A Game of Peeking: Gamification in Social Media

To help this article travel beyond my own communities, I’ll add a bit of context about my background:

I’m a philosophy-and-humanities guy, a self-taught tech nerd who drifted into art—and now I blend that with internet marketing and SMM (social media marketing).

This piece is, at the same time, an explanation of what gamification is—and a reflection on it.

In my (not very unique) philosophical style.

Set up:

Let’s start with the basic term—what “Gamification” means, as defined on Wikipedia:

“The use of approaches typical for computer games in non-game contexts (software and websites) in order to attract users and customers, increase their engagement in solving applied tasks, and encourage the use of products and services.”

Let’s underline the key word: engagement.

In other words, it’s when you create a “game” in a place that was never meant to be a game. You solve business tasks with game mechanics borrowed from video games—yes, literally.
And it’s presented like some kind of magic trick, because it’s used everywhere, and it’s framed as “the sales technology of the future.”
If you google the word “gamification”, you’ll see a TON of links, articles, short explainers, and manuals.

And of course—courses about gamification.

The first thing I learned about gamification is: don’t rush to “implement” it. Approach it with balance. Invent a game that’s actually interesting—for you and for people. Because there’s a risk of replacing intrinsic motivation with external motivation.
That’s when you start grinding “game metrics,” while quietly pushing aside the actual purpose of the process—and the link between the process and the metrics.
In plain terms: when likes become more important than meeting the audience’s real needs through content.

For that cautious approach, thanks to the book “For the Win” by Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter, which describes many cases of introducing game mechanics on websites to increase visits, time spent—and engagement.

I especially liked the example of gamifying physical exercise:

The idea was simple: the website introduced “mastery levels” for training. And that helped many visitors get engaged in improving their health.

That book describes the PBL triad

What kind of creature is that, and how do you “eat” it? Here’s the decoding:

Points — points;

Badges — badges (pins), titles, achievements, “achievments/achievements unlocked”;

Levels — levels.

Points: that’s the base element. The other two are just ways of expressing it.

The easiest to grasp is Levels. You accumulate a certain amount of points, then we draw a line and say:  lvl up!
So you don’t have to stare at a COSMICALLY HUGE number of points, we “compress” it into a smaller number—a level. We trade a big number for a small one, packaging it.
For perception and feedback: how skilled are we in this environment?

Thinking back to Daniel Pink’s “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” I came to the conclusion that the classic PBL elements are basically the system talking to its user. Building feedback.

And it all rests on motivations for mastery and autonomy, as two key pillars. That’s how I see it right now.

But autonomy here is more of a secondary engine. Even in linear systems, we enjoy becoming more capable at using them. Remember throwing a ball against a wall—basically playing with yourself. The system has little autonomy: you only choose the force and the throwing style, and even that is constrained by the goal of catching the ball again.

Everything else is linear: ball — throw — wall — bounce — hand, and again.

So the essence of points, badges and  levels is to reflect mastery of the system: the environment, and its tools.

Alright. Let’s go “more specific…”

Take step-counting apps. They tell you how many kilometres you’ve walked.
Those kilometres are the base element of gamification.
Distance becomes both the goal and the reward. Technically the reward is your health, but you start receiving “health feedback” through points—walked kilometres. Kilometres are points. If the app only told you “good job” or “bad job” without numbers, you’d get no sense of scale.

A more specific element is Badges—icons or titles.
You’ve probably seen the phrase “Achievement Unlocked.”

For example: “You killed a zillion zombies, so now you’ve unlocked the achievement ‘Crusher of the Rotten!’”
Enemies killed in a game are points. Each zombie is one point.
So a zillion zombies is a zillion points.
But badges let you turn the same “zillion” into a lot of different combinations.

At some point, the player gets a title like:
“Crusher of Rotten Meat!”—it differs from the previous one by just one word, but there’s a condition under it:
— You killed a zillion zombies using a machete. A specific method, specifically slicing.
It’s like a walking app telling you:
“Now you’ve walked 20,000 metres sideways!”
That’s still points, but it’s a special “slice” of points.

Like an oval can be seen as a cross-section of a cone—badges are a cross-section of points. A slice of the cone of possibilities inside a system (a game), and its tools.

