The Core of Gamified Design: How to Create Truly Engaging Applications

Over the past decade, simple gamification design has lost its appeal. Many early attempts at gamified products, such as Tripadvisor's rating system and Google's news reading badges, have failed to retain users in the long term. These failed cases overlook a key point: the core of excellent game design lies in user retention.

Successful games like "World of Warcraft" and "Candy Crush" have managed to attract players for over 10 years because their design aligns with the users' intrinsic motivations. By establishing feedback loops, teaching, and rewarding users, these games provide players with a long-term path to "mastery."

Today, many outstanding applications have incorporated game design principles into their core product design. These game-like experiences bring joy to users and cultivate long-term usage habits. This category encompasses many popular modern applications, including productivity tools, social networks, financial services, mental health, and education, among others.

Motivation, Mastery, and Feedback: The Three Pillars of Game Design

Although there are different definitional frameworks for "what is a game", most people agree on three core principles:

1. Motivation: Why do people want to play your game?
2. Mastery: What are the rules and systems of the game?
3. Feedback: How do players learn these rules?

Let's take a look at some successful game cases that apply these principles.

motivation

Contemporary game designers commonly agree on self-determination theory, which posits that behavior can stem from intrinsic or extrinsic motivation.

External motivation comes from outside, such as monetary rewards or commands from others. Internal motivation, on the other hand, stems from innate psychological needs, such as the desire for autonomy to control one's own life, the desire for competence to control outcomes, and the desire for relatedness to establish connections with others.

Most games focus on intrinsic motivation, viewing it as the most effective and lasting driver of behavior. Take the opening of the classic sci-fi action game "Mega Man X" as an example; within the first 5 minutes of the game, players encounter and are defeated by the powerful enemy Vile.

However, the player did not see "Game Over", but was saved at the last moment by a red robot named Zero. When the player knelt before Zero, he claimed the player would become stronger and that one day "they might even be as strong as I am."

This series of actions strongly demonstrates intrinsic motivation, and the game encourages players to set two goals:

1. Become as powerful as Zero
2. Defeat Vile

These goals constitute the "victory conditions" of the game, which are motivating because they directly enhance the player's ability ( to become stronger ) and autonomy ( to independently decide how to act ).

More importantly, players are motivated to keep playing without any gamification tricks, no badges, and no points. Players set out to achieve self-determined goals, and the game provides them with the tools to achieve those goals. This aligns the product with intrinsic needs.

This is also a key principle that many gamified applications fail to grasp. Instead, they treat the acquisition of badges or points as the goal itself. Without the support of intrinsic motivation, these mechanisms will ultimately become superficial external drivers, quickly leading to user fatigue.

( proficient

Cognition is the second key principle of game design. A player motivated to pursue victory conditions is ready to learn the game rules. In the case of "Mega Man X," these rules include the control scheme ) for how to move and shoot ( and the behavior of enemies. These rules show players how to win: gradually working towards mastery.

Mastery is an important component of every activity and is closely related to the intrinsic need for ability. People want to improve their skills during the process of engaging in activities, whether it is learning a new sport or playing games. Of course, they also expect that mastery is fair, and progress should be based on skill and choice, not luck.

Game designers often struggle to find the right balance of difficulty, not too hard and not too easy. A well-designed game can create a "flow" state, in which users are highly focused on the present, and time flies by.

Non-game products are also like this. For example, painting a landscape or playing a challenging piece on the guitar can often lead to a flow experience.

Combining intrinsic motivation with a balanced mastery path is crucial for maintaining learning effectiveness. As long as the rules are fair and the goals seem attainable, users who reach a certain level in games or activities typically persist. A common mistake in gamified applications is that they overly emphasize the systems used to track proficiency, such as levels, experience points, and badges, while failing to provide real challenges or mastery pathways.

When "leveling up" on Tripadvisor, users do not actually acquire any real skills; similarly, earning badges for reading articles on Google News is not something to celebrate. To be more effective, these systems need to measure users' actual skill progression in achieving the intrinsic goals that matter to them.

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) feedback

Feedback is the third key design principle, referring to how users learn the rules of the game or product.

The best games teach through the repetition of clear cause-and-effect loops. For example, Super Mario teaches players through the feedback loop of death.

