Fitocracy: Let’s Get More Game in our Social Fitness Game

So, getting in shape has been something I’ve been working on for a while. It’s hard when you’re a grad student or a game developer. I’m both, and therefore my fitness goals often fall apart all over the place while classes are in session. I ran last summer, which went alright but fell apart during classes. I’ve done Wii Fit and EA Active to try and trick myself into it being a gaming activity, and that worked, but the results weren’t great and so that fell apart.

What I needed was finding a program that would get good results and have the sort of motivational draw that the game-like solutions offered. Fortunately, I discovered Fitocracy right about the same time I was gearing back up for Summer Running: Take Two. This turned out to be great—first because the game-like elements combined with the social media framework provided excellent motivation (I get NUMBERS that make other numbers get BIGGER and other people can SEE it and give PROPs) and second because the information on fitness approaches shared by the community led me to a plan that’s getting me great results for my goals(more about goals forthcoming). All in all, just fantastic.

This is not to say there isn’t room for improvement. Right now, Fitocracy’s goal does not match up with the reality. It aims to be a social fitness game. Right now it’s simply a fitness tracker with Gamification, and I — like many in the industry — consider that a detriment to whatever it gets applied to because it’s using game-like elements without the essence of games. It lacks heart. Fortunately, the people running Fitocracy are smart folks and realize it’s not a game. Yet. And they want to change that—the site has always been conceived as a game. They’re not (game) designers and they know it, so they’re really open to suggestions. And thus today’s writing. Because during my post-workout shower today, I did a lot of thinking and a game design started to coalesce. I’m anticipating some fair number of Fitocrats ending up here, so this will be a bit heavy on process explanation or non-designers. So… here we go!

Don’t Fix What Ain’t Broke

Fitocracy already does some things very well. These things are largely responsible for the spirit of the place as it currently exists. So any design for Fitocracy as a game needs to respect those good points as constraints because they really need to stay. Otherwise you really risk alienating your current userbase, and that’s no good. Good news: there’s a good foundation to build a game on.

Fitocracy bills as a fitness game, but one of the core features that currently exists is the social networking functionality. This feature is huge. I’d posit that the social aspect of the site is what has kept it alive when people realize the game part isn’t developed yet. It provides peer motivation, which is a big part of sticking to it. So I feel as a designer it’s important to think of the game as a social fitness game.

Fitness is a many-layered thing. It means different things depending on who you are. How you become fit and what defines fit are largely a function of your personal goals. Fitness means something a lot different if you want to get strong, or if you want to run far. Or if, say, you simply want to improve your quality of life under partial disablement(I have a friend who has fibromyalgia and she’d love to use Fitocracy, but it doesn’t work well for her goals—more on this later). So the community clusters into groups based on this—Runners, Weightlifters, yoga practitioners, etc. Naturally, these get broken into more granular and personalized sub-categories as you get down to personal circumstance, but you get the idea. There’s some social stratification in the game’s players with the broad strokes of training falling into groups that do similar things, albeit sometimes in different ways.

Hmmm. It seems to me there’s a game mechanic that features player stratification based around what those players prefer to do. I’m reasonably certain I’ve seen games that are very social that use this mechanic, too. Okay, yes, I’m being a bit ‘cute’ about this. It’s cool, we’re informal around here. Point is, the situation on Fitocracy lends itself well to class-based gameplay. In fact, a lot about the way Fitocracy already exists suggests an RPG ideal. So my inclination? Let’s make a solid MMORPG out of fitness. It can be done(and has a good chance of being pretty damned fun).

Fitness goals are a tough nut to crack. Some of them are a part of what activities we want to do, some of them are milestones. Some of this is probably split between class/level progression, some belong in quests and the like.

Quests are currently in the game, and somewhat lacking depending on who you talk to among players. But from a basic mechanics perspective, the quests are fine as they are. They do exactly what quests do: They give a little direction, and trade effort from the player for more numbers(XP). So nothing in how they’re implemented needs changing. Content is the issue here, and that’s a very different issue. And one we can address (and will).

Another big issue is the balance of points in the game awarded to activities. This causes a lot of issues and arguments. I feel the issue here is people have different goals that affect fitness progress, but points are a constant, so some people making great progress towards goals don’t see it reflected in their points. So that needs addressing.

A Class Act

So, let’s get down to brass tacks and get designing. Technically, we have been—laying out core principles, design values, constraints and generally understanding the problem is real, necessary design work. But now let’s move on to things that most people recognize as design work. It’s time for high-level mechanics talk, starting with classes. They’re a major part of the game core, so it’s important to get a sense of them early.

Classes are based around what we want to do, more or less. Our abilities in our class are a reflection of what we’re doing, and our progression is based around what kinds of logged workouts get us progress towards our goals. So we essentially have class bonuses for appropriate workouts. I think this will go a long way towards dealing with perceived inequities, and it opens the door to something that is keeping some folks off of Fitocracy.

