Do you need game mechanics to want to make money?

[elfs]

I'm doing research into the whole gamification process for IndieFlix. We're coming up with the various behaviors we want to incentivize and, more importantly, the obscure capabilities of the website that we want to educate our users about. The real purpose of gamification is to encourage a user to explore the website, discover what rewards can be found, and so on. If we want reviews, rewarding people for being avid reviewers is a good strategy; even better, an initial reward for being a reviewer encourages further discovery of the reviewing process. That's what gaming does-- it gives feedback to the user about doing interesting things.

Here's one thing, though: Devhub does this with their site builder. But DevHub is a site dedicated to building small business sites. DevHub recently added game mechanics to their site builder, leading me to conclude that they were having trouble either (a) convincing people to maintain their purportedly money-making websites, thus encouranging money-making and DevHub's cut, or (b) their site builder isn't all that well made and leading people by documentation wasn't enough.

I generally don't "get" game mechanics. I find the whole badges/ points/ rewards mechanism pointless: at best, they're meta-representations of my personal success and security. Real friendships and real income are the only meaningful representatives. The idea that we need to incentivize people with game mechanics to find friendships or make money confounds the hell out of me.

Comments

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

I've been researching this quite a bit for my own project. I've come to a couple of conclusions :

1) prestige MATTERS. If gaining points/experience/whatever translates to a sense of authority (backed by things you can do that others can't) many people are highly motivated by that.

2) real world rewards -- even if random -- can be potent. If your points translate to a physical copy of a movie once in a while (or whatever) you can justify your time as "something for nothing".

3) haven't figured out how to use this, but surveying FarmVille players led to one person noting that he spent real money to level-up because a) it was really cheap compared to his other game-system investments that he never has time for now that he's a dad, so he felt like spending real money on fake things was 'a good value' and b) so he could stay on the level his friends are at and interact with them. i.e. if they had more time to level-up, he bought his way into staying with them.

Haven't figured out how to utilize #3, but 1 and 2 are fairly obvious.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

1) This can translate to "More of an authority as a reviewer because they've seen more of that type of movie" or "This is the person that uses ALL you're sites features, so if they tell you some part of it sucks, you MAY want to listen!" Lesson: you can use the stats for learning about and from your customers.

2) 100% correct. Look up awards for things like FourSquare. Completely pointless but effective. Adding real stuff can seriously drive traffic and revenue.

3) That's actually easier to realize then you think. Micro-transactions add up. Comparing the cost of two hours of game play vs. the cost of going to a movie and you can help "yard stick" price points. Zynga has a guide book on all that but strangely, they're a bit possessive of it... (http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/11/yeah-but-did-you-steal-the-zynga-playbook-playdom/)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

As opposed to SCVNGR, which let everyone see theirs. (http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/25/scvngr-game-mechanics/)

[mouser.livejournal.com]

My girl friend plays "CafeWorld" (so I have to...) and as an experiment I tried FarmVille and "Treasure Island" - all by Zynga. They *are* different, but as someone that's been a game dev (not currently) I can see that there is a lot of idea repetition - just different stats and new art. I suspect SCVNGR is less detailed but MUCH more broad then the Zynga version.

It's also an excellent spring board for those that want to design their own games.

[danlyke.livejournal.com]

I realize I'm not a market sample, but #1 above everything else.

The problem with #2 for me is that if I take the time to do the calculation of time vs material reward, often I'll quit. So "take our survey, help us improve" is a good pitch, "take our survey, we'll send you $2" fails, at least with me. You'll do better asking for help than offering me money or goods, and more prestige is better yet.

On #3, I'm one of those people who's never even played Cow Clicker (http://www.bogost.com/blog/cow_clicker_1.shtml), and has all the Zynga stuff blocked and filtered in as many ways as I can.

So I guess the upshot of this is that I'm not the market sample you're looking for either. Damn.

[atheorist.livejournal.com]

Is Anna Salamon's post on LessWrong, "People are not automatically strategic" appropriate here?

If you wanted people to be strategic (say because their success was a contributing factor to your success), it makes sense to recognize that they're not automatically strategic, and make the path a bit easier for bounded intellects.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/2p5/humans_are_not_automatically_strategic/