Gamification: Motivation Model

The broken way of carrot and stick

Have you ever asked yourself why do you play a game? Besides the fact that it’s relaxing, most of the times you play one because it’s fun. You enjoy the process of trial and error and discovering new stuff when you play it. Whether it is a new story element, new level or new item in the game.

In my previous articles about gamification I wrote about The Basics, Why People Love Failing in Games, Rewarding Users With Points. In this one, it will be about what motivates people in certain situations and why we love games.

When people apply gamification to tools we use on a daily basis, such as, to-do apps, fitness or learning new languages apps, we tend to miss some crucial elements. We can look beyond simple badges and achievements with points and use some different motivation models. For example, the process of having fun just for the sake of having fun. No extrinsic rewards required.

But to say that is easier than done. And before I give you an example of how we could encourage “fun for the sake of fun”, I want you to understand what motivates people first.

Motivation 1.0

Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, describes an essential and great experiment that shaped the way we look at motivation. The experiment was done by Harry F. Harlow, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin (1940s). He and his colleagues gathered eight monkeys and put them in cages to separately to solve a mechanical puzzle. The puzzle consisted of pulling a vertical pin from a piece of flat wood, undo the hook and lift the hinged cover.

Around day 13 or 14, the monkeys learned how to solve the puzzle by themselves. But it’s a bit odd because nobody taught them how to do it. Nobody offered any rewards for that — food, affection or applause. And that is about counter to our own world, where we try to reward every action of ours at work with praise, bonuses, bigger salaries and promotions. So what’s essential for us to take from this experiment is:

The monkeys solved the puzzle because they found the process gratifying. The process of doing the task was a joy and its own reward.