It helps decompose feedback: to deepen and widen the player’s understanding of how they affected the game world.
For example, in “The Witcher” series—specifically “Witcher III”—there’s an achievement:

“Rad Steez, Bro! / Extreme Sports”

“Slide down a hill for at least 10 seconds without stopping.”

The “points slice” here is more indirect. Once the player gets this achievement, they learn that:
— They explored the world so deeply that they climbed high peaks, and were non-linear enough to find a slope and slide down it on Geralt’s feet.
What a deep explorer.
— And during all that exploration, they obviously had to chop up plenty of scary (and not-so-scary) creatures. Which increased their “experience points,” and ultimately formed the summary: “Level X, Y, or Z.”

There’s one more element worth mentioning: the “leaderboard.” It changes how you measure your mastery in context. It creates a shared goal for all PBL elements.

But there’s a problem: the leaderboard must feel achievable. For example, when you play Crimsonland and in “Survival” you’re ranked #2556, you realise there are 2555 people above you. And this is the pain of all big projects. The wider the game’s reach, the more insignificant you feel inside the leaderboard. If the leaderboard is a key motivational element, you can ruin the desire to play.
The more achievable it feels to climb positions, the better it supports “goal orientation.” That’s why  P and L should be visible at all times, while leaderboard position should be hidden somewhere under a fold. Give the person at least the autonomy to set a goal: outrank 100 people and become #2456—through mastery.

SO:

People don’t enjoy interacting with something that doesn’t respond. At all. In any way.

The PBL triad creates touchpoints and the feeling of a system. And your position inside it.

And we remember the word “engagement.” And we hang a “leaderboard” next to it.

But Bo, we’re talking about social media here.

Exactly. Because PBL is communication. It’s a way to provide feedback, to show a person their position—and their impact—inside a system made by other people.

A “system” can be anything people built for people to participate in.

In very old tribal times (and shamanism), a shaman would wear special trinkets—badges—that signalled, for example, “rain master.”
And the more often rain came after his prayers, the higher his rank in the “leaderboard” of shamans across the tribes.
Yes, it’s a rough picture. And strictly speaking it’s related to PBL only at a very high level of abstraction.

Let’s use that abstraction and look for the PBL triad in social media.

We’ll start with points:

Anything that gives feedback and “value” of an action in whole numbers or percentages can be treated as an analogue of points. The system should provide both individually meaningful info (how you’re doing) and socially visible info (how others see your mastery)—an analogue of a “leaderboard.”

Those subsets can overlap.

No arguments here—first thing that comes to mind for me, for you, for all of us:

Likes, comments, followers, friends, views.

I’ll also add the “information-economic” features that open up at certain stages inside a platform.

Note: by “information-economic system” I mean a social network, in my own definition.

Okay, we found points. Where are levels?

Part of the answer is in the paragraph above:

…the information-economic features that open up at certain stages inside a platform.

But it’s not always visible from the outside. In systems like TikTok and Instagram, even if you switch to a business account, you still might not be able to see audience demographics and time-based activity patterns right away. The system will tell you there isn’t enough data yet. Technically, you can compute some metrics even from 10 people—but platforms often hide it. (This is a platform rule, not a law of nature.)

That’s why I treat it as “gamification of the account owner.” Get 100 follower-points, and then you “unlock” the level of analytics.
And badges and  levels include things like verification (the “official” checkmark). But it doesn’t always unlock by “levels”—sometimes you can get it through other routes.

And here’s the thought I want to lead you to: in social media, all these “gamifying” elements are built to shape trust. And we talk to the ones we trust.
And we buy from the ones we can talk to—and trust.
And to decide whether you’re trustworthy and “talkable,” people play a game of peeking.

From here, I’ll move to reviewing these points, levels, badges across platforms—and what you can do with them in community management.

Because community management is what increases engagement.

And it won’t hurt any business—especially creators and personal brands, where community management is basically mandatory.

PBL in VK

(VK = VKontakte, a major Russian social network—think “a Facebook-like platform,” but with its own ecosystem and culture.)

