Adding Points, Rewards and Badges to Organizations and Learning
While it’s fun to get a high score on a video game, it is just as fun to let others know you are the one who got the high score. Game designers are aware of this and early in arcade games, they created a leaderboard to add a social component to what was then essentially a solitary endeavor. The leaderboard is a list of the tops scores in the game so whoever played the game could see all the player’s names or initials and score. It was a simple invention but created a powerful motivator to play the game again and again and gave players a chance to socially interact in discussions around the game and high scores.
It also gave bragging rights and social capital to the individuals who achieved the high scores. Many organizations have sales leaderboards but what about leaderboards in operations, most forms processed correctly without errors, most customer complaints handled satisfactorily.
In addition to leaderboards, games also provide players with instant reward in the form of points. Sometimes those points are directly related to the activity. In football video game “Madden NFL 12” when a player scores a touchdown, the team earns six points. In the social networking game “Mafia Wars” points are earned by completing jobs or winning fights which are both activities directly related to the narrative of game which is running a criminal empire. In other games like Super Mario Brothers, you can earn points by collecting coins which is not essential to the goal of the game which is make it to the castle and rescue Princess Toadstool from Bowser. How about a dinner out on the company every once in a while after so many forms are processed?
In addition to points, many games have extra abilities or prizes that can be earned for accomplishing certain tasks within the game. In the video game Call of Duty, rewards can be translated into an upgrade of weapons or the ability to have special tactics available. For example a kill streak (killing eleven opponents without being killed yourself) enables you to “call in the dogs” which provides dogs who sniff out enemies.
Perhaps an operations person could earn a chance to go visit a customer? Or to attend a sales meeting.
There are two views on rewards and badges, one is to make them as easy to get as possible early in a game so that players are hooked and want to continue playing. The other school of thought is to avoid easy badges that are not related to activities that are rewarding in and of themselves. For example, in Call of Duty have a kill streak of eleven is a good accomplishment itself the ability to call in the dogs is nice but not the main motivator for trying to get an eleven kill streak. It is generally better to link activities within the game to reward than to have random rewards.
Unfortunately, elearning courses and classroom instruction do not offer easily trackable progress reports like leaderboards, badges or rewards. Won’t it be great to have a corporate leaderboard so employees could know how well they were doing? Or have badges employees wear to know how accomplished they are? Sounds like the gamification of work would provide some added incentive to employees.
Posted in: Design
Leave a Comment (4) ↓
Joe,
Hey, there’s still time for the ‘real guitar’.:) I agree with your comment, it seems like people do go out of their way to achieve goals within games that aren’t really major goals or upgrades, just personnel achievement. I think it is like the answer people give when asked “Why did you climb Mt. Everest?” and they say “because its there.” I think people like to have completion and some people feel uneasy if they know something on a level is not found or they didn’t achieve it. They need to find everything.
It’s interesting because I also think some people don’t care and they just want to accomplish the goal and not worry about the “hidden” goodies or achievements.
Thanks so much for the comment.
Hi Dr. Kapp,
I had just been thinking along these lines recently while considering my motivations on an Xbox 360. The ‘tangible’ rewards of weapons upgrades or unlocking a secret area can certainly kick one into gear. And if online multiplayer gaming has shown us anything, contests are excellent motivators if only for the bragging rights. The problem here is anyone who doesn’t consider themselves highly skilled will be demotivated to try in such a large pool.
With the invention of Gamerscore and Achievements or Trophies on gaming systems, however, I have noticed that anyone who is evenly remotely motivated by completion will go out of their way to ‘unlock’ these awards. The amusing part, really, is there is no actual reward (like weapon upgrades), but rather just a bump in the Gamerscore that no one really notices. But it’s more about knowing you overcame the challenge, and you have recorded evidence of it.
Giving a list of achievements or ‘objectives’ in a game may very well move learners to check everything off that list. I personally feel that if life had an ‘achievement system,’ I would have learned actual guitar by now instead of just shooting for a 2000 note streak on Guitar Hero!
Mark,
Thanks for the comment. Sounds very interesting and something I would like to hear more about in the future when it is up and running.
Karl:
Very nice article. I’ve actually taken this approach in a recent design of an on-boarding program for a global manufacturer. We’re taking a semi-3D virtual world approach and building in some assessments and games as well as some “unpublished” Easter Eggs based on discovery. The user’s leader board score will be an amalgam of points associated with those activities as well as submission of some more social activities (shared learning, case study submission, etc.) over the life of the program.
The leader board is then tied to a rewards program at the geographically regional and worldwide level. The actual rewards are TBD, but I suspect they will be significant since the client really wants to drive a culture change.
I’ll be more than happy to share more details once the design is approved and any NDA jargon is removed.
Again, thank you for the great article. It’s always nice to have an academic reference to refer to when asked questions by the client.