Putting the Fun in Functional - Applying Game Design to Mobile Services Amy Jo Kim, Creative Director, Shufflebrain - amyjo@shufflebrain.com (Okay, so this is pretty cool because I've read a whole bunch of Amy's books) Straw poll: - hands up who's played a game on a mobile phone? (everyone) - who's used a service/tool on a mobile? (most) - played on a Nintendo DS? (few) Mobile services that are not games, but are game-like, and designs, patterns to use to make services more fun and compelling. About Amy - background is psych, neuro and compsci - moved into doing software/UI design for Digital Chocolate, Disney, eBay, EA, LimeLIfe, Maxis, MTV, Square/Enix, Yahoo! - Specialisation is social games, networked communities and mobile services - favourite things are games that combine all three Some definitions: - what's a game? formal definition: "a system in which palyers engage in an artificial conflic, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome" - doesnt' cover everything (e.g. The Sims), but covers lots anyway. - informally? A game is a structured experience with rules and goals that's fun How do games shape behaviour? - they leverage basic, primal response patterns: competitiveness, desire to do well, tracking progress, etc. - slot machines are a great example for exploring how games manipulate us into playing and keeping playing. Psych background: schedules of reinforcement. Basically: there's a whole area of behavioural psych - schedules of reinforcement are about rewards given to a schedule (regular/random/variable) - certain schedules will elicit certain behaviours. E.g. if you get a pigeon/human/rat sitting in front of a slot machine - an occasional random large reinforcement will *always* produce addiction. So how do game mechanics make an interactive experience more fun/compelling? 1. Collecting - all about amassing stuff and then showing other people your stuff - old, primal way of showing how you're doing in a microworld - shows WOW inventory: objects you collect - can do a lot with them, one of the many things that is compelling. - Myspace: collections of friends - a powerful way of keeping track of how you're doing (how many nodes you've made a connection with) - impressive collection gives you bragging rights - some of you know the power of collectable cards: play dates where you show off how complete your collection is; trading to fill out - similar mechanic in social networks: tagworld - showing off your collection of fans - big fan collection = bragging rights in that microworld - collecting based on the power of completing a set - you'll work really, really hard to collect a set. Can be used in different applications, e.g. Habbohotel. The whole Habbo business model is based upon purchasing furniture for your room/making your avatar cuter. You could just put your credit card in, but instead you can buy a collectible card, turn it over and type in a card to get your coins - it's more work, but *it's more fun* and there's a metagame in it - showing people how much you love Habbo. Turning currency into something collectable! - Pokemon - you can get checklists (gotta catch 'em all) to make sure you've got them all - huge industry around action of completing a set 2. Earning points - fastr - a mashup flickr game. You guess what the tag is and can earn points from that - simple game, simple mechanic - points are what makes it simple and fun. - points are a simple way to keep score - similar to collecting to keep score - e.g. earning points in Bejewelled. But you can earn points in eBay - social points - your seller feedback - part of what makes ebay fun and compelling, even though it's not a game. - But: *what can points do for you*? One of the oldest forms of points are redeemable points: you get them, save them, put them in books and then spend them. Point of this is to drive loyalty and repeat behaviour. One of the things observed in work: if you want to target females in the work that you're doing - keep in mind that a barrier for females to playing games is the feeling that they're wasting time (a truism, but largely true) - much less likely to spend hours playing a game - want to feel like they're doing something valuable. if system has points, then a step ahead right there. e.g. drugstore.com - buying dollars. - Southwest airlines - redeemable miles - "rapid rewards" - rewards without miles - also mobile games: Sinari has a system called PrizePlay points in Europe (being brought to the US) - given tokens as you play, and if you do well, can cash them in for more things, then things from a store - keep someone playing this mobile game versus another - can earning points be social? yes: any multiplayer system (games, trading systems etc.) points are given and visible socially. e.g. in fastr you can see everyone else's points - different dynamic - you get competitive and you compare yourself against other players. - Acrophobia - system gives you an acronym and everyone who's in the chat room/game room comes up with a saying that goes with that acronym: "GMBD" - e.g. great men born dead - everyone comes up with one and then everyone votes on the one that they think is best - person who gets most votes gets points - purely social - that system is fundamentally similar to user rating systems such as in YouTube. - Social points express the values of the game - e.g. clever acronyms. In MySpace - rating profiles - or photos - basically hotornot mechanic. Right there, that tells you what's valued in myspace - (photos!) that's driven by having that kind of social points system on the site. - "Hotties" for mobile phones: cross between match.com and myspace - can rate people and communicate with them, customise profile, all match.com stuff - but interesting because it moves away from seriousness like match.com toward a lightweight game mechanic with a point mechanic. (not yet launched) - ebay - feedback scores are a form