Get Your Application Game On!

What We'll Cover

1. Would you like to Play A Game?

   Even cooler than tic-tac-toe and thermo-nuclear exchange simulations, we'll define gamification

2. Gaming in Action

   We'll experience real-time gaming in a .NET application for both users and administrators using the game architecture built into the Sueetie Online Community Platform

3. Enter the Adventure Zone of Code

   We're going to look at some of the source code behind the magic

Salient Geek Bio-Points

• Assistant Professor in Information Science when the Mosaic Browser was released in 1993
• Put my first website online in 1994 on an IBM RS/6000
• Web development ever since, specializing in .NET Online Community Development
• Sueetie Version 1.0 released December 2008

Gamification Defined

...applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging.

Gamification Defined

..the term “Gamification” will soon go away. It will just be called “Design."

Gamification in Real Life

Game Mechanics

• Points

  The most basic component of a gaming system

• Badges

  Think FourSquare "Fried Chicken Buster" or whatever. Can also use Achievements or Awards

• Leaderboards

  How members compare to others "playing the game"

Game Mechanics

• Progression

  Showing users how close they are to completing a goal (LinkedIn Profile)

• Exploration

  Offer bonuses for visiting new regions, or some unique content to foster a sense of discovery

• Time-Sensitive Events

  Have users complete tasks in specified time or certain time of day for an extra reward — think happy hour in a bar

Game Mechanics

• Pet Ownership

  The act of getting a pet — or a plant — that the user has to take care of "is often a powerful motivator" in getting people to stick with games, i.e., your application

The Gamified Application

• A Weighted Points System is the starting point. Need to modify the point types, their weights and add new point types
• Badges (also refered to as Achievements and Awards) follow user behavior: number of forum posts, thanks received, products purchased, etc. "Accentuating Member Engagement." Also rewarding users for actions YOU want them to take

The Gamified Application

• Members should be able to view their awards from their member profile and optionally on a community list
• We are tying points and achievements to every conceivable Member Engagement activity in your application. Your application's engagement points are unique, which is why deep integration is key

The Gamified Application

• Must design both real time and asynchronous processes for awarding achievements and assigning points
• Gaming is a first cousin to your Use Analytics efforts, as both give you metrics to measure site activity and user engagement
• Points and Achievements should be able to be awarded both automatically and manually, and for both onsite and offsite activity (Terrific Tweeter Award...)

The Gamified Application

• Must be able to change Point Weights, which means member point totals can never be static and are always generated dynamically (SQL chops)
• Must be able to filter administrative, community managers and utility users from Gaming Features
• Must give users the ability to opt-out of receiving award notifications and other gaming communications

The Gamified Application

• You are awarding different types of engagement and often the first occurrence and multiple levels of engagement within that type (First Forum Post, 10th Forum Post, 30th Forum Post, etc.) Duration of activities (ex: 1-yr membership) another approach.
• Gaming and New Features go hand-in-hand. The process of integrating the fun never ends. Ex: Wall Email Subscriptions.

The Gamified Application

• Must have a beefy Communications architecture to handle gaming process notifications, as it plays a huge part in keeping members informed and engaged
• If you are making the investment of going down the gamification path, you should consider someone who's creative and with design and writing chops to get the most out of it. There's SO much you can do with a gaming system once put in place

Sueetie Plays The Game

Sueetie Offerings

Sueetie Offerings

• Community Edition

  Free. No Premium Features (like gaming.) Limited Users.

• Small Business Edition

  All Premium Features with some limitations

• Sueetie Enterprise

  Unlimited everything

• Sueetie Enterprise Plus

  Unlimited everything and premium source code

Users Playing the Game

• Fun with Friedrick and Zonan

Managing the Game

• The Configuration, Care and Feeding of a Gaming System for the Creative Administrator

The Adventure Zone of Code

• Let's get dirty!

The Adventure Zone of Code

• Enumerators are your friends. We begin with SueetiePointType which defines the activity type. Administration View
• SueetieAchievementType define the types of awards or badges. You must also be able to award badges for activities not found in SueetieAchievementTypes. Administration View (excerpt)
• Both enums have data object counterparts in SQL Server which allows for extending points and achievements beyond the default types and generating totals and leaderboard activity.

The Adventure Zone of Code

• Points are awarded dynamically in real time using a global RecordPoints() method and the appropriate Point Type
• Example of Recording Points when a user creates a new Forum Topic
• Recording points for various activities in forums
• Many member engagement processes occur clientside with a web service (tagging a favorite, thanking a fellow member, etc.) Here are various examples of recording points in a Sueetie WCF Service

The Adventure Zone of Code

• The process of Awarding Achievements starts with the point of engagement in real time. They are also awarded asynchronously.
• Here in the Sueetie WCF Service a member marks a forum message as an answer. We're going to specifically look at awarding a user for providing an answer.
• At this point we add logic for first thanks provided and activity levels. Only Achievement Types that are defined pass through to the next step.

The Adventure Zone of Code

• An key step in creating an award is to determine if the achievement is enabled and that the user has not already been awarded that achievement.
• Final step with the heavy logic.

The Adventure Zone of Code

• You need to employ asynchronous awarding for activities that cannot be awarded in real time or require more processing demands than should be performed synchronously.
• Because these processes often require a lot of SQL logic (and to make scaling easier to manage) the achievement processes are broken out into individual SQL procs and called by a single Stored Procedure.

The Adventure Zone of Code

• You may want to put as much logic as possible in the SQL layer in generating leaderboard data (then cache it, of course.) You may also want to use it elsewhere to let users know who it ahead of them and with by many points.

Buy or Build

Buy or Build

We Reached the Final Level!

• Learn more about Gamification and Sueetie at http://sueetie.com and in the Sueetie Wiki.
• For questions about Gamification or anything we covered today, use the Sueetie Contact Form. It'll get to me.
• Other contact points: burke@sueetie.com. On Twitter: @daveburkevt. Google+ at gplus.to/daveburke