Reddit as a game

A Rabbit Hole

Reddit as a board game

Client

School Project

My role

Ideation and Execution

Timeline

One week in Sept '21

Tools used

Illustrator and Miro Board

Problem Statement

To break down the information architecture of one digital/screen experience - a game or favorite app - into a “game”. The goal is to Decompose an app into its business model, with victory points for each of the app's stakeholders - owners, users, and any third parties who may buy or sell information from the application.

Analysis of the current app

Based on MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek

Aesthetic Goals

Sensation

Game as sense pleasure

Reddit gives positive affirmation to their users. They feel like they are achieving something constantly on the platform when they interact with the platform.

Discovery

Game as uncharted territory

At every interaction with the platform a narrative is created for each user. Each user has their own journey based on their interactions with the platform. This created a pool of endless opportunities for the user.

Challenge

Game as obstacle course

Reddit challenger all their users to earn more Karma points the app. This challenge can be attained by going through multiple paths on the app.

Dynamics

Sensation

Game as sense pleasure

Reddit gives affirmation in terms of upvotes, awards and Karma points. This gives users positive feeling in multiple layers. For example a user posts something which gets:
upvotes, then some users give the post some awards and hence the user gets more karma points on the app.

Discovery

Game as uncharted territory

Each Subreddit on the platform has their own types of posts and contents. So when a user joins the platform they have endless options according to their interests and likings to follow and interact with subreddits. This makes every user unique in their own journey and also has endless opportunities in terms of going through the platform

Challenge

Game as obstacle course

Earning more upvotes using original content and then making your own communities to bring like minded people together is something reddit offers.

Mechanics

Understanding Stakeholders

Casual Users: These are the type of users who usually just come on reddit to interact with other people who post on the platform. They interact with the posts with upvotes and downvotes but are not usually known for converting into a Paid User by buying awards or coins.

Paid Users: These users are the ones who pay for buying coins on the platform. Coins are virtual good, and you can use them to award exceptional posts or comments, giving them Silver, Gold, or Platinum.

Moderators: A moderator, or a mod for short, are redditors who volunteer their time to help guide and create Reddit's many communities.

Reddit: The creators of a home to thousands of communities, endless conversation, and authentic human connection. Whether you're into breaking news, sports, TV fan theories, or a never-ending stream of the internet's cutest animals, there's a community on Reddit for you.

Design Process

The initial idea of creating the board was to make something that has not been done on a board game before. The start point was at the center of the board and the players will traverse from left to right on every chance. The actions that they commit (defined by the number on the dice) will give them positive karma or negative karma which will be denoted on the y axis of the board. Initially, the idea was to have 3 dice in order to have 15 possible numbers which will then correlate to their action on Reddit. Example: 3 can be you posted something and got one upvote. 5 can be breaking community rules and getting banned.

The initial idea looked promising but after communicating with my teammates it had additional considerations to be taken care of:

As there were only 15 possibilities on the dice it only had limited options for the user to interact with the game board.

Also if the user gets either a lot of positives or a lot of negatives then the board is limited to a certain number. Therefore a lot of consideration will have to be put into place to make sure the user stays on the board.

Reddit as the game

Reddit is a place where people spend hours scrolling for content switching from one subreddit to the other. This made us think about the rule where users have the opportunity to either go forward or backwards on the board.

Reddit gives an opportunity to the users to earn Karma points using activity on the posts that they have created or the traction that they get on the communities that the user has created. Similarly on the board we try and emulate the same for a player by giving out karma points for upvotes, awards, community traction or followers whereas take out karma points for downvotes, flagged posts and also getting your community banned.

Critical Feedback

Better visual representation for leaderboard

Create a system to determine the direction of player movement instead of them simply choosing which way to move. For example a wheel they can spin that determines whether they move forwards or backwards

Add more ways to gain Karma

Make the actions in the game more interactive

Upvote/downvote other players (alliances)

Each one can create a subreddit – this could potentially allow them to gain karma when other players land on their subreddit.