Gamification Mechanic Monday: advanced gameplay
When designing gamification solutions, we tend to spend a lot of time designing the journey of attracting people in and then engaging them and making them experience fun and joy along the way. What I have found hard in most games that as soon as you become more advance but not yet expert, the gameplay tends to become more boring. As you know from previous posts I do enjoy a bit of Pokemon Go when I am on the go (and occasionally at home too :-)). But to be honest the gameplay when the same creatures keep popping up and new ones are less and less frequent, the levels increase by seriously ridiculous amounts of points. I started to wonder whether the advanced gameplay actually got much thought.
Battling in a Pokegym gives that moment of joy when you win and take one over, but the fact that I could only play with one Pokemon at a time at a specific gym today, it totally lost my interest. My first guy had enough power to kill one and a half of the owners, but then that was it. I had to rejoin with a new Pokemon and fight the same 2 creatures all over again, surely when you killed on that one must be gone? Anyway it reinforced my thoughts on advanced game play.
When we look at most games initial enthusiasm will wane, you may still play but maybe not so often. In gamification often the business process on which game mechanics have been implemented, will remain part of the users experience by default of having to engage in this process. So keeping game mechanics evolving even on a randomised schedule, will keep the experience fresh and interesting even for the advanced user. Adding new techniques, taking others out, giving optional booster and random surprises are essential as well as great communication in the process. We recommend to our clients to keep revising how people are interacting with the solutions and when drop off happens over time to look at refreshing what is actually happening. We call it ongoing support.
What are your top tips for advanced gameplay in your gamification solutions?
