Variable reward is not all there is

Simplistic view on variable rewards and by extension motivation and particularly gamification is troubling me. It started with Hooked. Hooked by no means is a worthless reading, it’s a good take on product. However, the book and its summaries have to come with two major points (sources in comments):

🎮 I’ve been seeing gamification efforts minimized to variable rewards, often unexpected random ones. Successful gamification is a mix of strategies and in fact, various types of rewards. Prominent gamification guru and author of Actionable Gamification Yu-kai Chou has suggested 6 effective types of rewards some of which are: “eastern egg” (unexpected reward), fixed action reward, random rewards and prize pacing (collecting big known reward bit by bit). Chou like many others emphasise a need for a mixed bag of rewards, properly timed, matching the player type and much more. Gamification is multi layered: take Duolingo, the legend of gamification, find an article in the comments that analysed all aspects of Duolingo against Chou’s Octalysis framework, Bartle’s player types and more. Hooked alone would not be able to explain its success.

🐶 The very basis of Hooked model is behaviouralism. Typical criticism of behaviouralism would include dismissal of emotion, cognition and social nature of human life. Just like behaviorism, variable rewards concept originates from Skinner and Pavlov studies, who drew conclusions from studying rats and dogs. In a twisted way it makes sense that Hooked is based on these studies: the type of product use the book promotes is compulsive, almost desperate. Many products will not get away with it. This aside even if we assume purely behaviorist habit loop there are still some major gaps.

Jason Hreha, behavioral consultant for a bunch of tech companies and psychology graduate, writes in his article, “Over the years, practitioners took research from the Behaviorists and used it for a variety of different purposes, but it mostly took off with animal trainers. In fact, it seems like animal training is where behaviorist ideas have had the most use and success. Animal trainers realized pretty quickly the importance of variable rewards, but only after an animal had learned how to do a behaviour via a continuous reward schedule.”

He suggests that “Continuous reward schedules are more effective than variable rewards at the beginning stages of the habit formation process”.

Bottom line: I would not go after gamification and stickiness only equipped with variable rewards. It needs to be put in a broader context with the help of gamification experts like Chou and Bartle; last but not least some research suggests that overload of rewards may dull the experience (e.g. Overjustification effect) so I’d at least consider motivation theories rooted in cognitive psychology and multi-disciplinary ones in contrast to pure behaviourism.

Sources:

Gamification Octalysis by Yu-kai Chou https://yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/octalysis-complete-gamification-framework/

Contextual reward types by Yu-kai Chou https://yukaichou.com/marketing-gamification/six-context-types-rewards-gamification/

Bartle’s Player type

Constructive ciricism of Hooked model by Jason Hrera https://www.thebehavioralscientist.com/articles/hooked-how-to-build-habit-forming-products-is-wrong

How Duolingo uses gamification by Jasmine Bilham https://raw.studio/blog/how-duolingo-utilises-gamification/