by Yu-kai Chou
It’s important to first create a strong community that already has a lot to discuss and then introduce the Water Cooler to unleash the social energy. Otherwise, you will end up having an office with a water cooler but no employees in it.
Core Drive 5: The Bigger Picture
Social Influence & Relatedness is one of the best studied and practiced Right Brain Core Drives in gamification, with Development & Accomplishment being the well-studied counterpart Left Brain Core Drive.
Most people recognize spending time with friends as an intrinsically fun activity. Social Influence & Relatedness adds more fun to Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback as well as Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity. It makes Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling more meaningful and Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment feel more like an accomplishment. Also, it gives people a benchmark on how they are doing with Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession, as well as creates envy when others have what they don’t have (Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience).
However, there is such a thing as oversaturation: where many platforms abuse the mechanics for mass friend-spamming, losing the original social purpose of fun and collaboration. If your friends all feel like everything you do is for Left-Brain self-gain purposes, you will begin to lose their trust and be treated like a network marketer who is simply cashing out friends for money.
To get the most out of the book, Choose only ONE of the below options to do right now:
Easy: Think of a time when you had a mentor. Did your behavior change because of the mentor? If you haven’t never had a mentor before, come up with a plan to obtain one.
Easy: Think about a Social Treasure you received, or a Social Treasure that you were asked to give. Was it designed to encourage applicants to spread the name of a brand or project?
Medium: Think about another example that heavily utilized Conformity Anchors to change behavior. How was it utilized and can it be improved?
Hard: Think about how you can implement a Group Quest into the project you are doing right now that will motivate users towards the Desired Actions. Does it have a theme? Could it utilize collection sets and boosters to become even more engaging?
Share what you come up with on Twitter or your preferred social network with the hashtag #OctalysisBook and see what ideas other people have.
Join the Movement:
If you have read up to this point, you have become a great candidate to join our Facebook Group of Octalysis Enthusiasts called “Octalysis Explorers159.” Go on Facebook and search for this group, then request an invitation to join and see what other learners such as yourself are doing with Octalysis. Many thanks to Mike Finney for starting and orchestrating this group.
Chapter 10: The Sixth Core Drive: Scarcity & Impatience
Scarcity and Impatience is the sixth core drive of the Octalysis Framework. It is the drive that motivates us simply because we are either unable to have something immediately, or because there is great difficulty in obtaining it.
We have a natural tendency to want things we can’t have. If a bowl of grapes were sitting on the table, you may not care about them; but if they were on a shelf just beyond your reach, you would likely be thinking about those grapes: “Are they sweet? Can I have them? When can I have them?”
Personally, Core Drive 6 was the last Core Drive I learned about and is the one that intrigues me the most, particularly because this core drive can feel completely unintuitive, irrational, and emotionally difficult to utilize.
In this chapter we’ll explore this Black Hat/Left Brain Core Drive, understand its powers, and learn about some game techniques that harness it for behavioral change.
The Lure of being Exclusively Pointless
South Park, a popular American animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, has many lessons to teach us about human behavior (once you get past the potty-mouth cursing and gory scenes).
In one of the episodes, “Cartmanland”160, the controversial main character Eric Cartman inherits $1 million from his deceased grandmother. He decides to use most of the funds to buy a struggling theme park just to entertain himself there without being stuck in lines.
Instead of trying to improve the business, Cartman makes a full 38-second TV commercial to show how amazingly fun “Cartmanland” is and emphasizes that no one besides himself can enjoy it. “So much fun in Cartmanland, but you can’t come!” is the catchy slogan.
After realizing he needs more money to hire a security guard to keep his friends out, Cartman starts to accept two customers a day to pay for the security costs. He soon realizes that he needs to pay for other things such as maintenance, utilities, and other operational services, so he begins to open the park up to three, four, tens, and then hundreds of people each day.
Since people all saw how inaccessible Cartmanland was for them, when they learned that it was accepting more people, they rushed to get in.
Eventually, everyone wanted to go to Cartmanland and it went from being a near-bankrupt theme park to one of the most popular parks in the region. Experts within the episode even called the “You Can’t Come!” campaign a brilliant marketing ploy by the genius millionaire Eric Cartman.
Unfortunately, with more people in his precious park, Cartman became miserable and eventually sold it back to the original owner. Subsequently, he lost his money due to tax mismanagement, which is typical of Cartman.
What you see here is a classic example of scarcity through exclusivity. Though this is an exaggerated example, in this chapter you will see how our brains have a natural tendency to pursue things just because they are exclusive.
On the other side of popular media, in the movie Up in the Air161, protagonist Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, is a corporate “downsizer” that flies all over the place to help companies lay off employees. In a conversation with the young and ambitious status-quo disruptor Natalie Keene, played by Anna Kendrick, Bingham gives us a lesson about the value of scarcity, status, rewards, and exclusivity, as he explains about his obsession with accumulating airline miles.
