Apply game mechanics to your app (video) | Hacker News Reader

Apply game mechanics to your app (video)

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28 pointsmacmac7 comments

Is anybody aware of some effective examples of applying game mechanics to apps? (besides those mentioned in the video)

The best example I know is stackoverflow.com, which uses votes, badges, reputation etc.

http://www.thesixtyone.com does a good job.

To me "game mechanics" are just another way of saying "behavioral economics."

Game mechanics are about exploiting irrational but predictable psychological levers in the human mind. To that end, there are lots of apps that use game mechanics, some more obvious than others:

Foursquare/Gowalla are obvious. You get random rewards and points for doing various real-life activities like traveling and eating out.

Opower. See, e.g., this article http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/10/californi...

Mechanical Turk. Why would an American do work for $0.50/hour? It's not rational, and I think it's the game-like nature of mturk.

Many websites use the quest/reward mechanic to guide users through the registration process and the first few key steps of the application, e.g., LinkedIn's "your profile is 75%" complete mechanic.

I agree that behavioral economics greatly informs "game mechanics" but I don't think the levers it relies on are all irrational. My utility (pride, sense of accomplishment etc.) from answering questions on stackoverflow.com might far exceed the utility from the maximum monetary gain I could achieve from an alternative use of my time, thus making me spending time on answering stackoverflow.com questions perfectly rational.

Yahoo Answers and Yelp are the ones I would pick.

I think the issue is more about providing a meta-experience as games do rather than the particulars of the game mechanics.

I believe HN is an effective example. Your karma are your points. Comments and votes give you feedback.And you also collect submissions.

Amy Jo is brilliant.

Weight Watchers uses game mechanics: http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2...

Mint was experimenting with it: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/28/mint-turns-personal-fin...

They're building achievements into the new Honda Insight: http://www.popsci.com/cars/article/2009-02/eco-drivers-ed-20...

Yahoo calls them Reputation Design Patterns: http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/social/people/reputatio...

They work. My company provides game mechanics as a service that can be integrated into any site or application: http://www.bunchball.com/products/nitroworks.shtml

Some of our customer sites that are using game mechanics successfully: http://www.warnerbros.com/loyalty - WB loyalty program http://www.espin.com - social network for teens http://www.dundermifflininfinity.com - NBC's social network for fans of The Office http://www.characterarcade.com/ - USA Network's casual gaming site.

You can see a video of me talking (very fast, for 23 minutes) about how this stuff works here: http://xmedialab.tv/auckland-%E2%80%9Ccommercialising-ideas%... - click on "Rajat Paharia presentation"

I tweet examples whenever I come across them here: http://twitter.com/bunchball

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