Ask HN: Learning game psychology

7 points·pedalpete··4 comments

I'm trying to get a better understanding of game psychology in building apps. Stuff like HN, StackOverflow, or even FourSquare where people get deeply involved in the community to get points, badges, etc.

Can anybody point to a good resource for learning about this field?

My google searches haven't turned up much, and what I do get is not very deep.

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I thought this was pretty cool http://noteandpoint.com/documents/pdf/jap.pdf

Not just focussed on games, more what games can teach us about motivation in general.

Thank you so much. Half an hour well spent.

Behavioural game design is a/the topic you should be checking out.

I linked to a couple of good articles in a post here: http://www.lonegunman.co.uk/2010/03/19/behavioural-game-desi...

Design with Intent's "Learning from game design: 11 gambits for influencing user behaviour" post is worthwhile: http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2010/03/22/learning-fr...

You should also read Charlie Mungers - "Poor Charlies Almanack". Charlies essays discuss incentive design and biases in human psychology.

http://www.poorcharliesalmanack.com/

The first step in creating a system which exploits biases is to understand all the biases humans are subjected to.

I also recommend tversky and kahneman's works for understanding incentive structures.

Its a fascinating field, hope you have fun!

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