“Let’s pretend this is a game.” Adults have used these oft-repeated words to convince children (and, sometimes adults too) that something they hadn’t wanted to do could be made enjoyable. Like magic, the promise of a game can persuade the unwilling to give the activity — say, cleaning a room — a try. That’s the power of play. Think of your favourite games to play or watch and the thrills that are associated with them; then, compare it to how we feel when we work. No competition at all, right?

Now, just calling something a game won’t transform something tedious into a pleasure (as a child playing the “game” of room-cleaning will attest) but that’s from lacking the understanding of how to create a good game. We tend to take games for granted, considering them juvenile or time-wasters, but, researchers have begun discovering surprising benefits to playing games, such as improving brain function and encouraging people to become healthier.

Certainly some find learning or exercising as painful as cleaning, so how do well-designed games shift behaviour? And, what are the potential lessons we can draw to improve how people interact with our organizations? In this first of a two-part series, we’ll better understand what games are and explore the components that could be useful outside of games – with practical application in your organization. In the second part, we’ll observe examples of how games themselves are helping nonprofits and charities reach out to better engage stakeholders.

Everyone loves to play

Games have been played by humans for thousands of years. Games were used to pass the time, but also to teach in a lower-risk environment. For a contemporary example, children learn about finance through a game like Monopoly as a prelude to being exposed to actual monetary transactions. And, if I were to offer you a lesson on projectile momentum, gravitational forces, and structural engineering, surely some might politely pass. Yet, these concepts are handily explored in the popular videogame Angry Birds, and millions of people spend countless hours learning how to optimally harness physics to attack the game’s smug porcine villains.

Games have quickly grown in popularity over the past decade. Angry Birds is the most well-known example, thanks to the popularity of BlackBerry, iPhone, and Android smartphones and tablets like the iPad, but many people have been introduced to games also through Facebook (such as Farmville) and the Nintendo Wii (and its popular Wii Fit). In fact, the average player of social games is a female in her mid-40s, 44% of people play mobile games, and 72% of American households play videogames: with so many people playing games, we’ve come a long way from the stereotype of gamers in the basement.

Already many industries such as healthcare and education are attempting to incorporate game-like elements to better engage people, known as gamification. There are some misconceptions associated with that term, so we’ll stay away from it, but know that the concept of drawing from games isn’t novel nor foreign. We’ll begin by deconstructing elements in a game and then afterwards find relevant ways to apply them to nonprofits and charities.

Follow the rules

If we’re to be inspired by games, it makes sense to provide the definition for a game. There is no formal definition used by game designers, but two helpful versions include “an activity with rules” from Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber’s Challenges for Game Designers and “an experience created by rules,” from Anna Anthropy’s Rise of the Videogame Zinesters. These definitions seem vague, but game designers are aware of the diversity of experiences games can provide. The key takeaway here is that rules build structure and that games create interesting action (and interactions) out of that structure.

Take tennis, for example. The game would be dull if the only rule was to hit the ball so that your opponent could not return it. (To win, you would continually lob the ball behind you.) What makes tennis gripping is knowing players must abide within many rules to score a point — this is where the matter of skill comes in. A hallmark of a good game is one that has enough rules to be complex without having too many to be over-complicated.

For simplicity, one only needs to look at golf: the main rules are that you can only move the ball using a club and, aside from hazards, your score is determined by the number of strokes required to sink the ball into the hole. If you need an example of over-complication, listen to a young child explain the rules of a game they have made up: there will be countless rules with little cohesion, amusingly often by design so that the game’s outcome is always stacked in their favour.

Rules are also important because they guide the action: players know what they can and cannot do. There is no course of action in tennis that isn’t covered under the rules. When rules are unclear, the magic of a game dissipates, as players can no longer firmly evaluate their next action and gameplay grinds to a halt.

When designing any system (games are essentially complex systems), such as a volunteer program or a fundraising drive, a good series of questions to ask then is: “Are there enough rules to incite action, but not too many to be over-complicated, and is there any ambiguity in the rules that could cause confusion?”

