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Introduction to Gamification Part 4: Motivation (R.A.M.P, Maslow, SDT and more)

August 4, 2020January 30, 2019 by Andrzej Marczewski

Warning, this is one of my longest blogs ever!

Now we know a bit about what games, gamification and game-based solutions are (and are not), it’s time to start to consider some of the non-game related topics you need to understand to be good at building game-based solutions. The first of these is motivation.

In gamification we tend to look at motivation in varying depths, starting from a very simple perspective with just two options. Intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation.

The most basic way to look at this is that activities that are intrinsically motivating are those that people will do because they want to or appreciate the benefits of doing them. Activities that require rewards, extrinsic motivation, people do because there is a reward, not because they want to do it. It is not quite as black and white as that, but it is a good starting point – read on!

The Definitions

Let’s look at the “proper” definitions of these as explained by researches Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, authors of Self Determination theory (SDT) – a paper you will become familiar with as you follow these blogs.

Intrinsic Motivation: “the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence” ¹

They identify three intrinsic motivators: competence (or mastery), autonomy and relatedness, forming the basis of their Self-Determination Theory

Extrinsic Motivation: is “a construct that pertains whenever an activity is done in order to attain some separable time” ²

In terms of gamification, this would be considered any reward that was given to a user as an incentive to do something, for example, badges or prizes.

Needs and Motivations

There are many theories and frameworks that look at how humans are motivated. Two of the most well-known are Maslow’s hierarchy of needs ³ and Self Determination Theory ¹.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

First, let’s look at Maslow. Now, a warning. Maslow is widely taught, but there are many who say that his work is not founded in good research, so must be taken with a pinch of salt. For instance, the top tier of his pyramid of needs is “self-actualization”, but there is very little in the way of proof of what that might be or how one might truly achieve it! ⁴ However, the hierarchy of needs is a useful aide-mémoire so to speak, as it helps to visualise what drives humans in a simple and approachable way.

Basically, the Hierarchy of Needs shows us that there are needs that must be fulfilled before other needs can be fulfilled. Whilst the order may be slightly different depending on context, generally, we need to have our physiological needs and safety covered before love and belonging are important. Then we can think about self-esteem and finally self-actualization.

Now it isn’t that simple really, for instance for some esteem might be more important than love and belonging, but you get the idea!

Self Determination Theory

Proposed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, Self Determination Theory is the result of many years of research and presents three basic needs of humans, Relatedness, Autonomy and Competence.

R.A.M.P

Relatedness

Relatedness is experienced when people feel they are socially connected to each other in some way. It is a sense of belonging, being wanted or needed. In the “real world” this is often satisfied by friendships and family. At work, this can be satisfied by working relationships and friendships with colleagues. In the virtual world, we must rely on social networks or tools that allow people to connect to each other. For instance, if you look at many of the best multi-player games, they have ways to communicate with others, create teams and teams.

In gamification, we often look to create environments that allow for collaboration, but also team competitions. This allows people to work together, but also to have a bit friendly challenge between teams. It is usually best to avoid one-to-one competitions, these can lead to unpleasant behaviours as individuals set out to “win” especially if there is a tangible and valuable reward on offer!

Another word on competition. You will read about how bad it can be. However, if you look at sports people, such as tennis players, they often form strong bonds with other players whom they are competing with. One of the reasons for this is that they have a shared interest. Not only this, they can relate to each other. Imagine how many people can relate to Andy Murray’s reality as a high-profile tennis player?

Autonomy

Autonomy is loosely defined as the ability to make free, independent choices without coercion, or agency. In R.A.M.P, I am using autonomy to refer the ability to make choices as well as the freedom for self-expression and creativity. If someone is fully autonomous, they are essentially free to do what they choose, when they choose, how they choose. Obviously, this is not always possible in the real world. Within a corporate setting, for instance, autonomy may look more like a lack of micro-management and the ability to choose one’s own solutions to problems. Steve Jobs famously said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”.

In a gamified solution, autonomy could look like several things. It could be that you create a learning experience that allows users to choose their own path through, giving them choices of how to progress. It could be that you include tools to allow the user to create an avatar, or even their own materials to share back to others (slipping into Altruistic Purpose a little).

