Startup Life
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Posts tagged viral
Reward Systems that Drive Engagement (via Amy Jo Kim)
Mar 9th
Amy Jo Kim, CEO of Shufflebrain, gave a talk at Game Developers Conference 2010 and focused on the web-meets-gaming world (called metagame design). This is the practice of applying game-like reward and feedback systems to non-game applications for the purpose of driving loyalty and engagement. This slide deck (embedded below) focuses on three levels of metagame design: points tables, feedback and rewards, and viral outreach. She also reviews the pros and cons of metagame reward systems like levels, badges, leaderboards, spotlights, and quality ratings. AJK was kind enough to post those slides online for the community — thank you!
Metagame Design – Presentation Transcript
- MetaGame Design Reward Systems that Drive Engagement Amy Jo Kim CEO, Shufflebrian
- What is a Metagame?
- Using out-of-game info or resources to affect in-game decisions Gaming definition
- Layering an rewards system onto an existing activity
- Metagames are Everywhere
- Collecting Complete Collections — Gain Status, Access, $$
- Behavior Chart Collect Stickers – Earn Privilege or Prize
- Karate Develop Skill – Earn Rank, Prestige, Powers
- Scouting Complete Tasks – Earn Badges, Rank, Prestige, Powers
- Frequent Flyer Programs Spend Money – Earn Points – Redeem for Flights
- Arcade Spend Money – Earn Points – Redeem for Items
- Text RPG Complete Missions – Earn Points – Redeem for Items
- Contest/Raffle Take Action – MAYBE Win Item
- Contest/Raffle Take Action – Maybe Win Item
- Tournament Play Sport – Enter Tournaments – Earn Ranking/Trophies Leagues & Teams are part of this
- Tournament Play Sport – Enter Tournaments – Earn Ranking/Trophies
- So how do you design a Metagame?
- Metagame Design Framework Viral Outreach Feedback & Rewards Points
- Metagame Engagement Loop Post updates, give gifts, send taunts Get feedback, earn rewards Take actions, earn points
- Act React Customize Create Earn Spend Step 1: Assign points to actions Viral Outreach Feedback & Rewards Points
- Which ACTIONS earn points?
- Which REACTIONS earn points?
- 3 Types of points
- Experience Points (XP) – earned directly via players’ actions – track & reward socially/economically useful player actions
- Skill Points (Score, Rank) – earned via interacting with the system – based on mastery of the activity or game
- Influence Points (Rating, Reputation) – earned via the actions of other players – proxy for quality/reputation/influence – track & reward socially valuable contributions & actions
- Is your points system tracking skill, experience, or both?
- Is your points system assigning ratings to people or objects?
- Can you Spend your points?
- Levels Leaderboards Roles Reputation Missions Challenges Achievements Collections Step 2: Add Feedback & Rewards Viral Outreach Feedback & Rewards Points
- Levels are shorthand for participation and achievement
- Leaderboards identify, motivate and reward your most devoted players
- Social Leaderboards drive competition and enable missions
- Leaderboards can cause problems – don’t be afraid to remove/hide/change
- Missions tell players what to do next
- Mission-driven engagement loop Post updates, give gifts, send taunts Get feedback, earn rewards Accept Mission Update Mission List Take actions, earn points
- Reputation and Ratings track quality/skill + motivate contributions
- Achievements provide short-term goals + sense of progression
- Motivate newbies with easy-to-earn rewards
- Motivate power-users with scarce resources
- Motivate contributors with a rating system
- Updates Gifts Sharing Invites Step 3: Grow through Viral Outreach Viral Outreach Points Feedback & Rewards
- What are the ‘social moments’ in your game?
- Competition Bragging, Taunting, Challenging
- Cooperation Sharing, Helping, Gifting
- Self-Expression Check out my character/outfit/farm/page
- Case Study: Farmville
- XP + coins earned by completing tasks
- Customize your character
- purchase seeds
- Plant & Harvest Crops
- Help Neighbors
- Design & Develop Your Farm
- Buy exclusive items with $$$
- Tutorial introduces pts, levels, rewards
- Earn coins, level up, buy more stuff
- Leaderboards facilitate social interactions
- Achievements come early & often
- Achievements displayed as collections
- Achievements displayed as collections
- Help your neighbors, then brag about it
- Many opportunities for self-expression
- Gifting pulls people into the game
- Case Study: Stack Overflow Technical Q&A site w/crowd-sourced moderation
- Ask/answer good questions to build Reputation
- Leaderboards for Reputation score
- Earn badges by performing basic site tasks
- Question: why no viral outreach?
- 5 Tips for Designing a Compelling Metagame:
- Create a coherent experience that unfolds over time
- Define a points system (XP, social pts, redeemable pts) that supports your purpose and audience
- Introduce feedback and rewards that motivate newbies, enthusiasts, and contributors
- Design rewards that players will be eager to share
- Use “game pacing” to grant rewards over time
See Amy Jo Kim’s profile on GDC 2010.
Understanding Social Game Player Dynamics
Mar 8th
Understanding the behavior of players of social games has been an expensive lesson to learn by many companies, often picking up bite-sided pieces of insight through extensive A/B testing and internal metrics over time. Many companies have also tried to better understand the viral invitation process and successful virality of social games both on and off the Facebook platform. An academic paper entitled “Diffusion Dynamics of Games on Online Social Networks” was recently written by Xiao Wei and Jiang Yang from the University of Michigan, Ricardo Matsumura de Araújo from the Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil and Manu Rekhi, VP of strategy, marketing, business and corporate development for Lolapps.
The paper analyses the viral spread of an application and how/why are these processes occurring. SocialTimes.com did a great post that summarizes the academic paper. Alternatively, you can view the entire paper here.
Some of the key findings are summarized below:
- On average, each inviter has invited 26 friends while the median number is 10
- Just 10% of users account for 50% of successful invites
- Around 90% of users share their locale information
- Around 40% of users share their friend list
- Only 1% of users share their relationship status
- Invited users remain in the game longer: over 50% kept on playing for more than a day and 20% of all invited users were still playing 80 days later.
- Around 80% of non-invited players leave the game within the first day
- Overall, they find that invitation strategy is more important than demographics in determining invitation success rate
To determine how to create a profitable social game, please explore my previous blog post on the importance of Customer Acquisition Costs for startups.
RNA Psuedoknots and the Universcale
Mar 30th
I am in a hurry today, so this is going to be brief.
I was checking out the latest over at DIGG, and came across this cool flash applet make by Nikon Japan called Universcale that takes you from picometers to billion of light years in scale, showing objects (albeit, I expected a little bit more quality here) from neutrons to the edge of the universe.
Also, I’m reporting on a new discovery in the realm of viral research. Researchers at the Niels Bohr institute used optical tweezers to grab the ends of an RNA molecule produced by a bird flu virus. They found that the viral-encoded RNA has psuedoknots that cause human RNA polymerase to create the wrong protein (for human), but right for the virus! Check out more at the Science Daily article.