• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Gamification Nation logo

Gamification Nation

Gamification and game design for business results

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Solutions
    • Employee experience
    • Customer experience
    • Learner experience
    • Serious games
    • Gamification Training
    • Application Gamification
  • Speaking
  • Store
  • About us
    • About Gamification Nation
    • Awards
    • What our followers and clients say…
    • In the media
    • Contact Us
(+44) 0845 056 9828
Is gamification right for your project?

Too much of an earn more time game mechanic

An Coppens | 28th September, 2018

share:

As a gamification designer, I play games regularly to find out what works and could potentially transfer to gamification. Occasionally I find a game I keep playing for a bit longer than essential research. I am playing a game called Homescapes for a number of months now. It is nice easy fun when watching television or listening to a podcast. By playing casual games, you earn credit to help Austin the main character, to redecorate his parent’s house.

To earn more time you had to complete levels whilst mother was knitting a scarf, as you progressed at different points in the scarf you also unlocked additional unlimited play time, over and above the 5 lives you normally start with. In regular play, when you are out of lives, you have to wait for them to refresh and you keep your life when you complete a level.

The initial scarf knitting exercise in the game earned you unlimited play time for 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours and finally 3 hours, which only appeared at the weekend. I assume because of the success of this mechanic people played the game more often at the weekend. Recently the game makers moved the weekend time earning mechanic into weekdays and now when you hit an unlimited time slot, you may actually have to stop playing, because work or meetings beckon or it is simply too late in the day to start them.

A few weeks ago they added more opportunities to play for longer, one by logging in 7 days in a row, which has had me close the application more than anything and even more free time can be earned by another narrative game with leaderboards. At this stage, it is no longer fun to earn all the free time, when most of the time you have to refrain from playing, because you have other things to do.

I often find myself thinking, I just want to play my five lives in my break and do no more. I don’t want unlimited play time when it is not convenient for me and I hate wasting the free time when I earn it at the same time, hence I don’t play it as often when I earn free time.

For the last two days, I had to refrain from playing because I needed to work and it made me reflect that my nice enjoyable pleasure had been eroded by the game company’s ways of getting me back into their game and play longer. In effect, the total opposite happened, I just don’t play when I have free time about to open up.

From a gamification design perspective, we often see the initial enthusiasm of people with game mechanics then wanting to use them for everything everywhere. When in reality you just need to find the meaningful touchpoints where such things add to the experience.

In the above game example, I would keep the login streak, rewarding those that log in every day and then rotate the other games at weekends when people can actually play more freely. But then maybe their data scientists see other patterns and people like me are potentially not the target audience they are after.

 

 

Categories: gamification design Tags: Game design, game mechanic, gamification design

share:

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Book a Strategy Consultation

Strategy consultation

Book a strategy session now and find out what is possible for your company.

BOOK NOW

Buy your game deck

Buy your game deck

Build your own gamified experiences with our game deck

Buy Game Deck

Must Buy Book: Tapping into the Crowd by An Coppens

Must Buy Book: Tapping into the Crowd by An Coppens

Buy Book

Featured Post

Gamification trends for 2019

The time of year for predictions and resolutions is alive and well, so here are our visions for the trends in gamification for 2019. Like last year we … Read More about Gamification trends for 2019

Got questions?

Ask us your question

Related Posts

blogpost on game design and gamification design on www.gamificationnation.com

How hard is to design a game or gamified process?

How hard is it to design a game or gamified process? In our work with...

Creative playstorming

Creative playstorming

When you are used to deliver workshops and training sessions, it is often...

Choice architecture, compulsion loop and other such great things

Behavioural psychology and behavioural economics drive a lot of thinking...

Footer

Our Office

Gamification Nation Ltd,
Kemp House,
152 City Road,
London, EC1V 2NX, UK
Companies House Registration: 08145023
VAT number:
304326932
Tel: (+44) 0845 056 9828
Email: [email protected]

Navigation

  • Home
  • Our Solutions
  • Blog
  • Training
  • Speaking
  • Contact Us

Are you ready to start your project?

When you are looking for a partner to roll out your project, please get in touch! Send us an email or call us. We would be happy to work with you!

GET IN TOUCH
© Copyright 2013 – 2019 Gamification Nation. All rights reserved.
  • Anti-spam Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Linking policy
  • Terms
This site uses cookies: Find out more.