At the beginning of the game, there is an enemy called Goomba. If Goomba touches Mario, he will die and respawn at the start of the level, but only 3 seconds back. This short, harmless loop encourages players to try until they discover they can jump over or stomp on Goomba.

The iterative loop also provides positive feedback to users for taking the right actions. In Candy Crush, when players match 3 candies of the same color, it triggers spectacular explosion effects. The game also introduces randomness, surprising users with unexpected outcomes. When players link matched candies together, they appear stacked on the screen in a fast-paced design effect that is hard to track, featuring delightful moments of unexpected appearances like fireworks, fish, and lightning.

Excellent designers often assume that users will not read the manual, but rather design products using a "learn by doing" approach, incorporating iterative feedback loops along the way. These loops help guide users on their path to mastery, ultimately achieving their goals. Few gamified applications can build feedback loops as naturally as the examples mentioned above.

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Game-like design, rather than simple gamification

For many years, the three core design principles of motivation, mastery, and feedback ) MMF ( have far exceeded the field of gaming. In the 1990s, these principles were incorporated by the renowned design firm IDEO into human-centered design concepts. Today, many of the most popular consumer goods and enterprise applications have applied the MMF principles at their core design.

) game elements in social networks

Many popular social networks are essentially gamified applications. Platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok directly leverage users' intrinsic motivations. Users express their self-( autonomy ) while creating content and establish connections ### relatedness ( with others. There is even an optional mastery path, as users can strive to attract followers and receive feedback in the form of likes.

The relatively new application Clubhouse further incorporates elements of randomness into its core design. It creates pleasant moments by allowing users to enter live rooms, recreating the feeling of "bumping into" friends. Top Clubhouse hosts can invite other users on stage or enhance their public speaking skills.

It is worth noting that these social applications have abandoned the use of points or badges, yet they possess a strong long-term user retention rate, which is a hallmark of gamified experiences.

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) Game elements in work

In recent years, a batch of new generation productivity software is more like games than tools. Repl.it###, a browser-based IDE(, and Figma), a collaborative design tool(, have introduced multiplayer modes for coding and design respectively. Developers can collaborate in real-time, comment, and learn from each other, and this "human element" makes these software more interesting than traditional single-user operations.

The email application Superhuman is also a model of game-like design. Under the leadership of former game designer Rahul Vohra, Superhuman sets users the goal of "zero inbox" and provides fine control and inbox rules to help users achieve this goal. When users reach "zero" inbox, Superhuman displays a beautiful high-definition nature landscape picture that changes daily. The bottom of the picture also tracks the number of consecutive days the user has achieved "zero" inbox, reinforcing the path to mastery.

![a16z Partner: The most successful applications are packaged games])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-8337ce88861c957552c172e6bec43789.webp(

) Game Elements in Mental Health

Forest is a gamified application for enhancing productivity and mental health, with over 6 million paying users. It turns the act of staying focused into a game.

Users start focused training by planting a virtual tree. When users work with focus, the tree grows; if users leave the application before the time is up, the tree wilts.

A wilted tree serves as a negative visual feedback, discouraging users from getting distracted by social media or checking emails. Successfully maintaining focus will allow the tree to thrive, and users can plant multiple trees in their personal forest. The lushness of the forest reflects the user's achievements and duration of focus, ### which is also a path to mastery, (.

In the long term, Forest hopes to cultivate users' good habits around "focus" and "mindfulness."

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) game elements in the financial sector

A certain bank's automatic savings account has turned saving money into a game. The bank sets clear saving goals for users and has designed a process to help achieve these goals.

The bank's debit card will round up the transaction amount to the nearest dollar and automatically transfer the difference into a savings account. This savings amount varies with each transaction and is prominently displayed in color on the app's homepage, where users can see these delightful surprises when they open the app.

By incorporating randomness into the design, the bank has made traditionally dull bank reconciliations interesting. This positive feedback loop reinforces savings goals and helps users cultivate good habits on their savings journey. Over time, users may even be motivated to save outside of this bank.

game elements in the fitness field

Zombies, Run! and Strava are personal fitness apps similar to games that make running and cycling more enjoyable.

Zombies is an audio application where users play as survivors in a zombie outbreak. The app encourages running by having users perform purposeful tasks, such as finding supplies or escaping from zombies. Using