The journey begins upon clicking through registration and a bit of legal disclaimer. We are presented with a progress bar with zero points. One is reminded of Sebastien Deterding's description of LinkedIn: "like a piece of software installing itself on your hard drive, (the game) tells you that your profile was 70 percent done, and with only a few more actions […] could hit 100 percent. It’s an example of sticky completion because it guides the user through the whole site and gets them to make useful contributions that improve the service for them and the people who read their profile. It also takes a while to do."
In The Kukui Cup's case, this progress bar applies throughout only the introduction, upon the completion of which the first thing this reviewer clicked on among six or seven navigation items is the prizes. There's a Jack Johnson tee on the line, as well as some Kukui Cup branded goods. It's telling that I clicked on them first: prizes lens how people regard a service. If the services become about prizes then they only become about prizes, and that puts a game in a certain kind of category. Take the prizes away at a later date, and it invites only negative reactions from users and a decline in engagement, so if you want to give prizes, you have to be all in—or so say the experts.
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| Here's what the Kukui Cup looks like once you're in. |
What aspects of serious games or gamification does the Kukui Cup have (or lack)?
The Kukui Cup has many of the better-known aspects of serious games or gamification. The game designers seem to have minded the three key lifecycle stages. We have described the introductory, onboarding phase, minus one detail: importantly, the KC gives feedback that keep the user hooked, and creates a sense of urgency by presenting a serious problem along with a way for the gamer to fix it.
Second comes the habit building phase, also called the grind. This is for the regular gamers, in which challenges are doled out by the system. "It can be levels, badges, but that's just for the competitive gamer," says Amy Jo Kim in her talk about gamification's core concepts. [1] It's pretty funny that the "GET NUTZ" button leads to a URL called "learn." It makes sense, though, to re-label learning, because learning and fun are closely linked in game mechanics. Regarding mastery, Ralph Koster writes: "Fun is just another word for learning." While optimal conditions are needed for learning to be fun, those conditions can be configured and manipulated by the game designer. This is done in Kukui Cup by recommending a limit of five commitments, among other techniques. The gamer can choose the a higher or lower number of commitments, though, which gives the game appeal to those who might be more interested, or strapped for time, or who have other reasons they cannot fully commit.
The final stage, mastery, is for the "two to five percent of users who really get into it," says Kim. Because I am still working through the quests, I am not yet able to say whether KC implements anything for the mastery lifecycle stage. The prizes, at least, are certainly for the masters of the game. Having only just begun the game, it is not apparent whether there is an elder game, which is a game-within-a-game, designed exclusively for them. There are badges, too, for various levels of mastery. (*edit*: I learned after writing this that there is an elder game, called the Canopy, accessible to the high scorers.)
We can see other game aspects of KC by comparing it to the stages of the gamification loop (see the image below), which centers around a point system. All six stages are apparent. Leader boards appear at various spots on the site. Win conditions are made well known to the user in the course of the gameplay, as part of the challenges presented throughout the quests. The badge catalog is varied and easy to find in the Profile section. Some of the challenges encourage socialization, as they ask the gamer to tweet, post to Facebook, and email others about the game and energy savings.
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| The formula for fun? |
Everybody Needs an Avatar: or What's Engaging? What Isn't?
KC holds up well conceptually and comes with intrinsic rewards as a motivator. Everyone should learn how they can save energy, and people are especially motivated in Hawaii, where the costs are very high.
Not living in the dorms or being otherwise able to gauge energy savings makes this game less engaging, because progress cannot be measured. The points system puts on a little pressure to keep up with my classmates/teammates/"floormates" and help Lehua-B win, but even though my team was ahead when I checked, it seemed less important than it would have if we were metering our progress. Still, the game offers numerous fun elements for the demo player.
The first 99% of software development is writing it, the next 99% is debugging it, and the next 99% is all the little details, or so I'm told. It's mostly in those little design details that I can think of improvements on the current system. The game is ninety-nine point six percent good, in this reviewer's opinion. There must be plenty of data collection on the back end. I wonder what the game has to say about me. I am also wishing I had more time to play today.
What do you like the most and the least about the Kukui Cup? What do you think should have been designed differently? Does this give you ideas for course projects?
Having IRL meet-ups is a wise choice. It constitutes the "social fabric" of the Kukui Cup, which is among the the four key gaming conditions Jane McGonical says will reshape real-world behavior. (The other three are urgent optimism, blissful productivity and epic meaning.) It's a big challenge to engage people socially, and all the social networking gets to be too much. Jargon rears its head. Engagement loops, PERMA, progress mechanics and the like are beyond the scope of this analysis. The issues are myriad, subtle and sensitive, and they require a lot of research.
It might be interesting to see the social networking and status stages of the gamification loop developed slightly more within the Kukui Cup site. Bigger images and a link or two in the user's profiles, connecting to their presences on the wider web, might help foster a community vibe by letting members know and see each other more. It's hard to identify someone from a tiny thumbnail image. Rewarding the team members for connecting on Twitter, Facebook, or whatever their social platform of preference, could foster higher engagement by connecting them on the wider Web.
I have only recently begun to think of how to create games for KTUH, but I am sure it will be fun to develop along with my current projects for the station. Capacity-building exercises should be prioritized. The FCC is coming to renew our license. All our volunteers need to know on-air practices, technical questions, policy and procedures. We don't have a system to engage our followers adequately on our own social networks. We should make a game of what the station tweets. It would be more helpful to organize volunteers. There is a ton of other work that the station needs done, which nobody has been willing to do. We need to gamify that without making it "chore wars." Whatever we do, it must be fun. Fun is the future.
1. "Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software". Amy Jo Kim. Google Tech Talks. 29 January 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=ihUt-163gZI
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