Part II · Chapter 12

Game or Interactive Tool

One or the other#

Here comes an important fork in the direction a project takes.

Will it be a game or an interactive tool? It can't be anything in between. Only one or the other. Anything in between triggers a natural psychological defense in a human being. It creates an unmet need, the human resents the game for it, and that effectively kills the game and makes the project a failure.

Gamification, edutainment and similar terms are attempts to harness the impressive effectiveness of entertainment games for education, fitness, labor or other serious, non-entertainment purposes. It's an understandable idea. Games are clearly good at getting people to put hours of willing effort into something, so why not point that effort at something useful?

Unfortunately, it's a bad idea. Doing it means trying to go against nature, to force a system onto something whose very nature opposes it. There's a critical flaw that makes these attempts self-destruct, give false results, attract resentment and fail, whatever the intentions behind them. The effectiveness of video games comes from two things:

They're non-consequential to real life. That lets a person relax and let go, and embrace another world without needing to commit to it or feel pressured by it. They're free to experiment in it, enter and leave at any moment with no consequences, and they're not judged in any way that has a real-life impact.
They're honest about it. That makes sure the fundamental human need for authenticity isn't violated. Nobody likes being lied to or otherwise betrayed, even indirectly, even with good intentions.

Take away either one and the effectiveness is gone. A "game" with real-life stakes isn't a safe space to fail in anymore, so all the freedom that made it engaging disappears. A "game" that hides real-life stakes is a lie, and lies get found out.

So can serious applications harness the attractiveness of video games? Unfortunately, no, they can't. Thankfully, they don't need to.

The whole point of faked-game applications, gamification, edutainment and so on is to create powerful engagement, so that people care and use them willingly. As NVC shows, there are unlimited strategies to meet a need, and this one is no different. Other ways to create powerful engagement exist, ones that don't violate other needs in the process. That's where the difference between a game and an interactive tool comes in.

Game vs interactive tool#

Game: An activity or application that contains no intent to have real-life consequences. Fantasy. For fun. For play. Freedom to fail.
Interactive tool: An activity or application developed with the intent of having real-life consequences. A serious application with real intent. Failure is not desirable.

Side by side, they work in similar ways: both are interactive experiences, and both meet one or more needs. The main difference is intention. Games have no, I repeat, none, zero intention of having real-life consequences, even if they cause some as a side effect. Interactive tools do intend real-life consequences, and they're honest and upfront about it. They make it very clear that they aren't games, and that using them has direct or indirect real-life consequences or uses. Failing in a game is acceptable as far as real life is concerned. Failing with an interactive tool is not desirable.

Please note that "tool" isn't a lesser word here. A good interactive tool can be every bit as compelling as a game. It's compelling for a different reason: because it honestly makes your real life better, and you can see how.

The side-effect influence#

This might raise a question in you: can't games have real-life consequences?

Absolutely. But the intention must never be there. The focus is never placed there, not even slightly or remotely. None. Anything a game produces in terms of real-life consequences is a side effect.

The irony is that games can have a significant impact on people. Players go out of their way to learn things to make something happen in the game, and those skills can turn out to be very valuable in real life. Players learn languages to talk with their guild, learn math to optimize their factory, learn history because a game made a period of it come alive. But if ANY, and I mean even the tiniest amount, of the intent during development and design decisions is focused on motivating the player to do something related to real life, or on attaching consequences to it, it directly violates human needs. It will be perceived as manipulation, coercion and dishonesty, and it instantly kills the game's ability to keep a player.

And no, the intent can't be secretly hidden either. That's even worse, because the eventual discovery of the betrayal is too much for the player's subconscious to bear. They came to disconnect from real-life stuff, and they were fooled into doing real-life stuff anyway. It taints the experience and becomes an ever-present distraction from immersion. It's a huge retention destroyer.

The whole reason a game is engaging is that it's non-consequential and honest about it. The importance of this point is huge.

Can the side effect be harnessed at all?#

But wait! You might ask this next: if games have an impact on the player, could that influence be harnessed for serious real-life purposes somehow?

Sort of. It's about looking for opportunities inside a game, ways that enrich the existing game experience and make it better. It's not about starting the design of an interactive tool disguised as a game. It can only be used once the foundation of a game has been designed, not before. And it must not turn the game into an interactive tool, or go against any of the ideas, concepts, mechanics, systems or content already planned for the game.

It's a side effect, and it has to be treated as one throughout the whole design process. The intention stays completely on making a game, and making it as great as possible. Whatever real-life issue you want in the game, it has to be relevant to the game.

The way it works: while designing the game to be as great as possible, look for places where the real-life issue and the game are naturally compatible, so that it feels normal and makes sense as part of the complete experience. It's not a method for teaching anything or addressing real-life issues directly. It's a carefully designed by-product that also happens to be usable in real life.

It works through the power of encouragement. An environment affects anyone who enters it. Whatever it makes easier, more convenient, less costly or more pleasurable, the person becomes more likely to do. Whatever it makes harder, less convenient, more costly or more painful, they become less likely to do. A game set in a world where cooperation is simply the most effective way to survive will leave players with a lot of practice at cooperating, without a single lecture about cooperation.

So using the side effect means finding common ground that serves the game first and foremost. If anything I said earlier about disguising a tool as a game is violated, it will fail and kill the game. If the real-life issue is forced, or is in any way out of harmony with the game, it will fail and kill the game.

Remember the most important rule:

If you want to make a game, make a game.
If you want to make an interactive tool for a real-life issue, make an interactive tool.
Be honest, don't fake it, keep it real.

About gamification#

I've heard the success stories and claims that gamification and similar attempts at masking interactive tools as games work. And yes, they do look like they work. But they work at a very high cost, and only for a very short time. That detail isn't apparent at a glance. It only becomes obvious after the damage is done. With foresight, it can be avoided, so here's the chain.

