Game Design, Not Gamification (Build Toys, Then Games)
Make software fun by designing real toys that reward playful exploration — not by bolting on points and badges
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
A product-design philosophy: build business software the way you build games so people find it fun, tell friends, and fall in love with it. Crucially this means game design (goals, emotions, toys, controls, flow), not gamification. Points, levels and badges are extrinsic rewards that undermine intrinsic motivation; the durable path is designing genuinely fun 'toys' and combining them into games.
Origin
Rahul Vohra, a professional game designer before founding Superhuman, applying game-design principles to email. Cites a 1970s Stanford intrinsic-motivation study (the 'overjustification effect').
Core principles
- 01Games make products fun, shareable and loved — a growth and brand engine, not decoration
- 02Gamification (points/levels/trophies/badges) fails because extrinsic rewards undermine intrinsic motivation
- 03When gamification appears to work, it's because the underlying experience was already designed like a game
- 04The best games are built out of toys, so they're fun on two levels — the toy and the game
- 05A feature is a toy if it indulges playful exploration, is fun even without a goal, and elicits pleasant surprise
How to run it
- 1
Reject reward-bolting
Do not try to make a product fun by adding points, levels, trophies or badges. Understand that extrinsic rewards can actively reduce engagement.
Pro tip In the Stanford study, kids expecting a reward later drew only 8% of the time vs 17% for those given none — the reward halved intrinsic motivation.
Watch out Rewards massively undermine intrinsic motivation; adding them can make usage worse, not better.
- 2
Design across the five game-design areas
Work the elements that actually make things fun: goals, emotions, toys, controls, and flow.
- 3
Build fun toys
Create features that are fun to play with on their own. Superhuman's time autocompleter accepts gibberish and interprets it (2D=2 days, 3H=3 hours, '8am in Tokyo' does the timezone math, 'never' snoozes forever with a shrug emoji).
Pro tip A toy should reward experimentation — users start asking 'what can it do? where does it break?'
- 4
Test each feature against the toy criteria
For every feature ask: does it indulge playful exploration, is it fun even without a goal, does it elicit moments of pleasant surprise? If yes, it's a toy.
- 5
Combine toys into games
Assemble multiple toys into a larger structured experience so the product is fun at both the toy level and the game level.
In the wild
Superhuman's snooze/reminder input accepts free-form and even nonsense text and does its best to interpret it — '10' repeated becomes Oct 10 at 10:10pm, 'in a fortnight and a day' works, timezone math is automatic, and typing 'never' snoozes an email forever with a shrug emoji. Users spontaneously probe its limits in onboarding.
→ A humble, award-nothing feature that is genuinely fun, driving delight and word of mouth.
Common mistakes
Adding gamification to an un-fun core
Points and badges layered on an experience that isn't intrinsically enjoyable undermine motivation rather than boosting it.
Confusing toys with games
Skipping the toy layer yields goal-driven features that aren't fun to explore, missing the pleasant-surprise moments that spark sharing.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product designers and founders wanting B2B/productivity software that earns delight and word of mouth
Not ideal for
Teams under pressure to ship purely utilitarian features fast, where craft investment in 'toys' isn't yet warranted
From the transcript
“I strongly believe that we should make business software like we make games”
“that's the problem with rewards is they just massively undermine intrinsic motivation”
“as it turns out the best games are constructed out of toys”
“Do those features indulge playful exploration? Are they fun even without a goal? And do they elicit moments of pleasant surprise?”
From the episode
Superhuman's secret to success: Ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every new user, obsessing over every detail, and positioning around a single attribute: speed
Rahul Vohra (CEO)