by Yu-kai Chou
FOMO Punches in Action
Companies often ask me if their internal gamification systems should be mandatory for their employees. We generally know that play must be voluntary218. If one is forced to do something, even if it was a game, it is no longer considered “play.”
In that sense, gamified systems should be voluntary by nature, and therefore the Discovery Phase design becomes important in order to entice the employee into playing. Since employees must commit the work related Desired Actions regardless of whether there are gamified systems or not, they might try out the system if it offered the feelings of competency, social appreciation, and autonomy they naturally crave.
However, because of Status Quo Sloth, the employee often does not want to change their behaviors to try something new. That’s when the FOMO Punch can come in. Management can communicate how they are missing out on opportunities to achieve mastery, improve company recognition, and have more fun.
Another example of the FOMO Punch is the “Postcode Lottery” in the Netherlands. Each week, the Postcode Lottery awards a “Street Prize” to one random postal code (similar to a zip code but with a much smaller number of households). Everyone who played the lottery within that code will win the equivalent of around $12,500. Of course, the ones living in that postcode that did not buy lottery tickets get nothing except the agony of watching their neighbors celebrate the win.
In 2003 a study showed that the Postcode Lottery was more successful than other lottery programs because the Dutch residents were afraid of their neighbors winning without them219. Since we are more likely to change our behavior based on loss-prevention than gain-anticipation, people bought tickets because they feared a situation where their neighbors win the prize and host a big neighborhood party - then nudging them with, “Too bad you didn’t participate in this one buddy. Want me to buy you a beer?”
“The brain is very sensitive to loss — even low-probability losses,” explains Giorgio Coricelli, an associate professor of economics and psychology at the University of Southern California. “So if you frame something as a loss, biologically there is a compulsion to avoid it. We have an aversion to it.”220
With Core Drives 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 all built into the design, it’s no wonder the Postcode Lottery became such a huge success.
The Sunk Cost Prison (Game Technique #50)
Perhaps the most powerful and sometimes treacherous mechanism within Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance is what I call the Sunk Cost Prison. This occurs when you invest so much time into something, that even when it’s no longer enjoyable, you continue to commit the Desired Actions because you don’t want to feel the loss of giving up on everything.
Imagine a scenario where you played a game for a long time and it begins to become boring and meaningless. You ask yourself why you keep playing it, but subconsciously you realize that if you do quit the game, you will feel the pain of losing all the time, points, currencies, status, and customizations that you’ve invested. Quitting will result in that ugly sensation of admitting that you truly wasted hundreds of hours that ended up becoming nothing.
As a result, in order to avoid that depressing feeling of loss and emptiness, you instead convince yourself to use that powerful pristine sword to kill even more monsters, or tap into the two million coins you’ve earned with all your labor in an attempt to feel awesome again. Eventually you invest even more hours into the game and build up even more things to lose. You become trapped in a deadly spiral, and it can become quite depressing.
From a design standpoint, if you make sure the user is accumulating – and knows that they are accumulating – things that will be gone and wasted if they leave your system, it will be very difficult for the user to leave during the Endgame.
Sunk Cost Prisons, though powerful, adhere to the Black Hat principles of making users feel uncomfortable. As such, they should always be accompanied by White Hat Core Drives, (such as allowing users to recognize that they are actually helping the world and they shouldn’t give up the impact accumulated to that point). These technique should only be employed when the user has a quick urge to leave the system, such as being attracted to Black Hat Techniques used by other companies. (for instance, a special “limited” promotion that the user must sign up for.)
Facebook is an excellent example of a social media website that perfectly portrays the Sunk Cost Prison. I have many personal friends I physically hang out with but do not have their phone numbers nor email. The only way for me to contact these people is through Facebook.
If I were to suddenly deactivate my Facebook account, I would feel that all the connections with these personal friends would be lost. On top of that, I spent many years feeding my Facebook account with photos, conversations, and posts. All of which would be difficult to access or share if I retired the account.
To add both salt and insult to the injury, I wouldn’t be able to access and use all the virtual goods and currencies accumulated from the Facebook games I played. Facebook was smart in designing a product that people used so frequently and invested so much into that they would have a difficult time leaving – a sunk cost prison indeed.
On the other hand, even though Google’s search engine is extremely popular, it doesn’t really build up things to lose if you quit using it. It just happens that it is the best search engine in the market (in my unwavering opinion), so everyone wants to use it whenever possible.
But it just takes one change of mind, “hmm, today I think I’m going to search on Bing instead of Google,” for Google to lose that user. If one day, somehow everyone is convinced that another search engine is better, Google could lose all of its traction overnight - though so far it looks like this is not likely in the near future.