Ryan Bingham: I don’t spend a nickel, if I can help it, unless it somehow profits my mileage account.
Natalie Keener: So, what are you saving up for? Hawaii? South of France?
Ryan Bingham: It’s not like that. The miles are the goal.
Natalie Keener: That’s it? You’re saving just to save?
Ryan Bingham: Let’s just say that I have a number in mind and I haven’t hit it yet.
Natalie Keener: That’s a little abstract. What’s the target?
Ryan Bingham: I’d rather not…
Natalie Keener: Is it a secret target?
Ryan Bingham: It’s ten million miles.
Natalie Keener: Okay. Isn’t ten million just a number?
Ryan Bingham: Pi’s just a number.
Natalie Keener: Well, we all need a hobby. No, I- I- I don’t mean to belittle your collection. I get it. It sounds cool.
Ryan Bingham: I’d be the seventh person to do it. More people have walked on the moon.
Natalie Keener: Do they throw you a parade?
Ryan Bingham: You get lifetime executive status. You get to meet the chief pilot, Maynard Finch.
Natalie Keener: Wow.
Ryan Bingham: And they put your name on the side of a plane.
Natalie Keener: Men get such hard-ons from putting their names on things. You guys don’t grow up. It’s like you need to pee on everything.
Beyond the collection, status, and achievement (Core Drives 4, 5, and 2), one thing that was very important for Ryan was that “I’d be the seventh person to do it. More people have walked on the moon.” This shows that because it’s something that he (along with billions of others) couldn’t get right now, he valued obtaining it more. It was simply more appealing because of how exclusive it was.
The Value of Rare Pixels
In the previously mentioned game Geomon, gamers try to capture monsters in order to battle each other. T
he game is similar to Pokemon, but influenced by the environment where the gamers are physically located based on their phone GPS, such as being next to a river or a desert.
In Geomon, there are certain monsters that can only be found in very limited or special situations. Because some of these monsters are extremely rare, people are willing to spend real money in order to obtain them.
One such example is the Mozzy, a blazing fox made of fire.
The Mozzy can only be caught on hot days and close to an office run by the Mozilla Organization - creators of the Mozilla Firefox browser. This means, for a game that has players throughout the world, it is extremely difficult, sometimes impossible for the average person to capture a Mozzy. In the forums, people sometimes say, “This summer my parents are taking me to San Francisco. I’m going to rent a car and drive down to Mountain View. Maybe I’ll catch a Mozzy. So excited!”
This drive is further illustrated with the live comments made by Geomon players, through in-game chat, during game play. In the following screenshot I randomly took while playing, notice how desperate users are in obtaining a Mozzy. Emphasized with all caps – “I’LL DO ANYTHING FOR A MOZZY.”
Though it seems rather extreme, the desperate plea above is surpassed by the following conversation below:
Here, you see “Vincent7512” claim (adjusted for capitalization), “I wish I had a single Mozzy, then, at this point in my life, I could die happy.”
Now you would expect that when someone says this, others would respond with, “Come on… get a life! It’s just a game!” But no. Three lines down, you see “Valeriefox18” echo the same sentiment, “me too vincent :( me too.”
Here is a community of players who are so desperate about getting Mozzys that instead of playing the game more, they hang out on the chat board just to mope about it and feel “connected” to one another (CD5 Relatedness). Pretty extreme right?
Another example of this within Geomon is the Laurelix, the magnificent golden phoenix.
In order to catch a Laurelix, you need to be at a location that has an extremely high temperature, possibly over 110 Fahrenheit or 40 Celsius. The result of this design was, at one point there were only 3 players in the entire world that owned a Laurelix. As you might imagine, everyone wanted one too. Once the game studio even received a call from the mother of a player, saying, “My son has been sick for two whole weeks, and he said nothing could cheer him up unless he had a Laruelix. I don’t know what that is, but he said you had it. I’m willing to pay $20 for a Laurelix. Can you give that to my son?”
Interestingly, the Mozzy and Lauralix are not the most powerful geomons in the game – there are plenty of geomons that are more powerful than they are. But because these two are so difficult to obtain, their perceived value increased immensely, helping the company better monetize their game.
What’s amazing is that when something is this scarce, it has a tremendous amount of stickiness to it also. As an advisor for the company, I played the game for a while (okay, more than a while), facilitated the online communities, and helped the company redesign and rebalance their entire ability skill trees and combat systems. After that, I became a passive advisor, quit the game, and moved on to my “other work.”
For an entire seven months, I haven’t been playing, nor thinking about the game (except when meeting the CEO and advising them on management and monetization strategies). But one day I was traveling for work and found myself at a place that was excruciatingly hot, to the point where I felt like I was burning if directly exposed to the sun.
