Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards

by Yu-kai Chou

video game culture to taunt an opponent who has just been soundly defeated (e.g., “You just got pwned!”).” - Wikipedia

It sure seems odd that a fairly large group of volunteers go on Wikipedia regularly, not to be enlightened with mind-blowing knowledge, but to police the platform for pests like me who are trying to sneak irrelevant or unimportant content into the Wikipedia.

You know that no one enjoys this type of grunt work. These bright young interns and employees really want to learn great skills from you and your company so they can grow as professionals.

choose to spend a lot of time explaining to them how this is important to the company and how their work creates great impact.

But when it comes to Wikipedia, people are volunteering their precious time outside of their jobs to do the exact same thing without getting any “real” benefits! When you come home from work, there are lots of things you can do - practice your daily boss-complaining ritual, watch TV, Skype with your significant other, or even play games.

Individuals participate in the system and take action not because it necessarily benefits them, but because they can then see themselves as heroes of a grander story.

And if playing my part does not require me to sacrifice my life as a martyr but simply involves me to spend a couple hours a day monitoring weird activities on Wikipedia, that’s a huge bargain and something worth doing.

After some research, whoopee, I discovered that people who have spent time editing Wikipedia are almost nine times more likely to donate to Wikipedia compared to people who only benefit off it by consuming the valuable information (28% vs 3%)38. What’s more, donors who don’t edit the site have all donated far fewer than three times,

while a whopping 80% of donors who have also put labor into Wikipedia have donated five times or more.

even if it means foregoing financial compensation (which is Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession).

Newton’s Legacy is Beyond a Fruit

Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling is generally best communicated during the Discovery and Onboarding Phase of a Player’s Journey. You want to communicate very early on exactly why the user should participate in your mission and become a player.

What we are seeing here is that these friends of mine (and I suspect yours too) have first self-identified as an “Apple Person.” Therefore, they need to do what “Apple People” do,

it is often unfair to compare the market share of iPhones to Android Phones as a success measurement, since the iPhone is sold by one company, while Android Phones are sold by over a dozen companies throughout the world.

This is a build-up of the popular novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell, published in 1948 about a futuristic dystopian world where a unified society is controlled and brainwashed by a centralized government40

Then, a deep male voice says, “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’”

Through this commercial, Apple reassures viewers that the world wouldn’t be controlled by “Big Brother” - IBM, but would be liberated by Apple’s computers.

In his book, Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture, Ted Friedman discusses how powerful the commercial was:

They estimated that the total value was about $150 million worth of derived airtime. Within three months of the commercial’s appearance, Apple would sell $155 million worth of Macintoshes, establishing itself as the revolutionary computer company on the block.

“Think Different” campaign. This commercial ran in 1998, not long after Apple’s Founder, Steve Jobs returned to the board at the end of 1996.

At the time, Apple was a struggling company, and a dying brand. Jobs not only trimmed Apple’s product line from over 350 items down to 10, he knew he had to reinvent the Apple brand.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

The series of commercials was a gigantic success. It won dozens of prestigious advertisement awards and made the Apple brand “cool” again. It tangibly spearheaded the transformation of Apple from a dying company into literally the most valuable company in the world within a decade.

Neither of these campaigns actually talks about computers or electronics. They don’t talk about specs, RAM, color screens, or computers. You’re not even sure what they sell if you are unfamiliar with the company. They sold a vision.

When people connect with a statement like, “Because of Apple Computers, 1984 will not be like Nineteen Eighty-Four,” many started to think, “Wow! That’s amazing! I don’t know what they do, but I want to be part of this!”

the way to think different and change the world is to buy an iPod and have a thousand songs in your pocket.

As long as Apple can continue to make people think that it is a vision worth believing in, their customers will continue to be “Apple People” and buy Apple products.

Waze is a GPS-based mobile navigation app that provides a wealth of user-generated information about travel conditions from the Waze community. When you think of a GPS, it is purely functional as a tool. You turn left, turn right, and get to your destination - very functional as a tool, but not very epic. So

What Waze did was brilliant. In the early days of Waze, when you first download the app, it would show you one image. On the left side of that image, there is a huge snake monster, consisting of a street with many cars stuck on it. This snake monster’s name was Traffic. On the right side of the image, there were cute little Waze knight characters with swords, shields, and armor, working together to fight this big snake monster. So now, when you are driving with Waze, you are not just getting to your destination, you are helping a community of brave Wazers fight this Traffic monster! This resonates on a subconscious level because, deep in our hearts, everyone hates traffic with a passion.