What I Took from Games to Build Better Consumer Apps
Written by Vin Sathyamoorthy, former Zynga Product Manager and a Reddit Product Director. Current proud Texan, and a member of the Deconstructor of Fun consulting team. These facts aren’t mutually exclusive.
In 2018, I made a big transition from gaming (Zynga) to consumer apps (Reddit) - looking to leverage my understanding of daily habits, engagement loops and free-to-play monetization in a non-gaming setting. Our team at Reddit built a number of products that would look familiar to gamers - Avatars, Premium subscriptions with digital currencies, and Marketplaces for trading digital goods. Consumer Apps are vying for user engagement and retention in the same way that games have done for years.
Duolingo gets a lot of attention for borrowing engagement mechanics from games, but a number of apps do this, too: Superhuman, Strava, Snap, Classdojo and SNKRS, to name a few. Some apps do it in a very obvious way, and some do it subtly, but the bottom line is that there’s a lot of value in understanding consumer psychology and building powerful engagement experiences against it.
In this article, I’ll go over “5 superpowers” that Games Professionals should leverage when making the transition to consumer apps. In my experience, these tools and skill sets are often taken for granted by Games folks - but can be eye-opening to folks who work in Consumer Apps. They are:
Design Sense
Social Engagement
Progression Systems
Re-engagement Loops
“Powers” versus “Superpowers”
Superpower #1: Design Sense
A powerful value driver for any app is making frictionless, delightful experiences that drive conversion. Games put a lot of focus on creating fun + frictionless experiences when it comes to Onboarding, New Feature Introductions, Expansions and Social.
The Gen Z app noplace leverages “fun” and “power” elements to make social interactions delightful.
In Consumer Apps, this is called “Design Sense” or sometimes “Product Taste”. The idea is to take a craftsmanship-like approach to study the details and deliver great experiences that use all the tools in your belt - music, lights, animations, color, characters - to deliver deeply satisfying experiences. In Monopoly Go, this is the subtle haptic feedback when you’re rolling the dice. Or in Squad Busters or Brawl Squad, the UI changes and kill animations as you’re crawling a map.
Twitch was ground-breaking in the consumer space for introducing “Cheers” and “Cheer Trains” that created fun, animated sequences when gift-giving on livestreaming. Consumer Apps are turning to motion designers and interaction designers to help build these types of great experiences - using products like Rive to build silky smooth animation sequences.
The bar continues to get raised when it comes to product quality in Consumer Apps, so Games professionals can bring a very valuable toolbox to the table.
Superpower #2: Social Engagement
All apps want great Social Loops that drive user growth. Games had this social superpower because games are a great way for people to keep in touch. Words with Friends continues to be a juggernaut because it’s simply another way for people to say hi to each other.
Consumer apps want great social loops that aren’t forced invite flows or hacky share sheets. They want experiences that are organic, add value to existing users AND add value to potential new users. Nikita Bier’s consumer apps like tbh, Gas and Explode are examples of great product thinking married with strong social loops that generate explosive, exponential growth.
Strava creates Social Loops via Group Challenges to encourage new users to join, and accelerate the Core Loop.
Strava is a great example of a consumer app that leverages game mechanics for social and social-led growth. Mechanics like the recently introduced Group Challenges encourage users to work together to hold each other accountable. This is real value creation and creates growth by having friends work with other friends to improve each other’s health.
Games professionals have a lot of tools in their toolbelt to add value here too: Guilds, Alliances, Peer-to-Peer Trading Systems, Marketplaces, Group Chats all have valuable primitives that can be leveraged to build social loops and growth loops.
Superpower #3: Progression Systems
Games are built on the idea of achieving a goal and working towards milestones that allow you to accomplish that goal. Games create rewarding moments along that journey, and encourage you to work towards mastery of a number of things: match-3 puzzles, word-based challenges, shooter mechanics, etc.
Finch uses Progression Systems (and Battle Pass mechanics) to encourage users to achieve their self-care goals. Their progression is a content-based system.
Consumer apps are hungry for great progression systems, too. There is great demand for three types of progression systems: (i) Content Progression Systems; (ii) Status Systems; (iii) Creator Economy Systems. An example of a Content Progression System in the self-care app Finch is its seasonal rewards system that grants cosmetics and pets for continuing engagement. Discord and Twitch have Status Systems to reward paying contributors with badges, labels and special channel/server privileges.
Creator Economy Systems are a bit different, but a ripe area of opportunity for games folks: platforms like YouTube, Substack and Whatnot are built on the contributions of creators. Creators are playing a “game”, too - they are trying to maximize engagement or monetization, and the platform is their playground. Games professionals can help by: (a) creating great tools to allow creators to achieve their goals; (b) creating great laddering systems to help them feel rewarded in their progression journey.
Superpower #4: Re-engagement Loops
No matter how “fun” an app experience is, it’s only as good as its ability to bring users back to the product - day after day. Games have mastered how to bring users back, via new content, social actions made by others, dangling new rewards, offering new capabilities, or offering a new live event or social gathering.
Nike’s SNKRS app uses Live Events style mechanics with their “Drops”. By clicking “Notify me”, you make a Commitment to return to the app to get a coveted pair of sneakers.
The most basic form of a gaming re-engagement loop is a “Streak”, which has been copied by many different types of consumer apps. A more sophisticated type of re-engagement loop is what Nike’s SNKRS app did with “Drops”, which is a combination of new content (Shoes), social currency (have something rare that others don’t), game (participate in the drop) and social conversation. The alchemy of all these elements makes it very satisfying to come back, week after week, to SNKRS to see what’s going on with the culture.
Games professionals can lean on systems like Live Events, Challenges, Guild / Alliance Events, New Seasonal Content to offer Consumer Apps new ways of re-engaging users. Ultimately, the success / failure of these efforts depends on team’s working towards the app’s core value proposition. Simply attaching a game mechanic won’t succeed - but thoughtful connection to the core is powerful.
Superpower #5: “Powers” versus “Superpowers”
People who work in free-to-play gaming have had to design systems to accommodate both free users and paid users. This sounds obvious at face value, but building these mechanics into established Consumer Apps can be a daunting challenge. Games folks can provide a very valuable assist here.
The sorting puzzle game Hexa Sort is a master-class at building sophisticated systems to maximize both ad dollars and IAP dollars. It has created a class of “superpowers” that allow you to experience the product more freely: unlockable game board slots, extra lives, ad-free experiences, currencies and more. You have “powers” to play the game without paying anything at all, but you can unlock “superpowers” if you choose to watch ads or pay money.
Discord’s Nitro product is a $100M+ business by giving users / servers special “superpowers” that make the product significantly better.
Consumer Apps are looking for new ways to monetize their products outside of the tried-and-true “ads monetization” or “paid subscription only” methods. Discord tackled this by building a $100M business on Nitro and premium benefits - Nitro grants “superpowers” such as custom emojis, HD video streaming and server boosts.
“Superpowers” must be designed thoughtfully to make sure the core product experience is undamaged while creating an augmented, premium version. Game designers have plenty of experience designing “superpowers” and can be valuable creative partners in this exercise.
Wrapping Up
Game professionals bring a unique toolkit of engagement mechanics, social systems, and monetization strategies that consumer apps are increasingly hungry for. The key is connecting these gaming superpowers thoughtfully to each app's core value proposition - when done right, the impact can be transformative.
