Thought Process for Gamification for Growth Hackers

1
Thought Process for Gamification for Growth
Hackers
2
25th March 2020 A beautiful morning and three
days into the nationwide lockdown. I got up at 7
30 AM and saw a notification on my phone that two
buildings had been abandoned in my city due to
fire. I felt terrible because I was the mayor of
the city in the game SimCity. It was my
responsibility to keep the citizens safe. This
is how I realized the real power of Gamification.
3
What is Gamification?
4
Simply put, Gamification is the act of making
something game-like. Today, we can see it in
every aspect of our lives. Be it education, work,
marketing, scientific research, and more For
instance, A platform for GMAT tests increased the
participation of students by 370 using
Gamification.
And then 70 of the major employers are already
using gamification to performance and training
at their companies according to Engagement
Association.
enhance Software
Also In 2011, Gamification led to a breakthrough
in HIV research. Gamers playing a protein-
folding game called Foldit have helped unlock the
structure of an AIDS-related enzyme within three
weeks that the scientists could not do for a
decade. And the list goes on.
5
Growth Hackers Approach
6
In the last few years, gamification has become a
really hot topic among entrepreneurs, growth
hackers, marketers, and product managers. As a
result, a lot of them have reached out to me and
asked for help in applying gamification to their
product. Hence, I decided to write this
article. My goal here is to explain the thought
process required and also help you to avoid
common pitfalls of gamification. So, lets get
started. Creating a good gamified experience is
much more than simply implementing game mechanics
like points, badges, and leaderboards in the
product. They arent compelling unless you are im
proving along some personally meaningful
dimensions.
7
Think character transformation
8
All successful applications of game mechanics
provide an intrinsic joy of skill-building. It
feels good to engage our brains and improve our
skills and make progress along a path toward
mastery. Personal transformation is the backbone
of great gamification. Points Leaderboards are
just markers along the way and never the goal.
These markers help your users gauge where they
stand and how far theyve come. They are
meaningless as a standalone system without
something to master. To build a compelling
product experienceforget points, leaderboards,
and badges and think about character
transformation. Khan Academy has the best example
of gamification for Edtech apps. They have used
badges as rewards.
9
(No Transcript)
10
The badges names have been picked up from
Astronomy and are given as the user completes
certain challenges in the platform. The badge
level starts from Meteorite and goes all the way
to Black Holes. As the level of skill that you
learn in the platform increases, you get
higher-level badges. They have also implemented
variability in the badges. Meteorite badges are
common, Earth Badges are rare, and Black Hole
Badges are legendary. This keeps the users
excitement up in getting the higher level
rewards. When the level of challenge increase to
match the users evolving skill, you get a
perfect setup for flowthe ultimate goal of
every gamified product. There would be no flow
without learning, practice, and challenge.
11
Intrinsic Motivation
12
To create a truly engaging experience, you have to
tap into your users intrinsic (genuine)
motivation. In his book, Drive, Dan Pink tells th
at the three important ingredients of intrinsic
motivation are Autonomy, Mastery
Purpose. Autonomyis the feeling of controlling
your own destiny. Masterytaps into the feeling
of getting better at something. Purposeis about
connectedness and relatedness with other
people, with a shared cause, with something
bigger than yourself. You have to understand
that magic is not in points, badges, and levels.
They can easily be implemented in your product
with our plug-and-play platform FLYY. Your time
should be spent in understanding your customers
intrinsic motivations and connect these rewards
with them.
13
Dream11 and How they tap into users intrinsic
motivation
14
Dream11 is a fantasy sports platform that allows u
sers to play fantasy cricket, hockey, football,
kabaddi, and basketball. Before any match, a
user can pick players from both teams and create
her own Dream11 team within a budget of 100
credits. As the players in the team perform in
the Match user earns points that are used to rank
her team with teams created by others. This is
the perfect example of Autonomy where a user is
given meaningful choices with interesting
constraints. She feels in full control of the
outcome.
15
The user has to use her sports knowledge to
create the fantasy team. As her predictions
about the players performance get better, she
gets the feeling of Mastery in the fantasy
sport. Have you ever considered the reason you
support your Favorite IPL team? People from
Bangalore or Karnataka support RCB. People from
Mumbai or Maharastra support Mumbai Indians. I
support CSK because of Dhoni. Because I am also
from Jharkhand like him. We all want a sense of
connectedness and relatedness. This is what we
call Purpose. When users create their own team
in Dream11, they feel connected with something
bigger than themselves.
16
Conclusion
17
You have to ask some of these important questions
before you start implementing gamification in
your product Why is a user doing a particular
action in the product? Why do users return to
use your product? What do they care
about? Digging into intrinsic motivation will
help in designing compelling experiences and
avoid some common pitfalls of gamification. You
have to connect Points, Badges, Levels,
Leaderboards, and other reputation/reward
systems that you decide with the intrinsic
motivation of your user. Keep these learnings in
mind and you will be able to create a powerful
gamification system for your product.
18
THANK YOU
W W W . T H E F L Y Y . C O M
Please contact for more information
www.theflyy.com 080-470-91459, hello_at_theflyy.com