Of course, Google is combating that by introducing the Alfred Effect from Core Drive 4 through more personalized search results – Google understands You, and so if you stop using Google, you will lose all the customized results and experiences that no other search engine can provide you. This is not as strong as Facebook’s “we have all your friends hostage,” but it’s a step in the right direction.
When you design your experience, you should think regularly about what makes users reluctant to let go and therefore stay in your system for longer.
Core Drive 8: The Big Picture
Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance is a powerful motivator that is bluntly utilized by all sorts of organizations and systems. Core Drive 8 generates Black Hat results such as a high sense of urgency and obsession. However, in the long-run this puts the user in a state of discomfort.
In many cases, Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance works hand-in-hand with Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience because exclusivity and limited offers often come packaged with the anticipated fear of losing that exclusivity or having that offer fade away. These two Core Drives don’t necessarily have to coexist though. For instance, the Core Drive 6 game technique of Anchored Juxtaposition (where you provide users two options for completing a Desired Action, a combination of Core Drive 6 and 3) does not draw much strength from Loss & Avoidance.
Matched with Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity, the emotional fear of Core Drive 8 becomes magnified and even more crippling. Interestingly, Daniel Kahneman’s insightful Fourfold Pattern shows that, in low probability loss events, we become risk-averse to prevent that small risk from happening. However, in high probability loss events where we are forced to choose a certain (100%) loss, or a 90% chance to lose $200 and a 10% chance to lose nothing, we become risk-seeking and choose the route where we can foresee a glimmer of hope221. After all, fear is what motivates us to stay alive, but hope is what many of us ultimately live for.
To get the most out of the book, Choose only ONE of the below options to do right now:
Easy: Think about any activities that you are currently engaged in that are no longer enjoyable or meaningful, but you continue to do it because of Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance. How does that make you feel, and what would it take for you to sto
p that behavior?
Medium: Think about a product that you still enjoy using, but are likely trapped in a Sunk Cost Prison, should you one day like to quit. Is much of your personal data such as photos or the fruits of your labor, stored in the service? Are important contacts or relationships siloed within the platform? Are important organizational data and insights recorded in the system and essentially impossible to export? Think carefully about how the companies carefully built the Sunk Cost Prison while you still enjoyed their services, and how you can possibly escape it when you would like to switch.
Hard: Evanescent Opportunities, Countdown Timers, and FOMO Punches often work together to counter Status Quo Sloth and Sunk Cost Prisons. Can you devise a combination of these three game techniques in an optimal manner that can get people to leave their previous habitual comfort zones and give your project a try? After you grab the users into your experience, how would you add White Hat game techniques to make them enjoy it and feel empowered?
Share what you come up with on Twitter or your preferred social network with the hashtag #OctalysisBook and check out what ideas other people have.
Don’t miss out! Watch Yu-kai research popular games on Twitch.tv
Remember I said the only way to fully understand how a game uses the 8 Core Drives to motivate us towards obsessive behavior is to actually play the game? I’m sure there are plenty of games out there that you hear are popular but seems too complex to try it out yourself. In 2016, I began broadcasting my game design research for top-hit games on Twitch.tv. I showcase myself playing through these popular games while making comments on their game design and how they use various game techniques to entice me to come back every day and spend more money buying virtual goods.
I started out with Blizzard’s new card-battling computer game Hearthstone, and plan to eventually move on to games like Minecraft, League of Legends, and others. I do this for my own research, but if you go to my channel https://www.twitch.tv/yukaichou, you may be able to catch me broadcasting actual gameplay research. I also announce when I plan to live stream on my Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com/yukaichou so that’s another place to experience a FOMO Punch.
Okay, time for me to do another research session. I’ll see you during game-streaming.
Chapter 13: Left Brain vs Right Brain Core Drives
Using Octalysis in the Real World
Now that we have completed our journey through the 8 Core Drives, it is worth remembering that these Core Drives drive every action we take, whether it’s inside or outside a game. If none of the 8 Core Drives are present, there is no motivation, and therefore no action takes place (that is, with the exception of the hidden ninth Core Drive: Sensation).
You may have noticed that I always include a specific number with each Core Drive, and in some instances, I’ve only mentioned the Core Drive number without the full title. After reading this book and continuing on your journey to understand and implement Octalysis Gamification, you will find that knowing these Core Drive numbers will become extremely helpful.
When I work with my team of Octalysis designers on a client project, I often say things like, “Over here you can clearly see a Core Drive 6 design, which enforces Core Drive 3, which in turn promotes Core Drive 2, and ultimately leads to Core Drive 5.222”
If you are not familiar with the Core Drive numbers, you would naturally have difficulty keeping up with the conversation. The 8 Core Drives are designed to be “mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive” (also known as MECE223). Unfortunately, the full name of each Core Drive is a mouth full. By using their numbers, you can save time and effort in a long conversation and instead focus on creating valuable solutions.
