Glued to Games, a new book by Scott Rigby and Rich Ryan that explains the motivational dynamics of video games, can be ordered now at amazon.com. Written for all audiences, this book explores the psychology of games in detail - offering every reader a stronger understanding of the remarkable power of games to engage us. Check it out!
Saturday, March 17, 2012 at 6:59AM The presentation materials from Scott Rigby's talk - Intrinsic & Extrinsic Player Motivation: Implications for Design and Player Retention - is now available for download in our download section. Enjoy!
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at 7:54AM Immersyve's Scott Rigby will be presenting today at the Game Developers Conference in San Fran, focusing on deepening developers understanding of motivation as a continuum, rather than basic categories such as "Intrinsic" and "Extrinsic" alone. The goal is to summarize the best of motivational science alongside its practical application to game design, with plenty of examples of best (and some worst) practices. Slides will be posted here once the conference is over. Below is the full scoop on the talk from the conference program. Hope you can be there!
This session explains in detail how to sustain engagement with players, based on years of research, in order to drive longer and more profitable relationships. To design for this kind of engagement, data show it is important to have a clear knowledge of a player's specific psychological needs and understand the various categories of motivation that lead to sustaining (or thwarting) customer relationships. This talk will outline principles of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and how both can be applied effectively when they satisfy specific psychological needs, such as autonomy, relatedness, and mastery. Many game examples will illustrate some surprising truths about motivation, including how certain reward mechanisms can actually hinder a long-term relationship with your game, as well as how various forms of "extrinsic" motivation can be good for the player relationship, while others can foster a hasty exit by creating feelings of control and manipulation.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees will take away a detailed model of player motivation that gives concrete examples of both intrinsic and extrinsic strategies for game mechanics and content that both support - and are detrimental to - sustaining player relationships and value. Numerous game examples and data will provide actionable ideas that can be carried back into design and development of attendees' current and future projects.
Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 9:41AM On Tuesday, March 1st at the Social and Online Games Summit (1:45pm), Scott Rigby will be presenting an updated version of his top-rated (4.9 out of 5) talk on shifting the focus from short-term, manipulative motivational techniques to a renewed emphasis on meaningful satisfactions that drive sustained engagement and longer relationships with customers. Here's the blurb from the GDC website:
The churn rate in social & online games is staggering. We often visualize churn as a bucket with holes in it, but in reality, the numbers dont even justify the existence of the bucket as players pour into one end and out the other. Research indicates that by focusing too much on driving short-term behavior, we actively harm long-term motivation to stay engaged. While we increasingly rely on behavioral metrics to make decisions, we often overlook motivational and psychological data that is critical to success over time. This talk reviews specific techniques for deepening meaningful motivation in the design of social and online games, as well as discussing strategies to collect quantitative motivational metrics alongside behavioral metrics to better gauge success. Multiple game examples/best practices are discussed, along with strategies for game design and testing.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees take-away valuable information and strategies that can be immediately applied on three levels (1) specific strategies for retention, validated by gamer data, to implement in game design, (2) examples of best-practices from existing games to clearly illustrate concepts, and (3) ideas and strategies for improving metrics to include motivational data alongside behavioral data
We'll get the slide deck posted here on the site as soon as possible after the conference, and we've also just found out our book - Glued to Games - will be on sale at the GDC Conference book store (see shameless advertisement to the right). Cool!
Sunday, October 3, 2010 at 8:37PM Scott Rigby of Immersyve will be presenting again this year at the GDC Online (formerly GDC Austin), on Friday October 8th at 3pm (Room 5). This year's talk is entitled "Tools of Engagement: Five Tested Techniques to Improve Player Retention." Here's the summary:
Online games succeed when they motivate players to continuously engage, reengage, and “evangelize” to others their sustained interest and enthusiasm. Data from thousands of online gamers demonstrate principles and techniques from motivational psychology that are proven tools in building successful reward systems, game/social mechanics, and content structures that improve retention and increase satisfaction in the player. This lecture reviews five specific principles, along with data from online games demonstrating their effectiveness. Multiple game examples and best practices are discussed, along with take-away strategies for both game design and the integration of “motivational metrics” into your live data mining and research efforts.
We'll be posting a copy of the slide deck here on the Immersyve site shortly after the talk, so stay tuned! And if you are heading out to Austin for the conference, be sure to come by!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010 at 8:49PM Following a overwhelmingly positive reception on player rewards at last years GDC (talk rating of 4.8 out of 5), Scott Rigby of Immersyve will be presenting a talk at the 2010 LOGIN conference on optimizing game reward mechanisms (”Rewards that Retain: Understanding how rewards can either motivate of deflate sustained engagement with online games”). Here’s the scoop on the talk…
Rewards and player motivation to stay engaged with an online game are fundamentally linked, but often not well understood. Motivational data shows that rewards do not always have the intended effect of getting players to “stick.” In fact, if rewards are not structured well, they can actually encourage churn rather than retention. The LOGIN talk will outline and illustrate through game examples multiple dimensions of reward mechanisms - including (1) the motivational qualities of rewards that encourage deeper engagement (e.g. intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation) (2) how reward contingencies (e.g. performance-contingent, completion-contingent) influence sustained motivation, and (3) how the context of reward delivery (e.g. expected vs. unexpected rewards) differentially impact the value of that reward and its influence on keeping the player engaged over the long term. In each case, examples from online games will illustrate concepts alongside data from longitudinal studies of online game players.