Which has to do with the person's sense of ability.
Their sense that they are
accomplishing something, solving problems, surmounting obstacles.
They are achieving something within the activity.
The second one is autonomy, which says the person feels like they're in control.
I'm the one making the choices, it's not someone else telling me to do this.
It's me doing it by my own free choice.
Meaningful choices.
And the third one is relatedness, and by this Deci and Ryan, means something like.
Your activity is connected to something beyond yourself.
That could be some sense of meaning or purpose.
It could be, I am doing this because I'm
using less energy, and that's good for the planet.
It could be, I'm doing this because it will help my company, and I
believe in my company, and want to be a good team player in the organization.
Or it could, be I'm doing this with friends.
Social interaction is an element of relatedness, which
we see a great deal, with regard to games.
So, lets look at one example quickly, from a gamified side, and
how some of the standard kinds of game elements we've talked about.
Can activate, these three motivators,
of intrinsic motivation under self-determination theory.
And the point here is that game elements are not necessarily one or the other.
It's not that a badge is inherently
an external motivator, or inherently an internal motivator.
It can be one or the other, depending
on the context, and the way that it's applied.
So, these examples are about a site called Fitrocaracy, a site to
encourage people to exercise, to work out and to get into shape.
And Fitrocracy uses all of the standard
kinds of PBL type game elements we've seen.
But they do it in a fairly coherent sophisticated way, which
is really targeted towards intrinsically motivating
people, to engage in the activity.
So, first here, this is what happens on Fitocracy when you level up.
You get a certain number of points.
Standard game element.
It says you are a level up, now you're now at level
three, and here is the badge that you get for leveling up.
But notice how this is all integrated together, it's not just you've leveled up.
It's, congratulations!
You've earned it!
earning, i.e.
A sense of competence that you've done something
hard, that got you to that next level.
You're now level three.
Awesome!
And the click button says I'm awesome!
And you can share it with your friends.
To tell them how awesome you are.
And this is part of the overall structure of this site.
It really wants to make you feel good about yourself, when
you exercise, and it wants you to see this as a challenge.
And a challenge that when you overcome some of those challenges, when you start
to tag and, and report your workouts, and start to move up, and how.
Effective your workouts are, that means you are leveling up,
not just in some abstract sense, but you are getting better.
You're getting into better shape.
So, that's all about competence, and again, it's in how the site
is designed, to make the person feel, that their activity is achieving something.
Mastering something, as opposed to just doing something, for no particular reason.
Second one is autonomy.
And here typically in games and gamification, the issue is choices.
How much freedom does the user have?
The games that are heavily structured and scaffolded, where you have
two choices but the game will push you to just one choice.
And there's very little freedom within those choices, tend to activate
less autonomy, than the more sandbox type game environments, where the user
has lots of scope for choice, and within gamification, when services give
users lots of options, choose your own adventure, decide where you go.
That tends, tends to activate more autonomy.
So, here we see on Fitocracy.
You get to choose your interests.
And you get to custom build what sets of challenges that you
have, based on the kinds of workouts you want to engage in.
And some of them are groups, some of them are individual.
The point is, your decisions about which path you want to take, customize the site.
So you feel like the experience is one that you are in control of.
It's not telling you.
Cardio is what matters, you get to choose that.
And then, once you make those choices, it
gives you a whole set of different potential quests.
So, it's not just that you need to engage in one type of workout.
Here's a whole bunch of different workouts, this
one's only worth ten points, this one's worth 300.
But obviously, the first one's a lot easier.
So, you get to make choices, and trade off what's more important to you.
Autonomy.
The decisions are in the control of the
player, not predetermined across the board by the game.
Finally, relatedness, here in Fitocarcy we see a very strong social element.
It's better with friends.
Recruit your friends.
Help keep each other motivated.
Here's a pop-up that you see some other people on the site.
And it'll recommend people you follow.
Here's groups, you can join together with groups that are interested
in particular kinds of workouts, who have particular kinds of questions.
The whole experience is structured very much around, you're not in this alone.
This is not just about you, sitting in
a gym, or in your basement, and lifting weights.
This is about some activity, that you engage in
with a community, it's bigger than you, that's relatedness.
So, three good examples of applying
self-determination theory, to make a gamified
site, even when using the standard
PBL elements, feel more intrinsically motivating.
If you're interested in more on
self-determination theory, two good books to recommend.
One is a book called Drive by Daniel Pink, and
this is a kind of business popularization of self-determination theory.
He recounts the history of the work by Deci and Ryan.
And then shows how this kind of approach can be applied in business, and gives
some great examples of companies, that are
using these kinds intrinsic motivators for great success.
Really well written book, if you want to.
Understand how this, these concepts apply in business.
It's not about gamification per se, but it's very
relevant to the discussions that we have in this course.
The second one is by Richard Ryan, and a co-author, Scott
Rigby and it is specifically applying self-dermination theory to video games.
It's called, Glued to Games.
And it shows some of their research on, specifically, how
video games can activate these three motivators of self-determination theory.
So, ideally, every gamification implementation,
should be based on some attempt
to engage these aspects of
intrinsic motivation, which self-determination theory outlines