of social points - other people give you points - that's the only way you can get them - amass as many points as you can so you can do better in the microworld (the trading system) - Amazon - you can write a review, but other people can rate it - that says that Amazon really values not someone who writes lots of reviews, but *useful* ones - reflected in the way the site is organised. - Flickr - "interestingness" - not a measure of explicit social points, but aggregate behaviour: points calculated by a combination of number of comments, views, tags, for particular images. Gives you a rating system without asking users to do anything other than normal behaviour. - once you have points, you can get leaderboards 3. Leaderboards - leaderboards are top points winners across a particular dimension. e.g. tagworld - people who have the most votes - by week, month and aggregate - most popular on site. - Leaderboards express a game's values - leaderboard for XboxLive/Halo - leaderboards for individual combat achievement and team combat achievement - tells you teams are important as well as individuals. - TextAmerica - points some of which explicitly/implicitly given - what's valued here is how many images someone uploads that day, comments that images got, how much it was rated - leaderboards drive player behaviour - if you put up a leaderboard that says here' shte most commented images, that will encourage people to comment. YouTube has a leaderboard: highest rated videos - not the ones that have the most votes, but the ones that have the highest ratings. - myspace has attractiveness leaderboards - again, all of this expresses what the site is about. First time visitors get a quick indicator as to what's valued here. - Sometimes leaderboards get removed - e.g. slashdot karma, orkut for number of friends, Amazon for most popular reviewers: because they encourage/reinforce negative behaviour in gaming the system. - They're really, really powerful, and encourage people to game the system. Need to be careful that they're going to reinforce something that you want people to do more of. Really bad example: who's got the most friend: then it becomes who's got the most friends, and then those added nodes lose meaning. 4. Levels - Levels are very, very motivating - shorthand for accumulating points. - eBay introduced a star system early on, on top of points. They did this to make it easier to quickly recognise who's a valid seller/buyer. What eBay found was that the same behaviour happened in sellers as in games. e.g. motivating, loyalty, barriers to exit when you're close to levelling-up. - give the game experience a sense of punctuation over time - a sense that you've reached something, but there's still more to reach for. WoW: you can get to level 60 - "as soon as I reach level 60, I'll quit" - see how powerful that is? Karate example - belts (see that we get displaying/bragging behaviour) - quick way to express status - expect to see a lot more of this in social networking sites - once you level-up in WoW you get to take on new monsters, go to new places - eBay PowerSellers - people who maintain a certain level of reputation/sales per month - lots of different levels of PowerSellers. Very powerful motivational trick. 5. Feedback - Bejewelled is a great example of feedback: fabulous feedback at every level - screen explodes whenever you do something. Feedback draws attention through movement and change. - Feedback in MySpace: many ways in which people can communicate with you; introduced ability to get notification on mobiles when you get feedback. - accelerates mastery - anyone who's had a good coach knows that when you have someone/something that acts like a coach giving you feedback, you'll get better faster. Good example in Karaoke revolution - gives you great feedback, but teaches you how to sing too - all different kinds of feedback on pitch, timing, character glows/microphone leaves trails when you do well, get booed off when you start doing badly. Very motivating. - Brain Training - DS game - just launched in US. System of minigames that are math problems, colour matching (interesting thing here - limits gameplay to short sessions) - opened up whole new generation/market to playing games. Gives you feedback over time as to how you're doing - each time you're playing, it tells you how old your brain is - it shows your brain getting younger as you play more and more. - Why is AJAX so popular? makes experience more fun and compelling: housing flickr/craiglist mashup example. These systems are more fun, they're more responsive. Whether the system is more accurate or not *doesn't matter* - can make mundane tasks more fun - brain training is the biggest hit on the DS (in Japan - we'll see how well it does in the US?) - Cooking Mama for the DS: teaches you how to cook basic Japanese meals - gives you feedback if you're not doing it right - BIMactive (http://www.bimactive.com/): mobile app with web component. Runner's training system - really for anyone who moves. Works on mobile and also supports GPS - tracks where you go and keeps track of training runs. That's mundane - BIMactive uses feedback to make it more fun and compelling - shows you calories burnt (DDR does this!), pace, elevation, (lots of stats here) - shows you a map of where you've been. 6. Exchanges - Social exchagnes - structured social interactions, taking turns in a game, giving and receiving gifts - "having a conversation". Very basic, very primal, very motiviating. Age-old manipulation technique. - (lhl: further reading on many of the social motivations mentioned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini ) - exchanges can be explicit: e.g. Chess is an explicit exchange "your turn" - can be implicit: eBay's feedback - nothing in the system forces you to give feedback when you receive feedback - if you have a successful interaction with a seller, they'll harass you into