Journey Design and Nudges
Journey Design refers to the story, the player journey and visual aspects such as theming that create the game dynamics. Of these, flow isone of the most critical. Nudges, also known as game mechanics, are the elements that triggered along the way to propel the player through the journey.
The following are some of the nudges available within the Moroku Odyssey:
Awards: Sometimes called badges, an award is a virtual reward or title that is earned through performing some specific activity. They may be awarded for trivial tasks (first log in), for exploration (changing an avatar) or for more time consuming tasks (reaching a savings goal). Achievements provide a permanent reminder of what a player has accomplished as well as an incentive to unlock more of them.
Appointments: Provide a motivation to a player to perform a particular activity at a point in time or during a particular period. The GameSystem rules engine allows you to configure awards with time bounds so for example, a player me get double points for creating a savings goal within 24 hours. Time pressure is a well understood mechanism for motivating action, and appointments allow you to leverage this.
Cascading Information Theory: We allow users to ‘unlock’ information about how stuff works as they proceed through the game, earning points, badges and unlocking levels. This keeps the game alive, unfolding complexity as the player build skill.
Competition: With leader boards, points and achievements we have many of the necessary inputs and mechanics to run competitions which are ultimately focussed around rewarding winners
Community Collaboration: The game dynamic where an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a riddle, a problem or a challenge. Moroku Odyssey allows players to come together as communities of interest and to work together to pool points. Coupled with a bank’s’ corporate social responsibility programs, this provides a tremendous opportunity. By allowing the group with the most points over a period of time to nominate the target for the bank’s’ social giving, players are incented as well actively engaged with the brand.
Countdown: Having set an appointment such as a payment milestone or a check in time we represent the time to that event using Countdown to drive attention and urgency
Goals: Savings or spending challenges that customers set or can be set using AI. “We believe this is where you should be setting your target!”
Ownership: Ownership creates a stronger sense of engagement within players. While a player may have a sense of ownership over their bank balance, they are made aware at every turn that they don’t own the applications through which you allow them access it. Moroku Odyssey allows users to configure the colour scheme of the application and to select their own avatars giving a stronger sense of ownership of the platform and a greater affinity to it.
Points: The simplest mechanic and familiar from loyalty cards, air miles etc. Points are a running total or ‘score’ by which users may compare themselves to each other. Users earn points by performing actions via mobile apps, internet banking, visiting your public facing web site or downloading a product disclosure document. Points can be traded for actual real world rewards such as movie tickets or perhaps even improved interest rates.
Status: Status is a measure of rank. A player may have high status through the accumulation of points or achievements. The Moroku GameSystem provides leaderboards which can be configured to rank players globally, by demographics, postcode or pretty much any metric that you may like to use. Players can also see their friends’ achievements and are notified when a friend unlocks a new one. The ability to provide smaller leaderboards is important; a player who is ranked 96,000th in the world has little motivation to play more. However if that same player is 10th in his postcode then that certainly provides motivation.
Leader board: A list or lists of players ranked by points or awards to determine who will win or is winning
Levels: Progression to a goal is one thing. Progression through levels, or ‘leveling up’ represents a core aspect of the gamification experience. As players level up, their rewards become greater and they often ‘unlock’ new features. At Moroku we think of leveling up becoming increasingly financially literate. Players move from managing a simple checking account through savings accounts, credit products, wealth and retirement planning and perhaps ultimately to complex derivative trading! Moroku are developing a ‘Financial Mastery’ score as part of their GameSystem and actively looking for partners to drive the development of this complex metric.
Missions: Sometimes known as Challenges or Quests, a Mission provides a structured series of obstacles to overcome, sometimes within a time limit. A Mission in Moroku Odyssey is a sequence of tasks that a player must accomplish to achieve a reward. For example to become a Mortgage Master, a player might be required to visit a page about mortgages, download a product disclosure statement, use an online calculator to calculate a maximum borrowing, arrange an appointment with an advisor and finally take out a mortgage. This leads to the concept of…
Progression: Whether it be completing your LinkedIn profile, mastering a skill or waiting for a file to download, people like to see a reflection of their increasing development. The ubiquitous progress bar satisfies this need (or creates a feeling of incompleteness!) By dividing large goals into more granular steps, Moroku GameSystem allows you to present progression to players, encouraging them to take the next step on their journey.
Virality: Virality refers to the ability of a concept or meme to spread in the same way as a virus does, through social contact. Moroku Odyssey incorporates a strong social element through both integration with existing social media platforms that allow players to share their results as well as in system notifications and social behaviour.
Notifications: Players or employees can form groups and invite each other to join a group where they can share thoughts and information. Notifications are inherent within the platform. These can be used to send messages, player to player, system to player, system to group, system to player, etc.
Quizzes: Running Polls or quizzes available at a certain time to check people’s knowledge and providing points and awards for their answers
Rules Engine: The entire system is built to be dynamic. In partnership with our banking partners we establish a set of rules by which the game is played. These rules create events that then trigger outcomes. E.g. login get 10 points. Pay off your credit card on time get a badge
Rewards: The platform has a rewards platform that allows players to reward points for prizes or plugin an existing loyalty reward scheme.