Brian, I don't know of any research or literature that would support universal applicability of a goal-reward incentive model. It'll work for some people: people motivated by the successful pursuit of goals. If you choose to follow research around narrowly-defined and quantitative goals, with rewards delivered for leveling, collecting, within pre-defined time periods and so on, you'll engage people who find that kind of interaction compelling. Nothing more nor less.
I think of incentive models as self-selecting. Yes, some or many of us "respond" to goal and reward structures. But why? For some of us it may be the challenge, for others, the game flow, for some of us, a compulsion, and for yet others, competitiveness (against the game, our best scores, others). But aside from these vastly over-simplified examples, there are other motivations: personal, social, rivalrous, competitive, collaborative, authoritarian, subversive, curious... Name a social interaction and you'll find a social motive. Whether it can be structured into game flow or interaction models is another matter, and needs to account for the ways in which the medium transforms the interaction: by discontinuous play, by linear or non-linear sequencing, by coupled or dependent events and actions, by what is shown/hidden, and so on. I noticed with Spymaster that while some folks played the game, others played each other. Some players were seemingly addicted to leveling -- and the things that go with that style of "beat the game" play: accumulating and owning, always in increasing quantities. One might ask: which is more motivating: the increase in quantity or the absolute quantity? Relative quantity -- eg against oneself or the game or other players? There's no telling, for some players probably find the idea of a quantity (score) compelling while others simply like to score. Motivations by idea or conceptual abstraction vs doing the activity itself would be thus different. There were Spymaster players who used twitter DMs to gather a group assassination (my friends and I used skype). There were some who used twitter search results to see who was leveling (leveling can be set to send notifications) and then hit them based on what they probably would have purchased on a new level. That's smart game play that combines game knowledge with social skill: second guessing the other player's likely moves and then using search to take advantage of unintended consequences of having notification set to blast friends w your every move. (At another level this style of game play also provides the advanced game player the distinct pleasure of blind-siding a newbie -- especially one who's dumb enough to advertise his or her successes and scores ;-) ). There were some players who set up spy rings and used the game's social stratification (social games create social strata) to recruit, execute basic command and control, order assassinations, share funds, and engage in espionage. In fact one of the more interesting side effects of Spymaster's integration with twitter was the commonplace of "whose freaking side are you on anyway, bastid!" tweets. A declaration of loyalty to a spyring was no guarantee that the player would cease and desist assassination attempts. So the game took on attributes of real espionage, played out in public as well as in backchannel talk. I in fact received an offer of cooperation from my spyring's main opposition -- we agreed to fight publicly but had the backchannel there if needed. I've only scratched the surface of how social gaming might utilize interaction models, if codifiable in ways that can be structured in resource, position, power, authority, routine, or temporal forms (durations, episodes, turns, sequences, etc). It's all in how you couple the action with the psychology of social interactions and communication. Since all online activity fundamentally decouples actions from the proximity and immediacy of their consequences, you can work with that. I could imagine a successful game that used no clear goal setting, had an inverted reward structure, and an instable and ever-changing set of rules. If there were one, we'd all be here talking about how rule violation, disequilibrium, and chaos theory can be used for successful game design. Design and build social with consistency, so that users get what's going on -- but allow yourself to depart from conventional game features if you're doing social. Social rules don't need to have content. They structure social relations -- that's what many people respond to and find the most interesting. The transformative, subversive, preventive, ambiguous, open, closed (etc) effect that rules have on relations is what creates the social fiction (and reality) that makes a social game compelling. I get a beer mug on Facebook from a girl -- why? who else got one? do i have to pass it along? or choose a flowerpot for my friend? do i make it public? put it on their wall? add a note? who will see that? will people think we're flirting? When it comes to social we bring a limitless understanding and seemingly insatiable curiosity to experiences that shift or change our normal, everyday, and ordinary social realities. I'd recommend working with that -- goals and rewards, not so much . ;-) adrian chan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44855 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
