HN can't become like FarmVille. The key element to FarmVille (and games like WoW) is -- you level up not due to skill, but by how long you play the game. In other words, a very skilled player will level up just as quickly as an unskilled one.
On HN, karma is earned much more rapidly by "skilled" users, even though to get a high karma you must use the site often. Taking this away would rob HN of its most valuable asset -- karma encourages "skilled" users to post insightful comments.
Yes, but this method could also be applied to building better slot machines. The game itself requires very little skill or creative engagement on the part of the player. Farmville is evil game design; it takes advantage of human cognitive hooks and limitations for the purpose of profit.
Video games should expand upon what we are capable of. Reward structures and timed events are fine to a degree, but Zynga goes too far. This kind of manipulation needs to be addressed, especially as games become more and more thoroughly integrated with our society.
The problem with this kind of advice although interesting is that is takes something hugely popular and present it as the reason why farmville is working.
I am not so sure it's that simple. The real challenge imho is to show how to get critical mass. Not to talk about how you optimize once you have it.
Does anyone know exactly the reason why farmville became popular, cause somehow I think it's not about those 8 principles?
I'd also hypothesize that Zynga grew because they:
* Had a working revenue model, so they could pay for advertising without burning cash. And being able to advertise in the place where someone plays is helpful for conversions.
This was an awesome article. Can anyone point to more articles like this? I'm looking for ways make my web-app (a social discussion forum) more engaging.
I don't use Facebook or Farmville, but it sounds like the strategy is to just give you little scraps of gameplay at well-spaced intervals so that you are never fully satisfied. That makes you keep coming back for more.
(HN and SO are similar in this way. You randomly get karma points, which mean people like you, and so you keep checking your threads page to see how much karma you've gotten since you've last looked. Same goes for replies. If there was no karma or no threads page, I bet HN wouldn't have any users.)
I've never played FarmVille, but one of the things I loved about Kingdom of Loathing (other than the general awesomeness) was that I could only do so much at a time - I didn't feel like I had to commit to it if I just had a few minutes. And the fact that each day you got more adventures, it really encouraged me to keep coming back.
Oddly, it was at the point where I had more adventures in a day than I had time to use (and therefore started loosing them) was the point that I started to loose interest.
Something I learned from working at a large competitor at Zynga (where there was some employee cross-pollenation): A/B test the hell out of your ideas. Going from "making my app more social" to "Put vacant lots on users' farms to get them to add friends" means playing with lots of different ideas. What exactly clicks depends heavily and all the myriad details of your app and userbase.
I've had a chat with someone who used to work for Zynga, and he said it was a great place to work. He said they knew full well the psychology of what they were doing, and were quite proud of how well they do.
I would doubt it. Maybe the creators caught wind of it in a psych 101 class, but we learned about micro-achievements years ago just by being gamers, and they just happened to master it.
Super Mario Bros.
Think of the "levels" of achievement:
1) On the smallest level, you kill small enemies, get a "big" mushroom. You get points, and your environment changes.
2) On the next level, you collect coins. 100 means an extra life.
3) Then you beat the sub-levels, 1-1, 1-2, 1-3
4) Finally you beat a "boss" and go to the next "World" to 2-1, 2-1
5) Beat 8 "Worlds" and the "big boss" and you beat the game.
6) Advanced players will compete for the best times, try to create fireworks over the castles, find warp zones, or max out their points.
The key is in progressive achievements and always wanting more. You create a sense of urgency or need and you have someone in the palm of your hand.
Business is no different. I just upgraded my Basecamp account so I could add the "Time" module. I'm on World 2 now.
Who needs psychologists when you have game designers? Psychological literature doesn't have the level of interest or experience in the practical applications that expert game designers have.
And these games are just getting started. As they grow, these tricks will get worse. This is a MUCH bigger problem than people realize. If you could have prevented the introduction of Opium to China, would you have?
Having worked at Blizzard until recently, I think my response to this rhetorical question is predictable.
But help me understand a little better. I don't see designing more compelling gameplay as being a markedly different goal than more compelling musicianship, more compelling novel-writing or more compelling filmmaking. What's your perspective?
I was talking about this just yesterday with a game developer friend. I was trying to explain to him how I viewed your former employer as being too successful.
I said Blizzard was Too Successful in that WoW achieves profitability to the detriment of fiendish players, many of whom waste untold hours of what would otherwise be productive time. He, being an almost pure libertarian, disagreed with all too familiar logic: "it's not my fault they get addicted", etc.
I then asked him if he would sell drugs, and he responded that he already had. So, regardless of perspective, it is pretty easy to see where these arguments lead; that is, down the slippery slope and out to the extremes as one tries to justify their position.
These arguments tend to go down two roads -- one that I disagree with and one that I actually agree with.
The Too Successful argument is really a difficult one to draw out moral content from. There have existed people who lose themselves in games (among other things) to the detriment of their "real life" from way back. Forgive me for dredging this up:
So that's the question that has to be answered -- if there have been 500 billion hours of WoW played (just my random guess) in the last five years and 500 million hours of Rubik's Cube played in the 80's, is Ernö Rubik also equivalent to a drug dealer, just in smaller proportions? Finally, maybe WoW is keeping guys from even less productive internet addictions, like, say, editing TV Tropes.
So I think I need to understand the moral line drawn in the too-successful argument. Because otherwise I just see WoW as the current bête noire analogous to any other popular diversion, like video arcades were 20 or 30 years ago. Is there a substantive difference, or is it merely quantitative?
Now the argument that does resound with me, as well as most game designers I know, is that designers are making gameplay that basically abuses the player without enhancing their experience of the game.
Some people have pointed at the simplicity of the gameplay in WoW (i.e. questing is too easy) and said that it's abusive to make simple gameplay compelling. I personally find this bizarre. Abusive gameplay is an area where I hold Valve, Blizzard, PopCap and others fairly blameless. That's not entirely surprising for one reason: their customers pay for the game. A fine player experience is what they hope will create more customers.
With many social gaming experiences, players have come to expect abuse, which is a crying shame. That they will be tantalized, guilted, used to spam their friends, inconvenienced and annoyed. Is any of that core to the game itself? No, the proof being that in most cases if you pay, it goes away. It's beyond just breaching the editorial wall -- the lame way that marketing is integrated into gameplay is what makes pro game designers howl with disgust.
P.S. Anyone interested in investing in a startup that breaks social gaming out of these shackles, please email.
* give you karma just for stopping by each day
* give you karma for upvoting other's posts
* give you profiles you could customize by trading in karma
* show you what your friends were upvoting and their Karma
* show you how close you were to attaining moderator status
* allow you to give one virtual gift per day to your favorite contributors
* have your karma decline if you don't stop by in a week