When Anyone Can Build An App, Game Design Becomes The Differentiator
Michal Rahamim is Co-Founder & COO of Liberty Pixel, leading AI innovation, operations and technology strategy across its gaming portfolio.
gettyGamification has been discussed to death, so I want to approach it from a slightly different angle: as someone who actually designs games.
AI has already shaken the SaaS market by making it dramatically easier to build tools tailored to a specific company, but B2C is being shaken just as hard. The ability to build content, products and apps is becoming commoditized.
Spend 10 minutes in any vibe-coding community, and you will see it: “I built an AI app to plan your trip.” “I built an app that talks to my kid’s kindergarten teacher.” “I built an app for this extremely specific thing that annoyed me on Tuesday.”
And that is great. But it creates a problem for the next founder who wants to build an app that will “change everything.” You are no longer competing only with funded companies. You are competing with thousands of individuals who can build surprisingly functional products in a weekend.
So how do you stand out in a world where almost anyone can build almost anything?
I still believe in the Pareto principle (the 80/20 rule), where 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. Anyone can pick up a paintbrush, but we remember only a small number of painters.
For B2C products, I believe one of the strongest ways to create that difference is game design. And I do not mean taking a boring app, adding points and badges everywhere and declaring victory. Gamification works when the product itself starts borrowing the psychology and structure of a good game.
When I design games, I think about three elements in particular: story, core loop and progression.
By “story,” I do not necessarily mean dragons, kingdoms or a dramatic soundtrack. The story is the promise your product makes and the way that promise continues after the install.
Whether you are building a QR-code reader, a taxi app or an app that sends a manicurist to someone’s home, your marketing is already telling a story: Here is the problem. Here is a better version of your life. Here is what happens if you tap “Install.”
The mistake is ending the story there. If your ad says, “See where all your friends are hanging out right now,” and the first thing the user sees after installing is a gray registration form asking for six fields and a password containing one hieroglyphic symbol, you broke the story.
Give them a short, visual tutorial, maybe three or four screens. Continue the promise. Show them why they should care before asking them to do admin work. Games do this naturally. You open the box, and the game starts teaching you how its world works. B2C apps should think the same way.
In 2001, game researcher John Hopson wrote about behavioral game design and how different reward structures can influence player behavior.
For product design, I simplify the loop into three parts: action, reward and anticipation. The user does something, the product gives something back and then the user can see a reason to do it again.
Take a food-delivery app. The action is that the user orders dinner, uploads a photo or completes a weekly challenge. The reward they receive is XP, a digital collectible or visible progress toward a milestone. The anticipation is that they can see that one more order gets them free delivery, a discount or some other meaningful benefit.
That last word matters: meaningful. If your points do absolutely nothing, they are not a game mechanic. They are digital confetti. A strong core loop makes the normal use of the product slightly more satisfying and gives the next action some anticipation.
The core loop answers, “Why should I do this again?” Progression answers, “Why should I still care three months from now?”
Progression is the sense that the user is changing, growing or unlocking something over time. In our imaginary food app, perhaps frequent users move from “Beginner Taster” to “Food Master” and unlock permanent benefits: automatic Sunday discounts, access to secret menu items or priority support.
Yes, please feel free to invent less cheesy level names than mine.
The important part is that yesterday’s activity changes tomorrow’s experience. The user is not simply repeating the same transaction forever. They are building something.
At Liberty Pixel, where I work on games, we use the same principles in SkeeBoost. The experience starts with a nostalgic arcade story. The core loop asks the player to choose a character, play, win coins and improve characters or balls. Progression opens access to more content as the player advances.
The mechanics are specific to a game, but the principles are not.
Humans start playing practically from birth. Give a baby a rattle: Shake it, hear a sound, become fascinated and shake it again.
Congratulations. Baby’s first core loop.
AI is making it possible to create more software, faster than ever. That is wonderful, but it also means simply having an app is becoming less impressive.
Gamification cannot rescue a product that does not solve a real problem. But when several products solve roughly the same problem, the experience around that utility becomes enormously important.
The winners will not necessarily be the companies that can generate the most features. They will be the companies that make using those features feel rewarding, surprising and worth returning to.
When utility becomes a commodity, experience becomes the moat. And in B2C, sometimes the best way to build that experience is to stop thinking only like an app developer and start thinking a little more like a game designer.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
