. And or somebody who’s played the game before to explain it. And it’s something that I am both choosing to engage in and also something that has no real life consequences.

[00:03:10] I do think, however, That a lot of my interest in gamification comes from the fact that novelty and rewards are very motivating for me. But I think it also relates to the fact that a lot of tasks and things that I’m told I need to do are not interesting to me. Right. Like if I didn’t feel some kind of like societal pressure to provide work in return for capital. I probably wouldn’t. And so. I think I have spent a lot of my life being told that I have to do things in a specific way. Or simply told that I have to do things regardless of how appropriate I believe their reasoning is. And so having a way to regain control and having a way to bring play and joy into a process that I do not always understand is very appealing to me.

History of Gamification

[00:04:03] I’m really excited to share some of the discourse around gamification in the workplace. And talk about that with y’all.

[00:04:10] Gamification is typically seen as a more modern concept. Especially when it comes to academics and studying. The first academic work on gamification was published in the 1980s by Thomas Malone. And in the 1970s, in 1973 to be exact, Charles Coonradt wrote the game of work. Where he explored in a study the difference between work environments and sport environments. And he was specifically studying the impact of these environments on a team. One of the things that he determined was that sports teams had really easily definable goals. And they had immediate and obvious feedback. Whereas in the work environment, feedback is often really vague and disconnected from the goals. Which led to teams being disjointed and I’m curious how much like work culture impacted this right? Because the summary is essentially that one of the reasons why work environments are difficult to form teams is because without those easily definable goals and immediate feedback it’s difficult to come together and work together. And I’d be interested to see how much of that ties back to the individualist culture that these work environments are created in. But as of yet, I did not find a definitive study on this. So. If you know of one, please send it my way. Or maybe this is an experiment that we need to design, right.

[00:05:47] I think this, this concept of teamwork is really interesting. Especially because as part of my degree program, one of the things that we studied was success in leadership and the reoccurring theme throughout all of the resources and case studies that we were given was that the team needs to be involved in decision-making as much as possible. And that encouraging transparency and cross functionality in teams greatly increases their chances of success and not only their chances of success, but also team member retention and overall employee happiness. It’s always really interesting to me to study these things and to see, you know, this goes back all the way to the 1970s and it’s always really interesting to me to study these things because so many of the like common or core concepts are things that feel like they should be common sense. And so it’s always interesting to me to see how much study and science there is behind all of these things and how stubborn human beings are when it comes to actually making these changes.

Principles and Types of Gamification

[00:07:00] So there are five principles of game design then I’m going to share with you here today from a Sebastian. Deterding Deterding . I apologize if I am completely butchering that, but. Essentially, they are: excessive feedback. Scaffolded challenges that match users growing skills. Having a clear status or goals and being clear in how your actions and decisions relate to a goal. Chunking, learning one skill than learning another and then having to combine those two skills in a new way in order to learn something new. And social comparison.

[00:07:38] What I really like about the design principles and considering those rather than simply considering gaming mechanics, like a point system for rewards or badges and characterization, is that when you consider the education element of it, And you’re also bringing a level of mastery into the equation, this is where I think gamification can get really interesting. Because as is typical of something that I’m researching. I have been talking about gamification with everyone that I talk to on a regular basis. And the common thread that I have noticed when having these conversations is that all of my neuro divergent friends have at some point or another made attempts to bring games and play into the work that they do.

[00:08:30] One of my friends phrased it in this way, that boredom is the Cardinal sin for a person with ADHD. And so they had lots of examples of ways that they and their family and Other people that they knew with ADHD had utilized competition and rewards and elements of play in order to keep them interested in the work that they were doing. There’s a lot of racing, whether you’re racing with someone else, or you’re racing against a clock or you know, trying to do something as quickly as possible was something that they listed as being really helpful for them.

[00:09:05] And I realize that like, My friend group is not the largest research sample. Right? So take all of these things with a grain of salt as always, but what stuck out to me and the observation that I made was simply that like all of the people that I know with some kind of neurodivergency. We’re already intuitively finding ways to include game mechanics in the things that they are doing, simply because it’s intuitive for us to want things to be enjoyable. And since a lot of us are very tactile or hands-on learners it makes sense that we would identify with games and attempt to bring those elements into the learning and the work that we’re doing.

[00:09:46] Before we talk about mastery. I think it’s also important to recognize that there are different kinds of gamification as well. Zichermann has six official types of gamification.

[00:09:56] There are grand challenges where companies and workers institute, some kind of large-scale challenge where the reward is primarily participation. The longitude act of 1714 is a really great example of a grand challenge. My understanding of this is essentially that no one had a correct way of determining longitude. And this was having really detrimental impacts as people are attempting to travel and attempting to determine locations. And so they issued a challenge to see who come up with the best way of recording longitude. Which led to, you know, the developments that we have today. It was one of the first documentations of competition and prizes being used in a non-game situation.

