Incentives are a commonplace to game designers and developers. They are a means of designing activity to support goals and to motivate users. They are not events, which are those things that happen during game play and to which which users must react. We tend to think of incentives as those design elements that draw out, or appeal to a user’s interests, reasons, and motives. Design aspects that the user can anticipate, expect, and organize his or her activities around. We think of incentives as designed into a game, site, or service. But they are really, actually, in the user. They work because they incent (incentivize) the user’s incentives.

This is important, lest we think that incentives exist purely and simply in design. Incentives work by providing a reason that relates or connects to an existing interest and which is motivating to the user.

There are many incentives used in games to make multi-player game play more interesting. In social games, incentives will include both straight-up game play (leveling, collecting, tasking, etc) and social play (using player partnerships, allies and allegiances, teams, roles, for collaboration, competition, involving trust, betrayal, loyalty, etc).

Are incentives used in social media the same as those used in conventional media? Do the same rules and design approaches work in social media as in game design? The answer is probably not.

Frames

An incentive used in a game provides a reason to act: it is a fictional reason or cause of action and behavior that makes sense and is adequate in the frame of game play. It doesn’t work in “reality,” or outside game play. A game-based incentive is a fiction adequate to ground behavior within the game context. Games are a framing of experience outside the stream of real and everyday activity.

In the game-play situation, the player agrees to accept the fiction of the game and the rules that make that acting within that fiction possible. Games are framed “outside of” everyday reality, and often involve persons not belonging to one’s everyday world. Accepting the fiction — its rules, players, activities, events, powers, and time periods — is part of what makes games “fun.”

Rules & relationships

Another reason that games are entertaining is their transformation of relationships. Game rules do this. Rules change not only the nature of the relationship, but the roles or positions held by people involved. Participants or players may now speak and act differently, exercising authority provided them by the rules. And rules not only create and make new kinds of authority possible: they change power dynamics among participants. They give behaviors new reasons (because this is how the game is played): participants can now do new things with (or against) one another.

In social games, the transformative effect of rules on authorized behaviors can lead to compelling interactions, as well as unintended consequences that can be engaging precisely because they confuse game fiction and real-world relationships.

If the effectiveness of game-based incentives in social play is reflected in the power of rules to transform relationships, thus enabling new actions and behaviors, it would seem that game-based or game-like incentives should work well in social media. At the design level, common features and elements would make this transfer quite easy. User interface elements common to games and social media include:

• some kind of direct messaging and some kind of public messaging
• social objects to own, trade, share, pass along, compete for
• gestures for self-expression and communication
• social units built around groups, friends, teams
• personal or player profiles or representation
• technology-specific features, functions, and actions
• and more

Games and social media also share in some experiential aspects: mediated communication, action, competition, status, and social presence, for example, which belong to the social architecture and interaction design of each.

Differences

But in spite of some of these similarities, essential differences exist. Differences not specific to design or architecture, but to the framing of the (user) experience.

The incentives that work in games, work because they are supported by game rules. Those rules structure a fictional reality or transform an everyday reality. Incentives designed for games, in other words, use this fiction as their reason. Things a person might not do in the everyday world can have a reason within a game.

Games frame a stretch of time during which participants interact with each other in ways that create possibilities unavailable in the everyday world. But social media serve purposes of real communication and interaction. Behaviors that might be common in the gaming world such as wagering, collecting, promotion, competition, rank, and winning aren’t exclusive to the domain of games. But the incentives that work in the everyday world do not have to be constructed on game rules. In fact, they rarely refer to any rules whatsoever.

Constructedness

It belongs to the everyday world that its “constructedness” is not a theme; we go along with reality as it is. Any rules, codes, or forms of behavior that one might call organized have at best a tacit or implicit basis. This means that in the case of social media, it doesn’t work to articulate how users are to do things, how they should behave, interact, communicate, compete, and so on.

Social practices emerge as an outcome of participation: they are a sign that certain kinds of trust, commitment, interest, presence, and so on, exist. These things cannot be forced because it is up to each of us, as participants, to reach a level of comfort and routine with mediated interaction and communication. Since experience on social media is neither framed like a game (with a beginning and an end), and since it is purely voluntary, incentives don’t necessarily incentivize on the basis of rules.

Interests

Better than “incentive” is perhaps the term “interest.” Each of us has interests, takes an interest in things or people, and becomes interested. Each of us has self-interest, an interest in others, and interest in social experiences. We satisfy, protect, and share our interests. What’s more, interests, unlike incentives, are used and negotiated by people during normal course of interaction; whereas incentives structure activity towards achieving a goal, and have but one object or value.

Some social media elements depend on the effectiveness of shared interests to organize content and navigation: think simply about tags and the long tail. Common interests are indeed the basis of a great deal of social interaction and content. (If anything, it is more difficult to articulate differences than it is to represent commonalities online.)

