The Four Keys to Fun: Using Serious Game Technology to Deliver Public Services.

How to use games to craft emotions to build trust, increase participation,
and even deliver public services.

Video games are the new medium of the 21st Century and have the potential to transform how governments communicate, provide information, and deliver public services. Although largely seen primarily as a distraction and waste of time, inspiration from the proven underlying game mechanics provide the opportunity to improve the way public services are designed, ratified, offered, and utilized. In fact these Serious Game Technologies delivered on a social mobile platform are such powerful organizers of human action and engagement that in the face of such enormous challenges such as AIDs, economic crises, and climate change it is our responsibility to do so.

Games are self-motivating systems and for the past 30 years game designers have evolved interactive techniques to create emotion, support performance, encourage problem solving, develop system thinking, and increase engagement. The power of games to hold attention comes from specific designs around decisions that players make. Game designers craft emotions, situations, choices, and feedback that create the opportunity to change the way that players think, feel, and behave. With the increase of public information and services delivered electronically this engagement language of games has application to design interactive services to better serve the public and unlock their human potential through play.

Based on XEODesign’s 20 years of research, games create their legendary engagement in four ways. People play for challenge, novelty, friendship, and meaning. We call these the Four Keys to Fun and are the secret behind how player’s favorite moments in games create engagement. Best-selling games have at least three out of the four playstyles and players move between three of the four in a single play session. [1] Games have evolved many engagement techniques to make multiple types of activities fun. This Serious Games Technology delivered on social mobile platforms offers the opportunity to redesign public services to engage citizens in the whole process of creating and delivering public services in a way that improves the quality of services and reduces costs.

To understand how games create engagement is simple. Think of the game of basketball. First there’s the hook of novelty and curiosity that draws you in. There’s a simple joy of controls. Just dribbling the ball or role-playing a Harlem Globe Trotter doing tricks is what we call Easy Fun. Easy Fun is fun without challenge. Next the non-trivial task of getting the ball through the small hoop high above head makes the game more fun. You can’t simply push a button and win. This Hard Fun comes from challenge and mastery. Thirdly, basketball is more fun when played with other people. Competition and cooperation create People Fun. And lastly there is the Serious Fun from getting a good work out. The game changes the player. The real world connection of Serious Fun game mechanics makes them the Serious Fun mechanics have the most application to providing public services.

The power of play comes from setting up game mechanics into engagement loops. Serious Game Technology offers far more than adding points and badges to a website. For example just because a farming game with 80 million players has points and cows, does not mean that adding points and cows to a nutrition website will attract the same number of users. Although many games use points and badges to reward specific behavior it is important to understand that the motivational power of using points and badges attenuates over time and only a fraction of gamers play primarily for points. Rewards are only one reason why people play. Unfortunately, similar to an addiction, adding such extrinsic motivators to a task requires the continual increase in the amount of reward to maintain the same level of motivation. Like someone with a chemical addiction it takes more and more to feel good with a new high. Also worth considering is that extrinsic motivators such as keeping score of the number of people who follow a person erodes intrinsic motivation as people focus on boosting their score than benefiting from the activity or service. Extrinsic motivators also run the risk of creating secondary behaviors as people game the system. For example the game designers running the San Francisco Bay Bridge toll plaza introduced a discount for travel outside of rush hour. While more people now travel off peak, don’t be on the toll plaza at 6:69 PM on a Friday night, because literally there are dozens of cars pulled over on the median, others stopped in the active highway, everyone looking at the score board waiting for the toll to drop from $6 to $4.In this way, poorly designed gamification can actually kill.

Keeping this in mind, the more sustainable long term approach to increasing engagement is to design public service delivery around the core aspects that make games engaging not just points and badges. From the influence of social game mechanics imbedded in social media in the electoral process, to the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street; Serious Game Technology delivered on social mobile platforms has already transformed how people participate and shape the political process. Political discourse joined through the social popularity game of influencing others on social media has lowered the barrier to entry at the same time that it amplifies the feedback for how influential the contributor was. Simply posting a witty saying or catchy photo can win the approval of all a person’s friends plus the potential to reach a mass market of millions. In the social media game players earn points and status for participating and the electoral process and policy making will never be the same.

Serious Game Technology will soon transform the delivery of public services themselves in the way that Craig’s list replaced newspaper want ads or the way Wikipedia replaced the Encyclopedia Britannica. It’s possible that a free social game played by millions could be so effective and convenient that it takes over one or more government services. An engaging social or simulation game could deliver a wide range of public services from providing health information and emotional support to planting trees in urban areas delivering select public services at a higher quality and a lower price.

When our democracy was founded there were 30,000 people per representative. That number is now almost 700,000. Mobile technology that is increasingly socially designed and inspired by game mechanics provides the opportunity to rethink this equation.The design of new and more participatory systems of government could change how they operate and the services they provide. Interactive social games give governments a new and powerful channel to hear from and be influenced by the people they represent. Crafted to respond to human needs and motivations these new government systems can surely deliver improve service efficiency, and more importantly, the quality of life of citizens.

Game-design thinking will soon permeate all aspects of government services. Games can organize participation, provide opportunities for leadership, and strengthen social bonds between people. Information Services that governments typically provide, such as career training and job placement would be the first candidates to be gamified in a social way. To start the conversation this article focuses on a handful of government services that in our opinion where games will have the most impact.