[00:10:46] The next type of gamification is rapid feedback. Or sometimes known as a nudge system. A really great example of this is Duolingo. They utilize a lot of gamification aspects in a way that is very enticing for users. Thinking about it from an educational standpoint there are some things that they could do better. Although I recognize that like, A lot of those issues are solved when you pay for their services. So. You know, there’s some educational gatekeeping there, but the reason that this is a great example for a rapid feedback system is because If you have heard of Duolingo at all. I’m sure you’ve seen the memes of the owl breaking down your door and kidnapping your family because you didn’t practice your Spanish today. They utilize your phone’s notifications in a very aggressive manner to provide you with that rapid feedback so that you are constantly being reminded of and returning to the actions that they are looking for you to take.

[00:11:50] The next type of gamification is stimulation. This is typically going to be like stimulating some kind of real world situation in an online way. To increase both your knowledge and your enjoyment of the situation. I have never experienced this, but I know when my siblings took driver’s ed courses they did a lot of online driving simulations as part of their courses in a way to help them learn safely how to follow the rules of the road.

[00:12:20] Another type of gamification is a status marathon. A really good example of these are airline point systems. This type of gamification is designed with kind of a long game in mind, right? Marathon aspect of it. The point here is more so status and loyalty. So like essentially by remaining loyal to a specific airline, right. And only taking actions with that specific airline, you achieve a certain sort of status. And typically there are status rewards associated with that, right? Like, You get lounge access or first class upgrades, you know All of the benefits that we associate with having that status that a company is willing to provide as a reward for long-term loyalty.

[00:13:10] Another type of gamification is commercial or negotiation, gamification. And those are typically some kind of stimulated economy. A good example of this is the green stamps. Which came out in 1930, I believe. So I’ve seen in my research green stamps reference to a few different stores. The most common one was related to the Sears catalog. I’m sure this is not you know, a unique situation, but essentially they created a stimulated economy by printing green stamps in their catalog that were redeemable for shop items. And the company itself, got to set the value and the essential economic worth of the rewards and tokens that they were offering. This is really similar to Costco shop cards that you get when you book your travel through . You get store credit as a reward for purchasing your travel package through this company that you can redeem for items that Costco sells in their store. None of which are directly related to travel, but it’s essentially linking you know, these two separate entities together to encourage more brand loyalty from you.

[00:14:31] And then the last type of gamification that Zichermann outlines is expressive gamification. Or more commonly social expression. The most common example here is Farmville. Which is interesting and kind of dates a lot of the research and educational material around this. But it’s essentially capitalizing on your desire to express yourself socially and to kind of show off your individuality in a community setting. I would actually say like Yelp or like four square is maybe a more accurate example of social expression. Where you are utilizing the game mechanics of ratings and reviews and typically more visual elements to provide some kind of social capital. You know, you are essentially expressing to society both your opinions and your experiences.

[00:15:28] Now that you kind of have an idea of the different tapes of gamification and the different ways that game mechanics and principles can be used two inspire action and encourage specific results. The aspect and I guess the design principle that I find most interesting when it comes to gamification. Is the principle of mastery. I’m going to reference a Ted talk by Amy Jo Kim a lot. And if you’re also really interested in mastery as a concept of gamification and would like to hear more from an actual expert. Pretty much everything that I’m going to talk about in regards to mastery I learned from Amy Jo Kim. And I really recommend her Ted talk beyond gamification to learn more about this concept.

[00:16:18] Typically people utilize gamification in order to encourage retention from their customers. Her argument is that in order to ensure continued engagement and ensure retention you have to think about the different user levels and how the experience is going to differ as you level up in knowledge and in time spent using the platform or a software or time spent taking the specific action, right?

[00:16:48] A lot of people are familiar with the concept of onboarding and helping a novice level user learn and understand how do utilize a program or a framework. And there’s typically some education and clearly defined projects for people who move on to that next level of being a problem solver, where they are you know, pretty familiar with the rules and the regulations, and they’re learning how to solve the problems that they came to this approach or this program to solve. But there’s not a lot of thought and intention that goes into designing the experience for an expert or a master level user, right.

[00:17:28] Like once you can move through the process easily without thinking about it, what new challenges are you providing to these users? So that they continue to be engaged and interested in the process. I think this is where a lot of corporate environments fail when it comes to gamification. Because again. It’s really easy to think through the experience of a novice. It’s not always easy to know what’s going to engage a master level user. It’s not always easy. Especially when you are thinking through your process to anticipate the challenges and the engagement that a master or an expert level user is going to need.

