Interesting piece! I’m co-creator of Zombies, Run! so I’m glad to see it mentioned here - we designed it to be in the best interests of players, which is why it doesn’t feature streaks or leaderboards or other ways to manipulate you into overexercising or playing more than you want to.
That said, I’m more sanguine about gamification than the author. There are indeed many games to choose from, but the ones that are most concerning that those we have little choice but to play, whether they’re from our employers or in our schools and colleges, or built into devices and platforms like the Apple Watch and iOS.
If you’re interested in this subject, I wrote a book critiquing gamification called “You’ve Been Played” - the NYT called it illuminating and persuasive!
I share the concerns about excessive gamification. I should look up your book. Just the other day I noticed how instances of "level up" and "unlocked" are increasingly common ways of describing achievements and I dislike it because it implies your success is measured inside of structured constrains designed by others to control your behavior.
Question: what / how were the were the discussions on to not include leaderboards, streaks, etc? What what was the primary motivation behind the game? From your comment, it seems play to play rather play to win?
The goal of a fitness app, including gamified fitness apps, should be to help users achieve healthy fitness goals.
Theoretically, streaks are a way to encourage and recognise commitment – often people will use streaks to motivate themselves in writing a book or completing chores. However, it's inadvisable for people to exercise every single day for weeks on end. Of course, apps could build in rest days and lower-impact exercises to make streaks easier to maintain, but very few do and even then, it's hard to know the user's context – perhaps they've been ill and they need even longer to rest. It's pretty clear to me that streaks, as commonly implemented, are merely a way to boost retention at the expense of the user's interest.
I think leaderboards are fine in some circumstances. We use them in our own one-off virtual race events so people can benchmark themselves against others. However, we don't maintain weekly or monthly leaderboards for fitness in general because they end up being boring or even demotivating. When I had a Fitbit, the rankings were always the same, the walkers in London always trouncing the drivers in the US. I expect the only effect was to make the people at the bottom of the leaderboard depressed. For everyone who feels great ascending a leaderboard, there's someone who feels bad descending it.
My career in fitness gamification is based around the idea making exercising genuinely fun is the best way to motivate people. Competitive sports do that for a lot of people, but it can be relatively inaccessible. Zombies, Run! uses immersive audio storytelling and actual gameplay rather than just badges and XP and levels to make things exciting. It's not for everyone but it works for a lot of people.
I can’t answer for OP and I hope he does. I can say I’m designing a product at my company and have our team a set of golden rules for it.
Among them is we will respect the user. From being fair on pricing to data collected. If I get a hint of someone not in line with that, they would be off the team, no debate.
We’re lucky that the thing we’re building is not our core business, and it only has to be successful, not MBA-milk-everything-you-can-all-the-time successful.
For me, I have the power to make this a reality. For someone that doesn’t, do what you can.
That said, I’m more sanguine about gamification than the author. There are indeed many games to choose from, but the ones that are most concerning that those we have little choice but to play, whether they’re from our employers or in our schools and colleges, or built into devices and platforms like the Apple Watch and iOS.
If you’re interested in this subject, I wrote a book critiquing gamification called “You’ve Been Played” - the NYT called it illuminating and persuasive!