REWARDS AND FEEDBACK IN GAMIFICATION

Andrzej Marczewski’s Core Principles of Gamification Series

A core consideration of most gamified systems is how to reward activity and, more importantly, how to provide relevant feedback on that activity.

In this presentation I will explore some key feedback mechanisms and some of the simpler methods of rewarding people for their time and investment into your system.

The main takeaway should be that feedback needs to be meaningful and relevant, however it is provided.

Rewards and FeedbackDefining the

Considerations and Intentions of Game

Thinking

• Feedback is anything that gives a user some

understanding of progress and achievement. This can be

something as simple as a message that says, “You have

completed the survey”, to a full virtual economy working

with points, badges, levels, leaderboards, trading, prizes

etc. They are all just there to keep the user informed.

• Games provide feedback really well. They reward with

points, unlock controlled areas, provide powerups and

more – all to help the player feel that they have achieved

something. Although it isn’t the feedback that keeps

them playing, it does help to give some level of context

to their progress and increasing ability at the game.

• Rewards and feedback should be Relevant, In Time

and Meaningful (RIM).

• My mantra for using rewards is always Recognise don’t

bribe. If you are using rewards, they should celebrate the

achievement, not be the achievement.

Relevant

The feedback needs to be relevant to and in context with the activity. If the user is just being asked to tick a box – is it relevant to send them a certificate of achievement by post? Would it not be more relevant to have a little “thank you” message or to assign points commensurate to the behaviour or activity?

In-Time

Does the feedback need to be instantaneous, or can it wait? For instance, in a game, players get several types of feedback. When a jump is mistimed, the player dies. The feedback is immediate and it has to be! If the player gains experience, the game often notifies them on screen.

However, in the middle of a frantic battle, is that actually of use. A sudden message flashing up may be just distracting enough to get the player killed! It would surely be better to wait a moment until the fighting has died down a little, and then give the feedback. That, or wait until the level has ended and then give the feedback as part of a summary.

In gamification, this could be viewed as using a monthly leaderboard rather than an hourly one. If people are not going to be checking hourly, why feedback hourly? Judge the best and most impactful time to give feedback and rewards.

Meaningful

This is the most important category for me as in my experience this is where many gamified systems I have seen fall short. Many systems seem to reward almost every action the user takes, no matter how trivial it may be. Clicking start, registering, logging in and so on. Soon you have given the user awards and badges for everything they have done. They become meaningless very fast due to requiring no effort on the part of the user to achieve!

Use feedback and especially rewards to celebrate and record actual achievement. Then it provides meaning to the user. If everyone can have the “I clicked like 10 times” badge, it means nothing. However, the “I just scored 100% on my exam” badge is harder to get. If you then make that reward transferable to real life, it can have even more meaning to them. Maybe that badge gets them priority ticket allocation to see their favourite band.

Points, Badges, Ranks and Leaderboards

The core of many gamification systems

Points, Badges, Ranks and Leaderboards are one of the most common elements of gamified systems, for better of for worse.

Their inclusion has to be well considered and very well implemented for them to work effectively and provide the kinds of engagement, motivation and interactions that are required.

Together they represent a sort of sliding scale of simple rewards, starting with points and leading to badges and finally increases in rank or level with leaderboards displaying the progress of everyone involved.

PointsGiving points is a simple enough concept. In video games, points are often given to players for completing certain tasks. Kill the bad guy, find the scroll, save the prince or princess. In gamification, this is frequently translated into completing less complex tasks. Press the “Like” button, leave a comment and use the same shop multiple times.

Points help to power progress tracking, reward management, badges, achievements, leaderboard position and more. Even if the end user never sees them, most systems have some form of points running in the background.

You must balance points with effort to the user and value to the system. If a task is hard, or it is of high value to the system – reward it well.

Ranks/Levels• Unlike points or badges which recognise specific

actions, levels or ranks are there to recognise prolonged and consistent personal investment from a user, their expertise and their value.

• As their investment into the system and in turn, their value to the system increases, so their rank should also increase.

• Ranks should be permanent and transparent, just like everything else I have spoken about thus far! It should be clear how and why a user has reached a certain rank.

• High levels and ranks can also be used to show other people in a system who the experts are in certain fields. If a forum rates a person as a high rank in JavaScript, it is a safe bet that they will be able to provide a good answer to JavaScript questions.

LeaderboardsLeaderboards are an effective way to show a user

quickly where they currently stand within a gamified

system.

There are two main types of leaderboards, absolute and

relative

• An absolute leaderboard displays the leader of a

competition at the top of the leaderboard.

• A relative leaderboard shows the players position

relative to others who have a similar score to them.

Both have advantages and disadvantages over how

motivating they can be for people. Just keep in mind

that competition can lead to the formation of non-

productive actions if handled badly!

Relative Leaderboard Absolute Leaderboard

Progress and Progress Bars

One of the most important elements of any gamified systems,

progress

• When people hear progress and gamification in the same sentence, they usually think of this of heading towards a specific destination, like getting closer to the end of a level in a game. If that is not their first thought, then it will be of progress bars.

• We use progress bars a lot on gamification, in fact, they are one of my favourite “mechanics” to use. A progress bar is simple, efficient and works – LinkedIn would testify to that.

• When you start to internalise progress, it becomes all about a journey towards proficiency and mastery. This is as intrinsic as motivation can get, the desire to better one’s self, to progress through the journey of life, picking up everything we can along the way. This is not always a linear flat path from A to B to C. If it involves progression of skills, it is often a multipath journey that takes you from A to C to B to Z and back again – and anything but flat!

• Whether it is intrinsic progress, or just completing a form – always give them a way to understand where they stand in their journey. This doesn’t need to be a progress bar, it can just be the occasional visual or audio cue, an email to say well done, a virtual badge to represent some achievement along the way – it is all part of providing meaningful feedback.

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Get in Touch

Gamified.uk

@daverage

andrzej@gamified.uk

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