andrzej marczewski

Rewards and Reward Schedules in Gamification

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Reward schedule Rewards and Reward Schedules in Gamification

Anyone who has read a few of my blogs will, by now, be under the impression that I am not the biggest fan of rewards. Well, that is not entirely how I feel.  Those that have read earlier blogs may remember something I said – “Rewards should recognise achievement, not be the achievement”.  I also found myself saying in an email “Gamification at the moment is often nothing more than an attempt to illicit Pavlovian responses to external stimuli”. I know, how up myself does that sound – but it’s true.  The way many people are using rewards are as a way to encourage people to do things – like giving a dog a biscuit for rolling over on command

Rewards can Work.

That is not to say this can’t work, but for many there comes a point where that is not enough, especially if you don’t plan the rewards correctly.

I recently heard that the best way to use rewards is totally randomly.  It is understood that random rewards can become addictive in the right circumstances.  Take a slot machine in a casino or a pub.  There is not a great deal of skill needed to play one of those and there is almost no way of predicting when one will pay out.  The reward seems to be random.  However, it really isn’t.  What makes it addictive is the element of chance AND knowing that it actually will pay out – it has to eventually. The more money you pump in, the higher the chance that it will pay as well.  The randomness is not so much what gets you as the knowledge that it will pay eventually.  Digital rewards really can’t work quite the same way, there is no great meaning or value. In a casino I stand the chance to win my fortune, not really the same as the “Liked 100 pages” medal!

Back to Player Journey

So how can we make the most of rewards?  Well, let’s look at our player journey diagrams I introduced. Using Amy Jo Kim’s player journey as our metaphor here, there are three main phases. On boarding, Habit Building and Mastery.  Where rewards and points etc can really help is in the on boarding phase and to a certain extent the habit building phase.

As you can see, there are a few points where we can say that an achievement would seem to fit nicely.

Most people coming into a new system require a little hand holding. As they learn the system, rewards can act as re-enforcement to things that they have just learned.  When they come into the system, you give them some kind of welcome achievement.  Often the hardest thing is just walking through the door, so congratulate and thank them for it.

As they achieve something new, congratulate them. Recognise actions and achievements that you feel are important and that the user will feel is important. At key points in the user’s journey consider giving meaningful rewards or even useful ones. In an on boarding process in a company, consider only giving your employees luxuries (such as an iPad) if they have achieved certain things in your gamified system. Be a little careful with this though, remember we are looking for quality of work – not just work to get the reward.

As you go through the habit building phase rewards and achievements can still help to re-enforce key points in the user’s development, but should become scarcer as they get more skilled.  By the time they have reached mastery (or at least know what they are doing), there should be less and less need to use achievements at all.

Don’t get Carried Away

It is easy to get carried away with achievements and rewards, flooding the user with dozens of meaningless achievements for pointless tasks. it also helps to remember to tell the user why they have been given the achievement. If it was for completing a training course, make sure that it says that somewhere. If it is for being in the system for 12 months, let them know that.  It is often frustrating to get some kind of achievement and have no idea what it was for or how you got it. It is also annoying when talking to others and they tell you they got something but then can’t tell you how – it makes you feel left out if you don’t understand why someone else got something that you seemingly can’t get.

Reward Loyalty

People’s loyalty is a fickle thing. It is worth at least thanking them and recognising loyalty and especially longevity of loyalty. When they have been with you for x number of months or years, say thank you. Better still – give them something meaningful. Some will like the personal feel of this, others will see it as another trophy on the wall.  Either way, it is important to remember current users and not just the new ones – this is a lesson the mobile phone industry has taken a very long time to realise.

Call of Duty and Seeming Random

Let’s not forget randomness though. There is a place for it in a reward schedule. Most people love a surprise and it can help to give the “Oo, I wonder what I may get next” feeling. These rewards should be available to all and I would probably say that there should be some way to know what may be coming up, there are some who will want to know what may be coming next.  If we look at Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 we can see rewards done both well and terribly at the same time.

As you play the multiplayer game you get lots (and I mean lots) of regular achievements for number of kills, number of assists, number of this number of that and number of the other.  It is relentless and as such utterly meaningless to most players.

However, every now and again you will get a promotion. This is nice as it shows on your player record and on the score boards – showing others that you have achieved a certain level of accomplishment within the game (I refrain from the using the word skill).  It has some meaning and adds to your overall reputation in the game.  What really works for me though is when you get a new weapon or an upgrade to an existing one.  These are not random, but unless you read into what you get and when, it has the feeling of surprise when it happens and it is always welcome.  It allows you to customise your player further to match your style and adds to a feeling of freedom of expression within the game (autonomy if you will).  As I say, these are totally scheduled and relate to certain levels of achievement, but normally you are not expecting it and it certainly makes you want to play a bit more to get the next big gun.

