Gamification: The game design idea of Internet products

Concept

At the GDC conference in 2011, Gamification was raised as a hot new word. Simply put, the game's thinking and game mechanism applied to other areas to guide users to interact and use the method.

It can affect the psychological tendency of users in the Internet, medical/health, education, finance and other fields, and then promote the user's participation and sharing. Simply put, it can be used to encourage people to do things that are often considered "boring," such as completing surveys, shopping, or reading Web pages.

Wiki:gamification

Why pay attention to it

We design the product, finish the user test to make sure it works, and the operator to join the business plan, and then ... Pray for users to use.

In fact, when users use, we lack effective guidance, incentives.

Let's take a look at two examples first, from a self-service building service called Devhub:

Devhub was originally launched in February 09. Many users are spectators (zombie users), users set up their own home page, but will not take the time (or do not know how to) for the site to add columns, content and optimize, but not for value-added services for the function of money. July 9, they launched the gamification optimized version, through the task, reward, growth and other mechanisms to guide and motivate users.

Before gamification optimization, about 10% of the users built their own sites, but now, about 80% can be done. Originally, the user registered to do only 1-2 operations will no longer continue, and now increased by 9 times times. The average income of a single user also increased by 4 times times. Now they are adding 40,000 users a week, adding 4,800 more sites.

Another example, the deputy Director of digital technology from American television, Jesse Redniss:

After adding the elements of the game design to the new psych show website, the number of visitors to the site increased by 130%. In addition, the number of visitors to visit also increased by 40%. Most viewers stayed on the site for a relatively long time, increasing from 4 minutes to 28 minutes.

Now, we look back at the design goals, simple understanding, including:

Product Data Performance Promotion (UV, participation, activity, return) User experience promotion (satisfaction, enjoyment, fun) Business ROI Promotion (Payment success rate, return on investment)

From the above example, we can see that the game can be a good performance in these areas, namely: can use the game design method to help us achieve the design objectives

is what makes people fascinated

Although gamification as a new word has just been proposed, but its real life, some of the business activities already in the application of a number of similar methods, such as: credit card points exchange, airline mileage accumulation, a variety of business card planning, and so on. But their designs often don't look so interesting, so they don't reflect the value they deserve.

But we know that games do change people's behavior and habits. Some games (such as Warcraft) in the professional players, more than 10 hours a day playing games. And many of us today are fascinated by the farm (stealing food) games, plants vs Zombies, there are a large number of hardcore fans. At the time of stealing vegetables, even players set alarm clocks in the middle of the night to steal food. Others use Excel tables to record the ripe time of a friend's fruit. In fact, the proportion of netizens playing games is as high as 70%, and the game has influenced people's behavior and life.

what attracts people? Fascinating game mechanism

What attracts people to make such crazy moves? Here's a list of some of the factors that play an important role in the fascinating game. Include but not limited to:

Agreement mechanism


such as shopping malls at a certain point in time discount incentive mechanism


do something, get some rewards, this is a very common achievement mechanism (identity, collection)


For example some people like to collect McDonald's toys, some people like the stamp-collecting progress mechanism (completed, upgraded)


A less interesting example: school grades and further studies self-expression


likes to dress up his own workplace/den, and dress up his own community (helping people/cooperation, competition)


involves working with others to accomplish something, or competing with others in something: some elements and rules that can be exploited

After understanding the game's fascinating mechanism, how to apply them to the Internet product design? Here are some design elements and rules you can refer to:

Novice Boot Upgrade/progress bar collection Role List gift virtual currency competitive integral

Here are two of the most common ways to use the examples in games and web products.

Example: Self-Service construction Station Service Devhub

Finally, let's take a look at the Devhub mentioned at the beginning of this article, how to use the game design to help guide the user, and to turn the boring site behavior into interesting things.

Introduction page for newly registered users: Features and features of the introduction site by the robot role.

Construction Station main interface: Because the higher level of the network users will not use such products, so the positioning of the product mainly for the novice, but the point open the following large image can be seen, even after the optimization, the operation is more complex. But the site uses the floating layer in the lower left corner to prompt the user to do the "task" and use the experience value, gold coins to motivate. This is a bright spot.

Market interface: When users upgrade their level and have enough gold coins, they can buy more advanced equipment in the market to make their site more powerful and more beautiful.

User's Control panel: Interesting graphical management, including a variety of eye-catching incentive elements.

List interface: A person to play finally will be boring, the list allows users to constantly challenge the limit. Through the charts, users can also go to those who do well to see what can be learned. It's awesome.

Reward Showcase: The system will give users a series of development routes, when the user in a certain aspect (such as SEO) reached a certain request, you will get a reward and show here. It is interesting, it tells the user which direction to work hard, and rewards them in time.

some places to pay attention to

• Have clear business objectives. The game mechanism is used to drive.

• The game mechanism is directly integrated into the product's actual use process, not an add-on thing.

• This method is only a catalyst, not a panacea. The quality of the product itself must be guaranteed.

Some related resources

• Seth Pribash: Gaming mechanisms in the real and virtual worlds

• Tom Chatfield: Seven Ways to motivate the brain in computer games

Source: http://www.blueben.cn/blog/index.php/archives/1001