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Contextual game design must

put the player experience first.

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To some, gamification is the Next Great Hope for deep user engagement.

Sure, gamification does feedback really well—and insight into personal use of a

system, site, or service is invaluable for understanding progress toward goals.

But too often gamification is a grafted solution that ultimately serves the system

rather than the player. Gamification introduces points, badges, and achievements

as intended objects of desire without meaning. It also neglects the power of story

and disregards the insights of latent gameplay. To be clear, though, gamification

isn’t fundamentally wrong—it just needs to evolve past the hype.

How did we get here?

It’s natural to look toward those activities renowned for their ability to engage with the hope of dissect-
ing and appropriating some glowing essence. Farmville without the mechanics and playful abstraction is
ultimately a case study in tedium—why can’t some equally tedious system employ the same mechanics
and be just as engaging?

jaNuary 2012 | T+D | 41

By Matthew Jensen

Engaging

Gamification Strives to Keep the user’s Interest

thE LEarnEr

Gameplay is a next step in an

engagement maturity model—albeit
one clamoring for attention among
many. This model obviously must
evolve with the savvy of the audience
and the quality of competing signals.
At one point, content was enough to
engage an audience, but technology
quickly transformed the perception and
use of content. With technology came
an opportunity for features, and audi-
ences demanded usability.

Now an engaged audience must

find meaning. Meaning may come in
the form of personal exploration and
expression, contextual awareness,
social connectivity, or that irrepressible
tendency for games and play. So for all
of its faults, gamification must make the
transition from being reluctantly used
to eliciting meaningful engagement.

Designing meaningful games

Now in its awkward youth, gamification
is a hot prodigy supported by robust,
easy-to-deploy platforms. With each
new misuse of these tools, the seams
begin to show. Fortunately, there are
fixes for its flaws.

Put the player experience first.

The

creator of Monopoly never asked,
“How are we going to get people to play
with all of these little green houses?”
Gamification proponents must think
like game designers and put the player
experience first—not the required
use of a system. When designing, ask
yourself, “Is this the most rewarding
experience for the player?” Use of a
system, brand or employer loyalty, and
meaningful engagement all flow from
this player-centric design.

Achievements must be personally
relevant.

Traditional game design

approaches badges as a representa-
tion of meaningful achievement, not
the achievement itself. (For instance,
an astronaut wouldn’t brag about his
NASA badge, but he might be justifiably
proud of his achievements in the space

program.) Moreover, game achieve-
ments must be personally relevant. If
a player did not previously care about
logging in to the company intranet
three days in a row, what real meaning
would be present in a game that sud-
denly congratulated the employee for
doing so?

Use the power of the narrative.

People

are natural storytellers and are naturally
drawn to storytellers. Well-designed
games use the power of narrative, and
games offer an opportunity for pro-
found, long-term engagement with
archetypal characters and obstacles.
Additionally, games that consider the
story of the player’s experience—the
“player journey” from novice to mas-
ter—are deliberately constructed to
support real player growth, learning,
and self-betterment.

Identify and enhance games people
are already playing.

Gamification

seems to assume that artificially
induced desire will offset the profound
human need to do things our own
way. However, clever game designers
consider and embrace the hacks and
workarounds that users may intro-
duce into a system. Instead of forcing
contrary behaviors, games informed by
contextual inquiry identify and enhance
those games that people are already
playing—knowingly or otherwise.

A contextual inquiry approach

to game design

Traffic is a game. Staying healthy is a
game. Work is a game. And whether
we believe that such framing imparts
meaning to or devalues the circum-
stances, the context of play introduces
a new, useful perspective on engage-
ment with systems. The way that some
players can master the art of traf-
fic, health, or work can inform better
solutions—more overt, more playful
systems that can improve people’s lives.
And even the spectacular ingenuity of
human laziness (how one might “game
the system”) can expose faults that we
otherwise bear.