Points:

Friends and followers—basic counters. They implicitly communicate how much social proof a person has. Or how much you have. “Friends” (in VK) is also a networking layer, but “followers” is a heavier number.

They read you, but you don’t read them. You “matter” more to them. When you reach 100 followers (specifically followers, not friends), your personal page unlocks….

Levels:

Reach stats, visits, activity analytics.

Want to understand how to “master the system”? Master it up to 100 followers first.

Then you have likes, comments, views—numbers that again implicitly relate to  points. It’s sad to see a post with fewer than 5 likes on a page that has 1,000 followers and 2,000 friends.

Views sometimes “save” the impression. But in the end, all of it forms a mental sketch of an engagement index.
SMM specialists calculate ER (engagement rate), but the first calculator is the end user’s brain. Even if it doesn’t produce a number, it produces a feeling—trust or no trust.
So if you buy followers, you’ll end up buying everything else too. But trust—you can’t buy.

Badges:

The checkmark. VK doesn’t gamify personal pages much beyond that.

And you can get the checkmark even with 50 friends, if you can prove you’re a public figure.

For public pages (communities), there are fewer hard “limits.” Full stats often open once you’ve interacted with VK Ads (ads inside VK). But you don’t necessarily have to launch a full campaign—you can sometimes unlock parts of it by simply creating an ad draft. So it’s not exactly a “level,” it’s more like a hidden lever.

There’s also “Prometheus” (a VK internal promotion label/program). But it gets criticised sometimes.

My podcast on this topic (in Russian).

PBL in Instagram

Points:

You have “following” and “followers.” And also the number of posts.

There’s no “friends” class like in VK. There is a “Close Friends” list for Stories, but it’s not the same thing. You don’t define a base segment with privacy levels the way you can in VK.

You choose it manually from people you have mutual follows with.

Likes and comments are visible to outsiders.

Internally, the system “gamifies” you by showing saves and shares.

Based on those metrics, you can try to craft posts aimed at one reaction type—and grow your mastery.

Levels:

At around 100 followers on a business account, you can access audience demographics, geo data, and peak activity times (platform thresholds may vary over time and by region).

At 10K followers, you historically got a “Swipe up” link in Stories (this has changed in some regions/periods—today it’s often replaced by link stickers, but the “unlocking features by scale” logic remains).

Stories are magical. They have self-sufficient mechanisms to “play” with the audience: questions, polls, answer options.

Stories exist in VK too, but in VK they feel secondary and are available immediately “out of the box.” And the mechanics are less developed (though I haven’t studied every detail there).

Badges:

The checkmark, which you can obtain by request—not necessarily by reaching an enormous follower count.

Otherwise, the platform again “needs” third-party tools for automation and for audience-side point counting. But it’s harder here. Instagram doesn’t like external tools—especially sharing any data via authorisation.

There are unofficial slang “badges”: micro-influencers, “thousand-followers” bloggers, “million-followers” bloggers, etc.

PBL in TikTok

Points:

Total likes on the account, number of followers, number of following.

“Friends” there is internal and based on mutual following. By default, messaging someone who isn’t your “friend” may be restricted—you need to check privacy settings.

And then as always: likes, comments, shares of the video.

There’s also a detail: how many videos have used your sound.

Levels:

At around 100 followers, you can access demographics, online stats, and other analytics (thresholds may vary).

Around 900 followers—live streams (thresholds may vary).

Around 1,000 followers—an active link in bio (thresholds may vary).

Badges:

The checkmark again.

And you can try to obtain it from ~20K followers by passing verification (rules change; the “public figure” route still exists).

Or if you’re already famous outside TikTok.

It’s harder to “play” with audiences via built-in mechanics. There’s a poll sticker, but it’s limited (for example, it may only allow two options), and you can’t always show results or time-limit it the way you can in VK.

But video replies to comments, and duets/stitches, make community management almost effortless. That clearly helps engagement.

PBL in YouTube

Points:

Subscribers, likes, comments.

Views.

Surprisingly…

Levels:

From 100 subscribers, you can create a custom channel URL (rules vary by account history and region; the “unlock by scale” logic still exists).

From 1,000 subscribers, you can post text updates to the “Community” tab.

