They trigger motivating social comparisons.They facilitate psychological flow through feedback.They act as guidance mechanics and provide feedback.Having goals increases our self efficacy.They anchor our performance expectations higher.These reasons seem completely applicable to video games.Įight potential reasons why badges, achievements, and trophies might work are: It was the section discussing the theoretical underpinnings of badges reasons why they might work. That’s cool (or disconcerting, depending on your perspective) but the part of the article that I actually found most interesting wasn’t the results. It increased the likelihood that any given user would use the website to “post trade proposals, carry out transactions, comment on proposals and generally use the service in a more active way.” 3Ī Sharetribe badge, which also doubled as nightmare fuel. To cut straight to the chase, Hamari did indeed find that adding badges to the website had the intended effects. About half the data covered users who registered up to 1 year before the badges were added to the site while the rest covered those who registered after badges were added. To do that he conducted a field study of almost 3,000 actual website users. So the researcher wanted to see if adding achievements –in the form of badges displayed on user profiles– would help increase these kinds of user activities. Sharetribe is very community focused, so it really wants users who log in regularly, participate in markets, and provide important information to other users. I recently read an article in the journal Computers in Human Behavior by Juho Hamari entitled “Do Badges Increase User Activity? A Field Experiment on the Effects of Gamification.” 2 In it Hamari worked with the people behind a website that helps users find others to whom they can rent, sell, or share things like products, services, or physical spaces.
1īut …do they work? That is, does rewarding or promising to reward player behaviors with achievements, trophies, or badges actually get people to engage in those behavior more? Does it get them to play the game more? Has anyone ever actually studied that? They’re also part of the holy trinity of “points, badges, leaderboards” of gamification, which applies game systems to non-gaming activities like work, shopping, or philanthropy. “Achievement unlocked!” is a punchline that can be swapped into any situation where you get a little something for doing what you (presumably) were already going to be doing. Video game designers have figured this stuff out and you can borrow their best ideas by reading my book, The Engagement Game: Why Your Workplace Culture Should Look More Like a Video Game.Īt this point in human history we take it for granted that badges, trophies, achievements, and similar rewards are baked in to most gaming systems. They’re often used to motivate employees to higher levels of performance, but applying them successfully requires understanding something about the psychology of motivation. Achievements, trophies, or badges of some kind are often parts of gamification.
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