Actionable Gamification

by Yu-kai Chou

  As I was leaving Tea Stream Valley, I saw people soliciting for pencil drawn portraits. My tour guide was using the restroom, so I decided to check them out and see if they were any good - that’s the power of Core Drive 7: Curiosity. They saw me approach and asked if I wanted a portrait which I politely turned down.

  I was about to leave, when I saw another artist drawing a portrait based on an iPhone photo for another customer. I asked (in Mandarin of course), “Oh, so if I give you a mobile photo, you can draw it too?” He responded, “Of course! Do you want one?”

  I decided that this would be a great way for me to bring something back for my wife to show that I was thinking about her during my long trip away from home. Instead of just buying something expensive on the shelf at an airport, a hand-drawn portrait of her would be more personal and more endearing. It would show her that I actually spent time to have something unique and custom-made for her.

  I asked the artist, “So how much for one?” He told me it was about the equivalent of $50 USD. I thought, “Wow, that’s extremely expensive, even by U.S. standards.” Instead of negotiating with him, which I generally dislike doing because it requires too much emotional energy, I decided to use the walk-away tactic in Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience.

  “Sorry, that’s way too expensive for me.” As I started walking away, he rushed to say, “What if I could do it for $35?” I felt happy that my scarcity tactic was working, but $35 was still too expensive so I said, “Naw, like I said, it’s way too much.” Of course, I wasn’t bluffing. I truly did not intend to buy anything at that point.

  He then said, “Okay…I can do it for $25. Since the day’s about to end, I’ll just do you a favor and wrap up with this one.” At this point, even though it still wasn’t very cheap (for comparison, a 90-minute massage in Shenzhen was only $25), I thought I haggled well by cutting his original asking price down by 50% - feeling a sense of Core Drive 2. He also just used a Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness tactic of “I like you, so I’ll do you a favor,” so I thought I might as well agree to do it. I’m on a fun trip anyway.

  After working for twenty minutes, he was almost done with the portrait. It was alright. It wasn’t great but you could tell that it looked like my wife.(That was my main goal - I didn’t want her thinking that I was having another woman drawn!)

  As he was wrapping up, he asked, “Would you like to add a transparent protective layer to the drawing? It will protect the pencil lead from being smudged.” I said, “Sure, sounds good!” He gave me a concerned look and said, “It’s going to cost more though.” Slightly surprised, I asked, “How much more?” He told me nonchalantly that for the protective layer, it was going to cost me $15 extra.

  I then realized his sneaky tactic and felt fairly annoyed. I responded in an emotionally disturbed tone, “Then forget about it. I’m not going to pay $15 just for that layer.”

  Then, with a very concerned and considerate facial expression, he explained, “But if you don’t add the protective layer, the pencil lead will definitely smudge in your luggage bag and ruin the whole drawing. Look how easily the pencil lead falls off.” He then proceeded to use his thumb to rub a corner of the portrait, and indeed a layer of graphite came off onto his thumb. “It would be such a shame if this nice drawing got destroyed!”

  What would you do in this situation?

  As you can imagine, it was a very uncomfortable situation to be in. Nevertheless, it was also a very compelling educational experience. The power of Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance had taken over my behavior and I ended up paying him $40 for a rather mediocre drawing. And if you recall, just a few minutes earlier I turned down the same drawing for $35!

  I walked away, reminding myself repeatedly, “I’m not buying his drawing skills for $40. I’m buying my wife’s happiness for $40. It’s totally worth it.”

  A couple of very important observations in persuasive design should be made from this interaction.

  I was highly compelled to take the Desired Action. I ended up paying $40 for 20 minutes of the artist’s work, even if I rationally understood that the price wasn’t fair nor its delivery honest. The “artist” made his money. In addition, I felt extremely uncomfortable after taking the Desired Action, and from that point on, would never be strongly inclined to purchase something from street vendors in China again.

  This is very important to understand. Utilizing this Black Hat Core Drive is extraordinarily powerful in getting someone to take the Desired Action, but in the long run, it demoralizes the user’s experience and creates burnout which can lead to high turnover. Once they commit the Desired Actions, people don’t want to ever put themselves in the same situation again.

  In the situation above, where the artist is only making money from one-off tourists, this tactic only harms other street vendors in China so it may be worth it. At least, until a few years later when all tourists know to avoid buying anything from sleazy street vendors - unfortunately, including the honest ones. However, in your own experience design, I’m guessing you would like your users to commit more Desired Actions subsequent to the first Desired Action, as they enter into the Scaffolding and Endgame Phases.

  As a result, when we utilize design elements in an experience that appeal to Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance, it should only be at critical bumps where you really need the user to take the Desired Action. This should be followed by a series of White Hat Core Drives to encourage and balance the motivations of the user. We will explore this theme further in Chapter 14 on White Hat versus Black Hat Motivation.

