by Yu-kai Chou
Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession is a powerful motivator that can attract us to do many irrational things but could also give us great emotional comfort and a sense of well-being. Often it is a central focus that works closely with many of the other Core Drives.
When working with Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience, people continually become drawn in by a carrot. When paired with Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance, people do everything they can to secure what they have obtained. When matched with Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity, people become obsessed with the outcome and whether they would gain the precious good. Of course, the successful accumulation of goods leads to Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment, and when the sense of ownership sparks the need to become better and innovate, Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback comes in play.
Here you can see how all the 8 Core Drives work together in dynamic flows, each supporting the other and creating a spectrum of higher motivation. However, you must also be wary of designs where Core Drives sabotage each other. As one of the more Extrinsically Motivating Core Drives, if improperly design, it could make people act more selfishly, remove intellectual curiosity, and destroy any hopes of higher creativity. We will explore this in more depth in Chapter 13: Left Brain vs Right Brain Core Drives.
To get the most out of the book, Choose only ONE of the below options to do right now:
Easy: Think about something you collected or had a unique sense of ownership with. Did you feel that it was “fun” to spend time with it, even though from an outsider’s perspective it could look like you weren’t doing anything with it?
Easy: Think about something that has the Alfred Effect in your life. How did they implement it, and when did you recognize that effect was in place? Could it be designed to let users become aware of it sooner?
Medium Think about how you can introduce a Collection Set into a project that you are currently working on which will motivate users towards the Desired Actions. What kind of theme(s) can the collection set use? Do you want each piece to be given as an Earned Lunch whenever the user commits the Desired Actions, or have it as a Mystery Box where the pieces come out randomly after the Desired Actions?
Share what you come up with on Twitter or your preferred social network with the hashtag #OctalysisBook and see what ideas other people have.
Start Collecting
I’m sure you have noticed all the Game Technique hash numbers (#s) that follow each game technique within the different chapters. This actually started off as collection set designed for my blog audience to collect all the game technique numbers that are populated within my blog, videos, workshops, and other content such as this book. Later on, those who have a fairly complete set of game techniques #s will be able to use it as a guide sheet to study some of my most advanced content. Content such as Game Technique Combos where we determine what Game Techniques work best with each other to create various motivational effects, as well as the order in which they go, along with other fascinating things.
This is completely voluntary and only for those who really want to dig deep into my content and be able to wield the power of Octalysis one day. Of course, even if you don’t plan to dig that deep, such a list of game techniques would become a useful cheat sheet in referring what is available in your arsenal whenever you are designing a project.
Chapter 9: The Fifth Core Drive - Social Influence & Relatedness
Social Influence and Relatedness is the fifth core drive within Octalysis Gamification and involves activities inspired by what other people think, do, or say. This Core Drive is the engine behind many themes such as mentorship, competition, envy, group quests, social treasure, and companionship.
Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness is a Right Brain Core Drive that bases its success off our desires to connect and compare with one another. With the proliferation of new social media tools and platforms, more and more companies are working on optimizing Core Drive 5 during the Discovery and Onboarding Process.
Almost every consumer app these days urges you to “Invite Your Friends” upon joining their service. However, just because the social platform is there to spread a message does not necessarily mean there is engaging, share-worthy content. There are many pitfalls as Social Influence & Relatedness is a double-edged sword and needs to be wielded carefully.
When utilized properly, it can serve as one of the strongest and long-lasting motivations for people to become connected and engaged to your experience.
The Mentor that Stole My Life
In 2012, I was doing research on some games that didn’t have great graphics, but were very successful from the prospective of engagement and monetization (yes, part of my work is to research and play games, among other grueling activities such as talking about games, traveling the world, and coming up with random comments while filming my videos).
During this time, a game called Parallel Kingdom popped up on my radar135.
Parallel Kingdom is a mobile location based MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) that allows players to access and grow in a virtual world laid out on top of the real world, based on the player’s GPS location. The game has fairly unrefined and unimpressive graphics, but monetizes handsomely and makes millions of dollars as a small team.
When I started doing preliminary research on the game, I initially planned to spend no more than two hours to learn about its game mechanics design and how it could engage players so well. After that, I would return to focusing on my other work.
The initial stage of the Onboarding experience was so-so, with basic tutorials and explanations on the backstory of the game. I saw that the game was interesting because players get to build a kingdom on top of their actual home locations on a virtual map that reflected the real world (which ties in some Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession and Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity). The interface wasn’t very intuitive and there were many instances where I felt I needed to make decisions without having enough information.