From 10,000 subscribers, YouTube unlocks additional short-form/community features (availability varies).

From 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in 12 months—channel monetisation (requirements can change; check current YouTube Partner Program rules).

Badges:

Silver play button — 100,000 subscribers.

Gold play button — 1,000,000 subscribers.

Diamond play button — 10,000,000 subscribers.

Ruby play button — 50,000,000 subscribers.

Red Diamond play button — 100,000,000 subscribers.

And again—the checkmark. “Only creators with an audience of 100,000+ can apply for channel verification” (requirements vary; check current rules).

Whew… YouTube has surprisingly interesting gamification for content creators.

As for mechanics to “play” with viewers—there aren’t many built in.
Except: as a creator, you can not only like a viewer’s comment, but also pin it and mark it as “hearted by creator.”

Sub-conclusion:

Have you noticed that the two platforms with the biggest traffic flow tend to have the most “steps” in gamifying the content creator?

And almost no platform truly gamifies the content consumer?

In VK, because of the open API, there are services that can help cover that gap.

But this creates a security hole by definition. The more people/systems have access to your login/password in any form, the higher the risk of compromise. Still—if there’s no built-in option, you use what exists.

I also didn’t mention many reach-related metrics you can “play” with, but then we’d sink into analytics comparisons of how creators work with content. That’s useful, but it’s not this article’s goal.

The goal of this PBL section across platforms is to establish an abstraction layer.

These “creator gamification” tools are a kind of “leaderboard.”
And the further you move along it, the better (in modern platform logic) your audience’s engagement becomes.

And I’ll remind you: this influences trust, and trust eventually influences monetisation.

Social media as a game of peeking:

Social networks (and similar services) are places where people—willingly or unwillingly—peek into someone else’s life and draw conclusions, using an entire circuit of mirror neurons.

Out of the platforms mentioned, only a couple have any kind of built-in “reminder” automation for scheduled live streams.
Instagram and TikTok often simply expect the user to remember that you plan to go live.

Remember… Let’s hold onto that. Because the one who remembers is the one who’s engaged.

With all the marketing automation and “growth tools,” we’ve slightly forgotten that a human being can remember.
The task isn’t only to escort a user by the hand through a system. The task is also to build a relationship of trust.

So here’s my proposal: play with the audience. But how?

Ask riddles:

You have a life, and it has variability. Say you’re about to drink coffee or tea.

Ask the audience what you’ll drink: coffee or tea.

If you know the choice can be postponed, let the audience influence it—if it’s not a sacred decision for you. Let people feel they matter in your life beyond consuming your content.

In the end, this creates discussion. And the audience can actually influence you.
And when we influence each other, trust grows.

Choice does matter:

If you ask the audience something, show everyone that their answers affect the situation.

This is a law—and not a “law” like in Russia (RF = Russian Federation), but a Sky Law.

Follow this Dao. Otherwise, why do you even want an audience if you won’t consider their opinion? Whose creator or blogger are you?

Easter eggs and references:

If you notice bright, interesting moments in your users’ comments, you can reference those situations in your content. Not to mention basic pop-culture references, memes, and so on. That should almost be default.

Even better: wander through your audience’s profiles and their subscriptions. I have an instruction on this (in Russian). It could use an update, but it’s still largely relevant. It’s more useful for building a “customer avatar” and doing customer development.

As for choosing the audience itself—I do it a bit differently now.

But for understanding what you can “play” with—this approach works perfectly.

Achievement unlocked:

Here I’ll pause in more detail.

The essence of achievements (badges) is that they can be “guaranteed” or “conditional.”
Meaning: in games, there are achievements you get through the linear storyline.
And there are achievements you get only if you do something specific.
Plus there are secret achievements. That’s also gamification.
An achievement, as I remind you, is a cross-section of your mastery and your exploration of the environment/system/tools.

And that signals your engagement.

And the better your audience’s engagement is, the more stable it becomes, and the higher you rise in the “leaderboard.”
Linear processes are what happens anyway as you progress through a system.
Conditional processes are accidental or intentional mastery of a specific area of the system—by a certain method, via a certain tool.