Points, badges, streaks and levels get bolted onto a real-life task. At first, usage goes up, because the novelty meets a need for variety and the points meet a need for recognition. This is the "success" that gets reported.
The person's reason for doing the task quietly moves from the task to the points. (This is the rewards problem from Understanding Human Beings.)
The novelty wears off. The points stop meaning anything. To keep usage up, the system needs bigger rewards, streak penalties, notifications and guilt. Pressure goes up.
Human beings aren't dumb. Eventually the intent to manipulate becomes apparent. When it does, it hurts like a complete betrayal of trust, even if the reason behind it was compassionate.
The violated need for honesty and integrity causes anger and resentment. The person leaves, and now they associate the original task with being manipulated, so they're less willing to do it than before the tool existed.

Gamification is a form of manipulation, and it's dishonest at its core. The resentment it causes is what makes gamified projects fail: it kills the genuine willingness to use them. Like a contaminated source of water, I no longer want to drink from it.

I hope I've made this clear enough. Don't fall for the trap of gamification or similar methods. They aren't sustainable.

Making learning compelling, honestly#

In Good Intentions, Violent Methods you'll meet a developer who tried to make education fun and made people hate learning instead. I promised to show the honest way to do it, so here it is, before you see the failure.

First, notice that learning doesn't need to be made fun. Learning already is fun, when it meets needs. Glasser links the need for fun directly to learning, and you can see it in any child or any animal at play: play is how living things learn. People spend hundreds of hours learning the systems of a complex game without anyone making them, because the learning meets their need for understanding, competence and power, right there, immediately. Learning stops being fun when it's cut off from the needs it serves, and when it's forced. So the job isn't to add fun to learning. It's to stop taking it away.

Then you choose, honestly, which of two things you're making.

As an interactive tool#

If the purpose is that people really learn a real subject, make an interactive tool, and say so. Then use the method from Final Result vs Root Cause:

Start with the reference experience: what made you care about this subject. Give the user that experience, or one as close to it as you can.
Show, concretely, how knowing it makes life more wonderful, yours first, and then theirs.
Teach inside that context, so every piece of knowledge is attached to a reason the user can feel.
Let them use it on something real and see it work. The value demonstrates itself.
Let them fail freely while learning. Failure here is information, not a grade.
No points, no grades, no streaks, no shame. The progress bar is their own growing ability, and they can see it.

A tool like this doesn't pretend. It says: "This will help you do something you care about. Here's how. Try it." People who have the need will come, and they'll come back, because it keeps meeting the need. People who don't have the need won't, and no amount of cute characters would have made them.

As a game#

If the purpose is to make a great game, make a great game, and let the learning be a side effect. Design the game for its own purpose. Then, where the game's world naturally runs on some real knowledge, let it. A space game whose ships really obey orbital mechanics will teach orbital mechanics to anyone who plays it long enough, simply because that's how you get anywhere. Nobody was told to learn. The game just made it the most effective way to play.

What you never do is start from "I want to teach X" and then wrap a game around it. That's the in-between thing, and it fails for every reason in this chapter.

The human need to give#

There's one need that deserves its own section here, because it's what makes honest interactive tools work, and it's what makes honest monetization work too. It's the need to give: to contribute, to help, to enrich someone else's life.

Look at the grouped list of needs again: Love/Giving/Receiving/Affection/Care. Giving is right there, as a need in its own right. Humans don't only need to receive. We need to contribute. There's very little that feels as good as seeing that something you did made someone's life better. That's not a moral rule about how people should be. It's a description of how people are, and you can check it against your own experience.

Most attempts to get people to act on a real-life issue ignore this need completely. They try to make people act through guilt, shame, fear, duty and obligation: "you should care", "how can you ignore this", "do your part". That's power over people, and it fails the way all power over people fails. People either resist it outright, or comply resentfully and stop the moment the pressure stops.

The need to give offers a completely different route. People want to contribute. What stops them is usually one of these:

They don't know about the issue at all.
They know about it, but they have no reference experience of why it matters, so they can't feel it.
They feel it, but they can't see any concrete way to help.
They tried to help, but they never saw whether it made any difference.

An honest interactive tool for awareness removes those blocks, one by one.

Re-create the inspiration. The purpose of an awareness project comes from a specific event: something someone did, or something that happened, that shocked you, moved you or felt significant. The goal of the project is to let the user experience that same moment for themselves. Not to be told about it. To experience it, so they feel what you felt.
Show the need behind it. Make clear what was at stake, in terms of needs anyone can recognize: safety, health, belonging, fairness.
Offer a concrete, doable way to give. A clear, positive request, the R in OFNR. Not "care more", but "here's a specific thing you can do, today, that helps".
Show the effect. Let them see what their contribution did. This is the part almost everyone skips, and it's the part that meets the need. Giving without ever seeing the result leaves the need to give unmet, and people stop.

No guilt is needed anywhere in this. When people can feel why it matters, see how to help and see that their help worked, they help willingly, and they come back to help again, because it meets their own need. That's power with people.

Giving and money#

The same need explains why honest monetization works. Remember the NVC point that humans only ever say "please" and "thank you". When someone pays for a game they love, or supports a creator whose work enriched their life, they aren't being extracted from. They're saying thank you. Paying for something that made their life better meets their need to give back.

That has a big consequence for how you sell a game. If you give real value first and make it easy to say thank you, many people will, gladly. If you instead trap, pressure and trick people into paying, you've turned their "thank you" into a toll, and they'll resent every cent of it. The money looks the same on a spreadsheet. The relationship it builds is the opposite. Money shows what happens when this goes wrong, and Beyond the Game shows how to do it right.