Gamification Mechanic Monday: Rolling rewards
Rolling rewards unlike fixed rewards have more luck or odds attached to earning them, but the potential win of this reward is substantial enough to draw people into the game and when won to possibly make them a fan for life. Think about a game like the national lottery, the chance of winning has relatively low odds in comparison to the amount of players in the game, but the chance to win is high enough for people to join and play. When the jackpot hasn’t been won for some time, interestingly more people tend to join and play for a chance to win the big one.
In marketing this technique is often used to roll over this week’s amount of prize money for guessing tunes, a location, a person, etc. It tends to build up slowly and after a few weeks the amount is significant enough to attract more listeners and equally at that point you will find some people are also hooked into the challenge of finding the answer. Some people will join because of the chance to win and others for the challenge, the higher the stakes the higher the attraction rate. The difficulty and unpredictability of achieving a win is what keeps people engaged.
Where have you seen this rolling reward in action and to what effect?