Shall we play a game?

When someone says you have to do something… how liable are you to apply yourself? Will you chafe, and abandon the endeavor halfway in, especially if there’s no monetary gain?

Now, consider playing a game. Geocaching. Laser tag. Hide-n-Seek. LARPing. Leveling up in your favorite MMORPG (mine is Secret World. Go Templars!) Catching just one more Pokemon. All are time-sinks. Neither makes you richer. But do you really mind? Or is this a part of the immersion of the thing?

Diablo, one of the most successful game franchises of all times, is based on this. And nothing but this. You start out with mediocre gear, use it to level up, get better gear, earn more achievements — and well, even better gear. The storyline, from what I understand, will not win any literary prizes, but behavioral psychology is applied here like nobody’s business, and why not?

People feel good, being immediately and tangibly rewarded for their efforts, and are thus naturally incentivized to keep applying themselves to keep received similar reward. Knowing that your work is recognized and appreciated — and having a guarantee that it will be every time the work is performed is something that has worked on us as children, encouraged to clean up the room faster than our sibling has cleaned up theirs, and it is something that works on us as adults when we are racing to beat a dungeon boss that is just a wee bit stronger than the one before for a victory that will afford us a marginally better sword than the one our character already boasts.

If we can show our circles of influence that yes, all the work they are putting in can result in tangible results, in literal leveling up and badges they can show off on their profiles, in tangible rewards trickling into their wallets to be used to unlock more site features, build up rank, and subscribe to their favorite book boxes to come to their door every month — effectively for free — then, well… how is this work?

See how this works? ;)

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