Mastery (Competence)

Master, or competence as it is referred to in SDT (but RACP did not have as nice a ring to it as RAMP…), in motivational terms is the desire to be good at something, to overcome challenges, learn and improve and eventually master it. It is easy to imagine how this might work in education, be it school or corporate. There is an obvious learning objective! Anywhere you are learning a new skill are acquiring knowledge can fit within a path to mastery.

In games and gamification, the path to mastery is well laid out to the user. There are specific goals that they must achieve. As the user progresses, they are presented with new skills to learn, opportunities to practice their skills and usually a final test where they will be challenged to prove they have mastered those skills. In games this is often a “Boss Battle”, in education this will be an exam!

A key to making this enjoyable and accessible is to ensure that the learning objectives increase in their level of challenge as the users skill increases (Flow ⁵). If the challenges are too hard, the user will become frustrated. If they are too easy, they will become bored very quickly.

Purpose

So, now we know where Relatedness, Autonomy and Mastery have come from. But, why did I add purpose? Well, there are two answers, the first is because I saw it in Dan Pink’s drive⁶ where he used Purpose and ditched Relatedness. In his book purpose was focused on what I would define as meaningful purpose. This is a person’s need to feel that what they are doing fulfils a purpose in some way. It could be that they need to understand how the cog they make affects the overall system, it could be to know that adding that extra line to Wikipedia somehow improves human knowledge. There is a hideous phrase in gamification that covers this “Epic Meaning”. Deci and Ryan explain that for them, meaning is ingrained in all of the three needs defined in Self Determination Theory, not a separate need or motivation ⁷.

In RAMP I am focusing on Altruistic purpose. Altruism, the act of giving selflessly of oneself, in SDT is contained in Relatedness. However, my approach to this has always been related to making a usable set of tools that can help me create solutions for clients, trying to avoid the philosophical and focus on the practical. For this reason, I chose to separate Altruistic Purpose as the strategies to encourage altruism are slightly different to just those used to create social connectedness.

Overjustification Effect

It is important to understand that neither intrinsic motivation nor extrinsic motivation is better than the other when used in balance and harmony. It is often viewed that intrinsic motivation is the good guy and extrinsic rewards are the bad guy. However, you often need a bit of both. It is important to remember that something that appears to be an intrinsic motivation, applied in the wrong way will be viewed as an extrinsic reward. For example, social recognition. It is often viewed as intrinsically motivating to be given an elevated social status for achievement. However, if the person who is being elevated is only doing an activity because they know it will bring them greater status, it is an extrinsic motivator! If the social status is bestowed upon them as unintended consequences of excellent achievement, then it is more intrinsic.

This is where something called “Overjustification” ⁸ effect needs to be considered. If an extrinsic reward overrides a person’s intrinsic desire to do something, then they are experiencing Overjustification effect.

For instance, if you enjoy painting and do it in your spare time, you are intrinsically motivated to paint. If you are creating art just for money, then you are extrinsically motivated. Studies have shown that this often leads to a poorer quality of work. ⁸

With this being the case, we often say that extrinsic rewards are great in a situation where RAMP cannot be utilised well. If your job is to stamp a hole in a piece of metal 10,000 times a day, it is hard to do much with intrinsic motivation! However, if you want people to produce high-quality content, paying them based on nothing more than how many words they write is not going to work very well. You will just get one word repeated a million times! You need to create review mechanisms and hook into autonomy and purpose as well as mastery (and potentially relatedness with peer reviewing).

Three Layers of Motivation

By way of a final summary, I have created the Three Layers of Motivation.

This includes elements of RAMP, SDT and Maslow.

Base Needs

Based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the Base layer considers physiological and safety needs. This includes needs such as health welfare, security, shelter, food and the like. I also include money, which whilst it seems a bit odd when that is obviously an extrinsic motivator, in the modern world it encompasses so much more! To be secure, to have a house, to provide for one’s family, you need money! We no longer hunt for food and live in caves after all.