Achievements for linear processes follow the pattern “now that…”

Now that you’ve reached level 20, we grant you a title.
Now that you’ve passed this location, we mark it with a badge.
Now that you’ve finished the main story arc—we give you another rank.

It’s important: achievements for linear processes attach to intrinsic motivation without replacing it. We simply enjoy receiving a title that signals we’ve fulfilled our main interest—because all we need to do is keep playing.

Achievements for conditional processes follow the pattern “if, then…”

If you pass this level unseen, you get a title.
If you use only this weapon, you get a title.
If you complete this character’s side quests—here’s your badge. Pin it to your backpack.

Conditional achievements still feed intrinsic motivation—but with a taste of external motivation. Because many of them require replayability, and repetition is the mother of learning.

And the mother of learning is mastery. And mastery grows in the engaged.
And the engaged move you along the leaderboard.

External motivation usually leans on Levels, because that’s where new ways to interact with the system unlock.

So what do I dare to propose?

Imagine your community ecosystem has linear processes—give them badges.

Also invent activities that correlate with those linear processes—and give those badges too.

For example, if you monetise, always highlight your brightest supporters (or even everyone).

In the project Amotnik (a VK-based creator project), before it stalled, we made a special longread for everyone who donated. And we gave them the badge “Pillars of Creation.”

As in: the creativity of Niko stands on them.

I strongly recommend doing this in short periods and keeping a record of all badges and all recipients. That kills two birds: you create a “leaderboard” for the audience, and you later invent new game stages based on already recorded data—whether using third-party parsers/services or not.

A linear process example: being subscribed to a public page.

But tracking how long someone has been subscribed often requires a parser/tool (especially in VK because the API allows more data access than some other platforms).

Still, you can invent achievements for conditional time periods: one month, three months, six months, one year.

Create an article and list your “old-timers.”
Here’s a problem: the bigger the community, the more names you’ll have to add over time.
So you can shift toward more conditional—but still intrinsically linked—motivations.

For example: everyone who attended your concert gets a title and a personalised concert badge in your community. You call them something affectionate.
Zemfira (a famous Russian singer; for non-RU readers: think “a major cult artist”) once had a fan passport. It came with discounts and other perks.
As for counting likes and comments—I want to warn you. People can leave these reactions simply because they can.

That’s how you risk replacing intrinsic motivation with external motivation—and then the game loses its essence. Engagement gets compromised.
But a thoughtful comment is usually something people leave from intrinsic motivation.

— You can schedule a post of special importance, and reward everyone who joined the discussion with a kind word and a title.
— Mention it in the next post.
— Save it for yourself—as a record—but don’t build a full leaderboard from it. At least not yet.

Once you have three such cases, compare results: who contributed most actively and meaningfully. Give them an achievement for being a useful subscriber. Say it directly: for valuable thoughts in discussions.

Let it attach to something that’s hard to fake, but still conditional on comments in a discussion.

Alright—I’ll stop here for now. The topic is still fresh for me. I plan to implement it in my own projects and in the ones I manage. But I’m sure I’ve pushed you toward a couple of ideas.

Not to say it’s all easy—especially achievements. But the game is worth the candle. At least, global practice suggests so.

IN SUMMARY:

I’d like to say that the human species is constantly playing something with each other, and inventing ways to do it. The key move: turn the social network—and your way of running it—into a game.

Where there’s one, there are two. Where there are two, there are three. Where there are three, there’s a crowd.

Think of a child deeply absorbed in a sandbox game. People pass by, and sooner or later someone asks what they’re playing. Blink—and suddenly the whole yard is playing an expanded, more complex version. And everyone’s interested.

Because people create communication with each other, understand each other, and learn trust.

Gamification, in my view, is first of all not about special services.

It’s about a courtyard and two sticks—each stick can be a bazooka, a pistol, or a ladle.

And poplar leaves easily become a currency.

All these conditional numeric values I call PBL, because that’s the core idea of the article: to look at social media as a structure you can gamify not technically, but ideologically—using imagination and love for humans.

You want trust, right? You deserve it, right? You’re reading this article for a reason…

Trust people—and start inventing a game.

Thanks for your attention.