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What happens if gamification goes wrong? Does anyone have any examples of this? FYI - I'm going to try for all the badges I can on this post - including flagging, upping votes etc etc etc :) - Please don't take this the wrong way, I'm just pointing out what could happen! P.S. - I think gamification is awesome - but people need to know what can happen if it's not managed! also just to note, at the time of posting this I have the following badges: Autobiographer Editor Popular Question Student Supporter |
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An experienced game designer will always anticipate players "gaming" the game. Game designers are aware that players will not always adhere to the planned desired behavior. That is why Use Case Scenarios are thought of ahead of time. Definitely, not all "gaming" scenarios can be captured at the design stage. That is now the purpose of the Beta Test. Even after launch, difficulties with unfair use cases and exploits will continue to be discovered. That is why games continue to evolve and require patches and upgrades. The main mitigating processes to catch the "bad cases" - Use Case Scenarios - Continuous Testing - Open Communication In persistent world online games, players with bad behavior will generate a bad reputation. Some games tolerate this, some games even encourage this. It will always depend on the strategic goals of the design team. BUT. For community sites that require a high level of trust among players like couchsurfing.org and gaming wikis, bad behavior will definitely result in the extinction of the player. 1
Great points. If people actually care about their achievements on your site, they'll be less likely to risk losing all of that time spent. If people are abusive, they can always be banned and sometimes it can be necessary to make an example of those people, so others won't do it. It's like top World of Warcraft or Starcraft accounts being banned for cheating, Blizzard announced this, didn't hide it.. to make others less likely to cheat. They even reserved the right to ban your game that you paid for if you cheated, very hard-core but necessary. |
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http://mentionllc.com/news/article/groupon-breaks-down-at-scale/ Groupon has a couple of games that are going wrong. Games going wrong is especially sensitive in External (Viral, Social) games that promote users to invite more users. Some game/product designers don't take into account that an External Game can change your user demographic - sometimes hurting your monetization scheme. A good example of this is the Chinese social network P1.CN. Without going too much into depth, or breaking their confidence, the games they implemented resulted in rapid growth of an "undesired" element that ultimately deterred the desired element. This was not foreseen in the design stage, as the designers simply got excited about the potential growth. As a result, P1.CN is now generating less revenue than they could have and are struggling with a user base that is increasingly inert. Even seemingly successful systems of games can include elements that are counter to the goals of the product. Sometimes providing metrics (Points are really just another metric) encourages meta-games that are harmful to your products purpose. Starcraft II recently removed the ability to see the amount of games you had lost because that encouraged people to be too selective and careful about their games. Twitter and some other microblogs are facing similar problems with the Follow/Follower ratio. Any player that plays the game "I want to have more Followers than I follow" risks becoming a suboptimal asset, in that they might end up generating less traffic than someone who ignores the metric. One of the most important things to do with the knowledge of game mechanics is to examine existing solutions, rather than getting excited about adding new ones. I personally feel that this recent "gamification hype" is damaging to the industry because it creates the illusion that there are easy solutions to complicated questions. At Mention we always start by thoroughly examining the games that are already in your product that you might not have realized were there. What user retention you have already is invariably due to what is already in there, and finding ways to optimize those games is a cheaper, safer and more predictable method than adding some new badges or progress bars to your site. |
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I thought this was interesting and worth adding for a humorous take on what could go wrong;)
Comic from http://www.smbc-comics.com |
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You may like to build on this comment so people can avoid falling into the issues: IF I WAS EVIL I WOULD....
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Good point. Gamify Experts is invite only and could be community policed.. so we could add the requirement that to answer questions, you have to be a Gamify Expert. Anyone can ask. Also, we can have community flagging of people who look suspicious and if someone is found to be cheating, all of their accounts can be deleted thus losing all their points / work. Typically that kind of thing being done where everyone knows it happened(very transparent) leads to better behavior from all. Everyone should want the best quality and fair rules for all so it's in their best interest to help. Does anyone have examples of gamification going really wrong? - maybe a link to that site or a brief comment on the experience? @SimonC please check Michael Wu's recent blog post on Lithium where he named to examples, one of a sales organization who tried to gamify leads and the other from the recent GAP Facebook check-in campaigns. He explained in detail why both went wrong. Edit: found the link to the article http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Building-Community-the-Platform/Real-Life-Gamification-The-Good-the-Bad-and-the-Ugly/ba-p/29464 Andreas |
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Check out the excellent post from Michael Wu on what went wrong on two examples of Gamification, including the recent GAP Facebook check-in for a free pair of jeans: http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Building-Community-the-Platform/Real-Life-Gamification-The-Good-the-Bad-and-the-Ugly/ba-p/29464 It does not only list what went wrong, but also why, very informative blog anyway! Andreas |
Please feel free to edit any comments you like in this post. also vote any items you like up or down, heck even flag things if you like!!
--But please don't delete things!
My comment with links to the vote up buttons instead of stories got removed - stink! - But you should be aware that if you have a prize this is the kind of things people will try.
I think there is a way to go right. Just as we playtest a lot to find the best way to use a level design in a game, the same could happen to gamification. We should "playtest" a lot, and discuss here.
And, after all, some people already tried and it was successful.
Good point. How would you want to playtest here, post links and ask people to review them to discuss balance, fun etc.?