Money leads to security. It provides you shelter, it keeps your family safe, it provides food for you all. Before money, jobs, and the like, this was all much more primal. You secured your family by physically protecting them. You hunted for food and you built shelters. For most, this is now taken care of by earning money. We do not need to hunt for food or build huts for shelter; we now buy all those things. To get money, we normally need a job. Whilst many enjoy their jobs, they are unlikely to say, “If I wasn’t paid, I’d still work here”.

Emotional / Intrinsic

Once our base needs and motivations are satisfied, we can focus on the other more emotional motivations. I describe these as our need for relatedness, autonomy, mastery and purpose (RAMP).

I will go into much more detail in the next section. These needs are referred to as intrinsic motivations and are much more important to our feeling of satisfaction than pure rewards can be.

Trivial / Extrinsic

A lot of gamification efforts sit in this area – often referred to as PBL gamification (Points, Badges and Leaderboards) ⁹. They have their place and I will be explaining a lot more about them as we go along.

For now, it is enough to understand that these types of incentives are only truly effective when the first two layers of motivation and needs are satisfied. We will cover a lot more of this later!

Key Learning Points

A person is intrinsically motivated when they are doing something without the need for extrinsic rewards such as money.
Extrinsic rewards are those rewards that are given to a person to encourage them to do an activity.
It is not that simple!
We are all different and have different needs – it takes time and research to understand how to motivate large groups towards a single goal!

References

Ryan RM, Deci EL. Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. Am Psychol. 2000;55:68-78. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68.
Ryan RM, Deci EL. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions. Contemp Educ Psychol. 2000;25(1):54-67. doi:10.1006/ceps.1999.1020.
Maslow AH. A THEORY OF HUMAN MOTIVATION. Psychol Rev. 1943;50(4):370-396. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0054346.
McLeofd S. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs | Simply Psychology. Simplypsychology.org. doi:10.1007/s11693-012-9098-7.
Csikszentmihalyi M. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Performance.; 1990.
Pink DH. Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. Canongate; 2009. doi:10.1002/casp.
Ryan RM, Deci EL. The Darker and Brighter Sides of Human Existence: Basic Psychological Needs as a Unifying Concept. Psychol Inq. 2000. doi:10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_03.
Lepper MR, Greene D, Nisbett RE. Undermining children’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the “overjustification” hypothesis. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1973;28(1):129-137. doi:10.1037/h0035519.
Werbach K, Hunter D. For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Wharton Digital Press; 2012. http://www.amazon.co.uk/For-Win-Thinking-Revolutionize-Business/dp/1613630239. Accessed May 29, 2015.

Intrinsic Motivation RAMP Misconceptions

December 15, 2017 by Andrzej Marczewski

As we head to the holidays I wanted to revisit an old “model” and just clarify a couple of items that have cropped up in conversation over the years. The item in question is RAMP. This, as you may remember, is my core intrinsic motivation model of Relatedness, Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Obviously, based on Self Determination Theory, this has been a really handy tool in all of my gamification exploits over the years.

The basic idea is these are 4 motivations that are core to all people in some way. In self-determination theory, Deci and Ryan only speak about Relatedness, Autonomy and Competence (Mastery), as altruistic purpose is part relatedness. Whilst true, for gamification it is useful to separate this out into its own.

Anyway, I digress.

RAMP is not a taxonomy, people are not one or the other, they are a spectrum of all of the motivations, and much more! That said, depending on the context, one motivation may be more important to them than another.

For example, if generally a person is most interested in relatedness and you put them into an educational setting, at that moment mastery may be the most “active” motivation.

So What?

The point of this, just like the Player Type HEXAD, is to remember that all these motivations are at play in all of us but that we are all slightly different, just some are more active than others in different contexts. We will always be slightly more “weighted” towards one or two motivations day to day, but the rest will still be there.

The reason to keep RAMP in mind is to give some clues as to how to motivate people generally and especially towards certain types of behaviours – hence I create the Player Types based on these 4 motivations.

Oh and if you are interested, here is my full talk from Gamification Europe the other day!

Relatedness in Single Player Experiences

June 29, 2017 by Andrzej Marczewski

I love multiplayer games. Very little beats the feeling of taking on real people and working with real people in a game. People provide much less predictable challenges than computer driven opponents.