Interests are a better concept than incentives when it comes to action, too. We tend to do things online that we want to do. And we assume that this goes for others, also. Being interested, having interests, acting with interest, taking or showing an interest normally suggests personality, character, and taste.

Interest explains individual and social actions and behaviors. It does not explain game behaviors: rules and roles do that.

Because we can often relate to the interests of others others, if not by sharing then by at least recognizing and validating them, interests form the basis of social competencies. Competencies in being interested, having interests, showing or taking an interest — all of these are more likely to serve as a basis for social interaction and engagement than incentives modeled on games or fictions. (The exception of course involves people interested in games!)

And there is another reason that interests, not incentives, play a central role in the social organization of social media. Incentives are reasons that come from the outside. They are not in or of everyday reality, but are supplied by game rules or what have you for the sake of providing other reasons (to act, choose, behave…). Incentives undermine reality: people can do things differently, alongside or even against their personal interests and beliefs, if adequately incentivized.

In social media, encounters with other people include some degree of interest in getting to know the other. This may be ever so small, may be one-sided, or may be mutual. Our behaviors are taken at face value, as signs of who we are, what we are like, what we do, and what makes us potentially interesting (to somebody). In other words, it’s through interests that we relate to one another, and this interest is a common, everyday, and natural incentive that comes from within the social world, and not from outside of it.

Note: This post was inspired and provoked in part by Amy Jo Kim at GoogleTechTalks.

Emotion is one of the most powerful elements of an experience, and also the most difficult to design.  Yet games regularly inspire intense emotions, drawing players into the experience they offer, and making these experiences enjoyable and memorable.

With the best games, these feelings endure long after we finish playing.  Plainly, interaction designers who want to better understand how to inspire emotions could learn a lot from games. Nicole Lazzaro, a leading games researcher and design consultant, has studied games and game players extensively; her work on games and emotion offers useful insights for interaction designers seeking ways to inspire emotional impact.

In Lazzaro’s view, feelings are the motivation and reward (the source of ‘value’, in business terms) for playing a game. Lazzaro believes people play games specifically to experience the different feelings games can create; “the opportunity for challenge and mastery, the sense of accomplishment, the feeling of total immersion, a ticket to relaxation, or simply the opportunity to spend time with friends.” [5] This emotional reward distinguishes people who play games from the multitudes of gold farmers who earn a living performing game tasks for pay.

Of course, game designers cannot ‘directly’ create the emotions people feel while playing (at least, not until mind control technology is effectively ‘productized’ by some well-meaning corporation or government).  Instead, game creators “design the mechanics that offer players choices. It is in the making of these choices that players feel the emotions coming from game play. It is this new way of creating emotion that separates games from other media.”

The Architecture of Fun

Emotions emerge from the choices that game players make, within the space of possibilities defined by game designers. Thus design decisions about which kinds of choices to allow players to make strongly shape the eventual experience of playing the game.  I call this designing the Achitecture of Fun; Figure 1 illustrates the progression in level of impact linking game mechanics to player experience.

figure 1. The Architecture of Fun

For example, placing the collaboration mechanic in a game by design allows players to choose whether or not to cooperate with one another. Their choices yield feelings of generosity or gratitude (or perhaps schadenfreude at what happens when others suffer for choosing not to cooperate!), contributing to a game experience of enhanced (or not!) relationships with friends and other players. Figure 2 shows how the architecture of fun relies on choices and emotions to build relationships based on social fun.

Lazzaro describes game design as ”the language of choice that creates not just a game for the player, but a player experience” [3]. What is the vocabulary of the language of game design? And how can experience designers learn to speak and use this language?

figure 2. Social Mechanics and Relationship Fun

Lazzaro uses a diverse set of tools and methods including emotion profiles, play styles, and game genres to describe and design game experiences. [3]

One tool especially useful to interaction designers is a simple model in Figure 3 which identifies the emotional rewards different kinds of games provide. Lazzaro identifies up to 30 distinct emotions associated with games, based on direct observation. The model groups these different feelings players experience into four broad areas – ‘Hard fun’, ‘Easy fun’, ‘People fun’, and ‘Serious fun’ – and identifies the game mechanics that encourage each emotion.

As illustrated, the landscape of possible game experiences designers can choose to create ranges from goal directed to open-ended, and from game-like to life-oriented.