[00:18:13] In terms of the corporate environment. One of my friends, shared with me a story about how they worked for a company that was attempting to utilize gamification in their corporate environment. Essentially they were trying to utilize like levels and badges To encourage team members to progress through training faster, right? Which is a great concept. Great idea. But my friend shared that in action the corporate environment and like the team environment that this company had created prior to implementing this new process of gamification was one of competition and individual success. So what happened was when they implemented this new badge system that showed what level of training individuals were at. Is that people would discriminate against lower level employees because they were so used to that team environment of competition and desiring individual success that while they had moved to a more team focused environment essentially the badges just helped people discriminate against people who had little to no level of training. And so they tried to discourage lower level associates from joining their team because they were still looking for that individual success.

[00:19:35] And we were talking about this and I was like, yeah, that’s like a really great example of where having some idea of a master level experience would have been really helpful because. Had you thought about this experience as a whole right. And thought about how to encourage people to learn and how to encourage people to work together in a team. You could have implemented challenges for your expert users to train lower level associates. Right? You could have had some kind of mentorship award or achievement, right. Or like, you know, Had rewards for the team that has the most growth or, you know what I mean? Like, rather than focusing solely on the same metrics of success that you are demanding individuals meet prior to implementing this gamification method. Right. You could have thought of different ways and different challenges for your expert level people to solve. In a way that is encouraging teamwork and in a way that is encouraging, building up lower level associates. Instead of rewarding that same segregation and that same individual success attitude that was clearly not working for you previously.

Mastery and Implementation

[00:20:56] I think that also brings up. You know, a question of difficulty and a question of environment as well, right? Like not only do you have to consider your company culture when you’re looking at implementing gamification, but I think when it comes to acknowledging different levels and different user experience. You have to acknowledge that like, How difficult your task is, is going to depend on what you’re trying to achieve. It’s going to depend on which tools you’re using and it’s going to depend on which environment you’re in.

[00:21:25] In games, right, this complex whole is designed intentionally by a game designer. Whereas in worklife often the tools that we have, the environment and the results that we’re seeking to achieve are designed by our supervisors. They’re designed by hR people, they’re often designed by people who have never touched the work that you’re doing. And coming back to that transparency piece. If the overall goals of your company are not clearly defined. And the actions that you’re taking don’t immediately relate to those goals. You don’t have that immediate feedback of your success. It’s really difficult to find any enjoyment in the work that you’re doing.

[00:22:08] I think this concept of designing the environment and the difficulty curve is really, really interesting for us to consider as entrepreneurs, right. Because often you are wearing all of the hats, right? You are your own supervisor, your own HR department, you are the worker, right? And so we have the opportunity to intentionally design the environment and the goals and the tools that we need. So essentially we can completely redesign all of our business processes. You really have no reason to do things in any specific, traditional way, right? Like you can do things however you want.

[00:22:51] Which I think makes implementing some forms of gamification a lot easier because rather than trying to work around, finding a way to make a list of actions it has no relation to any goal or any forward movement enticing in some kind of way. Right? You have the ability to design your goals and your rewards and the aspects of motivation that you focus on. In a way the does center play and does center joy.

[00:23:21] One of the primary arguments for how difficult gamification can be to implementing work is that there is a core psychological and social difference between work and play. Right. We usually experience work as something that we have to do by some external force, whereas to experience something as play, generally, we must feel that we have chosen to do it voluntarily.

[00:23:44] Sebastian Deterding shares then that this means that if we want to create the experience of play. Our design challenge then is not how to include game mechanics. Right, but how do we induce a playful stance in the user towards the activity that you are engaging in?

[00:24:03] I think coming back to both the aspect of transparency and the aspect of mastery. Including some kind of voluntary choice in whatever process of gamification you’re utilizing is really important because I think You need to have some kind of understanding of the challenges that your master level users are seeking. And you need to have transparency, both in your goals and also in your reasoning behind implementing gamification right.

[00:24:34] I think like anything else that you’re going to do in a team if you want people to adopt a new process or a new philosophy, then you have to be able to explain it in such a way that everyone can buy in. You have to have some kind of individual level of motivation and engagement. Otherwise, it’s not going to work. If you have a team and you’re really interested in the concept of gamification and creating a culture of joy, I would really encourage you to read the book joy incorporated. I’ll have to look up who the author is, but I think that book is a really fantastic case study in transparency and trust in your team. And just how impactful that can be on your culture and on your company as a whole.

Centering Fun

[00:25:21] But in terms of entrepreneurship and solopreneurship really. This concept of encouraging what game philosopher Bernard Suits called a lusory attitude. Right? How do we create the experience of play is a really interesting question, because when you don’t have a team to work with right. I think one of the main challenges of entrepreneurship is that you have a specific task or aspect of business that you really love. Right. And that’s why you started a business. It’s why you do what you do. But the process of starting and running a business involves so many other aspects other than just doing the work. Right. And so what is often most challenging is you might enjoy doing the work that you do and not enjoy running your business operations. You might not enjoy marketing work, you might not enjoy, you know, any of the other hats that you have to wear as an entrepreneur. So it absolutely makes sense that people are often hesitant about starting this experience and starting a business.

