Games, according to Chou (2019), typically have four phases. Think of these as phases the player experiences as they play the game.
- Discovery. The player first discovers and learns about the game.
- Onboarding. You train the players to become familiar with the rules, options, mechanics, and how to win.
- Scaffolding. Users come back on a regular basis and commit to repetitive actions. Feedback provides them guidance toward achieving an understood goal.
- Endgame. You celebrate achievements, potentially leading to others wanting to engage with the gameplay.
So, I’ve been watching Season 3 of Squid Game on Netflix. I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s easy to see these elements in the portrayal of the survival games on that show. In the episode I just watched, the players had some background about the game from the day before, then were put into a new environment and were told the rules. They had a chance to stop the games, but they voted to keep playing. They asked questions. And as far as the show goes, the endgame is celebratory, if you get to stay alive.
- Games should be invitational—we as players make a choice to play (discovery).
- We can spell out all the rules, or in some games, players discover the rules as they begin, by design and discovery (onboarding).
- Games used in education and business may require scaffolding to draw players back.
- Players typically stop playing games when they get boring or they’re no longer motivating.
- There’s an opportunity (endgame) to celebrate player achievements and to build brand around your game after it’s over.
Over and over the literature makes clear that we shouldn’t be forced into playing games—they don’t work when we don’t join of our own volition. Chou’s book on Gamification is focused on how we keep users/learners/players engaged through our experiences and sees opportunities to “gamify” each of these four phases. As you think about creating your own experiences, it’s helpful I think to plan for addressing these four upfront.
When we gamify learning, consider how our students will come to understand your learning design, it’s goals, and why they might want to play; think about how you’ll teach them the mechanics of what to do, about how to make progress. How will you keep learners motivated? What happens if the challenge becomes too easy, or too hard? And how do we celebrate the experience, once the experience has ended? It should be an opportunity to reflect upon learning and for you to learn what they liked and didn’t like about the experience.
How could you adapt the four phases of a game experience toward the phases of a new kind of learning experience?