One thing that many multiplayer games miss is a good story. This isn’t always true, but the deepest narrative experiences tend to be single player only. Think about games such as Walking Dead, 80 Days, Heavy Rain, Her Story etc. Each of this offers a deep story, but on the surface seems to offer nothing that resembles multiplayer elements.

However, this is changing and in a really subtle but excellent way.

Games designers have realised that bringing social groups together in games, creating a level of relatedness, does not require people to be in the game together at the same time. What they need is a mechanism for Social Comparison.

My two favourite examples of this come from 80 Days and Telltale’s Batman.

80 Days

In 80 Days (if you have not played it, get it now – then come back…), you play Phileas Fogg’s trusty valet, Jean Passepartout. The game has you choosing routes around the world, country by country, trading and negotiating your way through some of the best story writing I have ever seen. It is a very personal and solo experience, which brings us to the question. How can they make that feel social? The answer is simple and genius in equal measure.

As you plot your route, you have access to a global map. However, if you look you will see there are lots of icons on the map, that are not you. Tapping one of them will reveal that these are other players who are currently travelling around the world, experience their own unique story. You can see their route so far and some information about how many countries they have visited and for how long they have been travelling. What starts as a solo experience suddenly feels less lonely s you realise others are doing the same thing as you. It is subtle

but very powerful!

Telltale’s Batman

Telltale’s Batman tells a story of a more detective focused caped crusader as he tries to discover just what the hell is going on in Gotham. Working as a Choose Your Own Adventure, you have to decide which responses will work best for any given conversation or situation. Some of these choices hold more significance to the story than others and this is where the solo experience can become a social one.

At the end of the chapter, you are given a breakdown of your most important decision – compared to how other players have responded. Oh, you chose to punch him in the face? Well, it turns out only 20% of players made the same choice!

It doesn’t stop there. In an attempt to make narrative games team events, they included a local multiplayer option called Crowd Play. In this mode, up to twelve people can sit around the screen and vote on what option to take. The game follows the will of the crowd!

Whilst it may not seem obvious how to make multiplayer experiences from solo games, it is not impossible! Let me know what examples you have seen where this has been done really well, where the multiplayer experience may not even affect the game, but it still adds that social element that is so often needed to feel that you are not alone!

Speaking of relatedness, I thought I would end on a cute note. Here is a video of me and my daughter, Olivia, doing a little duet!

Gamification User Types and the 4 Keys 2 Fun

April 20, 2014June 5, 2013 by Andrzej Marczewski

I am pretty excited about this one.

Gamification User Types

When I created my gamification User Types definitions, it was with a mind to help people consider who is going to be in their gamified systems and what may motivate them. I started with the intrinsic motivation RAMP I keep talking about, Relatedness, Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. From this I created the Socialiser, Free Spirit, Achiever and Philanthropist user types. That covered the who and the what – who the user may be and what it is that may motivate them. One of the things it didn’t cover was why. Why would people engage in this way and god forbid, why would they find it fun?

4 Keys 2 Fun

One of the posters on my wall at work is the 4 Keys 2 Fun from Nicole Lazzaro. For those that don’t know, early in 2000 (2003 / 2004) XEODesign (her company), conducted some research into why we play games. They surveyed players and non players, observed them, recorded them and interviewed them to assess the emotions that they felt during play.

The upshot was that they discovered four main keys or types of fun (Xeo Design’s website – why we play games):

People Fun (Friendship)
- Amusement from competition and cooperation
Easy Fun (Novelty)
- Curiosity from exploration, role play, and creativity
Hard Fun (Challenge)
- Fiero, the epic win, from achieving a difficult goal
Serious Fun (Meaning)
- Excitement from changing the player and their world

Obviously, there is more to it than that, but I encourage you to read and watch the original material on why we play games – it does a much better job of explaining the theory than I ever could. Basically it gives you a framework to use when building games to make them more fun.

Combining Fun and User Types

Before we get going on this, it may help some I consider fun in terms of engagement when talking about gamification.

