Rahul Vohra

And the other set of these kids were not told about any reward at all.

They were then put into a room, one by one, and asked to draw.

And so afterwards, the kids who were promised a reward, they would get their reward, and the kids who didn't know anything about a reward didn't receive anything.

They then observed these children over the next few days to see how much of their time they would spend drawing.

The kids who didn't get a reward spent 17% of the next few days drawing.

The kids who did get a reward, they spent 8% of their time drawing.

In other words, the presence of the extrinsic motivator reduced the intrinsic motivation.

And that actually happens with game design and gamification as well.

So one of the reasons, actually the core reason why gamification didn't work is simply giving your users a reward for something can reduce the intrinsic motivation for them to do that thing.

And to actually build things that feel like a game, we actually have to go into the theory of game design, like what is a game, what is play, what is fun, and then build your product around that.

And that's something that we did deeply with Superhuman, now Superhuman Male.

I'm curious, like, what are some examples of game design thoughts that go into the core loop, let's call it, of email, which is like the most unfun thing ever?

Totally.

I was like, how do I make the... And I didn't answer your previous question about why productivity, because it was the least fun thing in my life.

And I was like, how can I make this the most fun thing?

Over the years, I came up with multiple principles of game design around...

15 to 20, depending on the day.

But they draw upon different areas like psychology and mathematics and storytelling and interaction design and so on.

The principles cover areas like goals, emotions, toys, controls, and flow.

Those are like the top five areas I often think about when it comes to how do we make something feel like a game?