BEWARE THIS GAMIFICATION PITFALL

When it comes to gamification, story-based narratives are said to be the holy grail of intrinsic motivation.

And with good reason.

Human beings are emotional creatures, and well-told stories can hook you in, making you participate and engage with the material deeply.

Let’s take a look at a couple of good examples that use stories as such:

• For a gamified learning experience on IT security, an artificial infosec breach is created within the organization’s firewall. And learners are asked to identify the sources from where it could have occurred, and to basically help plug the breach at the earliest.
• To gamify emergency response training, a story is created around a natural calamity or an accident, and learners here are required to save as many lives as possible in as little time as possible. All the restrictions associated with an actual incident are applicable here, including limited access to equipment and facilities in which to provide emergency care at such a site.

Contrast these examples with straightforward presentation of content with no story (maybe with some points and badges thrown in), and we can already see that the story-based approach is much more effective.

On the other hand, consider what happens when you use a narrative that’s not inherently related to the content. A few examples:

• An e-learning program on negotiating with customers is set in a fantastic land where you need to negotiate with neighboring kingdoms and convince them to support you in a war.
• A course on types of knives and swords revolves around a military-themed drill.
• An onboarding training program is set in a faraway galaxy where you need to destroy a bunch of aliens in order to move forward.

In the above examples, is there a connection between the core topics and the narrative structures used to make them interesting? Maybe, but only a little.

I believe these examples fit the definition of structural gamification, as elucidated by Karl Kapp. Here, we are adding a story-based narrative (which is a game element), though the content itself does not undergo any change.

The stories by themselves aren’t bad. In fact, they are even well executed. And they do serve to engage learners by drawing them in and hooking them emotionally. (I know, because I’ve gone through these learning experiences. I’ve even helped create one of them.)

So what’s wrong with these examples?

The somewhat elaborate setup of the narrative means that the learner needs to spend time reading and understanding the story and its characters before they get to the key components of the course. That’s a TON of extraneous load.

What do we mean by ‘extraneous’? Merriam-Webster describes the word as: ‘not forming an essential or vital part’. When the story is not an essential or vital part of the core content, it becomes an extraneous element.

Another way to look at it is to see what would happen if we removed the story from the course. Would the content still stand? If yes, then the story is an extraneous element.

In learning design terms, extraneous is one of the three types of cognitive load as defined by John Sweller. This is the kind of load that we want to avoid.

There’s also a third angle. What if learners do not like the theme or story you’ve picked? In such a case, it can have the exact opposite effect of what you intended. Instead of hooking learners in and engaging them, the story can end up creating disengagement.

To understand this, consider the third example I shared above – “An onboarding training program is set in a faraway galaxy where you need to destroy a bunch of aliens in order to move forward.”

The theme of the story corresponds with the theme of the content. A faraway galaxy is similar to a new organization where you don’t know anyone. Destroying aliens is akin to conquering your new co-workers. Don’t get me wrong… I’m talking about winning these colleagues over, not knocking them off.

Still, the story needs to be told so that the learner is drawn in and engaged.

I experienced this course as a learner. Though the narrative was pertinent and told well, I found myself wondering how much more time I’d have to spend digesting it before getting to the actual content. And when the content was presented later, it had no bearing on the story, even though the two continued to be loosely connected throughout the course.

And this is what triggered my thought process on this topic.

As learning designers, we continue to chase learner engagement. At the same time, we squander it away by forcing them to do something that’s not even important – spending time digesting an unconnected narrative.

The solution? Allow learners to opt out of the story if they want to.

Now, this isn’t an argument for catering to the learning preferences of learners. If a curriculum requires the material to be presented in a certain modality or with a particular approach, by all means, go for it. You don’t need to consider individual likes and dislikes.

I’m also not talking about those who loathe games or gamification in general. If the game elements that we’ve added do not increase the cognitive load or dilute the core learning experience, then we don’t need to consider alternatives for those.

Let’s say that in the third example above, we are assigning points for every alien destroyed. This, while being annoying to some learners, does not necessarily interfere with the learning per se. So we can leave this element be.

However, for stories like the ones we’ve seen above, I believe we need to certainly give learners an alternative. The trick here is to ensure a watertight experience if they choose to skip the narrative. Also, we need to continue to hold them accountable for their learning (and behavior, where applicable).

Here’s how I think we can do that: Create a simpler alternative to the story. And wherever the story appears in the course, programmatically replace it with the alternative. Remember to completely separate the story elements from the core content. This shouldn’t be too difficult since the content is anyway not intertwined with the story (which is why we’re having this discussion in the first place).

These are the parts where I believe the story is mostly likely to occur:

1. The introductory elements, before the core content is introduced
2. Set up for activities or other scenario-based questions
3. Feedback for these activities / questions
4. Menu / topic navigation
5. End-of-course quiz / assessment
6. Course conclusion

I agree that it’s a bit of extra work to create these alternative paths, but if you are creating this kind of a gamified experience, then I can safely assume that you already have the necessary programming skills at your disposal.

If it’s planned and executed well, it could spell the difference between engaged and disengaged learners.

So, do you agree? Disagree? I’d love to know what you think.

Written by Srividya Kumar, Co-Founder @ Learnnovators