by Yu-kai Chou
True to the gamified spirit, when I sold my tenth item on eBay, I received an email from eBay itself! It was a certificate sent from this person named “Meg,” congratulating me as a valuable eBay seller and giving me a Yellow Star Certificate! I was so excited about this Achievement Symbol (Game Technique #2), that I printed it out and put it on my dorm room for many years. Even today, I think it is still sitting somewhere in a box at my parents’ home.
Even though this was not the original certificate I received, it looked something like the image below.
Eventually I would sell a plethora of other items, including new electronic products such as digital cameras, iPods, GPS devices, and even some string quartet songs I wrote! In my second year of college, at the height of my eBay career, I received a 100% satisfaction rating with over 1,100 positive feedbacks. As a result, I was awarded a Red Star ranking.
“I overpaid for my product. Take that, suckas!”
Based on the above, it’s easy to see how eBay uses Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment to make the experience more fun and addictive for the Seller. But what about the Buyer? What makes a buyer want to continuously buy on eBay?
From the buyer’s perspective, the genius thing about eBay is that when a purchase is made, you aren’t just buying something online like you do on other eCommerce platforms. No, instead of feeling that you are just acquiring some items in exchange for your money, you feel like you’ve actually Won!
Sure, after some adrenaline-filled bidding at the end, you may have ended up paying ten percent more than you otherwise would have, but you at least achieved victory over those eleven other bastards who were bidding against you!
“Take that suckas! It’s mine!”
Instead of just paying your way to success, which anyone could do easily, you worked hard and actually achieved a Win-State! You feel accomplished, and the value of that happiness far exceeds the extra money you end up paying for the item. On eBay, you are not paying to purchase; you are paying to play.
This is similar to games where people spend money in order to beat difficult levels that they can’t overcome. To be exact, people aren’t buying victories. If, immediately after people pay the game studio, a message pops up and says, “Congratulations! You have won!”, very few people would feel excited. Anyone could just pay money and get something. What gamers are paying for, is the feeling of being awesome. They pay to get powerful weapons or boosters that allow them to defeat a bunch of enemy monsters quickly, ultimately achieving dominating victory.
Another example that builds on the same principle is the General Mills brand Betty Crocker cake mixes. When it first launched many decades ago, it was designed to be the easiest cake mix for stay-at-home-moms to make, where they just have to add water to the powdered mix and then stick it into the oven for delicious cakes to come out. Unfortunately, sales were fairly stagnant and the company eventually hired business psychologists to help determine why.
One of the hypotheses was that the cake mixes were so easy to make, customers didn’t feel they were actually baking, and therefore did not have a sense of accomplishment or competence. Based on this concept, instead of making the process easier by removing steps, General Mills decided to add additional steps to the process. They decided to remove the conveniently powdered eggs from their Betty Crocker cake mixes and required the bakers to add in their own fresh eggs before putting them into the oven.
To many’s surprise, the product immediately became a breakout success. By adding that extra step of throwing in an egg yourself, people felt that they were actually baking a delicious dessert to compliment a meal. This made them feel great about themselves and their contributions to the family.55. The philosophy of, “Games are unnecessary obstacles that we volunteer to tackle” can be seen clearly here, where adding a few extra steps increased Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment within the experience.
As a result of the gamified systems mentioned above, many claim that being on eBay is “addictive.” It eventually transformed from a personal hobby to a Fortune 200 company that is worth over $70 Billion.56
What about Amazon?
After looking at eBay, you might ask, “What about Amazon? Aren’t they even more successful? I don’t see any gamification on their platform.” It’s true, founded in 1994, just a year before eBay, Amazon is now a Fortune 50 giant worth around $150 Billion, and they don’t do “gamification.”
Well, they don’t do gamification as in integrating points, badges, narratives, avatars or paths to leveling up. However, they have spent a great amount of resources nailing down many techniques within Human-Focused Design and many of the 8 Core Drives, which are the backbone drivers of successful games.
If you recall from previous chapters, good Implicit Gamification is often invisible like a doorknob – you don’t even notice it’s there, but you do use it to open and close a door without thinking. Through Amazon’s optimized design, we can see a few Core Drives being implemented with great effect.
First of all, the main Core Drive behind Amazon’s business is Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the premise behind this Core Drive is that if you feel like you own something, you tend to want to improve it, protect it, and get more of it.
Amazon has worked hard to streamline this process of Ownership & Possession. It is an optimized engine that allows you to own and possess things quickly, accurately, and without hassle. It has established itself as the prime place to “get more stuff,” and you know you are likely getting the cheapest bargain on the market. With Amazon, you know you can own more, faster.
