Video Games And Employee Motivation: What Do They Have In Common

Creating a culture that make every employee feel like a hero

Recently, Epic Games raised $1.25 billion in funding from a number of investors. Epic is the creative force behind Fortnite, the video game that is so popular, even my 80-year-old mother talks about it. It’s understandably considered a “game changer” by multiple analysts, and has made Epic the envy of the industry.

 

What exactly does news of Epic’s success have to do with being an HR leader?
 
A lot more than you might think.
 
As a behavioral scientist who specializes in understanding human motivation and emotion, my colleagues and I began by studying video games. We built a framework for engagement that is widely used across the game industry, and we continue to consult regularly with developers on the psychology of games and how they can understand, measure, and impact the experiences that truly engage and delight their customers.
 
Now imagine if the same principles that draw players into leading games such as Fortnite could draw employees into greater engagement and enjoyment in their work.

Somewhat. This was the promise of gamification when it first emerged in places like learning and performance seven years ago — but it never got things right.
 
It tried to skim superficial mechanics from games (badges!) without really understanding what we already knew. It then haphazardly sprinkled them into the workplace with little consistent benefit and limited bottom-line ties.
 
Gamification done this way missed the opportunity for developing a deeper motivational approach based on a simple fact:
 
The same basic needs and fulfillment that enrich our experience of games are also what engage us at work.
 
This simple truth can transform engagement and solve a vexing problem that costs companies billions every year. Gallup’s 2018 Global Great Jobs Briefing said that only 7 percent of the global working adult population has a great job. And, only 30 percent of the American workforce is engaged in the jobs they do have.
 
These disappointing stats haven’t changed in literally decades, despite herculean effort and investment by companies worldwide.
 
By looking at how people play games, we know that people are self-motivated to face challenges, succeed, and grow.
 
So, why is it that work — which one is paid to do — shows so little engagement, while games — which one pays to do — are extremely engaging?
 
In our workplaces and corporate cultures, how can we better recognize and tap into the same intrinsic motivation that our employees bring to games and also express in other valued areas of their lives?
 
These are the questions that can turn engagement around. And the answer lies in well-established and practical principles in human psychology. 

In numerous empirical studies of the psychology of games, we use a psychological framework we developed called Self-Determination Theory to assess players’ motivation and engagement. And it consistently emerges as the single biggest predictor of fun, engagement, and value.
 
Unsurprisingly, the same model is also a significant predictor of engagement, performance, fulfillment, and success at work. For those business leaders listening in, it also predicts bottom-line profit. More on that in just a bit. First, let’s unpack exactly what this model says.
 
At the heart of the Self-Determination Theory Model, lie three basic psychological needs that apply to every person on the planet — regardless of age, race, or gender. When these needs are fulfilled, engagement, motivation, well-being, and a host of positive outcomes emerge. And this model is being applied in our research and that of hundreds of our colleagues around the world to almost every human domain — including video games and work.
 
These three core psychological needs are autonomy, relatedness, and mastery:
 

 
We applied this model to video games and found it was not the fleeting experience of “fun” that drove engagement and value — but feeling the game specifically fulfilled autonomy, relatedness, and mastery.
 
Here are some examples.

Video game makers expertly craft experiences to fulfill our basic psychological needs.
 
When it comes to autonomy, good games give players almost limitless opportunities to author their own story — to create a personal narrative and follow paths that are personally compelling. Even when players aren’t able to choose their specific mission or task, there’s usually a clear reason why that task is important, so they can get behind it and willingly engage. The tasks and rewards are also structured in a way that provides the player with feedback, like when their world responds to their decisions or actions.
 
Online games like Destiny and Fortnite allow players to form teams, work together on missions, and play against other gamers thousands of miles away in real time. It’s not simply making these social connections that fulfill the basic need for relatedness, it’s that the mechanics of the game encourage players to work together and provide each other meaningful support.
 
Finally, mastery fulfillment has been a mainstay of video games since the arcade days, when players put a quarter into Pong or Asteroids and tried to progress as far as they could through the game’s increasingly difficult challenges. In modern games, the good design enables players to feel a sense of challenge, but also to primarily experience the ability to be successful and grow as they develop characters and identities over many hundreds of hours of gameplay (no quarter necessary).
 
Some may be confused by the success of a game like Fortnite: It’s free to play, yet somehow still makes billions of dollars? The reasons for its success — and the success of any video game — lies at the intersection of these three basic needs. When they are all richly satisfied, deep commitment, value, and engagement naturally arise.
 
The exciting news is, these same three principles also apply to work. And the process of unlocking their benefits won’t even require a great deal of change management.

Let’s explore this through the story of a new employee named Susan.
 
Susan, like everyone, wants to love her work. The need for autonomy that pulls her into exploring a video game world also fuels a desire to believe in what she is doing at work and have ownership of her tasks. Even when she is doing tasks she doesn’t have a choice over, she wants to believe in the purpose of that work, that her “quest” is worthwhile and valued.
 
Where possible, Susan wants to have a meaningful say over how she tackles the job. To provide personal input and ideas about her projects, having agency in her career development and progression. And when Susan has to complete tasks that are less than exciting, she can still feel autonomy if her employer explains why that work is important, respecting the fact that it’s important to be “on board” with the mission.
 
Fulfilling Susan’s basic need for autonomy creates purpose and high-quality motivation for her work much in the same way it draws her into a great game. When Susan experiences autonomy, she will be much more deeply engaged in her tasks — whether in a virtual world or the very real workplace.
 
Even if Susan feels she has agency over her career, does she feel connected to others at work? Or is she hammering away at spreadsheets in a back office somewhere by herself like it’s a single-player game? Or is the workplace experience she’s having a multiplayer game where she can team up with others to conquer and thrive? Or is it an every-person-for-themselves experience?
 
Just as in games, for Susan to have a workplace experience that fulfills her basic need for relatedness, there need to be meaningful social relationships where she feels respected and supported. The most successful companies nowadays are the ones that form flexible, agile, autonomous networks of teams that tackle projects together — much like a team that forms in Call of Duty to defeat its opponent.
 
Finally, once Susan is on a collaborative and supportive team, does she experience mastery in her work? Just as she will “level up” and gain new abilities and opportunities in a game as she succeeds, at work does she receive useful feedback and coaching to help her improve and develop? Is she given optimal challenges that let her acquire new skills and tools? Both in games and in the workplace, Susan needs to have challenges to allow her to grow, but be supported so she can successfully meet those challenges. Just as in a well-balanced game, the real trick is to have enough challenge to feel the excitement, but not so much that you feel overwhelmed.
 
As an HR leader, you know how hard it is to retain top talent. With a tight labor market and short tenure (roughly spending about 3.6 years in a job in America right now), today’s challenges are just that — optimally challenging your employees.
 
Properly challenging employees builds loyalty and interest rather than boredom and frustration. And specifically understanding and measuring mastery fulfillment and support empowers you to gauge whether your efforts are striking a balance that will truly engage.

The tools exist to understand, measure, and act on these key principles of engagement. Through our motivationWorks initiatives, we’ve built an evidence-based platform that’s bringing lasting engagement, value, and positive change to the workplace and the entertainment space.
 
And after decades of research, it’s exciting to see how the framework empowers the great experiences that build great workplace cultures of success and fulfillment — cultures that make every employee feel like a hero.
 
As a leader, you can use the framework of Self-Determination Theory to build incredible employee engagement and motivation, so your organization can attract, retain, and develop star talent, allowing everyone to achieve a new high score.