Getting Playful to Address Serious Challenges

Have you heard of the term ‘gamification’? It is gradually becoming a key feature of the discourse in applied behavioural research, but what is gamification and how can it help us to address the global challenges we face? Keep reading to find out what gamification has to offer us all, from Centre-UB Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Dr Sally Reynard.

Gamification is defined as “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts”¹.

Game design elements refer to the things that game designers carefully integrate when creating games, like those that you might play on your phone or with a PlayStation, such as Temple Run or Fortnite. These elements include things such as narratives, winning and exchanging points and badges, completing quests and moving up in levels of difficulty. The non-game contexts and settings that game design elements can be applied to are vast—from business and marketing all the way to environment, cultural and natural heritage, education and training, and health and wellbeing related challenges.

While the application of gamification in business and marketing has been around for many years (e.g., credit card redeemable points), efforts to understand and apply gamification to address global health and societal challenges have begun relatively recently.

Benefits of gamification and how it works

When we’re trying to influence or facilitate attitudes, understanding and changes in behaviour related to a health or societal challenge, the evidence tells us that we need to be thinking about motivation and enjoyment. What drives us to engage with something, and keep going with it?

Flow Theory, developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes the state of deep engagement and immersion, motivation, focus and sense of control that we can experience when completing an activity². We also don’t pay attention to unhelpful and unrelated thoughts or feelings whilst experiencing flow. To reach flow state, the activity must be intrinsically rewarding, appropriately challenging and include immediate feedback and clear objectives².  

How does the experience of flow work in real-life within a health and wellbeing gamification context? A scientific study examined the effect of popular gamified smartphone app Zombies, Run!³. In Zombies Run! users listen to a story about a current zombie invasion whilst completing a run or walk. Users can choose to be chased by virtual zombies within the stories—increasing the intensity of their exercise. The researchers spoke to people who had used the app and found that the zombie narrative, storyline and character game design elements distracted users from the perceived negative physiological effects of physical activity (e.g., feeling out of breath), and that the favourite feelings brought about by the app were immersion and presence³.

Another theory that can help us understand gamification, and particularly its impact on motivation in behaviour change initiatives, is Self Determination Theory (SDT)⁴. SDT proposes that we have 3 basic psychological needs—the experience of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Different game design elements are believed to tap into these 3 needs and support the promotion of motivation⁵. For example, moving up in levels of increasing difficulty instils a sense of growing competence—increasing motivation in the given activity.

“We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing” – Charles Schaefer, American Clinical Psychologist.

Current trends and considerations

Across all health and societal challenge contexts, it’s vital for those creating and implementing gamification strategies to consider current broader trends and up-to-date evidence from research and real-world application.

One of the current trends that is particularly important to consider is responsibility and ethics. Notable to this are concerns around the simplification of the use of gamification and related consumer and employee data to increase company profits and productivity, and exploit or control customers, employees and populations (e.g., in customer loyalty schemes and employee productivity initiatives)^1,5,6.

How can we address broader concerns and trends when we are integrating gamification to tackle global health and societal challenges? It is essential that we include relevant expertise and knowledge by working within interdisciplinary teams and involve the intended users within the ideation, design and evaluation processes through active co-design initiatives.

Gamification within a Centre-UB Fellowship

Sally is collaborating with Get Ahead Mindset throughout her Centre-UB Fellowship. Get Ahead Mindset is a company founded by Chris McAdam and Adam Dehaty which seeks to increase the accessibility of sport psychology training to athletes and exercisers of all levels through the creation of a new smartphone app.

“Get Ahead was created to break down the barriers that often limit access to sport psychology—cost, availability, and stigma. We wanted to provide athletes of all levels with tools that are evidence-based, accessible, and engaging. Our team brings together expertise in professional sport, psychology, education and digital innovation. We’re seeing that when users are given structured, gamified tools to support their mental game, they’re better able to understand and regulate their emotions, feel more motivated, focused and confident.” – Chris McAdam, Get Ahead Mindset Founder and CEO.

As part of the Fellowship, Sally is working with Get Ahead Mindset to optimise the in-app gamification strategy.

To begin this work, Sally met with Chris and Adam in London to ideate the game design elements that could be integrated within the Get Ahead Mindset app. This was informed by a review of the scientific literature related to gamification within physical activity and wellbeing, consideration of broader current trends in gamification research and real-world application, game design elements used in other successful smartphone apps, and knowledge that Sally gained within her PhD.

The ideas were then grouped based on their overarching features, purpose and the level of resources required to further develop and integrate them. Sally and Get Ahead Mindset are now conducting co-design gamification workshops with athletes and exercisers to generate new gamification concepts and prototypes within the app.

Want to find out more about Sally and her Centre-UB Fellowship?

Sally completed her PhD in Applied Psychology within the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. This focused on furthering the understanding of emotion regulation in children and adolescents and co-designing a prototype smartphone serious game that trains emotion regulation strategies. Emotion regulation can be defined as how we manage our emotional reactions in the moment, and it is linked to important behavioural outcomes within health, education, social and occupational contexts.

You can read a key paper from Sally’s PhD here. This summarises the scientific evidence around the use of digital technology to train emotion regulation skills⁷.

As well as working with Get Ahead Mindset to optimise the in-app gamification strategy, Sally is also completing an early evaluation of the Get Ahead Mindset app within the Centre-UB Fellowship. This is focused on understanding app users’ experiences of acceptability (enjoyment and engagement) and feasibility (ease and practicality of use) within the app and will support the app’s ongoing successful development. In addition, she is learning about business enterprise and pitching, and conducting public engagement and impact-related activities with Get Ahead Mindset.

References

1. Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011, September). From game design elements to gamefulness: defining” gamification”. In Proceedings of the 15th international academic MindTrek conference: Envisioning future media environments (pp. 9-15).
2. Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2009). Flow theory and research.
3. Farič, N., Potts, H. W., Rowe, S., Beaty, T., Hon, A., & Fisher, A. (2021). Running app “Zombies, Run!” users’ engagement with physical activity: A qualitative study. Games for Health Journal, 10(6), 420-429.
4. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2012). Self-determination theory. Handbook of theories of social psychology, 1(20), 416-436.
5. Buckley, J., DeWille, T., Exton, C., Exton, G., & Murray, L. (2018). A gamification–motivation design framework for educational software developers. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 47(1), 101-127.
6. Liu, D., Santhanam, R., & Webster, J. (2017). Toward meaningful engagement. MIS quarterly, 41(4), 1011-1034.
7. Reynard, S., Dias, J., Mitic, M., Schrank, B., & Woodcock, K. A. (2022). Digital Interventions for Emotion Regulation in Children and Early Adolescents: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JMIR Serious Games, 10(3), e31456.