If you want communities to grow and thrive around your products, you need to consider thriving early in your process — when it’s less expensive and you have more opportunity to create amazing things. This requires a conscious shift.
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Take responsibility for the impact of design decisions on player behavior and interaction (upstream) and community thriving (downstream).
- Embrace a proactive process to benefit players and make our work more successful.
The need to rethink
We all want to make successful games — games that invite people in, engage players over time, and build an audience and following. We have all seen how negative social dynamics can stand in the way of success. Quite often our companies, our metrics, and our resources have become organized to respond to bad actors. The thinking goes: if we could just eliminate disruptive behavior from digital play, all would be well.
And yet, research on social dynamics indicates there is a better way. By focusing on design, particularly the predictable spots where design prompts friction or tension rather than healthy human interaction, we can create a product that benefits players more.
We can shift our approach. Instead of reacting to problems, we can be proactive and recognize the ways that our choices in design facilitate and cue human behavior within the game. We can learn from research on thriving, resilient communities how to optimize for healthful social interactions. Shifting from reactive to proactive will reduce the friction of game play. It is also more sustainable for companies, as investment can move away from risk response and toward creative output.
Anchors of proactive design
Most companies wait until they’ve built a product before they’re concerned about helping their audience thrive. To a certain extent this is understandable, as they may not yet have an audience.
However, online communities are typically built around products. These products provide the basis for personal and shared activity and identity. If they don’t create the right conditions, the products themselves undermine the potential for their communities and audiences to thrive. And once launched, the kinds of product changes that might improve conditions are usually too expensive to make.
Thriving in digital spaces happens when and because conditions are right. As designers we create these conditions. We can engineer digital thriving into the game experience by focusing on three anchors of proactive design:
- Avoiding predictable conflicts that will undermine social interaction
- Creating activities that achieve personal goals while benefiting others
- Setting and reinforcing clear behavior expectations
With these anchors for design in mind, games are better oriented toward digital thriving.
Value of proactive design
Understanding how a proactive approach benefits both your audience and your company can help you make the case for a shift away from “how it’s always been done.”
Player value:
- More rewarding and fun experiences
- Less exposure to disruptive behavior
- Greater feelings of safety and trust
- Sense of accomplishment and belonging
Company value:
- More engaging products
- Greater retention and organic acquisition
- Less long-term support cost
- Decreased likelihood of reactive development
Toward a proactive process
Moving from reactive to proactive won’t happen automatically, however. It takes a reframe of process. The following shifts in design mindset and approach are crucial to success:
| Instead of… | Aim to… |
| Waiting until players complain or you see behavior issues to think about player dynamics | Think early about opportunities, eventualities, and repercussions of design decisions |
| Assuming that key behaviors are inherently part of the product design | Deliberately build for thriving by setting OKRs that lead to features, systems, and services that target key behaviors |
| Completely relying on punitive systems to deal with undermining behaviors | Reduce and mitigate social friction through risk analysis and design |
| “Carrots and sticks” Treating emergent behaviors as things to either bribe or punish | Seek “causes and bricks” Looking for root causes of behavior issues |
| Generic and status quo patterns Intuiting or copying old patterns because “that’s what players expect” | Find fresh and delightful patterns Exploring and committing to new patterns when they best contribute to thriving |
| Not caring about what affects personal needs, expectations, or social dynamics | Start with core values by getting clear on what you believe and putting core values in core loops |
Now what?
Continue learning how to be proactive with a design checklist: Sources of Conflict.
References
- Aknin, L. et al. (2001). Happiness runs in a circular motion: Evidence for a positive feedback loop between prosocial spending and happiness.
- Atkins, P. et al. (2019). Prosocial: Using Evolutionary Science to Build Productive, Equitable, and Collaborative Groups.
- Bayn, D. (2019). Social Behavior Design.
- Cushing, D. & Miller, E. (2020). Creating Great Places: Evidence-based Urban Design for Health and Wellbeing.
- Gehl, J. (2011). Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space.
- New_ Public. (2022). Civic Signals Research.
