Gamification techniques leverage people's natural desires for competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, and closure. A core strategy for gamifying is to provide rewards for players for accomplishing desired tasks. Types of rewards include points, achievement badges or levels, the filling of a progress bar, and providing the user with virtual currency.
Competition is another element of games that can be used in gamification. Making the rewards for accomplishing tasks visible to other players or providing leader boards are ways of encouraging players to compete.
Another approach to gamification is to make existing tasks feel more like games. Some techniques used in this approach include adding meaningful choice, onboarding with a tutorial, increasing challenge, and adding narrative. So, generally all games can be divided into the following groups:
1. Sensation - Game as sense-pleasure
2. Fantasy - Game as make-believe
3. Narrative - Game as drama
4. Challenge - Game as obstacle course
5. Fellowship - Game as social framework
6. Discovery - Game as uncharted territory
7. Expression - Game as self-discovery
8. Submission - Game as pastime
In their foundational work “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research” Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek introduce the framework that breaks games into basic components and aligns them with their game design counterparts. Each game consists of three elements: Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics. These elements combined make up all the types of games that we know.
Mechanics describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms.
Dynamics describes the run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others outputs over time.
Aesthetics describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system.
Aesthetic Models
Using out aesthetic vocabulary like a compass, we can define models for gameplay. These models help us describe gameplay dynamics and mechanics. For example: Charades and Quake are both competitive. They succeed when the various teams or players in these games are emotionally invested in defeating each other. This requires that players have adversaries (in Charades, teams compete, in Quake, the player competes against computer opponents) and that all parties want to win. It is easy to see that supporting adversarial play and clear feedback about who is winning are essential to competitive games. If the player doesn’t see a clear winning condition, or feels like they can’t possibly win, the game is suddenly a lot less interesting.
Dynamic Models
Dynamics work to create aesthetic experiences. For example, challenge is created by things like time pressure and opponent play. Fellowship can be encouraged by sharing information across certain members of a session (a team) or supplying winning conditions that are more difficult to achieve alone (such as capturing an enemy base).
Expression comes from dynamics that encourage individual users to leave their mark: systems for purchasing, building or earning game items, for designing, constructing and changing levels or worlds, and for creating personalized, unique characters. Dramatic tension comes from dynamics that encourage a rising tension, a release, and a denouement
Mechanics
Mechanics are the various actions, behaviors and control mechanisms afforded to the player within a game context. Together with the game’s content (levels, assets and so on) the mechanics support overall gameplay dynamics.
For example, the mechanics of card games include shuffling, trick-taking and betting ñ from which dynamics like bluffing can emerge. The mechanics of shooters include weapons, ammunition and spawn point which sometimes produce things like camping and sniping. The mechanics of golf include balls, clubs, sand traps and water hazards which sometimes produce broken or drowned clubs.