It took me a long time (far too long) to realise that these 4 keys 2 fun had a remarkable similarity to my user types. It makes sense really, motivation and fun are intrinsically linked, so it stands to reason that the four key intrinsic motivators would be analogous to any theories about fun (as Victor Manrique brilliantly displays here Gamification Player Types: Meet the players!).

When we put these together we start to get a fuller picture about the motivation and engagement for certain types of users. You get the Who, What, Why and even some of the How!

Who	Socialiser	Free Spirit	Achiever	Philanthropist
What	Relatedness	Autonomy	Mastery	Purpose
Why	People Fun	Easy Fun	Hard Fun	Serious Fun
How	Communicate Cooperate Compete	Exploration Fantasy Creativity	Goals Obstacles Strategy	Repetition Rhythm Collection

Enough talking, time for a picture!

Gamification User Types, Motivation and the 4 Keys 2 Fun

Above we have the gamification user types, displayed with the main motivation, the fun “key” as well as the player experience for that key. The axes are similar to ones I used in the original version of the user types, and very similar to the 4 Keys 2 Fun ones. Structured vs Unstructured and Acting on Users vs Acting on the System. In the 4 Keys 2 Fun these are Structured vs Open Ended and Real World vs Game World.

Making use of it

When you look at my basic design framework, you can see that the first step is to look at What you are trying to gamify, what is it you want the users to actually do, what is your goal. After considering Why and Who, the next step is to consider How, how can you engage as many user types as possible in that activity? Is there a way to include choice, freedom, exploration, altruism, social connections, status, learning, goals, collection, creativity – any of the game thinking elements that I have spoke about in the past that support the 4 core motivators. Now we can start to look at how you can use the player experiences highlighted here for each user type to hook into the fun type for that user type.

Let’s create a fictional example for each user type using a question and answers system (like Quora).

The Philanthropist user type thrives in this kind of example. For them. as system needs to provide mechanisms for the user to find some kind of meaning. In the case of a Q&A system, this would start by letting the user help others by answering questions or finding answers for others. That gives is the purpose part. The fun type that is most associated with this user type is Serious Fun. Of the player experiences that come under serious fun (Repetition, Rhythm and Collection), collection is going to be the most valuable in this situation. So when they offer help to others, award points for them to collect – then let those points be converted into something that has a meaningful value. An example of this, taken from Nicole’s game Tilt World, would be to convert points into trees being planted in Madagascar. Of course, you could think a little smaller and just donate to charities! Naches all round.

The Socialiser type is a little easier. They are looking for social connections and status to support the feeling of relatedness. Within out Q&A system we should include some form of social network to allow users to talk to each other. People Fun is the type we would be looking at with the socialiser. Under this we have three different player experiences and can actually make use of all of them in our Q&A system; Communicate, Cooperate, Compete. We already have the communicate part, but how about expanding this to allow collaborative answers to questions. On top of that, for those who want to, we can include Leaderboards to cover the competitive users. Rememebr that not all users will be interested in leaderboards!

Achievers want to feel that they are improving, that their journey in a system is one to mastery. With our Q&A system we can cater for this in a couple of ways. One would be to recognise their achievements (yes that does point to badges and the like), the other would be to use the system to offer actual learning opportunities. You could, for example, for expand the system to allow the philanthropists to create tutorials, which the achievers can then take. When you look at Hard Fun, the goals and obstacle player experiences are of most use for this example. Give your users learning objectives and goals. Let them feel that they are achieving something by answering questions, that they are mastering the system. Let your user experience Fiero.

Last but by no means least, our Free Spirits. Their motivation is autonomy. This is less obvious in a Q&A system. Giving users choice and creativity doesn’t seem easy. In fact when you look at the player experiences for Easy Fun – fantasy, creativity and exploration, it seems even harder for a Q&A system to provide engagement for this user type. However, there are still a few things you can do. First, let the user explore. This can be done with well design user interfaces, consider gameful design here. It could just be a button that takes them to a random question on the site (check out the page roulette button on my blog). This leads to the feeling of freedom and exploration. Also. let them create a persona with avatars, information and skins. Most user types will use this as a chance to say a bit about them, but a free spirit may like to get creative! Another tactic would be to make the interface and editor for answering or asking question more creative. Don’t restrict them to straight up text input.

