The Psychology of Gamification… Part One

Psychology tells us people don’t like to be forced or dragged to the destination. They like to be the masters of their own destiny. Most people like to feel in control.

We’ve built this into Black Box VR, by allowing users to select which exercises they do. However, we still want users to get a well-rounded workout. Because of this, we built the AI to intelligently send Champions that direct the user down a well-balanced workout path while they maintain autonomy. This is also in our system with the various ladders we have created so users can DECIDE which ladder they would like to put effort into.

This choice, builds a deeper connection with the overall game and experience.

Again, this is simple psychology. We like to know where we’re going. We like to know where we are in the process. Otherwise, as players, we are in the dark growing increasingly wary.

We address this in Black Box VR with our ladder unlocks so that users can always see where they are in a particular journey. However, there is room for further growth here. One idea would be to design a “Hero’s Journey” map into our app. This map would be based on a Hero Member’s fitness goals. This could show them a customized journey of where they can go and how to get there that pertains to not only game features but their individual fitness goals.

With our Dynamic Resistance Machine we have invented that pairs with the VR environment, there are a lot of future features we can unlock. In the future we could optimize for the entire NASM OPT scale from hypertrophy and strength to athletic performance/ power. Players love customization and personalization and this ability to customize journeys that align with real-world goals, while seeing a clear map of the progress is motivational magic.

“To use a reductive example, you reward a dog with treats when you’re training it. When it behaves well, the dog gets a treat. It keeps doing the good behaviour because it gets rewarded. The same thing happens with gamification. When you complete a level, you get a reward – a new character or power-up for example. So you do it again, and again. It reinforces a habit or behavior.”

We are always looking for new ways to reward Hero Members with various digital currencies and we’ve now seen the community positively freak out over swag items. However, we still have A TON of potential here with making sharing more seamless so users can share and get positive reinforcement from not just the Black Box VR community but from friends and family that don’t know about our gym of the metaverse yet. Creating new design systems that reward users for sharing and caring is at the top of our list to help them build a stronger community around them, while also introducing people to our life-changing fitness solution.

“Achievement is one of the most powerful psychological driving factors of human behavior. Everything we do, we do to achieve something.”

At Black Box VR, we give rewards, which people like, but rewards are more powerful when people understand their rarity in context. This context and rarity or status of an achievement can better communicated and more visible in profiles in the app, website, online community. In the near future, we will allow users to have more context around their achievements and compare themselves with the larger community. Achievement with context and visibility is much more powerful in motivating positive behaviors.

“Humans are competitive by nature. Most of us want to push ourselves further and harder. By using ‘personal bests’ and ‘previous records’, you can convince your users to come back and try again.”

We do a great job of this with the performance charts, XP ladders, individually trophy ladders, etc. but we have a big opportunity here to unlock a more powerful Hero Level metric (the true indicator of a players strength) by increasing the fidelity of our ORM paths as well as exponentially tapering off our Hero Levels. For example, many people get stuck at a Hero Level at the top end when they are dialed in by the AI with their resistance levels. This makes sense because muscle gain and strength don’t improve in a linear way.

One idea would be to break up the levels at the higher end where the difference between a Hero Level 30 – 31 would be .5 Lbs of a one rep max, while a level 10 – 11 might be a 5 lbs. difference in ORM. This type of high fidelity goal setting and achievement keeps a positive drip of progress that is tied to human physiology in what is standard for strength gain across the general population. The more we can dial in the design around these aspects, the greater chance we will be able to create stronger reinforcement of goals and push members to compete with themselves to better their numbers and level up their lives.

In the meantime, don’t forget to sign up for your free trial by heading to our locations page. It’s time to level up your life in the only gym of the metaverse. It’s really fun, and really effective.

Check out the photos below of some members that completed our 90-day challenge and got EXTREME fitness results. Did I mention they only worked out 3 times per week for 30 minutes a workout? This is the future of fitness!

We hope to see you soon, the offer won’t last forever!