Gamification: Intrinsic Motivation FTW!

Just in time for the 2011 GDC in San Francisco, I find myself encouraged by the developments in the field of “Gamification” over the last six months since I posted Getting Gamification Right back in August. The forces of good are gathering!

First, that post seemed to resonate with a lot of people, and thanks to everyone who contacted me with support for the ideas and the importance of focusing on meaningful satisfaction of basic psychological needs. A lot of industry leaders are now rallying behind the concept of “intrinsic motivation” that we’ve been promoting to game devs since 2004, notably through white papers and our first Gamasutra feature four years ago introducing the idea of intrinsic motivation and basic need satisfaction (competence/mastery, autonomy, relatedness) as a model for design and player experience testing.

A few things from some of the luminaries in the game space:

• First, industry veteran Chris Heckler spoke at last year’s GDC (March, 2010) on  the important distinction between intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards, and the danger of focusing too much on extrinsic. While he wasn’t aware of our research at the time showing this effect directly in games – we have it Chris! In several studies that a focus on extrinsic rewards is unrelated to long-term engagement, and intrinsic rewards are related to a player’s sustained interest in games. Here’s a brief chart pulled from one off our presentations on the topic:

  

Note here that when players are focused on extrinsic rewards, it is related to their expectation of play in the short term (i.e. in the next day), but unrelated to (i) their actual enjoyment/immersion and (ii) their long-term motivation to play. Here’s a great example of why focusing only on short-term behavioral metrics can lead you down the wrong path, vs. collecting meaningful motivational metrics to understand the quality of motivation for play. Only intrinsic reasons were related to an expectation of play over weeks and months, as well as interest in playing more games by this developer. In other words – when people are intrinsically motivated to play your game, they think you rock. But if they are extrinsically motivated…well…don’t gussy yourself up and sit by the phone waiting for a third date.                     

Additional data we’ve collected also support that player’s engagement behavior follows these intentions. Feel free to download some of our talks (2008, 2009) that focus specifically on extrinsic and intrinsic rewards from the Immersyve site.

• Second – We let out a spontaneous cheer when Jesse Schell voiced his concerns about a lack of focus on intrinsic motivation in his December interview with Gamasutra. This is definitely worth a read, and as many of us look to Jesse for inspiration in this area we hope his voice on the topic has a far-reaching impact.

• Finally – If you haven’t had the chance to pick up Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken, do yourself a favor and grab it. In particular, the back half of the book is an inspiring look at how we are entering what she calls an “engagement economy” in which motivation – the right kind of motivation - is the whole ballgame. We hope our book – Glued to Games – will provide everyone a closer look at what specifically the “right kind” of motivation is, and how it can be put to work.

There is still a lot of work to do on this issue, and happily there are many other presentations and talks that are being given specifically in the area of gamification that are drawing upon the motivational research work we’re doing and exploring exciting new areas.  Please keep letting us know what you’re up to in this space, and also a reminder: For those of you doing basic science/not-for-profit research – we make our metrics freely available to you for your projects! To date, our Player Experience of Need Satisfaction (PENS) model is being used in 30+ studies around the world. Let us know if you have a project you’d like to discuss!

Finally - I propose we gamify the extrinsic vs. intrinsic debate and get some cool Realm v. Realm contests going. You extrinsic guys can have special spells that root us with pop-ups and stun us with spells like the "hellfire of 1000 badges." We'll fight back with self-buffs of inner strength from meaningful need satisfaction (Team Intrinsic: Please email me your cool spell names and mechanics).

My only request: Can our side have the good-looking avatars? Please?