Like the majority of first-time users on any site, within thirty minutes I felt that I learned enough of what the game was about, and planned to leave the system. I was behind on my work anyway.
But forty minutes into the game (probably enough time for the game to determine that I was a serious player), I received a message that said, “Hey, [User X] has been assigned to be your mentor. He will contact you the next time he signs-in.” The message in itself was interesting. By indicating the mentor could not talk to me immediately, it was more convincing that he was an actual player, and not just a computer or a company employee.
That built up some curiosity and anticipation (Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity and Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience). I wanted to know who this user was and what he would have to say about the game. Maybe he was an artificial bot or a human admin? If he were an actual player, perhaps I could learn more about the Scaffolding and Endgame Phases from him.
When my “mentor” logged in some twenty minutes later, he requested to teleport to my location. I granted him permission. He showed up, and quickly started to share some tips about how I should think about my “career development” in the game – what skills would be useful to learn, what viable trades and professions to pursue in the game, and the best items to collect.
He also started giving me gear - items he knew I needed to become more powerful such as swords, shields, helmets, boots etc. The default sword I had only gave me +2 damage, but the new sword he gave me (which was his old gear that he no longer needed) had +7 damage. That’s a significant boost to anything I could find on my own. With this new, more powerful gear, I was anxious to go back to the dungeons (or levels) that I was struggling at earlier and show those monsters my new powers. I wasn’t going to quit the game until I could demonstrate my new powers and could feel accomplished.
At that point, a thought crossed my mind. This mentor had given me all these amazing items that I couldn’t get on my own; at least
not within the first few hours of gameplay. If I took his items and then quit the game, I would be wasting all these “valuables,” and he would likely be very disappointed about it. Morally or responsibly, I couldn’t quit the game…not until a little bit later anyway.
At that point, he asked me to follow him into some lower level dungeons. I listened. Wow. The monsters in those dungeons were tough, even for my new gear! I tried to fight them as skillfully as I could, but I still came close to dying several times. My mentor then started attacking the monsters, and with each blow he would wipe out a batch of them. It seemed so easy and effortless for him. At that point, a subconscious feeling crept into my mind.
“I wish I could be like that one day.”
This is an interesting thought because I didn’t really care about the game at that point. But when we see someone else effortlessly complete something that we struggle hard against, our brains automatically develop a feeling of envy. How people deal with that envy may be different – some become inspired with “I want to be like that one day!”, whereas others enter into denial, “Well, I can never do that, but the whole thing is stupid anyway.” This game had cleverly designed for the former.
When you design an environment where people are prone to be envious of others, you want to make sure there is a realistic path for them to follow to in achieving what they are envious about. Otherwise you will simply generate user denial and disengagement. We will explore this theme more in Chapter Ten on Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience.
After following my mentor for a couple hours to conquer a few dungeons, another thought began to hit me. “Man…this guy is a high level player. He should be fighting in the high level dungeons. He gains nothing here and is just wasting his time. He is investing in me! Of course I can’t quit now. I would be the biggest disappointment ever!”
As a result, instead of quitting, I joined his Kingdom, became a valid member on his team, and helped the Kingdom collect resources such as lumber, fruits, stones, and equipment. Instead of playing the intended two hours, I ended up playing the game for two months before I forced myself to quit in order to start researching other games. Sadly, when I did quit, one of the members in the Kingdom did become fairly upset with me because he spent a good amount of time helping my character grow, in the hope that I would become a strong force within the Kingdom. At the time, I felt quite horrible being such a big letdown.
This is the power of Mentorship, one of the Game Techniques in Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness that we will cover in this chapter.
How many times have you tried to withdraw from a volunteer group, team, church, or even a relationship, but had an extremely hard time because you didn’t want to upset other people?
We derive some of our most joyful experiences when we are with friends and family, and experience stress and anxiety when these relationships aren’t going well. We are innate social animals, and naturally endowed with a sense of empathy. We are influenced by what other people feel and think about us.
Understanding the dynamics of Social Influence & Relatedness is something every good Octalysis Gamifier should become familiar with.
We’re all Pinocchios at Heart
In 1972, the Keep America Beautiful Organization created an advertising campaign with the theme, “People Start Pollution. People can stop it.” It was considered to be one of the most moving and effective public service announcements of all time. The ad campaign featured a Native American reacting to the widespread corruption of the environment, and shedding a single but powerful tear.
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Many years later, the organization wanted to revisit the same theme, so they created a new pollution prevention campaign with a poster of the same Native American shedding that single but powerful tear with the slogan, “Back by Popular Neglect.”
Unfortunately, this time around the ad campaign was not only ineffective, it may have backfired and caused even more people to pollute the environment.137 Can you tell why?
