[miguel_marinheiro]

We discussed multiple psychological behaviors already, in this post we’ll explore endowed progress.

To get us started on what endowed progress might be, let’s look at an experiment which will gives us a pretty good idea:

Joseph Nunes and Xavier Dreze were behind a car wash experiment, in this study they handed out 300 loyalty cards, these 300 cards however were not the same:

• 150 of them needed 8 stamps to earn a free car wash.
• 150 of them needed 10 stamps but two of them were already stamped. 

These were the end results, 19% redeemed the 8-stamp cards, 34% redeemed the 10-stamp cards.

This essentially means that the value was doubled depending on the stamp card you got.

Starting a task with a head start makes people more likely to complete the task.

This is called the endowed progress effect.

In fact this effect is a close “relative” to loss aversion, this is because giving someone something that is already in progress makes them feel like they are losing something by not completing it.

Games specifically are full of examples of this, let’s explore some:

• RPGs: These types of games usually have a leveling up system at their core, one of the interesting things about them is that usually XP carries over from one level to the next, this essentially means that your next level is already in progress making you more likely to keep playing and pursuing the next level.
• Civilization games: If you played the Civilization series you’ll be aware of the phrase “Just one more turn”, the design team for the game have tried to nail down on what creates that feeling and one of the reasons they came up with was because “You always have something going”. If you think about it, in a game of civilization usually you have 3 or 4 things in progress, so you feel like you’re in this constant phase of almost completing something and you want to complete it.
• Hearthstone Ranked play: Hearthstone’s ranked system is somewhat unique in that you earn stars to level up, however if a rank needs 3 stars to level up you don’t level up once you get the third star. You level up once you get the 4th star and that star carries over to the next rank. This essentially means that you start the next rank with it already in progress. If you lose then you go to 0 stars.
• Settlers Of Catan: In this game players have to expand their territory by building cities and roads, something that is interesting to look at is that you start the game with two settlements on the board which effectively means you already have 2 out of the 10 points needed to win.
• Battlepasses in games: Something that has become popular are battlepasses, this essentially means that you always have something in progress in a meta-game type layer.

These are just some of the examples of endowed progress, I’d like to briefly mention Hades.

Let’s have a look at all the places where we can identify endowed progress:

• The Fated List: This essentially is a challenge system, you get rewards by completing these challenges, the challenges themselves are usually composed of various requirements. Usually in a normal playthrough you’ll have multiple of these challenges in different states of completion. 
• Boons: This is your main way of progressing your character in Hades, it’s interesting however that the game starts you off in each run with one of these (usually randomly selected), so it sets you with a head start on some path.

These are two really important factors, but what sets Hades apart is also how the narrative constantly feels like it’s in progress, you don’t finish a quest and call it a day like many games. With each death something new happens, you always feel like you’re getting close to a new narrative piece.

That’s what made Hades standout to me.

To round up this post, I’ll cite a UX website that had some key takeaways on the subject:

• Endowed progress effect can motivate users into working harder towards a goal.
• Artificial advancement makes users believe they already made progress, and hence they are more likely to complete the task.
• Reframe tasks to make it look incomplete rather than unstarted (for instance, ‘Signing in’ as step 1).
• The closer users are to completing a task, the faster they work towards reaching it.
• People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.
• Motivation can be enhanced by visual representations of progress and finish line.