Gamification Thinking: The Core Mechanisms Behind Successful Applications

In the Web3 and blockchain space, people often believe that token incentives can naturally attract users. However, this view is overly simplistic and underestimates the complexity of human nature. Society itself has a set of incentive systems that drive human behavior, including vanity, a sense of belonging, and so on. Whether it is the points and badges of the Web2 era or the tokens and NFTs of Web3, they are merely short-term external incentives. What truly matters is meeting the intrinsic needs of users.

Retaining users is more critical than acquiring them. Traditional subsidies and airdrops can attract attention in the short term, but the core issue is how to convert temporary usage into long-term habits.

This article explores the mechanisms behind gamified applications and analyzes which factors can help retain users in the long term.

Misconceptions and Evolution of Gamification

Early attempts at gamification often overlooked the fundamental principle behind great game design - user retention. Classic games like "World of Warcraft" have managed to attract players for over 10 years because their game mechanics align with users' intrinsic motivations. By establishing feedback loops, guiding and rewarding users, they provide a long-term path towards becoming a "game master".

Nowadays, many successful applications have integrated these game design principles into their core product design. These game-like experiences bring enjoyment to users and foster long-term usage habits. They cover a wide range of fields, including productivity tools, social networks, financial services, mental health, and education.

Three Core Principles of Game Design

1. Motivation

Motivation can be divided into two categories: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation comes from external sources, such as monetary rewards or commands from others. Intrinsic motivation arises from innate psychological needs, including autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Most games focus on intrinsic motivation, considering it the most effective and lasting driving force for behavior. Taking "Mega Man X" as an example, the game sets two goals right from the start: to become as powerful as Zero and to defeat Vile. These goals directly reinforce the player's sense of competence and autonomy, without the need for additional points or badge incentives.

In contrast, many gamified applications use the accumulation of badges or points as the goal itself. Without intrinsic needs to support them, these mechanisms ultimately become shallow external drives, quickly leading to user fatigue.

2. Proficient

Mastery is an important component of every activity, related to people's intrinsic need for competence. People want to improve their skills in the process of engaging in activities, whether it is learning a new sport or playing games.

Game designers are dedicated to finding the right balance of difficulty, neither too easy nor too hard. A well-crafted game can create a "flow" state, allowing users to fully concentrate and forget the passage of time.

Combining intrinsic motivation with a balanced mastery path is crucial for maintaining learning motivation. As long as the rules are fair and the goals seem attainable, users will usually persist. A common mistake made by gamified applications is to merely celebrate the use of systems for tracking mastery levels, such as levels, experience points, and badges, without providing real challenges or mastery pathways.

( 3. Feedback

Feedback is key for users to learn the rules of games/products. The best games teach through a clear causal loop. For example, Super Mario teaches players through the feedback loop of death.

Enemies like Goomba appear right at the start of the game. If Mario collides with a Goomba, he will die and restart, but only revert back 3 seconds. This brief harmless loop encourages players to try until they discover they can jump over or stomp on the Goomba.

The iterative loop also provides positive feedback for correct actions. In "Candy Crush", players trigger spectacular explosion effects by matching 3 candies of the same color. The game also incorporates randomness, bringing unexpected surprises.

Excellent designers usually assume that users will not read the manual but instead adopt a learn-by-doing approach to design their products, setting up iterative feedback loops along the way. These loops guide users towards mastery and ultimately achieve their goals.

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Game-based Application Examples

( social network

Popular social applications like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok directly meet users' intrinsic needs. Users express themselves through creation ) autonomy ### and establish connections with others ( relatedness ). There are also optional mastery paths, such as increasing followers and receiving feedback in the form of likes.

Clubhouse further introduces randomness by allowing users to enter live rooms, recreating the feeling of "bumping into" friends and creating pleasant moments.

These social applications have abandoned points or badges, yet have achieved strong long-term user retention, reflecting the characteristics of game-like experiences.

( productivity tools

The new generation of productivity software is becoming more gamified. Repl.it), the browser-based IDE###, and Figma(, the collaborative design tool), have introduced multiplayer mode, allowing developers to collaborate, comment, and learn from each other in real time, adding elements of interpersonal interaction.

The email application Superhuman sets a "zero inbox" goal for users, providing fine control and rules to help achieve it. When the goal is reached, it displays a daily changing high-definition natural landscape image and tracks the number of consecutive days achieved, reinforcing the mastery path.

( mental health

The Forest app will turn focus into a game, with over 6 million paying users. Users begin their focus training by planting virtual trees, which grow while they work, but with early exits, the trees wither. This negative visual feedback prevents users from getting distracted. Successfully maintaining focus allows the trees to survive, enabling users to plant a personal forest to showcase their focus achievements.

Forest hopes to cultivate long-term habits around "presence" and "mindfulness."

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( Financial Services

Chime Bank gamifies savings. It sets clear savings goals for users and designs a process to help achieve them. The Chime debit card rounds up transaction amounts, with the difference automatically transferred to the savings account. The savings amount for each transaction varies and is highlighted in color on the app's homepage, bringing unexpected surprises.

This positive feedback loop reinforces savings goals and fosters good habits. Over time, users may even take the initiative to save outside of Chime.

![a16z Partner: The most successful applications are packaged games])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-1b09f87a6f2b4dfa03b510f288665b8f.webp###

( fitness

Zombies, Run! and Strava make running and cycling more fun. Zombies is an audio app where users complete missions during a zombie apocalypse, such as finding supplies or escaping from zombies. Users win by running at a specific speed or distance. The app tracks each run, sends progress reports, and celebrates milestone achievements.

Strava adopts a similar goal-setting and feedback loop, and also adds social elements. It maintains running/cycling leaderboards, allowing users to see their relative progress in real time compared to others. The leaderboard itself is not an intrinsic motivation, but it works well in Strava because competition is a natural competitive activity.

) education

Duolingo is a gamified language learning app. It sets language learning goals for users and recommends studying for 15 minutes a day to achieve proficiency. The courses are divided into short, easily completable levels, similar in length to mobile game stages.

The course design focuses on helping users achieve a flow state, mixing new and old words and dynamically adjusting based on performance. Duolingo also tracks consecutive learning days, maintaining user autonomy while enforcing discipline ### to avoid becoming a bad student ###.

Looking to the Future

These core principles have been integrated into many successful modern applications today. Early gamified applications focused on short-term engagement, while game-like applications closely align with user needs to achieve long-term retention.

The core of the Motivation-Mastery-Feedback framework is always user retention. When people have fun and realize they are achieving their goals, they develop long-term usage habits. In this way, gamified applications help users move towards lifelong goals, from saving to regular exercise to improving work efficiency.