More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Yu-kai Chou
Started reading
March 18, 2023
Are you designing your experience to be the failing game or the successful game? How would you know?
“Okay, how do I want my users to feel? Do I want them to feel inspired? Do I want them to feel proud? Should they be scared? Anxious? What’s my goal for their intended experience?
The Octalysis Framework embodies my life’s work, and the majority of this book will be about how to use Octalysis to design experiences that are fun, engaging, and rewarding.
Epic Meaning & Calling is the Core Drive that is in play when a person believes they are doing something greater than themselves and/or were “chosen” to take that action.
We are familiar with the fact that people don’t contribute to Wikipedia to make money, but they don’t even do it to pad their resumes. People contribute to Wikipedia because they believe they are protecting humanity’s knowledge – something much bigger than themselves.
Development & Accomplishment is our internal drive for making progress, developing skills, achieving mastery, and eventually overcoming challenges.
Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback is expressed when users are engaged in a creative process where they repeatedly figure new things out and try different combinations.
Ownership & Possession is where users are motivated because they feel like they own or control something.
Social Influence & Relatedness incorporates all the social elements that motivate people, including: mentorship, social acceptance, social feedback, companionship, and even competition and envy.
Scarcity & Impatience is the Core Drive of wanting something simply because it is extremely rare, exclusive, or immediately unattainable.
When it finally opened up to everyone, many people wanted to join simply because they previously couldn’t get in.
Unpredictability is the Core Drive of constantly being engaged because you don’t know what is going to happen next.
This is obviously the primary Core Drive behind gambling addictions, but it is also present in every sweepstake or lottery program that companies run.
The very controversial Skinner Box experiments, where an animal irrationally presses a lever frequently because of unpredictable results, are exclusively referring to the core drive of Unpredictability & Curiosity -
This Core Drive should come as no surprise – it’s the motivation to avoid something negative from happening.
Some make the user feel powerful, but do not create urgency, while others create urgency, obsession, and even addiction, but make the user feel bad.
Interestingly, Left Brain Core Drives tend to rely on Extrinsic Motivation – you are motivated because you want to obtain something, whether it be a goal, a good, or anything you cannot obtain.
Right Brain Core Drives are mostly associated with Intrinsic Motivations – you don’t need a goal or reward to use your creativity, hangout with friends, or feel the suspense of unpredictability – the activity itself is rewarding on its own.
Because once the companies stop offering the extrinsic motivator, user motivation will often plummet to a level much lower than when the extrinsic motivator was first introduced. We will examine this tendency, termed the overjustification effect,
It is much better for companies to design experiences that motivate the Right Brain Core Drives, making something in of itself fun and rewarding so users can continuously enjoy and engage in the activity. Motivation is often better when it sticks.
I call techniques that heavily use the top Core Drives “White Hat Gamification,” while techniques that utilize the bottom Core Drives are called “Black Hat Gamification.”
Zynga games (historically) is that they have been very successful with implementing many Black Hat Game Techniques. Of course, they don’t have the framework to understand it as “black hat,” but they refer to it as “Data Driven Design.”8 Because of the Black Hat Motivation, for a long period of time their games drove great numbers off each user in terms of retention, addiction, and monetization. However, because most Zynga games do not make users feel good when playing, when the user is finally able to wean themselves from the system, they will.
Many people voluntarily submit themselves to Black Hat Gamification in order to go to the gym more often, eat healthier, or avoid hitting the snooze button on their alarm clock every morning.
hidden ninth Core Drive called “Sensation,” which is the physical pleasure one obtains from taking an action. People do drugs, get massages, or have sex (hopefully along with many other Core Drives) because of the sensation Core Drive.
The reason why I don’t have it included in the main set of the framework is that the Octalysis Framework primarily focuses on psychological motivators instead of physical ones.
behaviors will usually be motivated through Core Drives such as Scarcity, Accomplishment, and Ownership.
Even pleasurable activities such as sex, when lacking curiosity, relatedness, creativity, and scarcity, can potentially become rather unappealing.
Facebook is very strong in many of the 8 Core Drives, but rather weak on Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling - there is generally no higher purpose on using Facebook unless you are one of the few who are actively contributing to a cause on Facebook.
