Players

Although the last few sections have been about the serious side of things, such as objectives and target behaviors, we still have gamification as the focal point. Hence, from this point on we will refer to our users as players. We must keep in mind that although we have defined the actions that we want our players to take, the strategies to motivate them to take that action vary from player to player. Gamification is definitely not a one-size-fits-all process. We will need to look at each of our target behaviors from the perspective of our players. We must take their motivations into consideration, unless our mechanics are pretty much trial and error. We will need an approach that's a little more structured.

According to Bartle's Player Motivations theory, players of any game system fall into one of the following four categories:

The following diagram outlines each player motivation type and what game mechanic might best keep them engaged.

As we define our activity loops, we need to make sure that we include each of the four types of players and their motivations.