At that moment, instead of shouting or complaining about it, the first thing that came to my mind and mouth was, “I wonder if I could catch a Laurelix here…” This of course confused my client who was giving me a tour of his great country.
Even though, again, I didn’t care about playing the game anymore and haven’t played for over half a year, because a Laurelix was so scarce, I naturally thought that, “Well, when I can capture one, I probably should capture it!”
The Leftovers aren’t all that’s Left Over
Most of us would like to believe that we make purchasing decisions based on the price and quality of a good. A purchase is seen as a very rational exchange of money for an item that we desire. If the price were greater than the “utility,” or happiness that we derive from the valuable, then we don’t make the purchase.
However, psychological studies have shown again and again that this is only partially true. We buy things not because of their actual value, but rather based on their perceived value, which means many times our purchases aren’t very rational.
In 1975, researchers Worchel, Lee, and Adewole conducted an experiment to test the desirability of cookies in different cookie jars162. The experiment featured two cookie jars, one with ten cookies in it, and the other with only two. Though the cookies were exactly the same, the experiment revealed that people valued the cookies more when only two were available in the jar. They valued those cookies more, mainly for two reasons: 1) Social Proof – everyone else seems to prefer those cookies for some reason, and 2) Scarcity- people felt that the cookies were running out.
In a second experiment conducted by the team, subjects watched as the number of cookies in the “ten-cookie” jar were reduced to two cookies, while the other group saw the “two-cookie” jar get filled up to ten cookies. In this case, people started to value the former more and devalue the latter. When people saw that there was now an abundance in the first jar which earlier had only two cookies, they valued these even less than those from the “ten-cookie” jar of the first experiment where there were ten cookies to begin with.
Here we see that, when there is a perceived abundance, motivation starts to dwindle. The odd thing is, our perception is often influenced by relative changes instead of absolute values. People with $10 million would perceive their wealth differently (and feel differently) if they only had $1 million the year before, versus if they had $1 billion the year before.
Persuasively Inconvenient
As illustrated in the examples above, our brains intuitively seek things that are scarce, unavailable, or fading in availability.
Oren Klaff is a professional sales pitcher and fundraiser who claims to close deals through a systematic method which he calls neuroeconomics, a craft that combines both neuroscience and economics. By digging deep into our psychology and appealing to what he calls the “croc” brain, the method utilizes various Core Drives such as Social Influence & Relatedness, Scarcity & Impatience, as well as the upcoming Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity and Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance.163
In his book Pitch Anything164, Klaff explains the concept of Prizing, and how it ties into three fundamental behaviors of our “croc” brains:
We chase that which moves away from us
We want what we cannot have
We only place value on things that are difficult to obtain
His work suggests that, instead of ABS – Always Be Selling, salespeople should practice ABL – Always Be Leaving. If you are always leaving the discussions, it means that you are not desperate, are highly sought after, and not dependent on this deal. You are the Prize. Klaff claims that, when you correctly do this, money will flow in.
Through his methods, Klaff has raised over $450 million and claims to continue so at a rate of $2 million a week.
It is oddly true that as we place limitations on something, it becomes more valuable in our minds. In Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, the authors share how Colleen Szot revolutionized her infomercials by simply changing the call-to-action line from “Operators are waiting, please call now,” to, “If operators are busy, please call again.165”
Why would this be? In the first case, viewers can imagine operators sitting around, waiting to answer calls and take orders for products that may be of marginal value. In the second case viewers will perceive that the operators are struggling to answer a flood of calls just to keep up with the demand on orders.
Even though this message suggests an inconvenience to buy a product, the perceived scarcity alone is enough to motivated people to call quickly before the product potentially runs out.
My father is a diplomat for Taiwan, and sometimes he would talk to a colleague who was deployed to a former communist country in Eastern Europe. I once heard the colleague say, “If you see a line on the street, don’t even waste time finding out what they are in line for. Just get in line. It must be something essential like soap or toilet paper. It doesn’t matter if you have money. If there is no toilet paper in the region, your money is useless.” Here, the sheer inconvenience driven by scarcity and social proof can compel a comparably wealthy person to stand in line for hours.
In Pitch Anything, Oren Klaff also brings up another example where BMW released a special-edition M3 that required the buyer to sign a contract promising to keep it clean and take care of the special paint. Without this promise in writing, they won’t even allow you to purchase the car! In this case, BMW is inflating its value so that the buyer will believe it is a special and exclusive privilege to drive the car. Maybe that’s why the hard-to-get strategy in dating culture is so prevalent. Through Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience, you can keep your prospective partner on their toes.
Curves are better than Cups in Economics
When I was studying Economics at UCLA, the one fundamental lesson that my professors regularly talked about was the Supply and Demand curve. It basically explains that if the price of an item drops, the demand will increase. If the item becomes completely free, the curve will indicate the maximum number of buyers that will acquire it.