Putting it Together

  1. Welcome the user: Introduce the user to the fact rewards are in use and thank them for taking that first step. – Expected, Engagement Contingent
  2. Encourage and Re-Enforce:  use achievements and rewards to help re-enforce the behaviours you are trying to encourage in the early stages of the user’s journey through the system. – Expected, Task Contingent, Unexpected, Non Task Contingent, fixed interval and variable interval
  3. Scarcity: Continue this in a regular but limited way as they achieve higher status or skill within the system. If the system is built correctly, you should not need to continue with regular pats on the back once they have mastered it all. Expected, Task Contingent, Unexpected, Non Task Contingent, fixed interval and variable interval
  4. Reward Loyalty: It is easy to forget this, but it is important to recognise longevity of loyalty.  For most it will be nice, for some it will be something to show off as part of their status and reputation. – Expected, Fixed Interval
  5. Surprise them: As well as these, use meaningful rewards in ways that the user may not naturally be expecting.  Try to surprise them with things that may actually make them smile or things that may be of use to them. These can be used in moderation for as long as you want. – Unexpected, Non Task Contingent

One word of warning, rewards should not be used to try and “lift” people out of boring phases of their journey. If you switch the emphasis on working to get a reward away from getting a reward for achievements, you will quickly lose your employees trust.  Rewards can not last forever, there comes a time where the system has to stand on its own two feet and be intrinsically engaging. I’ve said it before and will say it again, a bad system can not be made better with points and badges – You can’t polish a turd.

Harry Potter and the Gamification of School

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When I was a kid a school (long before Harry Potter had been thought of – and gamification for that matter…), teaching methods generally sucked. A teach stood at the front of the class, dictated out ancient notes and you had to write them down in your exercise book. If you didn’t pay attention or did something the teacher did not like, you got a board rubber thrown at your head. There was no intrinsic enjoyment to be had from the learning process; it was all drained by the way we were taught. This was not unique to my school years; it had been this way for decades.

That is why they had to come up with something to help motivate students to at least behave during class, the House system.

Each student was a member of a house (I was Owls) and had a merit table associated to them. Merits were given to good students, good deeds, exploits on the sports field and so on. De-merits were awarded for bad behaviour. Every now and then all of the points for each student and each house were added together, the de-merits subtracted and then the house with the most points got a reward.

It was a simple system that worked for a number of reasons. The first was that it promoted teamwork and peer pressure. You did not want to be the one to drag your house down due to not doing your homework for 10 days straight. That was dealt with by the other members of the house in the playground. It gave you some incentive to do well in your own right. Everyone could see your scores on the class merit chart – again creating a little bit of peer pressure and in some promoting some pride in their scores.

In Harry Potter and in other real schools, this was taken to the next level by actually awarding a House cup at the end of the year to the house with the most points. This would add even greater pressure to achieve or at least not misbehave too much. I think out house cup was awarded based on Sports Day, but that was never my strong point so I never paid much attention!

Right, so we have established that back in the old days extrinsic rewards were used to motivate students to do well. Did it succeed? To some extent yes. However, before you start quoting Deci at me and yelling that extrinsic rewards don’t work especially for anything that needs creativity (like education and learning surely). Points, badges and ladders are the spawn of evil gamification “experts” who don’t know the true psychology behind motivation. Re-read the first paragraph. Teaching methods sucked. There was no joy to be had in the way we were learning. Yes there was joy to be had when you finally cracked it, but the process was boring, uninspired and just plain painful at times. Intrinsic motivation was almost non existent for this. Now re-read Deci and everyone’s conclusions about motivation and extrinsic rewards for mechanical tasks. Hence extrinsic rewards offered some glimmer of hope. It made you feel part of something that may be a bit bigger than you.

My hope is that this kind of thing is no longer needed. We are 25 years further on in education, surely teaching methods have improved. More teachers should be inspiring their students with well thought out and engaging content. Blended and eLearning approaches should be perfected by now to allow students to learn in ways that best suit their styles. Teachers should no longer be standing at the front of the class reading out notes they first wrote when I was at school. School is now fun and engaging at every level.

Right?

Driving the wrong behaviours with rewards.

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I have written about this whole thing quite a lot already, but I have some new insights based on things I have witnessed recently.

We know that extrinsic rewards are meant to demotivate people when doing anything that is even slightly creative. So why do we keep seeing them being used in gamification and marketing. On the face of it, that kind of thing works well. Offer a reward and ask people to do something simple. Like this, follow that, +1 the other and you can win a book. Low and behold you can get hundreds or thousands of these clicks – great. The question is, how many of these are valuable? What is the goal? If you are trying to develop new and worthwhile interactions and relationships. Does the same person liking everything you have ever written, just to win the prize, have any actual value long term?

Add another dimension. What about asking people to write something as well. They get an extra entry to the competition for writing something that you feel may be of value to you in your research. Every new piece of written work earns an entry.

What is to stop people just entering multiple times with complete rubbish? Have you designed the system so that you have to check the written work is of value? Probably not, you trust human nature. Trouble is, humans are not trustworthy when a prize they want is on offer. If they can find a loophole or a trick that gives them the edge, they will make full use of it! This is not their fault, it is the way some people are programmed – the killer / Achiever profiles (from Bartle’s player type). They want to win, they have found a way to do that that you have not blocked or told them they can’t do – they will use it!!