Four Kinds of Fun

In figure 3 you see game experiences providing ‘hard fun’ center on feelings of player accomplishment. As Lazzaro describes it, “Hard Fun is the perfect balance of player skill with game difficulty. If the game is too easy the player quits because they are bored. If the game is too hard players quit because they are too frustrated.” [1] Fiero – not the GM faux sports car of the 90’s but, as Lazzaro defines it, ‘the Italian word for “Personal triumph over adversity.” – is the emotion that accompanies the experience of mastery.  Game mechanics that encourage feelings of fiero and the experience of mastery include; wins, goals, challenges, obstacles, leveling-up, enhancing powers, etc.

figure 3. Four Kinds of Fun

According to Lazzaro, ‘Easy Fun’ rewards players differently, creating curiosity by sparking players’ imaginations, relying on mechanics such as detailed environments that encourage exploration. ‘People Fun’ provides amusement based on relationships and social bonds. ‘Serious Fun’ yields relaxation, addressing players’ personal values with mechanics such as practice and rhythm. (For more extensive descriptions of the other three types of fun and the related game mechanics, see sources listed in the References section)

Emotions Aren’t Linear

Of course, designers cannot simply paint by numbers, because players do not feel emotions in a linear and tightly compartmented way. Rather, “emotions are fluid and braided over time, one emotion blending into the next.” [1] Accordingly, games that succeed usually offer players experiences that blend three or all four types of fun, emphasizing them differently throughout the game experience. [3]

And inspiring a particular emotion such as fiero requires designers to carefully balance all elements of the game experience. ”To get Fiero, the player must succeed just when they are on the verge of quitting. When they achieve at that point they experience a huge phase shift in the body from feeling very bad to feeling very good. This enhances the feelings of elation.”[1]

New Design Method

Lazzaro believes that by understanding and designing for the emotions associated with each kind of play, “designers have a new method for creating broader and deeper experiences”. [3] I believe this language of choice and emotion is relevant not just for game creators, but for experience designers broadly. Why? Everything people do is touched by and dependent on the emotional aspects of being human; from our tasks at work, to our relationships with friends and family, to our plans for the future. Cognitive and neurological research shows we cannot make the simplest decision about what to have for lunch without emotions.[6] If we can design emotional elements of experiences even to a limited extent, the reach and impact of interaction design is dramatically enhanced.

Lazzaro’s approach offers immediate applications at the tactical and strategic levels of experience design. The language of choice can help with everything from choosing the content, controls and other tangible elements of user experiences, to defining the essential concepts and mental models that structure those experiences. The language of choice can also serve as an assessment method for existing products and services, a concepts and options generator, a prioritization tool, and one source of input in the creation of roadmaps for products and services.

What’s Next

Looking ahead, as convergence and technological change relentlessly blenderize familiar devices, media, genres, industries, and even our basic concepts of product and services, it’s natural to ask “What’s next?” in experiences. In Lazzaro’s model, ‘People fun’, based on mechanics like cooperation, communication and competition, is one of the most important emotional sources of experience value.  Based on this view, Lazzaro believes the combination of social emotions with traditional skill-based game emotions offers tremendous potential for game makers and creators of social experiences, and predicted the emergence of hybrid experiences that combine these two sources of emotion several years ago.

We can see hybrids as they arise thanks to the ‘social shift’, the transformation of digital experiences of all kinds through the addition of social mechanisms such as conversation, sharing, identity, relationships, etc. The social shift is especially visible in the enterprise space, where collaboration capabilities seek to transform the structure and functioning of even the largest organizations, and the precipitous growth of socially-focused experiences in the on-line world. Likewise, in the games universe, the success of individual game titles and game consoles is now dramatically affected by the size and value of the player communities they connect, as well as the graphic quality, hardware, or other experience element.

Lazzaro describes the creation of games by analogy, observing, “Shakespeare designed the emotional space between characters. Game developers design the emotional space between player and game.” [3] In the same way, the language of choice she presents provides interaction designers with the tools and perspective necessary for designing the emotional space between people and digital experiences.

References & Resources

[1] Lazzaro, Nicole. “Why We Play Games.” Games for Health Grantee Dinner. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Baltimore, Maryland May 6. 2008.

[2] Lazzaro, Nicole. “Halo Vs. Facebook: Emotion and the Fun of Games.” Etech Conference. March 4. 2008. [http://en.oreilly.com/et2008/public/schedule/detail/1589]

[3] Lazzaro, Nicole. “The 4 most Important Emotions of Game Design.”
Game Developer’s Cconference. March 8. 2007. [http://www.2007.loginconference.com/session.php?id=46]

[4] Based on an original diagram created by Nicole Lazzaro / XEO Design Inc. All content and ideas copyright XEO Design Inc. 2008.

[5] XEO Design, Inc., “Philosophy” http://www.xeodesign.com/philosophy.html (Accessed May 8, 2009).

