Achievements, Foursquare, and Donald Norman

In a recent article at Gamasutra, Ian Bogost declares his distaste for Foursquare. In the article he groups Foursquare badges and mayorships with Xbox Live gamerscore and achievements, saying that both are essentially customer loyalty programs—along the lines of frequent flyer miles. The main argument in the article is that Foursquare, in particular, is a lousy customer loyalty program, as it rewards loyalty to Foursquare, not to the venues that Foursquare users check into.

I have some beef with this argument.

I do agree that Foursquare and XBL gamerscore/achievements share a number of similarities. But I don’t think that they’re customer loyalty programs. Maybe they do function in that capacity, but their real benefit to users is more basic. Foursquare, gamerscore, achievements—these are all engines to lend feedback to activities (like going out, or playing video games) that don’t have feedback built in. They make playing video games and going out with friends more usable.

[pictured above: Don Norman’s gamer card. Note: not actually Don Norman’s gamer card.]

I’m talking about “feedback” here in the Donald Norman, Design of Everyday Things sense. Feedback is the information that a system gives you about its internal state. Good feedback is a vital part of any usable system.

Normally, your social life and your video game habits don’t have quantifiable feedback. Until I started using Foursquare, for example, I had only my memory to count on when it came to figuring out how often I went out—or, when I did go out, where I went to. Foursquare’s popularity, I think, lies in making this information visible: it helps you keep track of where you’ve been, and compare your activities to those of your friends. It gives you useful feedback on your social activity.

Foursquare provides a number of mechanisms for displaying and quantifying this feedback. Friend notifications are one, mayorship is another. Foursquare mayorships aren’t really about loyalty! They’re just a means of quantifying the way you interact with a place. It’s not about rewarding repeat customers—it’s about letting you know whether or not you’re a repeat customer.

Gamerscore and achievements serve a similar purpose. They give you feedback on your play; they give you acknowledgment when you do something noteworthy; they let you know (in broad terms) how much of a game’s content you’ve completed; they let you compare the way you’re playing the game to the way your friends are playing it. Achievements are one of the reasons I prefer playing games on the 360 to playing games on (for example) the Wii: more feedback, more context, makes for a more fun gaming experience.

With a few notable exceptions, no one plays games just for the achievements. They’re not a goal in and of themselves. Likewise, no one “plays” Foursquare just to get the badges. Both badges and achievements are there to let you know that your activities follow a particular pattern. As an added benefit, badges and achievements you haven’t earned yet suggest what other patterns are possible.

Foursquare, achievements, trophies, whatever—there’s a reason that these systems are popular, and they’re not going away any time soon. I’m interested to see more game designs that exploit or subvert these systems. Achievement unlocked is a great place to start. (Could a similar game be made with Foursquare?)

—Adam