Ideate to Win

Recently, I’ve learned a bit about the theory of cognitive dissonance – Wikipedia defines cognitive dissonance as:  a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously. In a state of dissonance, people may feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment.  Wikipedia further defines cognitive dissonance –  The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements.

As a game designer, I’m always looking for techniques to get players to do what I want them to do.  Therefore, I find it useful to design game mechanics with principles of cognitive dissonance in mind.  This way I can create “problems” that the player will feel compelled to “fix” and I can direct them to experience the important features of the game.

In Farmville, the designers created a mastery system which rewards a simple decorative sign when the player plants enough crops of that type.  Since I wanted to be the best Farmville player among my friends, I was ready to do whatever it took to get more mastery signs than any of my friends.  I spent about two weeks harvesting over 1000 eggplant crops just to get that sign.  It was a grind, but extra rewarding in the end since I felt I made a huge accomplishment!  Then, I moved on to pineapples and didn’t stop until I had 10 mastery signs total!

In the Farmville example, I already had the believe that I needed to be the best farmer among my friends.  But what can we do when players don’t already have a motivational belief?  I found the following powerpoint slide on the web explaining how to do this in a sales environment:

It seems in an in-person setting we can ask customers to get them thinking that they “need” a certain object to create this cognitive dissonance.  In a game setting, there are multiple different ways to achieve the same result.  Here are a few ideas:

• Have social leader boards scoring in-game tasks – competitive players will want to be the best of them all.  We can motivate them by messaging, “Do you have what it takes to be the best?”
• Have in-game characters request objects from the player – compassionate players will want to give their characters what they want.  We can motivate them by messaging, “Do you want to be a good caretaker?  Make your animals dreams come true and they’ll think you’re the best!”
• Add completion/mastery meters wherever appropriate – completionists will want to fill these meters.  We can motivate them by messaging, “Are you up for the challenge?  Complete these goals to gain eternal glory!”
• Add unfinished items to the playspace (buildings under construction) – decorators will want to finish construction to maintain a nice looking playspace.  We can motivate them by messaging, “Do you want to have the best looking farm?  Complete your buildings now!”

They also had a slide which reminds me of my post, My Name is Krysta, and I’m a Whale.  In the post, I explain how the Steiff toy company was able to up-sell me to make more purchases by tugging on my emotions.

However, a game designer must always make sure the player has a way to fix the object which is giving them the cognitive dissonance.  If there is something the player wants, we must create a way for them to get it otherwise they’ll lose interest in the game or feel cheated.  I’ve had this experience while playing The Tribez game.  I had spent about $20 to finish building the raft in the playspace only to find out that I couldn’t yet use the raft with no reason why.  Needless to say, I have no plans to spend any more money on the game!

In summary, give your players interesting “problems” to fix, give them a path (or two!) to fix them and they’ll keep playing and paying in your games