How to Make an Interactive Experience Meaningful
By: Matthew Adelman
Tags: Humanism, Intrinsic Motivation, Game Design, Psychology

“Studies of older Americans find that one of the best predictors of happiness is whether a person considers his or her life to have a purpose.” Mark Lepper

I think this Mark Lepper quote also works for interactive design. Allow me to explain.

When you play a video game, you most likely will invest a great amount of time sitting in a chair, looking at a screen, and perhaps maybe even skipping one of Maslow’s basic needs like a bathroom break or a snack. It is important to feel like the time on a game is worthwhile. In other words, there’s a legitimate purpose behind the time sink.

How do you do it? How can an interactive experience be designed to leave people feeling like the experience was meaningful? Interactive Designers are in luck. Meet Dr. Mark Lepper.

Meet the Chef

Mark Lepper earned a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1966 and later attended Yale University where he received a Ph.D. in Social and Developmental Psychology in 1970.

Since 1982, Lepper has been a Professor of Psychology at his alma mater, Stanford, where he is currently the Chairman of the Psychology Department. He has been known for his work in Social Psychology which includes research on the Hostile Media Effect, Self-Reinforcement, and Social Interference. Lepper is also known for his research on how children are influenced by extrinsic and intrinsic rewards.

Extrinsic rewards are rewards that can be touched and are clearly visible. Think about the bi-weekly paycheck an employee will receive or the trophy a championship football team will earn. On the other hand, intrinsic rewards cannot be touched or seen. They instead, resemble the positive feelings of an individual after participating in an activity that is fulfilling. Examples include feelings of contentment after finishing an entertaining novel, or the satisfaction a runner might feel after beating their PR in a race.

The 5 C’s

Lepper’s research on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation led him to an important conclusion: Extrinsic rewards weaken the learning experience when overused. Instead, he stressed the importance of intrinsic motivation.

This raises the question, how can an interactive activity be designed to be intrinsically motivating?

The answer: Lepper identified the “5 C’s” of intrinsic motivation.

They are: challenge, curiosity, control, competence, and context.

Challenge involves the level of difficulty associated with a game or interactive media. To apply this “ingredient,” the game or activity should be neither completely easy nor completely hard. Instead, the activity should be at an intermediate difficulty where the player is able to find success without feeling like a game is impossible.

Curiosity can be implemented in a game by making sure that there is no shortage of activities to do and areas to explore. Procedural-Generated games like Terraria and Minecraft strive in evoking the curiosity of most players by providing a seemingly infinite amount of content.

An overview of how Procedural Generation is applied to video games, Source: Extra Credits

Control relates to the tendency of players to feel like they are controlling the game, not the other way around. Wii Sports is a good example of a game that perfectly incorporates the “control” aspect. By incorporating motion-sensors, movements of the remote are similar to the movements of playing a particular sport in the real world.

Demonstration of how to use the Wii remote to play Wii Table Tennis, Source: ContraNetwork

Competence can be attributed to the feelings of success or contentment with one’s progress. In interactive games, to foster competence in a player, the pacing should be relevant to the player’s acquired skills and abilities. Ultimately, players should feel like they are improving as the game progresses. More importantly, the player should be able to find success relatively quickly in order to reinforce confidence.

Context simply refers to an imaginary or fictitious environment that the player can engage with in a game or any form of interactive media. RPG(Role-Playing Games) like The Pokemon Series and Undertale have been successful in applying this ingredient by setting up interesting narratives.

A brief explanation of the plot of Undertale, Source: JakeTheGreat

Why Lepper Might Like Mario Kart

To put all five of Lepper’s “5 C’s” into the perspective of one game, I selected a classic game from my own childhood: Mario Kart (Nintendo Wii).

Challenge in Mario Kart is multidimensional. Part of the challenge in the game is racing against others who will throw hazardous projectiles at you such as the red shells, banana peels, and thunderclouds. Beyond simply competing with others, players have to avoid obstacles and enemies on the race tracks. I recall being petrified by Chain Chomps while racing in Mario Circuit but there are many others such as Shy Guys, Goombas, and the infamous Piranha Plants. Each map that the player races on also offers its own unique hazards. For example, on the map: “N64 Wario’s Gold Mine,” players have to contend with bats and gold carts as they race on a railway. On the map: Bowser’s Castle, racers have to deal with a multitude of different hazards, including explosive fireballs, lava-flowing geysers, and a moving floor that distorts the player’s view.

