Everyone loves to talk about gamification, as though it is some magical bullet that makes all products better. It doesn’t quite work that way. Game mechanics can work well for intensifying existing behavior for sure. But they don’t work well for changing behavior.
This is particularly obvious in the fitness tracker space. Many activity bands like Fitbit end up in the drawer because they don’t change underlying behavior. They don’t get coach potatoes off the couch. But fitness trackers aimed at athletes do get used, and they get used a lot. Nike run, Garmin and Strava all get people who are already active to become more active. They push runners and cyclists to go faster, further and more often. They intensify existing behavior.
Snapchat tracks streaks, the number of consecutive days that users send direct snaps back and forth with a friend. It’s been wildly popular and is one metric that teens are obsessed with tracking. Streaks are seen as a key game mechanic used by Snapchat to drive user retention. Now Facebook messenger is rumored to be trailing streaks as well.
Streaks is a great feature for Snapchat, but it’s example of how you can’t staple a feature onto any product. The feature needs to needs to match the use case.
Snapchat is used by people to communicate with their closest friends. Since you talk to your closest friends almost every day already, the streak game dynamic makes sense. It intensified existing behavior.
But people don’t use Facebook messenger to talk to their best friend — they’ll use Snap, iMessage or SMS. They use Facebook messenger to communicate with their weaker ties, their “Facebook friends” vs their IRL friends.
Game dynamics don’t change user behavior. You can’t use streaks to get people to communicate with their weak ties more often. It simply doesn’t make sense, and it won’t work for Facebook messenger.
Game dynamics can a very powerful tool for product design, but it can’t change user behavior, it can only intensify it.
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