AKA Relatedness.  The sense of doing something that contributes to an idea that’s bigger than yourself.  In a weird way, this is how we get our sense of “belonging” and being related to the world/universe at large.

This is not really something you can add to game, or a site.  All you can do is place yourself near potential purposes that you think people might be traveling down.  Health Month, for example, sits next to the river of health, sustainability, quality of life.  750 Words sits next to the river of creativity, self-expression, and self-knowledge.

By being near potential sources of meaning in peoples’  lives, you can tap into the highly renewable motivational energy that is generated when people move along their purpose paths.

Jane McGonigal‘s EVOKE and many of her other games are good examples of games high on the purpose-meter.  Kiva is a good example of a website that highly aligns with purpose.

I think this is definitely an important motivation element in the playdeck, even though there’s really not much a game can do but align itself with purposes (therefore needing to both choose one and to get out of the way of it) that then use the game more than the game uses it.  Just doing that, however, is a big step, and one that I think games are going to be more interested in doing in the next few years.

Score: 13

• Effectiveness as a motivational tool: Very high (5 out of 5)
  
• Intrinsic or extrinsic: The very definition of intrinsic (5 out of 5)
• Difficulty to implement: Medium.  You have position your product along a purpose, and let it have its influence. (3 out of 5)

The Self-Determination Theory uses the word competence, and Daniel Pink uses the word mastery in his book, Drive.  Different states of the same journey.  And really, the motivational element here is simply the desire to get better and better at something.  Before you’re a master, and before you’re even competent, the joy and reward of just getting better at something is intensely powerful.

On 750 Words I use competence as a motivator by tracking how long it takes you to write 750 words, and how many times you were distracted.

On Health Month, I use competence as a motivator by giving you a “grade” at how closely you were able to follow each of your self-imposed rules each  month.

Nike+ and RunKeeper use competence by congratulating you on your fastest or longest runs.

The best way to play around with competence and mastery, in my opinion, is to provide people with a mirror of their activity.  Tell them what they just did, but didn’t realize, and remind them about how they have done in the past, but forgot.  Give them stats that summarize their behavior, and let them use that to make small incremental improvements over time.  It’s one of those things we’re really bad at… knowing if we’re making a small improvement or not.  We like big, obvious change.  But by keeping track of behavior and reporting back when you break a personal record, or improve your grade, or whatever… that feedback allows the long, slow, progress from competence to mastery to gain a little shape and form that it otherwise wouldn’t have.

Improving at something is highly rewarding… if you can detect it.  Game mechanics can help you detect the smallest improvements and magnify them so that they provide you with the fuel to keep improving.

A couple of my favorite books on this topic:

• Mastery
• One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

Score: 13

• Effectiveness as a motivational tool: Very high (5 out of 5)
  
• Intrinsic or extrinsic: The very definition of intrinsic (5 out of 5)
• Difficulty to implement: Medium.  It’s just about recording what has happened and highlighting small improvements. (3 out of 5)

Autonomy is the first element of the Intrinsic Reward Trinity outlined in Dan Pink’s book, Drive (autonomy, mastery, and purpose).  It is the ability to make choices about your life, the ability to direct our own lives.

An example of autonomy is rather amazing ROWE (results-only work environment), which is a management style that rewards employees based on results, and not on hours worked.  So, rather than expect someone to be in the office between certain hours every week, expect them to get a certain amount done.  This gives the employee the autonomy to figure out how they are best able to get the work done.

Another example, companies like Google that do the 20% personal time where you can work on non-primary-project specific things. Or hack days.

It’s not quite the same as independence, as it emphasizes choice rather than lack of connection or dependence on others.  Someone can choose to work closely with others, if it helps them get their work done.

In a game context, autonomy could be translated as the ability for a player to choose their level of commitment and their style of play within the game.  For example, Health Month allows people to choose their own rules every month.  They can choose both the number of rules adopted, as well as how difficult they want to play each rule (ie. No alcohol or limit to X number of drinks per week).

Score: 12

• Effectiveness as a motivational tool: High (4 out of 5)
  
• Intrinsic or extrinsic: The very definition of intrinsic (5 out of 5)
• Difficulty to implement: Medium, as it requires giving up control (3 out of 5)

I’ve gotten feedback from two people I highly admire (Gary Wolf and Jesse Schell) that perhaps Health Month might be focused too much on extrinsic rewards, and that I should read Punished by Rewards and Drive.  So, that’s what I’m doing.  I think I’m far enough in to be able to process their primary arguments.

I’ve been sort of obsessed with collecting motivators lately.  There’s SCVNGR’s Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck, there’s Jesse Schell’s Art of Game Design: Book of Lenses, and now there are these “3rd Drive” motivators that pull together all of the elements of intrinsic reward.

I think I’m going to go through them, one by one, and rate them and see how they apply to effective motivation, “intrinsic” or “extrinsic” motivation, self-tracking (ala Quantified Self), examples that I’m aware of, and finally how it can or should be applied to Health Month.

Let’s see how far I get.