The answer here is, don’t offer a physical reward (or even a virtual reward) if you want quality. Far to many people mistake quantity with quality!

Let’s look a little bigger. The research that Deci and others has done implies that if you want creativity – take rewards off the table. The introduction of a reward for creating something reduces the creativity employed. But why? Well, take a video game company that has produced a massive hit – let’s call it Medal of Duty. They know that with very little extra work, they can generate vast oceans of cash by just reproducing and repackaging their previous game the next year. They tell their team to just make it look a little different, but not to spend much time or money on it. Why? Because, there is no need to. When you know that what ever you produce you are going to get a reward – why put any effort in? We are back to quantity over quality. Give me £1 for every line of text I produce, no matter what the quality, all you will get is lines and lines of adasd asd asd as ereww das das da ds asd as dgpoasdpoasod asodi asd asdlkja sld . The money (extrinsic reward) has taken the place of the reason I was writing in the first place.

What about performance based pay, I hear you cry? Pay more for better quality. The problem with that is, it doesn’t work.

Dan Pink, in his FLIP Manifest gives just one example of research done on this. The US Education system. They spent millions on linking teachers pay to their students performance. In 2011, Roland Fryer of Harvard Business School examined this programme in 200 schools.

His conclusion? “Providing incentives to teachers did not increase student achievement in any statistically significant way”. Paying more just doesn’t give you better – not always. Actually, going back to Mr Pink, he just suggests pay everyone slightly more than they expect – take money off their minds, and sit back and enjoy the fruits of their creative labours!

Rewards can blind us to the real value of a task – both from the users perspective and the controllers perspective. It is easy to think that quantity is more important than quality. You want those followers on twitter, you want those likes on Facebook. But ask yourself, how will they help in the long run? If that is all you want, great, go for it. If you want something meaningful and you want quality, find another way to appeal to peoples creative side.

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I was just finally reading Daniel Pinks: Drive (all the way through, rather than skimming!) and found this great and very relevant excerpt:

Carrots and Sticks: the seven deadly flaws

  1. They can extinguish intrinsic motivation
  2. They can diminish performance
  3. They can crush creativity
  4. They can crowd out good behavior
  5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behavior
  6. They can become addictive
  7. They can foster short-term thinking

The danger of extrinsic rewards on motivation – What I learned from my 5 year old

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Another quick one, prompted by an interesting behaviour exhibited by my daughter today that taught me rather a lot about extrinsic rewards.

I have mentioned before the research that has been done on motivation in the past by the likes of Edward Deci and the writing of Dan Pink and more. All of them point to the same thing, extrinsic rewards are bad for intrinsic motivation. The basic reasoning is that at some point, no matter how careful you are, the reward will become the reason to do the task. The extrinsic reward replaces the original intrinsic motivation.

I have in the past spoken about my daughters reward chart. On early post of mine was about what Super Nanny had taught us about gamification and what it meant for the next few generations. We had tried to be very careful about how we used the reward chart – knowing what I know about the nature of motivation. Stickers got harder to get as she mastered the art of being good!

Recently we thought we had cracked it. The reward chart had not been used in many weeks – job done. Or so we thought.

This morning I had the following conversation with my daughter.

Daughter: “Daddy.”

Me: “Yes dear.”

D: “I haven’t had a sticker on a reward chart in ages.”

M: “No sweatheart. You have been really good recently, there has been no need to use it.”

D: “Oh. Well. I was quite naughty yesterday. Can we start using it again, then I can get that My Little Pony I wanted.”

Do’h.

So there we have it. Total proof that the extrinsic reward has, in her mind, become a main reason to be good.

More work ahead I feel!

 

A Question of Motivation

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A very quick blog this week, whilst I work on a few deeper ones (possibly)

An argument that is pretty constant in Gamification, is that of Extrinsic vs Intrinsic motivation / rewards. Things like badges, points and even money vs altruism, autonomy, status and more. The general consensus, based on the works of people like Deci and talks by people like Daniel Pink, is that extrinsic motivation is in no way better than intrinsic motivation. The research shows that being almost bribed to do stuff will actually decrease your effectiveness.

That said, almost everyone agrees that extrinsic rewards are very handy for on boarding – for quick fixes and pushes.

Anyway, here is my question / puzzle.

Your boss invites you in to his office with two offers.

1. You can have promotion, earning you extra social status – but of course extra responsibility and workload. However, rather than getting a pay rise, you can choose a charity for the extra money to go to.
2. You can stay the same grade you are now, but you can have the pay rise that would be equivalent to a promotion. Again, the workload would increase.

The first choice gives you lots of mice intrinsic options. Choice, Status, Altruism, Charity, Autonomy, Relatedness etc. The second choice is purely extrinsic – you get more money.

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic – What would you choose?

 

For me, my motivation to work is to provide for my family. As such, I would personally go for the money! In gamification, there are a lot of people concentrating on making systems more interesting and engaging, but so few seem (on the surface at least) to be looking at what motivates each individual. Not every person reacts in the same way to every situation – no matter how well researched the psychology is.

 

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