It is also weak on Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience, as these days there are very few things that users want to do on Facebook but are barred from doing it.
Like Facebook, Farmville and Candy Crush also lack Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling within, but Farmville also lacks Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity
Twitter is also fairly well balanced but skews more towards Right Brain Core Drives. In contrast, LinkedIn is heavily focused on the Left Brain Core Drives, with a White Hat emphasis. This makes sense, because LinkedIn is all about your career, your life, your accomplishment. Those are very extrinsic goals, and as a result, everyone feels like they need to have a LinkedIn Account.
However, through the Octalysis Framework we can see that LinkedIn could benefit massively if they put more effort into Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback, as well as Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity.
It is a craft that requires a nontrivial amount of analysis, thinking, testing, and adjusting.
As you become more and more advanced in Octalysis beyond the contents of this book, you will start to learn the higher levels of Octalysis design. (Up to five levels. There are only a handful of people in the world who know what is Level IV and above).
Once one has achieved mastery in Level I Octalysis, they can then apply it to Level II Octalysis, where we try to optimize experiences throughout all four phases of the player/user journey.
These phases are: Discovery (why people would even want to try out the experience), Onboarding (where users learn the rules and tools to play the game), Scaffolding (the regular journey of repeated actions towards a goal) and Endgame (how do you retain your veterans).
during each Experience Phase of the player’s journey - whether it would be unpredictability, accomplishment, or social influence. For instance, most people Discover a product because of Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity – they read about it on the news or hear others talking about it.
During Onboarding, they might be motivated by Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment – feeling smart and competent during the early stages. During the Scaffodling Phase, they might be motivated because of the social dynamic (Core Drive 5) as well as trying to go after the goal they could not reach yet (Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience). In the Endgame, they might continue to be engaged because they don’t want to lose their status and achievements (Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance). How you design for all four Experience Phases through the 8 Core Drives will strongly demonstrate your
...more
In the above diagram, I applied Richard Bartle’s Four Player Types (Achievers, Socializers, Explorers, and Killers) to Level III Octalysis primarily because it is the most recognized model in game design.
Richard Bartle himself claims that his Four Player Types may not be suitable for gamification environments11. It could be Sales vs. Marketing Staff, Male vs. Female, Loyal Customers vs. Nonchalant Customers vs. New Customers etc. The point here is that different types of people are motivated differently,
Level III Octalysis allows the designer to understand and design for how everyone is feeling at different stages.
Once you become familiar with Level III Octalysis, you can almost feel how motivation moves within your system and recognize where motivation is lacking or whether there is too much Black Hat or Extrinsic Motivation in the system.
For instance, through Level III Octalysis, one can reach conclusions such as, “Looks like the Achievers start the experience in Discovery well, Onboarding is fine, but in Scaffolding they lose motivation and drop out. The Explorers will try out the product because of Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity, but during Onboarding they feel confused and would leave. Socializers wouldn’t even try out the experience because there is no Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness advertised in the product. Finally, the Killers seem to be the ones in this case to stay through Discovery,
...more
Higher-level Octalysis processes are useful for organizations that are truly committed to making sure that they push their metrics in the right direction and improve the longevity of a gamified system.
If the above does not interest you so far, it is safe for you to put the book down and do better things with your time. But if the above excites you and you choose to go on, I promise you there will be an exhilarating journey of discovery, empowerment and awakening ahead. I’m even feeling excited just thinking about it.
many critics who are upset about how broad the term can be. They especially criticize that, due to the broad nature of the term, gamification enthusiasts are claiming everything good, fun, motivating, or immersive as something they perform on a professional level.
I can’t promise you a definitive conclusion to the debate over what is and what isn’t gamification, but I do hope you leave the chapter with a more rounded understanding of the field.
Gabe Zichermann and Sebastian Deterding had a public debate on gamification concepts.
Gabe Zichermann is a brilliant marketer, speaker, CEO of the largest Gamification conference in the industry, the GSummit,
Sebastian Deterding is the Ph.D. academic that studies the deep theories and motivations of game design and Gamification.