  This is the beauty of the Octalysis Framework (from my point of view). We not only can use it to understand how to engineer and design for motivation, but we can understand and optimize for the nature of that motivation to make sure it fulfills both our short-term goals and long-term goals.

  And if you must know: upon returning to California, my wife recognized herself in the portrait and was extremely touched by the gesture. I also felt extremely accomplished (Core Drive 2) because she was so happy and because my plan worked like a charm.

  Perhaps the $40 was worth it after all.

  “Why don’t you take all my money?” in Poker

  The same type of Core Drive 8 behavior happens frequently in psychological wagering games such as poker205. Consider the following situation in which many Texas Hold’em Poker players often find themselves:

  At the beginning of a match, you may start off with a very strong hand, or set of cards. In order to avoid scarring off other players, you increase the bet by a small amount, so that anyone who has some hope of improving their hand in the current match stays. As more community cards (center cards that everyone can use and “share” to build their hands) are flipped, your hand remains strong and everyone continues to call your small bet by adding little increments to the pot. This often means that the players are not confident with their own cards, but they don’t want to fold (give up) yet in the hope of getting a better hand, so they keep putting in the minimum amount of money to stay in the round.

  You continue to feel very good about your hand, especially compared to your opponents. Finally, when the last center card is turned over and there is nothing more to see or hope for, you feel like it is time to reap your winnings. But knowing that everyone else likely has weaker hands, you still don’t want to scare the entire table off. So you decide to put 40% of your chips in and see if anyone will challenge you with the same amount. You hope to get someone with a semi-decent hand to think that perhaps you are bluffing and bet against you.

  With such a show of strength, most people fold because they are aware that you truly have a strong hand and they only have mediocre ones. But one individual suddenly goes “All-In” and pushes all his chips into the center.

  This is a difficult moment for a poker player. You have already demonstrated full confidence and strength in your hand. Even if the other player also believed he had a great hand, he could simply match your bet instead of raising it. That
way he could control the amount just in case your hand turns out to be stronger than his.

  But by going “All-In,” this person is demonstrating that he is so confident in beating your high hand, that he doesn’t care what you might have. In poker, the worse hand a player can get is not the smallest hand at the table but the second largest hand. When you know you have a small hand, you simply fold and only lose a few chips. But when you believe you have the biggest hand at the table but ultimately don’t, you are at risk of losing all your chips.

  In this scenario, you quickly do some calculations in your head and conclude that there are three possible hands that, though extremely unlikely, this other person could have to beat you with. Maybe he’s just bluffing? You become nervous and start to think about how he played his hand in the last few moves. Your rational brain becomes fully convinced that this person is not bluffing and has your hand beat. You’ve lost.

  If you were a computer, your calculations would quickly recognize that losing 40% of your money is better than losing more than 40% of your money. And so you would fold your hand and acquiesce the loss.

  However, the human mind thinks differently. In this moment, we tend to focus our eyes on the money laying on the table. We start feeling the pain of losing 40% of our chips and then start to have second thoughts: “What if he has a smaller hand? What if he is bluffing? What if he actually has a small hand, but he thinks it’s big?”

  We forget that our rational brain has already determined that this person is not bluffing and has our hand beat. It’s our emotional brain that’s doing the thinking now. You also don’t want to look like a loser in front of others (Core Drive 5) after confidently raising your bets and suddenly bowing out upon the first challenge you face. Pride is an expensive thing to possess.

  Finally, Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity kicks in to elevate another aspect of Loss & Avoidance. If you fold now, you will never know if the person had a better hand (In poker, a player does not need to reveal their hand if their challenge isn’t met by an equal or higher bet). You might live the rest of your life wondering if he actually had your hand beat or not, and that’s a terrible thing to live through!

  As a result, you ultimately make the irrational decision: you push in all your money, simply because you don’t want to give up on the 40% you already committed. Through this, you choose to meet your opponent’s challenge and reveal both of the hands to see whose is bigger.

  Finally, as you already know in your heart, the person reveals that he actually does have a better hand than you. Instead of losing 40% of your money, you have lost it all.

  This is why in poker, the term “Tough Muck” refers to the situation where players fold a very strong hand after betting a lot of money. Any player can win money when they truly have the best hand, but only true professionals know how to execute tough mucks when they need to.

  The Good Chasing the Bad

  The same phenomenon happens in investing too. Say you are wealthy and invested a billion dollars into a biotechnology company called LOSR. After many years, they are running out of money but have yet to reach any conclusive findings. They tell you they are very close, and just need another $400 million to make that major breakthrough.

  Now if you had just become knowledgeable about this company, you might conclude that based on the traction you have seen, the executive team is completely incompetent and you wouldn’t even invest $20 in them. Why throw money down the drain?

  As in the poker example, our inability to cope with sunk costs pushes us to take irrational actions – putting in good money to chase after bad money. You end up reluctantly putting the extra $400 million into LOSR in order to save the $1 billion you’ve already sunk into it.