A player races in Bowser’s Castle in Mario Kart Wii, Source: GamerJGB

Curiosity in Mario Kart is attributed to many different components of the game. A notable example is the fact that there are more than 30 different race tracks to choose from, so there is no shortage of places to explore. Additionally, music in Mario Kart is not generic. Each map that the players race has its own unique song or theme. There is also the incentive to play the game often as certain vehicles and characters can only be unlocked after the player reaches certain milestones.

The controls in Mario Kart Wii are straightforward. Players control the movements of their karts simply by moving the Wii remote left and right. Nintendo even released the Wii Wheel in an attempt to make the controls look more like a steering wheel in a typical car instead of a remote. This was a smart move by Nintendo because it incorporated an aspect of reality into an otherwise fictional game, and provided players with a sense that they really are in control of a vehicle instead of an imaginary virtual car.

Demonstration of how to use the Wii Wheel, Source: Gadgets and Gears

Mario Kart Wii does a good job in promoting feelings of competence in players with its use of Item Boxes. In the game, Item Boxes are multi-colored floating boxes with question marks on them. When an Item Box is picked up by the player, the player is given an item that can be used advantageously. Item Boxes can change the dynamics of a race fairly quickly when used. A player in last place for example, can immediately move ahead of other racers if they receive the “Bullet Bill” item. This item, when activated, gives the player a rocket boost that allows them to move down the race track significantly faster than the other players. Another example is the “Blue Shell” item, which can be used to stop the racer in first place from moving for a short period of time. Ultimately, Item Boxes can help to reinforce the confidence of players by allowing them to redeem themselves and change the outcome of a race almost instantly.

Item Boxes in Mario Kart Wii, Source: https://www.supercheats.com/guides/mario-kart-wii/items

Last but certainly not least, context is also clearly recognizable in Mario Kart. The game introduces characters from other games in the Super Mario franchise that many of the players have likely already seen including Bowser, Luigi, and Daisy among others. In many of these other Mario games, it might not be possible to play as one of these characters, so allowing players in Mario Kart Wii to select one of them can be powerful in allowing players to identify with the characters that they know and love.

Depiction of all 24 characters in Mario Kart Wii, Source: https://www.keengamer.com/articles/features/quizzes/mario-kart-wii-quiz-characters-and-vehicles/

A Game That Falls Short? Ride to Hell Retribution

After doing some research and attempting to find consensus on one of the most poorly made video games, I seemed to come across multiple different game review websites that gave the action-adventure game “Ride to Hell: Retribution” terrible ratings. GameSpot gave the strongly criticized video game an “Abysmal” 1/10, while Metacritic PC Version gave it a 16/100 indicating “overwhelming dislike.”

Review of Ride to Hell: Retribution, Source: GameSpot

One of the major areas of dysfunction in Ride to Hell: Retribution is its controls. In an in-depth review of the game, GameSpot criticized the key controls for not being remappable. Essentially, the controls in the game cannot be reconfigured whatsoever.

The game has also been criticized for its terrible movement mechanics. For example, movements of the character’s bike often register with delay and aren’t smooth. This is similar to the fighting/hand-to-hand combat mechanics of the main character where hits are delayed and oftentimes unresponsive.

Lastly, load scenes in the game are extremely long and unnecessary, causing the player’s time to be wasted. Instead of “getting to the point” and progressing through the story quickly, the player is often forced to press “enter” to advance past a loading scene, which may not come intuitively to a player that is playing this game.

Mark Lepper would prefer a game where the controls can easily be identified and where the player’s actions make an impact. He wouldn’t want the controls of a game to interfere with the player’s ability to explore and find success. Plagued by glitches and bugs, Ride to Hell: Retribution unfortunately falls short in satisfying Lepper’s ingredients to an intrinsically motivating interactive experience.

In the End, the Experience Matters

Mark Lepper’s “5 C’s” provide the groundwork for any game designer to develop a game that is intrinsically motivating. It’s important to understand however, that while these “ingredients” can serve as the building blocks to designing a successful game, game designers should also think about the kind of experience they want their players to have. The impact the game has on the mind of the player is just as important as the intricacies and inner-workings that go into its development.

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