Rewards Design in Gamification - The Case of Blizzard (c) Diablo III (c) - A

As know, Progression graphs and Badges may be the most important Gamification elements. They provide instant feedback and give a reward for certain action, in nontangible games, of course. Does this hold true in all circumstances and applications? Well, I do not think so! Rewards and Progression graphs must be meaningful for the user and each achievement should be important to have the stimulating effect.

The rewards are absolutely critical for almost any game, otherwise what is ultimately there to motivate the players to play. This is more so in social applications, less so for games themselves. Nonetheless, still this holds true for online or video games in which you play alone or even with peers against an AI. And some game designers try to use these powerful means, but fail miserably! Take a look at the screenshot from the Awards page in the Blizzard © Diablo III © game: what do you notice?

Well, as you can see, I got 2680 rewards and I am only 59% through. Does getting any individual badge or achievement motivate me in any meaningful way? Not so much, really. Moreover there the progression metrics are not meaningful at all for motivation.

There are different kinds of nontangible rewards: Expected vs. Unexpected with a different degree of contingency to them. It is known that people way more strongly react to unexpected motivators as we are tuned to faster notice and pay more attention to unusual objects or events. Diablo III © predominantly has Expected Completion-oriented rewards, which are not too strong. In addition to that the rewards are not performance-oriented: you get most of the rewards for just playing a game in due course in a continuous way, whether you want them or not. These rewards can hardly engage, motivate the player or change his behavior. Moreover, the rewards structure is so complex that planning to get some of the rewards is not feasible. See the printscreen below for the examples of these poorly designed rewards.

Guess, someone tried to copy the Microsoft (c) XBox (c) approach, but failed miserably!

(c) Nikita Rogozin 2013