  Sure, there might be a slim chance that the company does end up making a major breakthrough, in which case the world will think you are brilliant and insightful. However, you made the investment not because of clever wit, but simply because of your fear and attachment to what was already lost.

  The financially rational decision here is to cut your losses and invest your $400 million into other, more promising opportunities. (Unless, of course, you are investing for non-financial reasons - such as preventing the epic tragedy of mad scientists experimenting on themselves due to lack of funding, and becoming super-villains that destroy civilization).

  True to the nature of Black Hat motivation, you are strongly compelled to take the Desired Action, but do not necessarily feel comfortable with the behavior.

  Zombies Make you Skinnier

  Even though large doses of Black Hat motivation demoralizes us, a little bit of Black Hat can add the thrill and excitement to an experience. Mild forms of countdown timers, small penalties, or even playful fear tactics can further engage users towards the experience.

  A good example of “playful” Loss and Avoidance can be seen with the mobile app Zombies, Run! This app immerses the user in a fictional apocalyptic setting where zombies have taken over the world. The user assumes the role of “Runner 5” in a little town called “Abel.” Sometimes, Abel town runs out of resources, and “Runner 5” must go out into the wilderness to accomplish missions and save the town.

  Donning a pair of headphones and listening to a series of narrations while physically running in the real world, the user is motivated to run because they “don’t want to get eaten by zombies.” In strategic parts of the run, the “Abel town radio station” will motivate the user to sprint for certain periods of time, simply because they see fast-moving zombies right behind the user through their imagination binoculars.

  Whereas Nike+ makes users run primarily because of a feeling of Accomplishment (Core Drive 2), Zombies, Run! makes users run because they do not want to be eaten by zombies.

  Often when I run my quarterly online workshops on Octalysis Gamification, many people bring up Zombies, Run! as the app that fully engaged them to get back into running. I myself have been quite impressed with how well it drives regular and repetitive workouts for users.

  Of course, to be an engaging experience, Zombies, Run! uses a variety of both White Hat and Black Hat core drives beyond Loss & Avoidance to motivate the users. The game’s backstory has Runner 5 setting out on a mission to help save his stranded community from the zombies, which introduces Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling into the narrative. Every mission achievement plays strongly to Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment. The resources he “collects” while running (the feedback mechanic is just the audio from the earphones telling you that you have picked up a battery case) can be used to rebuild your character’s community, which harnesses Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession.

  Finally, Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity is driven through the plot. So if the user wants to find out why another in-plot companion runner suddenly started coughing heavily without reason, they will have to run more to find out whether the companion runner is infected by Zombies.

  Flipping other Core Drives Off

  Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance complements many of the other Core Drives for an interesting reason: often it manifests as the reversal of the other Core Drives. You don’t want something bigger than yourself to fall apart (Core Drive 1), hence you act; or you don’t want to look like a loser in front of your friends (Core Drive 5), hence you make a purchase.

  Some may argue that this doesn’t constitute a separate Core Drive. As an example, critics might point out that people are driven back to Farmville because they want to feel a sense of accomplishment or ownership and that the loss of either feeling is simply the removal of these drives. However, from a design standpoint, it is important to consider Loss & Avoidance as its own Core Drive.

  This is because gaining something and preventing a loss is incredibly different from the standpoint of motivation. Studies206207208 have shown over and over that we are much more likely to change our behavior to avoid a loss than to make a gain. It forces us to act differently and plays by different mental rules. In fact, Nobel Prize
winner Daniel Kahneman indicates that on average, we are twice as loss-averse compared to seeking a gain209. This means that we have a tendency to only take on a risk if we believed the potential gain would be double the potential loss if the risk were realized.

  Through using the Octalysis Framework, this differentiation improves behavioral design by specifically identifying opportunities to integrate proactive loss-avoidance mechanics that generate a more subtle set of motivational dynamics.

  Ultimate Loss vs Executable Loss

  Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance can be a tricky Core Drive to manage. If done improperly it can demoralize the user and lead to churn.

  One important thing to keep in mind is that Loss & Avoidance is motivational in a proportional manner. The way users respond to Loss & Avoidance is generally proportional to how much they have already invested into the experience.

  If users have played a game or used a product for ten hours, they will feel a more substantial loss than if they had invested only ten minutes. Starting over after losing is definitely more impactful on a player that’s invested a few days into the game and is on level 37, as opposed to a player who just started and is on level 2.

  The key strategy here is that the experience designer should dangle the threat of a large setback (the Ultimate Loss), but should only implement (if at all) small marginal setbacks (the Executable Loss) to emotionally train the user in taking the Ultimate Loss more seriously. The Executable Loss reinforces the avoidance.

  As a general rule from my own experience, the Executable Loss should never be greater than 30% of what the user has already invested in time and/or resources, and ideally never more than 15%. Generally a small loss of 2-5% is enough to motivate users to take the activities seriously. If the users lose over 30% of what they have originally invested, the odds of them feeling demoralized and quitting become extremely high.