And Finally

That is just one very quick example of how all four user types can be catered for when you consider the fun type as well. It all goes to help create a more rounded experience for more users.

Remember that most users won’t remain a single type for the entire time they are in a system. This means that the type of fun and engagement will change over time for them as well. Nicole explained to me, using serious fun as the example;

“Serious Fun comes in before and after the win (Hard Fun) to make winning feel more meaningful and make the feeling of winning last longer”

So different types of fun can also act on each other to produce different effects. She has also been quoted as saying that most popular games included at least three types of fun in them!

It is important to understand, people will experience fun in different ways and the same for fiero and naches. People experience achievement in different ways, it is not just achievers who will experience it. Philanthropists will feel achievement at helping others. This is just a guide to help you get a better feel for how to engage different types of users.

I would like to thank Nicole Lazzaro for taking time out of her very hectic schedule to offer some advice on this mash-up. My hope is that this will help others get a better idea of how to include fun on their engagement models within gamification. It actually makes my user types a more complete “frame work” and should give you something else to read further.

For more information on the 4 Keys 2 Fun, visit http://xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html

Motivation, let’s get real for a moment.

August 20, 2013April 6, 2013 by Andrzej Marczewski

Dan Pink and Ryan & Deci are quoted a lot when we talk about motivation – I include myself in that and this is good – they have a lot of research to back up everything they say.

The basic quote usually revolves around. Money is not a good motivator. Mastery, Purpose, Autonomy and in some quoted cases Relatedness are what we need. They are intrinsic motivators, money is not.

True.

There are a few things most fail to mention. One is the fact that this is most true for creative tasks. The other, much more significant bit they don’t mention is this. When basic needs, such as money, are no longer a concern – what’s left is intrinsic motivation.

Taken from his book Drive

“The best use of money is to take the issue of money off the table . . . Effective organizations compensate people in amounts and in ways that allow individuals to mostly forget about compensation and instead focus on the work itself.”

It is amazing how often people miss this little nugget out. I recently heard of one chap who’s boss quoted the idea that money is not a motivator at him. Told him there was no pay rise, but research proves money is not a true motivator so it should be OK. What he failed to understand was that this guy still needed to pay rent, pay for food, pay to keep his family secure.

If we look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (I had to go there eventually), we see that security (where money comes in) is a very basic need. It is one of the foundations to our happiness. This makes sense. How can we be happy if we and our loved ones are not safe and secure.

When we have security covered, then the other levels of motivation can play a greater role for us. In the case of working and jobs, this is when we are secure in our role and money is no longer a concern. We have enough to be comfortable. I am not talking about millions, but enough to not have to think twice about buying cloths and food for your family, with maybe enough left over for a few luxuries. If we have that, then we begin to look for the next level of motivation.

The issue is, for many, this is not the real world they live in. So how can we expect them to be engaged by Gamified systems that try to work using virtual rewards and intrinsic motivation that does not cover these basic needs?

My thoughts are this. If the possibility for more money is not realistic, virtual goods are likely to be insulting – if they do not add to the security of your employees. However, using virtual rewards and the like to recognise employees, with the understanding that it all goes towards improving their working situation and security – then you may be on to something.

Failing that, using Gamification to make the day to day lives of your employees more bearable – even enjoyable, can’t be a bad thing. However, if you spend serious money on a new Gamified system, instead of making sure your employees are in a situation that makes them feel secure, you are going to face serious backlash. It is like being in a small company and being told that there is no money for pay rises, then your goes and buys a yacht.

Where am I going with this then?

Glad you asked.

Motivation theories are great, Deci, Ryan, Pink and others are worth reading and understanding. They are absolutely right, if you take what they say in the context within which they are talking. They all talk about intrinsic motivation based on your basic needs being fulfilled, one of which is security. If this is not the case, whilst using motivational methods such as Gamification can be of use, they must be handled with sensitivity and care.

The other thing to consider, if you know more money is not on the cards, would you not at least like your job to be engaging?