Specifically, if you have medical conditions that prevent certain high-intensity activities, Fitocracy is depressing in ways it doesn’t intend to be. This is largely because differences in people’s goals aren’t reflected in the game’s scoring. Example: I have a good friend. She has fibromyalgia. This severely impacts her physical limits and fitness, to her, isn’t about developing great endurance and strength, but just helping cope. But it’s still fitness; just her personal fitness. Lifting any kind of weight can be a big deal, and myofascial work is a big deal. But you just don’t post big numbers with this stuff as things currently go. Fitocracy doesn’t lend itself well to this kind of situation.

However, I think there’s room for these people in the game, and it can work without marginalizing them by using a class structure. Performance in the game shouldn’t be based on some absolute real-world scale. It needs to be personalized like the reality of fitness is. Then you’ve got something special. I think we can include physical therapy activities without marginalizing those people or trivializing their progress. I’d like to think that’s something Fitocracy is for. (Yes, there’s room for people to “cheat” this, potentially. But I think they’re just hurting themselves, and the community will police these instances effectively. In some rare cases, administrative measure might be necessary, but those are very specific instances.)

So class levels and rewards for activity logging are based around what kind of fitness you’re into. I think this approach allows everyone to be happy with the way the game plays for them. It also allows for some interesting possibilities in factoring in things that Fitocracy doesn’t currently track but are important to fitness, like diet. Potentially, anyway.

This isn’t terribly detailed. At this stage, we’re setting structure, not filling it. That comes later. or now it’s enough to know how classes work in the game—we don’t need a list yet.

Role with the Punches

With some class ideas laid down, the question becomes “Great. There’s classes and there’s how they it into the game as it stands. What do I do with them?” In other words: “So I don’t see a game yet.”

Well, we have a mechanic for interacting with the game, so let’s talk about some of the things you could do. Quests, of course, we already have. The content might be lacking, depending on your opinion. But we can work with a richer quest experience now, because we can issue class-based quests. Really, do runners that don’t lift for their strength training really need a Three Big Lifts quest? I’d say no. I’d say it’s probably irritating. I know the swimming quest bugs me when I don’t really swim (no pool access). Class quests, with a method for picking up ‘common’ quests(like the swimming one) if you want to have them.

Classes and their inherent roles give us the opportunity to interact with other game elements. We have an interface through which meaningful sorts of PvP can be carried out—even in cases where people don’t do similar exercises, in some cases. We can build raid content! Pick up a set of people to fill different roles, and since we’ve got a structure that translates RL activity to game actions, and we’ve got classes to work with, we can make that happen. Raid events probably happen on a weekly basis, to account or scheduling, with a raid taking several weeks, or even longer, depending on preferences.

Activity logging can have more effect than just leveling, too—stat modifiers based on various performance metrics would allow people to tackle game challenges in ways that appeal to their particular brand of fitness, just like they complement playstyle in other games. A tank with higher strength doing a bit more damage than an endurance tank, for instance.

Details on the specifics of how combat-type events would work are pretty broad in terms of possibilities—a lot of community discussion would probably have to factor in. A big question is how much time people want to devote to the game itself, or if they want a lot of it automated to free up “real time”. The idea here is raid performance is fueled by your fitness activity in some fashion. The question is, do players decide what actions to take themselves, or does the system run things?

What’s nice here is being able to play the game with people you may not be able to work out with, but you still get a sense of communal fitness. Sure, you lift weights and your friend is into light yoga for physical therapy—but in the game, that just means you’ve got a tank and a healer and you can kick some ass, because you’re doing stuff differently but making solid progress in your own ways.

Raid? Does that mean… gear?

Well, sure, why not? But not gear in the usual MMO sense. It could conceivably be cool to have some sort of visual “who-I-am-in-the-game” thing, like a semi-customizable paper doll graphic that you could win gear for meeting special goals and then show off.

If you’ve ever seen Gaia Online, the game/message board… thing (don’t blame you if you haven’t) then we’re talking something sort of like the avatars there, or like a 2D version of XBox LIVE avatars. It’s important to note that we’re not talking gear with stats and things like that—a fitness game like Fitocracy shouldn’t ever be about anything but your real-life results. But something cool you can show off for your hard work, sure.

It’s worth noting, additionally, that a lot of what we’ve got here makes people think of a sword-and-sorcery MMORPG setting. I don’t think it has to be that way at all. I would in act suggest a fitness-themed game world, more or less, and if someone’s into fantasy or scifi or pirates or whatever, let that come out in the gear they display. Why not? It’s quirky and fun, and we need more of that in the super-serious fitness world. We’re supposed to enjoy being in shape, not grind our way through it.

So… that’s it?

So what’s left in terms of this design proposal? Oh, LOTS. we have a lot of high-level, but very little hard rules and math to drive it. I’m relatively new to fitness stuff, and I only know what I do. I know games, and what people tell me, and I know game design and how to produce mechanics from subject material. But there’s a lot of that stuff that isn’t even covered here. This is all broad strokes to paint a picture. If the picture is good enough, then it’s time to work out all those details, like how the numbers I post for my swim translate into XP and stats and how the game decides what happens based on those and so on. But hopefully I’ve put forward some interesting thoughts. This is at best a rough draft. One of the foundations of designing games is feedback and iteration. So from here, I show it to select people and refine. Then I show more people, and refine. And so on, until eventually it doesn’t suck.