Drawing Inspiration from World of Warcraft: Gamification Design Elements for Behavior Change Technologies

Abstract

Human–computer interaction (HCI) researchers are increasingly designing technologies for behavior change, drawing on different perspectives, theories and models. In recent years, a new approach has started to be explored within the HCI community: gamification is more and more used by researchers and designers to drive users’ behaviors toward specific directions. However, this design technique has showed several limits, especially for the choice of game elements to be employed. Drawing inspiration from the videogame world, this research wants to suggest the employment of game elements that could contribute and support behavior change processes in different settings. Looking at the Massively Multi Player Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) as a source of inspiration, an ethnographic study in World of Warcraft (WoW) has been conducted. We found that WoW is capable of driving its players’ behavior by employing incentives and penalties, as well as by providing social support and favoring mentorship. By creating a persistent world, supporting the recollection of players’ past memories, leveraging narratives and designing the time of play, WoW further affects players’ habits, increasing their retention in the game world. Findings from the fieldwork grounded the development of a set of design strategies that suggest how to use such elements in the design of interactive systems addressed to change users’ behaviors: for example, they recommend to design incentive systems that exploit different scheduling, as well as to create digital mementos to trigger positive memories that may support the change. Such strategies were then compared with game elements that can be found in other MMORPGs to allow for a greater generalization, and discussed with reference to HCI literature.