giving feedback until you do. Tit-for-tat (lots here to do with psych and how people feel reciprocity in exchanges). - WoW - explicit social exchange - lets you trade with other people. Could just be implicit, but then you run into contract enforceability - so it's made explicit to reduce CS(?) - MogiMogi - GPS-based game where you collect virtual objects in the gameworld that you have to go to places in Tokyo to actually pick up. But, you can do this online - you can trade in case you don't have all day free to run around picking stuff up. - Gifting is an implicit social exchange (again, drives reciprocity). NetMarble avatar system in Korea - can get yourself avatar clothes but also for other people. Same with HabboHotel - can buy objects for yourself and also give gifts. Helios (MVNO: mobile virtual network operator - run on top of an existing telco, e.g. Virgin, AMP - not sure how many of these there are in the 'states but lots in .eu) - Helios targeting the myspace generation - big feature trumpeted is gifting- wallpaer, ringtones, etc. as gifts). - Think about providing a place where you can let people give each other gifts. - Mobile astrology app - not released yet - alot of women want to buy charts for both themselves and their friends (think about how horoscopes are shared in magazines - when you have one, you want to read out the readings for the people around you, too) - MySpace has both implicit and explicit exchanges: add friend is explicit - requires actions on both sides. Comments on objects, though, are implicit - you don't have to give someone a comment back, but there's an expectation. Remember to leave room for the possiblity for give and take. 7. Customisation - Not limited to games, but games are really good at providing the UI/character customisation that people like. Customisation increases your investment in the property. - Metrogirl: four personalities in it, and you choose the one that reflects you the most. All the advice comes from that personality - feedback from market research was that people liked that (thought that perhaps there would be more customisation there?) - EBay - interface customisation; Google/ig setting up your personalised homepage/portal makes it harder for user to leave (but doesn't this annoy people? I'd want to be able to transport my Yahoo! portal prefs to Yahoo!) - Automatic customization - Amazon homepage changes automatically based on user behavior, is fun and engaging - Flickr - knows your name, knows who you are - no explicit customisation here - there's something about the way that it makes it personal right away that makes it must harder to leave - Character customisation: WoW allows you to produce very different, detailed characters - but in MySpace you can produce lots of different *looking* profiles. MySpace gets a bad rep for looking really bad - but that doesn't matter to the target audience - what matters is the extreme customisation - remember that the users *want* it to look that way - speaks to the desires of the users of the site. - Brain training: tracks your progress over time, remembers when you logged in - if you haven't logged in for a while, it remembers and tells you how long, and tells you what exercises you should probably do, tells you to log in more often. Hokey, but *it really works* - encourages you to log in again. Makes it feel more fun because it's relevant *to me*. MySpace through the lens of game mechanics - Collection - friends, comments - Points: can earn feedback on pictures - Feedback: rich feedback on a number of levels - commetning - Exchanges: implicit and explicit exchanges - Customisation: hardcore customisation in terms of profiles - "reminds me of walking into a teenager's bedroom" - *that's the point!* (the clue is in the name: *my* space) extreme self-expression Looking ahead - More serious applications that feel like games - More games that teach you real-world relevant skills - Lots of opportunity on web and mobile References - slides on shufflebrain.com - email at amyjo@shufflebrain.com Links amazon.com bonesinmotion.com digitalchocolate.com ebay.com flickr.com google.com infospace.com myspace.com mogimogi.com nintento.com popcap.com tagworld.com textamerica.com worldofwarraft.com youtube.com zephora.org/thoughts/ Q&A - Serious Games Summit / Serious Games (http://www.seriousgames.org/) - NYC public feedback - LiveJournal - support tickets maintained by volunteers - points for dealing with support tickets. - BzzAgent (http://www.bzzagent.com/) - street teams - points for getting the word out about a product - Automatic customisation vs. personalisation - explicit vs. implicit - ie what you can do as an application/service provider to do as much of that customisation/personalisation as possible upfront without having to require user's input - Design stage: cultural considerations? demographics? Both of these very much part of the design process. - How do you prevent gaming of a system? - no perfect strategy - but in personal experience, put time caps/limits on activities. - also in MMOGs - you get rewarded for *not* playing for a while. WoW "sort of" implements caps. e.g. only being able to earn points for a certain amount of time to prevent macroing. - Amazon / Flickr opaque customisation - any penalties? - you can prevent gaming by not exposing the mechanics (but that won't ever stop anyone from trying to game your system) - advantage: people *don't* tend to game systems, it demotivates them when the mechanism is opaque. People want to know what the rules are - if you don't say what the rules are, then it doesn't feel like a level playing field. - Important to realise distinction between being a game and being fun and engaging, *but not a game*. - Gaming - input methods are exploding the playing field: DS, Karaoke Revolution/Singstar, EyeToy, Guitar Hero - new game controlelrs, input mechanisms allowing for a wider range of game mechanics