IgnitePlay: Encouraging and sustaining healthy living through social games

Many successful social and casual games use techniques in their design that help sustain players´ interest over time. The success of these games amongst players who consider themselves `non-gamers´ has resulted in the development of applications that attempt to use these same techniques to encourage behavior change in the real world. Most of these applications gamify their sites by adopting a system of points, badges, and leveling up. In this paper, we take a different approach. In collaboration with Igniteplay - a company created to develop a product to encourage users to adopt a healthy life style through online social media - we investigated the connection between social game and media design mechanics and user motivation. This investigation led to several concrete techniques that we are currently testing and revising in the hope that such techniques will enhance participant retention. In this paper, we discuss these techniques and outline future directions.