Finding the game among the evi-

dence can be a daunting task. One
contextual inquiry approach starts with
the tightest possible focus on a spe-
cific instance, but using the broadest
possible definitions of play. After that,
designers can increase the size of the
circle of play, exploring the advantages
of making the rules more overt—and
making the game more transparent—to
determine the threshold at which the
act of appropriation has disrupted the
integrity of the latent gameplay.

As an example, consider the design

objective to improve the experience of
the shopper at a supermarket checkout,
and to introduce engaging play that
will benefit both store and customer.
Contextual inquiry seeks to expose
moving parts and to identify the fol-
lowing game elements (inspired by
the work of Tracy Fullerton) that exist
naturally in the environment, so design-
ers can then formalize and enhance the
gameplay where appropriate.

Who are the players?

Can we create

a catalog of all of the human parties?
The shoppers, cashiers, baggers, and
managers are key players, but what
about the kids who were dragged along
kicking and screaming? The product
marketers who paid for space among
the impulse buy items? The custodial

Gamification proponents

must think like game

designers and put the

player experience first—

not the required use of a

system. When designing,

ask yourself, “Is this the

most rewarding experi-

ence for the player?”

42 | T+D | jaNuary 2012

staff who are a little leisurely in cleaning
up that yogurt spill?

How do these players win?

They all

have different personal objectives: the
shopper generally wants the fastest
experience, while the manager knows
that an extra couple of minutes in the
queue will generally translate into the
purchase of a magazine or a pack of
gum.

Of those win conditions, which are

collaborative? Which are competitive?
In the complement or conflict of those
forces we can start to identify the core
objective and outcome of the game.
These objectives can be even deeper
and tied to the real human values of
achieving, belonging, or understanding.

What are the rules?

How does the

process of the supermarket checkout
impart limitations and require that
players follow particular procedures?
How do player behaviors reflect those
rules? When someone brings 12 items
into the 10-item express lane, does the
situation devolve into Lord of the Flies?

What are the moves that players can
make?

In other words, what are the

procedures permitted within the con-
text of the rules? You also might think
of these as well as the game controllers:
the player behaviors and the means to
track them.

What is the game board

and how does

the environment itself define play
(which is readily apparent in the layout
of the supermarket checkout)?

What is the game clock

and how do

time considerations, urgency, and ritu-
als affect the game?

Since audiences seek mean-

ingful play, contextual inquiry
attempts to identify how players
are already deriving meaning from
their experience—even in the super-
market checkout. For this, I refer to
Immersyve’s Player Experience of Need
Satisfaction (PENS) model, which iden-
tifies how gameplay can satisfy intrinsic
rather than extrinsic needs.

How do players experience and
express competence (“the need
behind our love of a challenge”)?

Does the serious shopper derive some
intrinsic benefit from reading the queue
and picking the fastest lane every time?

How do they derive meaning from
autonomy (“the need behind our
love of freedom”)?

Even having the

opportunity to choose lanes might be
meaningful.

How do players derive meaning from
relatedness (“the need behind our
love of connecting”)?

Is the queue an

opportunity to have a shared human
experience? Or to earn a little credibility
with a familiar cashier?

Theoretically, games informed by

contextual inquiry encounter no adop-
tion resistance. Rather than nudging
audience behavior to engage a gami-
fied system, it’s far easier to not change
audience behavior at all. Appropriate
the games that audiences might already
be playing because these games are
generally motivated by the intrinsic
values of the players and, thus, have a
gravity all their own.

Considerations

Latent gameplay may decorate every
corner of your organization, but not
every instance warrants time to elevate
the behavior to the team, depart-
ment, or company level. While learning
objectives and games are a natural
fit, they’ll still come face-to-face with
development, content population, and
maintenance issues.