Clarity is a central tenet to games: even if parts of the game are shrouded in mystery, such as the plotline of a videogame, there must be enough information provided for a player to sense the correct course of action, such as knowing what area to explore to move the story ahead. Most games — but not all — include goals that signal the game’s intention to the player. In golf, the goal is to score as few strokes as possible and players can measure their skillfulness against themselves, other players, and the par for the course.

Goals are imperative

After thinking of the rules you have created, it’s important to ask yourself if the goals are evident enough, and whether or not your participants can figure out the correct direction throughout the way.

In games, the term “mechanics” describes the actions in which players take to play the game and reach the goal (if there is one). Returning to Angry Birds, the chief mechanic is using a slingshot to launch spheroid birds at the pigs in the buildings. The mechanics are made more interesting when the player gets access to many types of birds, each with their own special ability, but the game remains about throwing things at other things. Mechanics are central to a game: take a second to imagine how much of tennis and golf would change if we swapped the main mechanics, so that tennis players had to swing with clubs and golf players serve with racquets, because play would be different, the game changes, and players would act accordingly.

Remember that mechanics, the ways you set up your participants to act in a system, will ultimately determine tactics, strategy, and behaviour. How we incentivize those mechanics also matters: for example, in basketball, players can score two-point or three-point shots, depending on the location. Players during the game will calculate which mechanic makes most sense and shift their behaviour. If your organization is not satisfied with how people are acting in a certain program, it could be because the mechanics are set up improperly.

Make it compelling

Now that we have looked at the framework of a game with rules, goals, and mechanics, we can discuss some of the characteristics of an engaging game. The most interesting games are ones at which players can get increasingly skillful. Human beings enjoy getting better at things if — and this is an important ‘if’ — there is enough feedback to demonstrate progress. Furthermore, humans tend to stick with an activity when the difficulty is matched with their skill level. Looking at golf once again, players can gauge their progress first in comparison to the course par, then against other players and their previous scores. After a player has mastered a course, they’ll look for new challenges. The ability to continually improve is what makes golf so fascinating, as players become more precise and exact with their strokes, to enable successfully playing a variety of courses.

Digital games have an advantage here in that they can provide nearly-instantaneous and continuous feedback to players. In the game Dance Central, a motion-sensor reads players’ body movements and shares how closely they are mimicking the dance moves shown on-screen. At the end of each dance, the game calculates how well the player did, and as players improve, the game rewards them with new, more difficult dance routines. Players can post their scores and videos of their routines online, where friends can give positive feedback or enter a playful competition, creating social incentives and increasing difficulty. Incentives (including competition), in conjunction with feedback, can be strong motivators to keep people doing something.

However, there is one caveat: the player has to voluntarily engage with the activity. It isn’t a game if the player is forced to play. This is why organizations that attempt to use incentives and feedback in a blanket fashion to hook people are misguided: you can’t trick people into doing something they don’t want to do for very long. They may give it a try out of novelty, but very soon they will leave.

In fact, a sense of autonomy and ownership is vital for games: even within the rules, mechanics, and goals, a player must feel that they are in control of their own destiny. Think of the classic game SimCity, where an open swath of land presented a feeling of opportunity. Players enjoyed the choice of building as they liked using the given mechanics within the framework of rules. More recently, the best-selling game Minecraft elicited a similar feeling. No one wants to feel like a cog and it’s hard to be excited about not having a sense of control. In your system, do participants feel like they have the ability to make meaningful choices, or are they going through a series of motions?

People often say “life isn’t a game.” While this could be true — or, at the very least, life isn’t a well-designed game — we’ve seen the many lessons that can be drawn from games. When we build a great game, we’re building a robust system in which people playing can experience interesting interactions, become invested in the outcome, and attempt to achieve their best. And, aren’t these things what we’d want to replicate in our organizations?

Jaime Woo is a Toronto-based writer, activist, game designer, and co-founder of the Gamercamp festival.

Photos (from top) via iStockphoto. All photos used with permission.