For me, the Octalysis Framework has been incredibly useful because it not only provides a visual understanding of the intricacies of motivation, but also its nature: the placement of each Core Drive on the octagon shape provides visual cues that helps the designer determine if they have a long-term or short-term effect, or whether these experiences are intrinsically or extrinsically designed.
The Octalysis Framework also enables us to predict how motivation can evolve over subsequent phases and helps us identify the weaknesses of a design which can be addressed and improved upon.
Left Brain vs. Right Brain Core Drives
A key aspect of the Octalysis Framework is the difference between Left Brain and Right Brain Core Drives.
The Left Brain Core Drives involve tendencies related to logic, ownership, and analytical thought. They are expressed in the following three Core Drives:
Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment
Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession
Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience
The Right Brain Core Drives are characterized by creativity, sociality, and curiosity and as illustrated by the following:
Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback
Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness
Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity
(Note: there will be several points later in this chapter where you may find the need to refer back to the reference above.)
Again, it is worth noting that the terminology of “Left Brain Core Drives” and “Right Brain Core Drives” does not necessarily mean that they are physically located on the left side or right side of our brains. These references are merely symbolic in that some of the Core Drives are influenced more by the “logical brain,” while other Core Drives are influenced more by the “emotional brain.”
There have been past instances where some individuals tried to attack my work, pinpointing how the “left brain vs. right brain” model has been debunked and therefore is no longer scientifically valid. From my perspective, this is simply an issue of semantics, for I could very well name the emotional Core Drives, “Rainbow Core Drives” and the logical Core Drives, “Stone Core Drives” - which would actually give a nice, game-like ring to them.
However, the current terminology is ideal for design purposes, as the “left/right brain” terminology is popularly understood in the social sciences. Therefore I designed the Left Brain Core Drives to be conveniently located on the left side of the octagon and the Right Brain Core Drives to be situated to the right. I’m a designer by trade, so even though I don’t see anything wrong with the Left/Right Brain terminology to begin with, I prefer tools that are useful over ones that are simply “semantically accurate.”
I believe that my intended goal to organize these Core Drives into intuitive patterns within a visually clear diagram was successful. This allows me and my students to follow complex motivational and behavioral design principles in an approachable manner. In turn, this enables us to design experiences that ensure long-term metrics are sustained.
Conveniently, the Left/Right Brain framework structure also allows us to differentiate and design for the differences between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation
The grouping of Left Brain and Right Brain Core Drives with correlated to what many motivational theorists understand as Extrinsic Motivation and Intrinsic Motivation.
Extrinsic Motivation is motivation that is derived from a goal, purpose, or reward. The task itself is not necessarily interesting or appealing, but because of the goal or reward, people become driven and motivated to complete the task. More often than not, people go to work everyday not because they actually love doing the work, but because they want to make a living, advance their careers, and be recognized for higher achievements.
For example, let’s say you have a terrible job. Your job is to dig feces out of the ground for hours everyday. It’s labor intensive, smells horrible, and you hate the job with a passion. But then someone shows up and says, “I’ll give you $10,000 for every single piece of dung you dig out.”
All of a sudden, you become excited and extremely motivated to dig, thinking, “Wow! This is easy money! Hahaha!” You’re now engaged, joyful, and motivated with the
job. Morale is high, and you start working much faster than you did before.
However, it is important to remember that the task itself is still not fun. You are motivated because the extrinsic reward is extremely appealing, and it creates the illusion that you enjoy the activity. Once the extrinsic reward is gone, you will go back to hating the task - and possibly more so than before, as we will see soon.
Intrinsic Motivation, on the other hand, is simply the motivation you get by inherently enjoying the task itself. These are things you would even pay money to do because you enjoy doing them so much. For instance, you don’t need to reach any target to enjoy utilizing your creativity; you don’t need a physical reward to enjoy hanging out with your friends; and you don’t need any compensation to be absorbed by the suspense of unpredictability.
In fact, when you go to a casino, you have the opposite of a reward. Most people know that they are “statistically screwed” by the casino – that’s how the casinos make so much money. But they still come out saying, “I lost $200, but I had so much fun!” Why? Because, throughout those five hours, they were constantly thinking, “Maybe I’ll win this time!”
They are spending $200 to buy the intrinsic joy of “possibly” winning. If the unpredictability is removed and people know with absolute certainty that they will get $40 after pressing those buttons for five hours, they will no longer think it is fun. In fact, it would become very similar to the dreadful work of laboring in a factory.
Left Brain Core Drives are by nature goal-oriented, while Right Brain Core Drives are experience-oriented. Extrinsic Motivation focuses on results, while Intrinsic Motivation focuses on the process.