Changing Behavior Through Video Games Comes Down to These Four Things

As mobile video games gain greater reach and sophistication levels that deliver more realistic, entertaining, and challenging experiences, unprecedented narrative is being incorporated into gameplay that influences players’ behavior in meaningful ways. As we leverage this preferred medium to prepare our next generation for meaningful careers in previously stigmatized industries within manufacturing, including life sciences, cyber/IT, aerospace, and auto, many behaviorists agree on incorporating these four disciplines into gameplay to affect change.

Four In-Game Disciplines that Can Change Behavior in Gen Z

1. Motivation

Self-determination theory identifies three primary psychological needs that drive most behaviors: 

• the need for competence, or a feeling of effectiveness at completing tasks

• the need for autonomy, or the sense of freedom to choose one’s own behavior

• the need for relatedness, or of feeling tied to others through relationships and shared values.

These basic needs tend to motivate behavior in an individual, independent of extrinsic rewards. By design, video games check each of these boxes via challenges that can be repurposed with increased difficulty, directly promoting and improving desired skills development, which can make workforce readiness a lot more rewarding…and fun.

2. Reinforcement

In contrast to intrinsic motivation, video games can also use extrinsic rewards to reinforce desired behaviors, including task-noncontingent rewards, and rewards of glory. The former can consist of kudos and likes from other players in the game, or by in-game mentorship from industry and educators, all of which promote feelings of relatedness and autonomy. Rewards of glory consist of points, achievements, badges, or animations, and can support competence needs by providing feedback and shareable bragging rights. 

3. Personalization

Gen Z is more likely to devote cognitive effort and attention toward an activity they perceive to be personally relevant. By tailoring game narrative to align with their values, game designers — and industry — can persuade players in a way other forms of persuasion may not. Creating game characters a player identifies with, or by casting the player themselves as the main character is one way. Another way is to incorporate desired goals into the game narrative. As an example, BeatNic Boulevard is a new simulation-style, free-to-play mobile game where students in San Bernardino County, California — in collaboration with Stanford University’s Tobacco Prevention Toolkit — learn the importance of living a tobacco-free lifestyle. As students play the video game, they learn and recognize the impact of tobacco-use, vaping and how the sale of these products negatively affect schools and communities, eradicating false perceptions perpetuated by the tobacco industry.  

4. Proteus Effect

The Proteus Effect represents the experience of embodying an avatar in a virtual environment, which affects multiple aspects of cognition and behavior of the player. Being in a virtual world allows users to control many aspects of their appearance they cannot easily change in the real world, allowing a player to “try things on” in an arena void of stereotypes. This is especially powerful in breaking down stereotypes within trade-specific careers.

Mobile Gaming is a Viable Skills-Training Medium

The number of active mobile gamers worldwide is over 2.2 billion today. As industry, states, and regions look to grow their workforce-ready talent pools, mobile gaming should be at the top of their list as a proven, customizable training and recruitment tool that can scale to reach this entire next generation.

What skills development or behavioral change would you like to see incorporated into mobile games? Comment below.