DAC 305: Choice and Agency in Gamification

CHOICE AND AGENCY
DR. LENNART NACKE
Associate Professor, HCI Games Group, Department of Drama and Speech Communication
DAC 305: DESIGN FOR INTERACTIVE GAMES

CHOICE/AGENCY/GAMIFICATION
INTERACTIVITY
▸ Digital games allow humans to interact with an action and
make their own choices
▸ In a movie, we can shout at the protagonist that they
should look behind them or not go through that door,
but we have no inﬂuence on their actions
▸ Interactivity and the resulting freedom of choice for
players is a central aspect of digital games

CHOICE AND AGENCY
▸ Any moment in a game, where the player could perform two
or more distinct actions, but has to pick some number of
actions less than the total number available to execute
(Portnow, 2013)
▸ This applies to game mechanics and narrative
▸ Without conﬂict, there are no choices (Portnow, 2013) ->
Choices should not be obvious
▸ Agency: The feeling that your choices matter

CHOICE IN TETRIS
▸ Choice can be important without a narrative impact
▸ Clear lines early vs. waiting for a full Tetris/more points

AUTONOMY NEED SATISFACTION
▸ Autonomy: sense of volition or willingness when doing a task
▸ Deﬁned in the following dimensions
▸ Identity: Amount of Avatar-Customization
▸ Activity: Actions (Quests etc.) in a game
▸ Strategy: Different ways of solving problems
▸ Volitional Engagement: Pursuing game goals because you want to
▸ Together with Competence an important predictor of Enjoyment and
Immersion (Ryan, Rigby & Przybylski, 2006; Ryan & Rigby, 2011)

CUSTOMIZATION FOSTERS AUTONOMY
▸ Shown in studies of Kim et al. (2015), customization acts
on game enjoyment via autonomy

DARK SOULS 2
▸ Different from other RPGs, you can choose which skills to
learn and which attributes to reinforce
▸ Challenges
▸ Shield run, fists run, etc.
▸ Class “The Deprived:
▸ “Unclothed, origin unknown. Has nothing to fight with,
except life-affirming flesh.”

METAL GEAR SOLID 3 EXAMPLE
▸ Different ways out of the cell
▸ Either open cell door (via code) and take care of guard
or…
▸ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDZ5WC9bZ3c

PARADOX OF CHOICE
▸ More choice is generally perceived as positive (because of
autonomy and ownership)
▸ However, some ﬁndings from consumer psychology
(Schwartz, 2004) point to too much choice being
correlated with negative affect, little motivation to choose,
and little satisfaction with the options
▸ More choice is perceived as enjoyable but more difﬁcult
and more frustrating

DISCUSS THE PARADOX OF CHOICE
▸ Can there be too much autonomy in a game?
▸ When would that be the case? Do you know examples?
▸ Does it matter which consequences your decisions have?

MEANINGFUL CHOICE
▸ Meaningful Choice: The player has to believe that what
they choose will lead to different outcomes (Portnow,
2013)
▸ Choices that pull at players heart strings, that make them
look deep inside themselves at their own character in real
life, that they remember as deeply emotional experiences
(Morrison, 2013)

CRITERIA FOR MEANINGFUL CHOICE
1. Awareness - The player must be somewhat aware they are
making a choice (perceive options)
2. Gameplay Consequences – The choice must have
consequences that are both gameplay and aesthetically
oriented
3. Reminders – The player must be reminded of the choice they
made after they made it
4. Permanence - The player cannot go back and undo their
choice after exploring the consequences

MORAL DILEMMAS AND MEANINGFUL CHOICES IN GAMES?
▸ Do you know examples?
▸ The Walking Dead? Heavy Rain?
▸ How would you implement meaningful choices and moral
dilemmas in your games?

SUMMARY OF CHOICE
▸ Choice and Agency can manifest in the game’s narrative
and in the game mechanics
▸ Many digital games deliver just limited freedom of choice,
but as long as we do not notice, we experience autonomy
▸ If players perceive their actions as steering the game
procedures, they will feel that they have meaningful
choices

LET’S TEST COOKIE CLICKER
▸ http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
▸ Play this for 5 minutes, then let’s discuss your experience

WHAT IS GAMIFICATION?
▸ “the adoption of game technology and game design methods
outside of the games industry” (Helgason, 2010)
▸ “the process of using game thinking and game mechanics to
solve problems and engage users” (Zichermann, 2011)
▸ “a process of enhancing a service with affordances for gameful
experiences in order to support user's overall value
creation” (Huotari & Hamari, 2012)
▸ “the use of design elements characteristic for games in non-
game contexts” (Deterding et al., 2011)

RULE-BASED VS FREE PLAY

GAME DESIGN AND USER EXPERIENCE
▸ Malone wrote in 1982: ““…features of computer games
can be incorporated into other user interfaces, [which
then] can be made not only easier and more productive to
use, but also more interesting, enjoyable and satisfying.”

GAME ELEMENT EXAMPLES: LEADERBOARDS

GAME ELEMENT EXAMPLES: LEVELS AND POINTS

GAMIFICATION HYPE? 2012 VS 2014

WHAT SHOULD GAMIFICATION DO?
▸ Should gamiﬁcation be used to persuade people to adopt
a behaviour or should it enhance enjoyment?

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN GAMIFICATION GETS REMOVED?
▸ After removing incentives (points, badges, levels,
leaderboards) much less users were active in the intranet
social network of a company (Thom et al., 2012)
▸ Signiﬁcantly less photos, lists, and comments
▸ Results are comparable for workers from the US and India
▸ Only extrinsically motivated

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN? SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY
▸ Theory of basic psychological needs
▸ Competence: “the perceived extent of one’s own
actions as the cause of desired consequences in one’s
environment “
▸ Autonomy: “locus of causality is perceived internally”
▸ Relatedness: “the urge to interact, be connected to, and
experience caring for others.”

ORGANISMIC INTEGRATION THEORY

DISCUSSION: IS GAMIFICATION ALWAYS BAD?
▸ Think about extrinsic and intrinsic drivers

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR ATTENTION
THANK YOU
Contact me:
len@uwaterloo.ca
@acagamic (Twitter)
hcigames.com

DAC 305: Choice and Agency in Gamification

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DAC 305: Choice and Agency in Gamification