[6] Dan Vergano, “Study: Emotion rules the brain’s decisions” USA TODAY, August 6, 2006. [http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-08-06-brain-study_x.htm]

Photos by: Sean Dreilinger

During the E3 2009 expo, which was held from the 2nd to the 5th of June, Microsoft presented Project Natal. The project brings human-computer interaction without an electronic input device to the masses. By capturing your full body movement and your voice (and being able of doing this for several people at the same time) it brings gameplay to an entirely new level.

Here is the video:

Interesting to see is that again activities within games which up till now didn’t seem fun enough for the player to be involved in, are suddenly becoming much more interesting simply because the type of interaction has changed (the video shows an example of changing the tires during a race). The same thing happened when the Nintendo Wii was introduced. By adding more physical engagement, the fun-factor of certain activities is increased.

Could this be a general rule within gaming and other activities which involve play? More physical engagement equals more fun? Off course it’s not applicable to every type of game, and the amount of fun or ‘satisfaction’ one gets from playing a game isn’t only determined by the degree of physical engagement (think of puzzle or strategy games where this is achieved on a more reflective level), but it certainly proves to be quite a big factor.

This technology will soon find it’s way out of the gaming industry and into other industries, as Steven Spielberg already indicated at the E3. The question now is how big it’s impact will be.

This is a pivotal moment that will carry with it a wave of change, the ripples of which will reach far beyond video games - Steven Spielberg

The only thing gamers can complain about these days is the mere 24 hours that are in a day… There are so many new games coming out, exploring new ways of interaction, that you just can’t keep up. One of the more interesting games for the iPhone and iPod is Rolando. Here you play a platform game while using your skills wilt tilting, tapping and multi-touch controls.

In Rolando you control a whole bunch of creatures who live in Rolandoland. This country is in peril and you have to help them save the day. The problem is that their king has fallen asleep and can’t assist. He has to be brought to a certain place. This can be done by manipulating the environment by yourself or sending the Rolandos on their way, pushing the king forward.

The graphics are very cute and appealing. But the gameplay isn’t as easy as the graphics might suggest. The first few levels can be handled with slight skills, but from there on you have to be a master of your iPhone. ngmoco:) created a superb game well worth it’s $10.

Rolando video! “Escape from Rolando Central” – coming in December for iPhone and iPod touch from ngmoco:) on Vimeo.

You’re probably thinking ‘What does a drop of water have to do with Johnny Holland?’ We couldn’t imagine a reason ourselves, until somebody came up with the idea to create a game in which you can play a drop of water. And games are interactive, so that’s a signal for us.

The game is called I-Fluid. It’s basically a platform game in which you have to survive and reach the end. All kinds of objects and creatures are in the way and are capable of sucking your juices. The interesting thing is the physics behind the game. When you interact with your environment you can cause chain reactions. You also have to look out for objects that suck water, such as kitchen paper… but vegetables are an ideal way to regenerate yourself.

What’s the best way to teach the laws of physics? In the past students would have thrown objects from a roof and count the number of seconds it takes to get down. But with Crayon Physics Deluxe they can learn the laws in a really creative way; by drawing doodles.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is a 2D physics puzzle game. In this game you have to move a ball towards a target. It’s up to you to come up with innovative ways to move it. All the objects you draw change in real physical objects, which can range from stones to wheels and leverages. I believe this is a great way for children to have fun while learning.

Unfortunately the release date is: ‘when it’s done’

Crayon Physics Deluxe from Petri Purho on Vimeo.

Indie developer Ian Dallas presented a tech demo of his latest project “The Unfinished Swam” to the world about a month ago.

The Unfinished Swan is a first-person painting game set in an entirely white world. Players can splatter paint to help them find their way through an unusual garden.

A lot has been said about this demo but what kind of game this is going to be remains a mystery. Whatever it will be; the demo for one shows us a great new way of exploring his virtual world. Like a blind man using a paintball like gun to feel around. I bet this will be one scary game.

The Unfinished Swan – Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.

We used to be happy with a small keychain holding a tamagotchi, but that won’t happen again. From now on we can own a virtual pet that actually looks and moves like a pet. Sony is currently developing EyePet, an augmented reality virtual pet. I can explain what I want, but just watch the video and be amazed.

EYEPET from Michele Bertocchi on Vimeo.

Isn’t it great? Of course it’s a promotional video, so we have to wait if it’s really this cool. But for now: I’m pretty impressed. The reaction time looks good and the facial expressions of the monkey look fabulous. I can really imagine that EyePet can help children to learn and experiment with social behaviour. Would it be possible to reflect situations on the child’s relationship with the pet? Like neglect, sadness, aggression… Interesting to see what the effects would be.

Thanks to the EyeToy we finally have a commercial use for augmented reality, merging the digital and physical world in an interactive experience. I think this interactivity could help child development. I wonder what Sony is doing with this aspect…. Are they using didactics?

Unfortunately there is also bad news: the game is scheduled to release in Q4 2009. Hmmmm.