[00:26:31] And I think at that point, You know this question of how do I induce a playful stance in myself, right? Like how do I create that experience of play in the activities that I’m engaging in when they are not things that I necessarily enjoy. And I think this question you know, I most often phrase it as, how can I make these things easier? Because I think that kind of relieves a lot of pressure right. I don’t necessarily like have to enjoy the task in order to get it done and to get it done quickly and efficiently.

[00:27:04] And I think you know, this is a really fun question to consider because things should be fun. I think the process of intentionally inspiring some kind of intrinsic motivation for things that you maybe aren’t naturally inclined to be motivated towards. It’s really interesting, right. Because I think a lot of people myself included have fallen into the trap of You know, simply adding some kind of game elements or some kind of game mechanics and an attempt to make boring work more enticing. And that’s not always necessarily successful.

[00:27:40] You know, just because I have I promised myself a candy bar after I do my taxes. Right. It doesn’t mean that doing my taxes is going to be any more rewarding. It doesn’t mean that I’m really going to be any more intrinsically motivated to do my taxes. It doesn’t mean that doing my taxes is going to be more exciting because that actual action is not impacted by the reward that I’m giving myself.

[00:28:04] And my like attitude and again, my intrinsic motivation isn’t impacted by, you know Racking up points or getting a candy bar or a bag, right. So I think like, the question becomes, you know, What am I intrinsically motivated by, you know, what are my intrinsic motivators? And how can I utilize those? Even when I don’t want to do a task. Right. Even when the activities that I’m doing, aren’t things that I’m normally intrinsically motivated by.

[00:28:35] I do think that there is something to be said, About designing ways to provide yourself with external motivation, right? My friend, Lexi Merritt shares often that she will publicly announce a deadline in order to feel like there is some kind of external motivation for what would otherwise be a self-imposed deadline right much easier to ignore. I think, you know, Utilizing accountability buddies and other forms of external motivation can absolutely be really successful. And we’re not always going to have access to that external motivation to get things done. So yeah, how can you bring that aspect and attitude of play to all of the work that you’re doing whether it would intuitively be intrinsically motivated or not.

[00:29:22] I’m also, still really, really fascinated by that concept of mastery. Right. And I think that this is incredibly important and influential when it comes to your systems and your business operations, because. I think it’s really easy for people to be really familiar with the rewards and the motivations that they need to learn something new. But we don’t have a lot of experience with rewarding ourselves for continuing.

[00:29:54] And I think that this is probably one of those things that’s like very specific because You know, The societal idea of consistency is very rigid. And so we often don’t give ourselves credit for the things that we continue if we are continuing action in a way that doesn’t align with that rigid idea of consistency, right? I have a very long list of actions that I can choose from as part of my morning routine. And I consider that routine completed, not when I have done every single action, but when I have been intentional about choosing and beginning any one of those actions, right?

[00:30:32] Just because I didn’t have a cup of coffee every single morning, this week does not mean that my morning routine is in shambles. Right. And that’s because I define consistency in a different way, because I know that for me, novelty is a really big intrinsic motivator for myself. So I have found ways to adapt my systems and design, you know, my life in a way that honors that need for novelty. So that I can then be consistent in the things that I want to do without needing the rigidity of “I have to do this thing. The same thing at the same time, every single day.’ Right.

[00:31:12] And I think a lot of times people will fall into. Ooh. I think a really good example of this is reviews. Right. People we’ll learn something new or they’ll try to implement something new in their business and they do a really great job of tracking it while they are attempting to make something a habit. Right? You do a really good job of keeping track of how often you do the new thing when it’s new and exciting. But when it’s no longer new and exciting collecting that data doesn’t seem important anymore.

[00:31:42] And I think this is the point where we need to consider, you know, your master level experience. Like what new and exciting intrinsic motivation can you enter into this, right. Or can you make tracking it automatic? Right? Do you, you know, accept then this knowledge as concrete data that you can have and just like not worry about tracking specifics.

[00:32:05] I realized that this episode is kind of just a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. But I think you know, Like good systems design. I don’t have all of the answers for you because I don’t have the same experiences as you and I don’t have the same motivations and needs and accommodations. As you will.

[00:32:22] So please take these questions and run with them. Right. I would love to hear the answers that you have. I would love to hear your thoughts about this topic and about how you can implement game mechanics and some of these design principles into the work that you’re doing to find more intrinsic motivation to find more joy and play in the work that you do. One of our core values here at rain or shine is Fun so, this is really interesting conversation and a really interesting concept for me. Because this is something that I want to implement on a regular basis. Right? This is something that I want to implement in all of the work that I’m doing. Until the next episode, may you find ease and joy in the life that you’re living, rain or shine.