To mitigate these setbacks, aspir-

ing game designers might first consider
those learning categories that align
with (existing or soon-to-exist)
community-generated content. A thriv-
ing knowledge management system or
collaboration platform can be inspi-
ration for an incredible game—and
alleviate an ongoing content creation
burden. Pre-existing participation is
naturally something to leverage, but also

The Overarching

Power of Games

The power of games has not escaped
the learning departments of organi-
zations such as Target, Miller Brew-
ing Company, and Hilton, which use
feedback systems and simulations to
monitor and reward behaviors (and
empower experimentation without
real consequence). But with an audi-
ence of game-taught young employ-
ees clamoring for the sort of visceral
experience they might get from the
Halo series, designers are forced to
break ranks a bit and, when it comes
down to it, favor fun over educational.

Respected game designer Ian

Bogost has observed a bit of valida-
tion of games and simulations for
learning. Sometimes the game can
stand on its own.

In an online post, he notes ongoing

inquiries about Stone City, a train-
ing game developed in 2005 for Cold
Stone Creamery. The inquiries are not
from “human resources managers or
training executives looking to build
their own training games,” Bogost
writes. “They are ordinary people,
often young people, who just want to
play or buy the game.”

Indeed, a game designed to train

employees how to dole out the proper
scoop has gained the interest of the
general public.

jaNuary 2012 | T+D | 43

common goals, stoking leadership qual-
ities in players who might otherwise be
relentlessly competitive.

Ritual.

Games are rituals within rituals.

By anticipating, sculpting, and respect-
ing these rituals, game designers can
manufacture the sort of engagement
that teachers, employers, and market-
ers seek.

Incremental.

Nobody likes to be tossed

to the sharks his first time playing a
new game. Thoughtful games meter out
difficulty, allowing players to encoun-
ter challenges when it’s appropriate for
their increasing skill level. Additionally,
narrative-driven games reveal content
in an incremental way, serializing the
release of poignant moments and fur-
ther engaging players.

Convenient.

As games—particularly

video games—grow increasingly com-
plex, user experience and interaction
becomes paramount. If the use of the
controller impedes the enjoyment of
the game, the player (and designer)
already has lost.

Rewarding.

The subjectivity of “fun”

makes it a dangerous word. When con-
sidering what is rewarding to the player,
the designer introduces something
measurable and meaningful as defined
by the overt and covert desires of the
player. All good games are rewarding;
some good games are fun.

Since audiences seek

meaningful play, contex-

tual inquiry attempts to

identify how players are

already deriving meaning

from their experience.

Gamification, as a stone on a long

path, is a giant step for the engagement
maturity model. The holistic games
from which gamification derives its
mechanics are based on the theory and
application of serious design think-
ing, and games of this sort have proved
effective in orienting critical decision-
making, stimulating innovation, and
engaging diverse backgrounds. Now
it is time to prove the intuition and
perseverance of the game designer in
all of us.

Matthew Jensen is co-founder of Natron
Baxter Applied Gaming, which designs and
develops hardworking games for individu-
als, businesses, and communities;
[e-mail].

provides an observable and archived
set of behaviors that elucidates player
objectives immediately.

Feedback-rich games also can

improve employee growth by refram-
ing skill development as a player’s
journey—a demonstration of the power
of story in both the player’s life and
the game narrative. In this way, the
instructional design appropriates the
best practices of game design, which
has professed for years that every game
is really three games: the game for the
novice, where she simply learns how
to play; the game for the player, where
she develops a personal style of play;
and the game for the master, where
she pushes the very boundaries of the
game and, in effect, creates a new game
through her skillful play. Skill develop-
ment within this construct can provide
more clarity, more guidance, and a
more persistent feeling of purpose.

Common characteristics

of player-centered games

So what might a holistic, player-
centered game informed by contextual
inquiry look like? Admittedly, they take
no common form, but they do tend to
share common characteristics.

Responsive.

Good games provide

meaningful feedback, and that feed-
back motivates the player to make
informed tactical decisions (consider a
treadmill at the 0.98 mile mark, drawing
the runner ever closer to 1.0). Relevant
feedback should be immediate and
obvious to show a strong correlation
between cause and effect.

Collaborative.

By virtue of the “con-

tract” between players, all games are
collaborative in some way. But more
meaningful games, by and large,
are those that organize play around

44 | T+D | jaNuary 2012

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