Let me give you another example and see if you can hone in on what’s wrong with these campaigns. For many years, the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona suffered heavy losses due to the vandalizing and theft of their petrified wood. They wanted to come up with a message that would decrease such theft.
As a result, they put up a sign that read, “Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year, mostly a small piece at a time.”
This message seems to make sense, as it tells people how serious these little transgressions can be, hoping to appeal to people’s Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling as well as some Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession.
However, when the sign was posted, both theft and vandalism increased. Why?
Here we learn that, just because one attempts to appeal to various Core Drives does not mean it will be done elegantly and effectively (This is why we study games to learn how they successfully do it). But more so, it’s because this message created an Anti-Core Drive, or the motivation to not do the Desired Action. Both messages imply, “It is the crushing norm that people pollute, steal, and vandalize. Please don’t be like them.”
While there are some people in the world that go out of their way to be different, unique, or weird (I may fit that bill a little bit), most people benchmark themselves with what everyone else is doing. The updated slogan for the Keep America Beautiful campaign, “Back by Popular Neglect” told people that, “Hey, it’s actually popular to pollute.” Though their message was that you shouldn’t do it, it actually encouraged people to be more like the norm.
Don’t believe me? A group of Behavioral Psychologists did further investigations to prove this concept138 . The researchers decided to do a split test at the same National Park in Arizona with two different signs and a control test to see how behavior changes based on three different messages. They also threw many “easy-to-steal” petrified wood pieces along the way to measure how many were stolen. The signs were as follows:
Sign #1 — Social Norm: “Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood from the park, destroying the natural state of the Petrified Forest.” (A picture of park visitors taking pieces of wood accompanied this.)
Sign #2 — No Social Norm: “Please don’t remove the petrified wood from the park, in order to preserve the natural state of the Petrified Forest.” (This sign showed a lone visitor stealing a piece of wood with the universal “No” symbol, a red circle with a diagonal line).
The final condition was having no sign at all to serve as the control test for the study.
Stunningly, they found that having no sign at all led to a 3% theft rate while having Sign #1 (Social Norm) led to a 7.9% theft rate. This meant that, the Social Norm sign increased theft by 160% compared to having no sign at all! The sign that says “Everyone steals and hurts the environment” not only failed to deter theft, it literally promoted theft.
On the other hand, Sign #2 (No Social Norm) performed as expected and lowered the theft rate to 1.67%.
What do we see here? What we perceive as the social norm greatly influences our decisions and behavior, often more so than personal gains or even moral standards. In the extreme, this “social norm override” can explain many of the devastating acts performed done by Nazi soldiers, who may have otherwise been decent people had they lived in another country at the time139; or mass suicide attempts by the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project140).
The famous fictional puppet Pinocchio had a dream – to be a normal boy just like everyone else. Perhaps we all have a little bit of Pinocchio inside of us.
The Average Person is Above Average
There have been numerous studies on how “social norming” affects our behaviors. Often, when we see how other people are performing, we begin to compare ourselves to the norm and start to adjust accordingly. Our social standing among our peers turns out to be a strong motivator for us regardless of whether we think others recognize our standings or not.
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bsp; Interestingly, when researchers study how people perceive themselves relative to others, the majority consider themselves to be “above average” at almost anything you ask them about. This of course, is statistically impossible.
In a survey of faculty at the University of Nebraska, 68% of the faculties rated themselves in the top 25% percentile for their teaching abilities.141 Similarly, a survey done on Stanford MBA students showed that 87% of them believed their academic performances to be above the medium. 142 Even among high school students, a survey attached to the SAT Exams in 1976 revealed that 85% of the students believed they had better social skills than the average, while 70% believed themselves to be above the medium in being leaders. In fact, 25% of the students rated themselves as the top 1% when it came to social skills143. Many times, when you show all these people who are “above average” that they are in fact not so above average, that is when they decide to change their behaviors.
One notable study on the power of social proofing involved hotel bathrooms messages that urged guests to reuse their towels for environmental reasons144. Among other variations, a social proof message in the hotel bathroom read, “Join Your Fellow Guests in Helping to Save the Environment” and noted that 75% of guests participated in the towel-reuse program.
It turned out that people who saw that 75% of other guests reused their towels (establishing a “social norm”) became 25% more likely to reuse their own towels. Interestingly, an alternative sign that was specific to the guest’s room was tested, saying, “nearly 75% of guests who stayed in this room reused their towels.” This created even better results because the “relatedness” principle indicates that the more you can relate to a group, the more likely you will comply with its social norm.