Also, Amazon is constantly learning about your preferences and personalizing what you see to who you are, something I call the Alfred Effect (Game Technique #83). As it does so, the sense of Ownership & Possession grows even more as people now identify it as a unique “My Amazon” experience that no other eCommerce site can provide.
Don’t fall behind your neighbors!
Accompanying the Alfred Effect is Amazon’s Recommendation Engine, now infamous in the personalization industry. Amazon’s recommendation engine, according to Amazon themselves, led to 30% of their sales57. That’s a fairly significant factor for a company that is already making billions of dollars every month. In fact, JP Mangalindan, a writer for Fortune and CNN money, argues that a significant part of Amazon’s 29% sales growth from the second fiscal quarter of 2011 to the second fiscal quarter of 2012 was attributed to the recommendation engine.58
And what does this recommendation engine look like?
“Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought.”
Amazon quickly realized that, by learning about what other people similar to you are buying, you have a much higher tendency to buy the same items too. Can you think about a Core Drive that pushes this behavior?
You may have guessed it (but I won’t judge you if you haven’t) - Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness. By knowing what other, similar people are buying, social proof and relatedness help consumers make decisions with greater confidence. This helps Amazon increase their sales and subsequent up-sells.
Of course, another “Social Influence & Relatedness” factor of Amazon that heavily contributed to its early success, was the millions of user reviews on books and other items.
“My friend Bob says the doctor is wrong – and he reads a lot about health.”
Studies on Trust and Reputation in Peer-to-Peer Networks by researchers like Yao Wang and Julita Vassileva of the University of Saskatchewan, as well as Minaxi Gupta, Paul Judge, and Mostafa Ammar of the Georgia Institute of Technology found that the average consumer prefers and trusts reviews by peers over those by professional critics5960. This is somewhat odd, because professional critics have made it their life mission to distinguish the good from the bad. For every published review, they would spend a significant amount of time collecting all the necessary information, going through the experience, just to write a well thought-out piece reflecting their depth
of knowledge and commitment.
But when it comes down to it, consumers seem to prefer the thoughts and opinions of other consumers, who likely do not have the same level of sophistication and understanding with the product, let alone spent the same amount of time experiencing and reviewing the item in question. At the end of the day, we value the thoughts of people we can relate to, often more than the voice of authoritative experts.
In Amazon’s review interface, you see a statement such as, “4.6 out of 5 stars,” followed by a “leaderboard” of reviews that expresses the voting sentiments of the community. For the top review, “400 of 445 people found the following review helpful.” Coincidently, the review was given by “Book Shark,” who is labeled a “Top 500 Reviewer.”
Oh wait, there are also leaderboards, community voting, and status labeling on Amazon? If you thought Amazon does not use gamification, think again. While you are at it, try to remember what was the color of the last doorknob you held.
Never make Users Feel Dumb
I’d like to take a moment here to point out that though the focus of this chapter is on Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment, it is almost impossible to evaluate a good experience or product without considering the other seven Core Drives, as they intricately work together to create a unified and motivating experience. Even though the success on Amazon is seen through many other Core Drives, such as Scarcity & Impatience, as well as Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback, let’s refocus back on the theme of Development and Accomplishment.
Beyond improving one’s ranks and obtaining badges, a very important type of emotional accomplishment is to “feel smart.” We all like to feel capable and competent, and feelings of being incompetent or powerless can create some of the most scarring moments of our lives.
A product that makes users feel stupid, no matter how great the technology, is often a failing product. From my experience, if a user spends four seconds on an interface and can’t figure out what to do, they feel stupid and will start to disengage emotionally.
The Google Search Engine makes sure this doesn’t happen. Before Google became “Google,“ Yahoo! was the quintessential “search engine.” giant. However, Yahoo! saw itself as an online portal where people could discover new content instead of being a pure search engine.
Interestingly, when the Google Founders wanted to sell their search engine to Yahoo for a measly $1 million, Yahoo turned it down, even though they recognized Google to be a more efficient search engine that took people to their destinations faster. This was because it went against Yahoo’s portal strategy of showing users many links to click on, leading to many more clickable links (a Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity Core Drive play). And along the way, offering advertising links to click on.61
Consequently, when you go to Yahoo’s homepage, you will see a great deal of content along with links. Even though it does drive many clicks and exploratory activities for many users, it can be a bit daunting or even paralyzing for users who can’t navigate and decide through so many choices. Google, on the other hand, focuses their strategy on the Development & Accomplishment Core Drive.
When you go on Google.com, you usually see only two things: Google’s logo, and a search box. There is almost no chance for you to feel confused about what to do next. You type your inquiry in the search box. Even if you are not exactly sure what to search (a moment of feeling partially incompetent), the auto-fill function jumps right in to give you suggestions.
