Early this afternoon during Erik Bethke's discussion of the cross-over between Virtual Worlds and Massively multiplayer games, he hit on a fantastic idea that I'd love to see explored. What if you could incentivize people to do things that were good for them by giving them goal structures? Players provide goals for themselves all the time in ostensibly 'goal-less' virtual worlds, from Second Life to Club Penguin.
In an aside, Bethke noted that assigning goal structures - reasons to play - is actually a fairly easy part of game design. Though it takes some effort to make those goals fun and interesting, working them up in the first place is a fairly trivial piece of work.
So what if you could make eating right and exercising fun by leveling up and earning loot?
He was waxing on about the love people have for reward structures; as you'll see in our writeup of the session, much of what he had to talk about surrounded the success behind goal structures. On sites like eBay and Amazon, this mentality leads to 'players' trying to get high reputations while buying and selling items.
Viewing games as pastimes rather than stand alone complexes is a natural outgrowth of this viewpoint. So, why not apply those kinds of ideas to other hobbies. Why not offer rewards to stamp or coin collectors via an online game, or reward players via a website when they participate in a social services project like Habitat for Humanity?
Taking this a step further, it's easy to see how much fun such an idea could be when applied to something that's healthful but requires willpower to follow through with. A game structure that rewards you for getting regular checkups might be one example; perhaps the IRS would have more success getting people to file their taxes if there were Achievement points associated with an early filing?
One that Mr. Bethke mentioned specifically was the possibility of an exercise-related online game. In fact, the Weight Watchers program already offers rudimentary elements of this kind of an idea. Members use a points system to regulate their food intake, and meeting (self-assigned) weight loss goals results in fripperies like gold stars or smiley faces at group sessions.
In the Weight Watchers system, exercise 'earns' members extra points, which can be used to have more food or variety. All the elements are already there: metrics, goal structures, positive reinforcement (in this case even more valuable than the usual online kind).
Taking that one step further, what if you had a wrist-watch like device that actively tracked your exercise with something like an accelerometer? Some people would cheat, of course, but regular users could see their statistics uploaded to a server that would dole out rewards based on activity. Community aspects could be enhanced through networking, forums on specific types of exercise, or even community challenges not unlike the regular Xbox Live community events.
Bethke's ideas are fascinating, and his work on GoPets is some standout work regularly unappreciated by players focusing on big-budget AAA titles. Here's hoping the weight-loss and tax-filing software of tomorrow offers us a few 1ups with our medicine.