Google understood this key point very early on. According to the book The Google Story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, the company was so clearly focused on the strategy of having a clean homepage, that they turned down many great monetization opportunities which could be leveraged from their launch point; even till today.62 It is said that an organization’s strategy is not what they choose to do, but what they insist on not doing.
Unfortunately, the understanding and sophistication of making users feel smart from Google doesn’t always spill into their other product lines. Google+ is a common example of how a great technology can make users feel dumb and lose traction.
Even though Google likes to tout how Google Plus’ “active users” count makes it the second largest social network in the world, the average consumer understands that it is because they were somehow “tricked” into the Google+ interface while using YouTube or Gmail, something I call brute force distribution (no game technique here). Despite hundreds of millions of “active users,” according to ComScore and Nelson, average Google+ usage time per user every month is less than 7 minutes. Compared to the 400 minutes per month from Facebook, it clearly isn’t the place everyone is hanging out at.
Other web savvy users also continue to use Google+ because of alleged Search Engine Optimization advantages for marketing, which is credited to the brilliant work done by the search engine itself rather than the merits of the social platform.63 After all, some people would even eat insects if it helps them increase their search rankings.
Despite being the “number two social network in the world,” if you look at Google’s own blog, with its user audience being the most biased towards Google products, you will often see way more tweets and Facebook Likes than Google +1’s on each post. An unnamed Google employee once told me, “At Google, there’s this joke, ‘If you are organizing a party and you don’t want anyone to know about it, share it on Google Plus.’”
Star of Bethlehem - Guiding Users Forward
If you have played the popular hit game Candy Crush, have you ever wondered why when you don’t make a move for a few seconds, the game shows you a “Glowing Choice” (Game Technique #28) of a possible solution that is often not the optimal way to match the gems? In almost all cases, if you just blindly follow the Glowing Choices, you will end up losing the game. Why would they show me a solution that does not make me win? Is this a trap?
The truth is, Candy Crush understands that, feeling a sense of progress and ultimately losing is much better than feeling stuck and confused. If you play the game through and lose, your natural reaction is to start a new game; but if you get stuck and can’t find three gems to match for a long period of time, you may just abandon the game altogether and start doing other things. Perhaps the expert consultant has already answered the email you just sent out - better check now!
Back to Amazon; Amazon makes people feel smart when they buy things. They do it in many different ways. First of all, Amazon tries to avoid the 4-Second Rule by making sure users always know what to do next.
On this screenshot of a product listing, most of the screen is white with black text, but graphically, the experience guides the user towards two Desired Actions. The first is the “Look Inside” button on the book, displayed in vibrant colors with a pointed arrow, similar to the interactive onboarding tutorials found within games. This is another example of a Glowing Choice, where a user is visually guided by obvious signs towards how to proceed.
The second Desired Action is the green zone on the right, with two time-tested orange action item buttons that serve as the real conversion metric for the business. Interestingly, the two orange buttons don’t even have the same color, with the “Buy Now with 1-Click” showing a cursor index finger pressing a button within the button.
It is important to note that this Desired Action is the only part of the page that is visually “colorful,” and the eyes automatically are guided to that direction. I call that a Desert Oasis (Game Technique #38), where visually nothing else is prominent besides the main Desired Action. The Desert Oasis looks green and juicy and it subconsciously suggests that there is a Win-State behind this option.
Finally, Amazon never forgets to show you a bogus List Price that is crossed out, a real selling price below it, and it tells you the amount and percentage of your savings if you didn’t pay the bogus List Price. This again makes people feel like they are making the smart choice for getting a great deal. A misunderstanding of this concept led J.C. Penney to fire their former CEO R
on Johnson, widely known for pioneering the Apple Store, after a “Fair and Square” campaign of removing “fake” discount numbers, resulting in one of the biggest failures in retail history.64
The Premium Price of Smarty Pants
Bogus prices that make users feel smart are seen everywhere. In the Behavioral Economics Bestseller book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely describes a case where a group of MIT students are presented with a choice between paying $59.00 for a one-year subscription to the digital edition of the Economist magazine or to pay $125.00 for a one-year subscription to both the digital and print editions of the magazine. The majority of the students (68%) chose the digital version for $59.00.65 Who wants to pay $66 more for physical copies of magazines when you can just read it digitally for half the price anyway?
However, when another $125.00 option to buy a one-year subscription for just the printed editions of the magazine was inserted in the middle of the above two options, it changed everything. Technically, this shouldn’t do anything right? Why would anyone get a $125 subscription for printed editions of the magazine when they could get printed and digital editions for the same price at $125? And we already determined above that very few people wanted both editions for $125 anyway. How could adding an even less desirable option change user behavior?
